I was joking about Emily Brontë. It’s really Stevie Smith (she did write one novel, no? I delight in her verse.)
In fact it’s Jean Rhys. Grace Paley. Angela Carter. Colette.
Greenwich Village streetcorner anecdote for you, circa early 1990s:
Grace Paley: David, how are you? Tell me what’s new?
D. Markson: Hi, Grace. Nothing, really. Though in fact I do have a volume of poems coming out.
Grace Paley: That’s what we’d all rather do, isn’t it?
Markson household anecdote for you, circa whenever she used to spend a week with us, while a client of Elaine’s:
Angela Carter never bathed!
Lissen, OK, finally, I’ll tell you. It’s Anaïs Nin.
Love again—
D.
93 Of Wittgenstein’s Mistress.
94 The Strand Bookstore, a treasured NYC institution, opened in 1927, the year of David’s birth. Located at 12th Street and Broadway, it was one of David’s favorite haunts. He sold many books there through the years, and when he died, his library ended up there. One of his fans, Tyler Malone, started a tumblr called “Reading Markson Reading” after David’s death. He posts the marginalia found in David’s books that Malone and others have retrieved from the Strand.
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.”
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.
Oct 5 ’06
Simsy, my sweet—
A P.S. Correction to this a.m.’s letter. It occurs to me that when I referred to my ex-girlfriend-former-Playboy-centerfold-also-a-writer, you might have thought she’s the one I’ve been talking about of late. No, this is another. Was a Playboy centerfold when I met her — probably twenty years before yourself saw the light of day. The only centerfold who ever had a short story of her own in the same issue. All these years later, and she lives only about three blocks away here in the Village. Amazing. You turn old and pot-bellied and senile and you’re still in touch with some who a half-century ago were heartbreakingly young and beautiful.
Love again—
D.
Nov 17 ’06
Simsy my love—
I owe you. But as always, no hay nada aqui. I uncopyedited my copyedited ms of The Last Novel, then proofed the proofs. I get wholly confused re what’s what with the two-in-one Epitaphs coming out before that. I just had to apologize to that lovely lady French critic for a minor annoying screw-up (mine), and began my letter by saying, “On December 20 I will turn 79. I forget things!” Friends, acquaintances, keep dying (would you believe two memorial services yesterday?) (I went to neither.) (And have long since told my kids — none for me, pls.) Were you aware of the death of Richard Gilman100 over there — that is, aware that it occurred over there? Another friend (to a small degree).