Yes, no, I am still incapable of reading. Except for Alice Denham’s Sleeping With Bad Boys, especially all the porno parts featuring David Markson. (Book just now out; she being the ex-Playboy centerfold I’d mentioned. Review in this coming Sunday’s Times refers to “the novelist David Markson (‘stud lover boy’).” (I kid you not — my step into literary Valhalla.)
Have you heard from Rebecca Wolff101 re your pomes (as old Aiken102 used to spell it)? Don’t know her, but I seem to receive a freebee of the periodical now and then. You didn’t say where you hoped to land a teaching job; any nibbles?
How odd is it that I know these guys (well, knew, in Dick Gilman’s case) with Japanese wives? Pete Hamill & a writer name of Josh Greenfeld being the other two.
But, hey, that reminds me — if you have the odd moment, check to see if a translated Wittgenstein’s Mistress is in print over there, can you?103 It’s a year and a half ago that I received my few dollars, but I’ve never seen a book. (I’m not sure why I care; for all I’ll know when I do see it, it could be a copy of The Sorrows of Werther.) Then again, I could ask the agent’s office. If I remember.
Nada mas. My kitchen sink drips. The super fixes it. It drips anew. This comprising the major events in my existence of late.
I will assume you guys are OK. What would happen if I dialed your Madison #? Wait, let me. I just did. It rang & rang. Then, as if an answering machine had been on (but sans message), it said, “Memory full.” Is it still yours? Did I ask about this before? On Dec. 20 I will turn 79. I forget things!
But with love — David
100 Richard Gilman, a leading drama and literary critic, 1923–2006. He died in Kusatsu, Japan.
101 Editor of Fence Books, who was reading my second manuscript at the time.
102 Conrad Aiken, American novelist and poet, 1889–1973.
103 I tried, but failed to find one.
May 21 ’07104
Simser—
I was amused by that line you changed,105 which now asks if I sit staring into space on the subway, “lovesick.”106
You’ll get a chuckle in turn when I ask Eric107 to change the line that follows, from me smacking you upside the head to giving you a whack on the tuchas!
Hey, hope all is well. Nothing new here. (Well, that award.108) Reviews very slow in coming in on the new book, but several due soon.
Love to you both—
D.
104 I’m not sure why there’s been such a long break in our correspondence, though once I came back from Japan, we began speaking on the phone more often.
105 He’s referring to a line from the interview, included in this volume, we were doing for Rain Taxi. David took the questions I gave him and basically scripted the whole thing, right down to my interjections.
106 I was teasing him about his novelist girlfriend.
107 Eric Lorberer, editor of Rain Taxi.
108 He’s talking about winning the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award in Literature for “exceptional accomplishment.”
Aug 5 ’07
Dear Simsy—
Thank you for all the cows.109 There is now cow flop all over my rug!
Yes, depressed re Brooklyn.110 Severely. But a lovely letter from Palleau, telling me her husband says it was doomed from the start — since Brooklyn wasn’t young enough!
Yes (again), thinking about a next book — but, dammit, collecting these cursed notes again111—which (see our interview) I swore I’d not do! Ah, well, keeps me occupied, at least. “Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.”
Some guy who’d wanted to do an interview, and whom I put off, commented on the Rain Taxi issue. I told him, “Laura Sims is prettier than you are.”
Hey — love to you both—
Ever—
David
109 I think I’d sent him a postcard with a picture of cows on it. It’s a safe bet, considering I was back in the Midwest.
110 He and his novelist girlfriend, whom he’d code-named “Brooklyn,” had broken things off.
111 He couldn’t seem to escape his old composition method.
Sept 29 ’07
Laura, lass—
November 5th, that 92nd St. thing is. But why in hell would you punish any good friend by making him/her go?112 A., I’m only one of two readers — Will Self is the other one. B., Ann Beattie is flying up to introduce me, and surely ought to take some of my time. C., with no scenes, events, active moments in my work, I’ll surely need at least a 5 min. preface explaining whatinhell the book is all about, and how it works, etc., etc., if what I read makes any sense at all — earlier references to things that now repeat, and so on. Which means your chums will get about a page and a half of Markson for their $18 tickets!
Spare them.
With love—
David
112 I’d asked him for the details of his 92nd Street Y reading (his first reading ever, he said) so I could tell friends in New York to go.
Feb 3 ’08
Hey — Simsy—
Writing this for your return out there.113 How great to have seen you. And I’m excited as hell that you’ll be here in the fall.114 (Or, as you suspect, in Brooklyn.)
But, dammit, I owe you a lunch. I started to pay, and you made us split it, and I never thought about my two wines as opposed to your single lovely pale iced tea. Next time on me.
Next time, also, shut me up once in a while, will you? Three hours after I got home all I could still hear was the sound of my own voice.
Incidentally, on the reverse here, now that’s the girl of my dreams.115 Brooklyn who?
Hey — love to you both—
David
113 He means my return to Madison — I’d gone to New York for a reading. Again I’m not sure why there’s such a long break here between cards, but it could again be because we were talking on the phone more frequently.
114 We’d just learned we’d be moving back to New York, for teaching jobs.
115 He’d uncharacteristically sent me a picture postcard, that iconic close-up shot of a beautiful, green-eyed Afghan girl, taken by Steve McCurry in 1985.
June 9 ’08
Symsy—
Blessings on your furry little head for the essay!116 And no need to send one. My buddy Carolyn Kuebler, managing editor up there, has me on their freebee subscription list. (She was with Rain Taxi before.) So long as you spelled my name right, what can be bad?117
Meantime, lots of medical nuisances here, hospital time (brief), etc. Gawd, I hate being 80! Latest prognosis, fair.
Hey, I’ll see you in August. Everything will be better in NY than in Cheese-Land!
Love—
D.
116 I’d finally finished and published an essay on David’s work. It appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of the New England Review and is reprinted in this volume (page 97).
117 He hadn’t seen it yet, obviously, and I was nervous for him to read it, knowing he was easily angered by mistakes (as he perceived them) people made when writing about him.