Fare Forward: Letters from David Markson

Oct 5 ’06

Simso—

Okay, I’ll finally tell you the absolute, categorical, unadulterated truth. It’s Ellen DeGeneres. She’s not gay. She’s been faking that, so it won’t spoil her image when she’s seen ducking in and out of my building.

Speaking of in & out of my building, Edie Falco lived here for years, and I had no idea who she was, never having seen The Sopranos. (Or maybe it was before The Sopranos.)

Forgive the cruddy paper, by the way. (Though at least there ain’t no cutesy little pink animals on it!)

Meantime there is NOTHING doing here, still. Awaiting copy-edited ms on the new novel. Lunch with Ann Beattie, dinner with Kurt Vonnegut (and two other chums) being my only recent “literary” activities. Also with my editor and publisher, and my novelist girlfriend (OK, it’s not DeGeneres). And she ain’t my girlfriend anyhow — though it’s nice to have felt a little playfully flirty for a bit, considering all my sexless, energyless ancient debilities. Bright, nice woman.

Still struggling to find something to react to when I read, dammit. About five total Anne Carsons now, and I’m about to quit — an occasional (no, a rare) glittering passage does not a genius make. And all that surface intellectuality is just that, surface.⁹⁸ That long Ammons Garbage I have tried to get into twice — and cannot believe how it won a National Book Award — via intimidation maybe, a little like Carson in that respect. A Barry Hannah amused me, but wound up with a shrug. A Tabucchi,⁹⁹ a grunt. But ignore all this, it’s me and my worn-down head, not the books. Or as my once-Playboy- centerfold-writer-ex-girlfriend recently said, “David, maybe we’ve just read enough novels.”

Then again, in your honor, I did buy a Penguin Bashō haiku collection. Now that’s the stuff for me — eight or ten words at a clip, the entire volume done with in fifteen minutes, hallelujah!

End of page, more than I anticipated. I think I’ll consider it a day’s work. No, it’s Thursday, make it a week’s.

Hope you’re both OK, still happy there, etc. With much love — David

98 I’m a huge Anne Carson fan, and vehemently disagree.

99 Antonio Tabucchi, Italian writer, 1943–2012.