Fare Forward: Letters from David Markson

Feb 1 ’06

Simso—

No, I ain’t a Capricorn, whatever comes before that — which I recall only because somebody once told me. Don’t tell me you believe in that shit?

Gawd, how can you teach as much as you say? The only time I did it full time—1964–66, at LIU — I was semi-suicidal.

Meantime, lissen, you might inquire at RCF yet again re your DM essay — telling them you saw a Dalkey Archive catalogue in a bookstore (I’m the one who saw one, but that means they are in distribution) and DM is not even listed for their spring issue. Otherwise, if you don’t peddle it before you go to Japan⁷¹ someplace, then what?

Why why why do you do all those readings? Who arranges them? Do you get paid?

Don’t leave flowers, telephone.⁷²

Old tired sick broke⁷³—but with love—

David

71 I’d received a writing grant from the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission for a six-month residency in Tokyo — for fall of 2006.

72 I was going to be in NYC, for a reading again. We couldn’t meet but I’d told him I was going to leave flowers on his doorstep.

73 Which would become a primary refrain in his last novel, The Last Novel.