He wasn’t kidding when he said he could hardly read fiction at all, after a certain point. I put him in a story once. I didn’t tell him, but I gave him the book. The character was named “Markson” and if he’d seen it, he would certainly have called, or sent me one of his famous, funny postcards. The character wasn’t really meant to be him, though the story took place in New York, and the character was at a party to which he or anyone else we knew might have gone. It was a little secret hello from me to him, that’s all. He did the same with a line written just for me in one of his books. So I gave the secret wink and he didn’t see it, and he gave the secret wink and I smiled. I bring this up because whether overtly or covertly, whether unconsciously, or even as a prank, writers write to other writers. Just because they’ve died, those writers don’t disappear.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to:
The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog — for providing both the impetus and the site for my posts on Markson.
Francoise Palleau-Papin, Martha Cooley, and Ann Beattie — fellow Markson friends and champions.
Wes Del Val, the Markson fan and champion whose vision made this book happen, and the rest of the powerHouse team, including Craig Cohen, Will Luckman, and Krzysztof Poluchowicz, who shaped, polished, and perfected.