Fare Forward: Letters from David Markson

Aug 9 ’06

Simsy—

Carole Maso I used to know a little, some years back. She’s gay. Indeed, last I knew, she and her partner had a baby.

Joy Williams, very attractive, I met once. She is (was?) married to the ex-Esquire fiction editor Rust Hills. I think they live in Key West.

Lynne Tillman I never met, never read.

Mona Simpson, likewise.

Christine Schutt — never even heard of.

I’ll tell you the truth. It’s Emily Brontë.

Lissen, the whole thing is absurd. I’ve not seen you enough to have probably mentioned same, but A., I have prostate cancer, and B., the treatment for same blocks testosterone — meaning I ain’t got no sex life! (Whether I’d have one at 78 in any case is beside the point.) But all I can do about this besotted lass is sigh wearily and daydream of the past. I am inordinately fond of — indeed, cherish — my editor, too, who is in fact younger than the novelist, recently divorced, now in New York. And tomorrow or the next day a 22-year-old kid, working on my books, is due to stop by. And there’s Sims, nagging me for a name — when I’m debating which monastery to enter.

I don’t know what became of the Japanese edition.⁹³ I was sent my few bucks long ago. Usually books eventually arrive. Though it’s all sort of meaningless when I can’t make sense of them anyhow. I remember tossing out several never-opened Norwegian copies of something, the last time I sold books. They are probably still on some bottom shelf at the Strand.⁹⁴

I was joking about Emily Brontë. It’s really Stevie Smith (she did write one novel, no? I delight in her verse.)

In fact it’s Jean Rhys. Grace Paley. Angela Carter. Colette.

Greenwich Village streetcorner anecdote for you, circa early 1990s:

Grace Paley: David, how are you? Tell me what’s new?

D. Markson: Hi, Grace. Nothing, really. Though in fact I do have a volume of poems coming out.

Grace Paley: That’s what we’d all rather do, isn’t it?

Markson household anecdote for you, circa whenever she used to spend a week with us, while a client of Elaine’s:

Angela Carter never bathed!

Lissen, OK, finally, I’ll tell you. It’s Anaïs Nin.

Love again—

D.

93 Of Wittgenstein’s Mistress.

94 The Strand Bookstore, a treasured NYC institution, opened in 1927, the year of David’s birth. Located at 12th Street and Broadway, it was one of David’s favorite haunts. He sold many books there through the years, and when he died, his library ended up there. One of his fans, Tyler Malone, started a tumblr called “Reading Markson Reading” after David’s death. He posts the marginalia found in David’s books that Malone and others have retrieved from the Strand.