Fare Forward: Letters from David Markson

Sept 5 ’06

Simsy, my love—

Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s Hillary. She’s told Bill, and understanding the depths of her passion he’s willing to step aside. And of course she’ll forgo a run for the presidency.

But don’t tell a soul.

What the hell is a “young adult novel”?⁹⁵ Don’t waste your writing time on trivia, dammit.

Says David — whose two old private eye books will be reissued in a couple of months.

Meantime I love, love, love, your “poet” business card.⁹⁶ I would show it to everybody — if I ever saw anybody, any longer. Even had to cancel lunch with my editor, Trish Hoard (of Shoemaker and…) last week, because of awrful arthritis. I’ll bet I haven’t ever gotten around to mentioning my arthritis — just one more of the 97658 subdivisions of the “sick” in “old, tired, sick, etc.”

I wish I had some news. Basically just going nuts, trying to concoct a new novel different from what I’ve been doing, getting nowhere — which is to say, doing nothing. Forcing myself to read some of the allegedly “great” novels I’ve let go past in recent years — Saramago, Sebald, etc., and being bored by all of same. Though Joanna Scott does do loverly prose.

It’s not Hillary. It’s Beyoncé. Who is Beyoncé?

Re that cartoon I sent⁹⁷—I passed it around a writing class or two — telling them that if they did write, they should be careful whom they marry.

Anyway. Forgive the draggy lack of energy. Not just old, tired, sick, it’s old, tired sick, DULL.

But I do send much love—

David

95 I must have told him I was thinking about writing a young adult novel while in Japan.

96 The Japan-US Friendship Commission issued me a box of meishi, business cards with English on one side and Japanese on the other, to use during the duration of the fellowship. They read: “Laura Sims, Poet,” and listed my Tokyo address. I’d sent one to David.

97 From The New Yorker, it shows a man and woman on a porch; he’s seated at a typewriter and she’s handing him a sandwich, and saying, “I’ve got an idea for a story: Gus and Ethel live on Long Island, on the North Shore. He works sixteen hours a day writing fiction. Ethel never goes out, never does anything except fix Gus sandwiches, and in the end she becomes a nympho-lesbo-killer-whore. Here’s your sandwich.”