Fare Forward: Letters from David Markson

“In Celebration of David Markson,” AWP Conference, Chicago, February 2009

David’s introductory remarks, read aloud by Martha Cooley to the fifty-plus audience members:

From David Markson, in New York—

Just a few words of greeting — and regrets that I can’t be there, if only to lurk anonymously in a back corner.

To Laura Sims, a good buddy — and a good poet — even if I sometimes can’t understand half of what she writes.

To Francoise Palleau, a dear friend, who’s lucky I’m not 65 years younger — or I’d be chasing after

both

of her gorgeous daughters.

To Joe Tabbi, with whom I go back at least twenty years — even if he seems to have lost my address and phone number in the last several.

To Maria Fitzgerald and Brian Evenson, regrettably, neither of whom I’ve met. But, hell, I’m only 81—there’s plenty of time.

To Martha Cooley, with whom I’ve shared endless laughter — except when she’s proclaiming in despair, “David, you’ve told me that — three times, already!”

And to the audience, all two or three of you. It’s been a long haul for me to get to where things like this happen, but that only makes it all the more gratifying. My very best — and my thanks for your interest.

But one more moment, if I may, a note of an entirely different sort. If anyone is ever doing any work involving my novel

Reader’s Block

— writing about it — please, please, use the latest edition, the one with the blue-ish gray cover marked 3

^rd

printing, 2007. Because of a horror story I won’t go into here, the 2

^nd

printing, the one dated 2001—for years the most commonly available one — contains endless

egregious

errors. To this day I don’t know why I’m not serving 20 years to life for having committed homicide because of it. Again, please, quote only the 2007 edition — i.e., the one dated nearest to the time when you’re hearing this — which I believe is fully corrected. Thank you again.