July 27th, 2010 / 2:23 pm
Author Spotlight

Alas, David: Finding Markson’s Library, by Kevin Lincoln

There are five books that used to belong to David Markson in my apartment right now.

There are also two books by David Markson. These have his name on the front, like you’d expect: on The Last Novel, written in thin, spare black lettering in the sky of the cover illustration, a foggy graveyard ephemeral below it; in the other—This Is Not A Novel—written in all-white lowercase below the novel’s—it is a novel, despite the—title, which features the interjection of an illustrated female nude as seen from behind and waist-up, a slight crescent moon above her.  As for the five that once belonged to him, they have his name written inside the front binding, in a hand that grows less ragged, looser, more fluent as the years go by:

in The Lime Twig by John Hawkes,

Markson

NYC ‘65

in Carpenter’s Gothic by William Gaddis

Markson

East Hampton ‘85

in The Counterlife by Philip Roth

Markson • NYC

‘89

in A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis

Markson

NYC • 1993

in Agapē Agape by William Gaddis

Markson

——   2002

My experience with David Markson, appropriately enough, began with and is inextricable from The Strand, the New York City used bookstore he loved during his life.

I say experience with Markson, but what I mean is experience with Markson’s books; as a 20-year old guy living in New York City for the first time the summer of Markson’s death, I’d never gotten the chance to meet him. (The ambiguity of that statement sounds almost appropriate, though, considering these books of his that I now own.)

I bought Reader’s Block in, I think, the December of my sophomore year—so December 2008. New York Magazine had run a feature the year before in which they solicited recommendations from critics on the “Best Novels You’ve Never Read,” you, of course, being the “you”—hopefully the critics had read what they recommended. And Markson won. “Won,” I should say, because let’s face it: the honor is a little ignominious, if not just bittersweet.

Granted, I know now—and I’m sure plenty of people had this exact thought when the feature ran—that such a title for Markson was unfortunately fitting. He’s hardly a household name. And in the baying that follows a legend’s death, the chorus of common obituaries that always seem to strike on common points, Markson’s obscurity never failed to be mentioned alongside his genius and unique style.

But anyway, I had this book in Durham, North Carolina, where I go to school. And Markson died and I thought, Damn, I hadn’t read it yet. But if there was any time, it was then.

In Durham for a weekend soon after Markson passed, I took the book from a box in my future apartment and started reading it that night before bed. On the flight home I got hooked, enthralled like a hypnotic by the parade of self-killed brilliants that Markson marches through the mind of his narrator, Reader, as he toys with his gestating novel.

Riding the M72 from LGA towards 125th Street, I reached into my backpack to resume reading; and, in one of the sheerest bursts of disappointment I’ve ever felt in my life, I realized I’d left it on the plane.  Before I got home, even though I’d slept all of eight hours between the last two nights, I hit The Strand and bought another copy of Reader’s Block, along with The Last Novel for good measure. I finished both within the week.

It’s ironic that the first phrase I can think of to describe Markson is “a true original,” considering the content of his books: largely quotes from other artists, sometimes attributed, sometimes not, or a brief sentence about the way they died, or some fascinating bit about the relationship between two writers—drawn from real life, but painstakingly constructed. Not all of his works are like this, and not all of his works that are like this are like this; if you’re curious for more details, read any of the obits from June, or the many eulogies by plenty of better writers than me. Or, better yet, just read the books.

Where this story gets remarkable, where the Markson/Strand connection stops being of mere biographical interest and starts becoming something else, happened about a week ago. Pretty much every time I’m around Union Square this summer I hit The Strand, and I was browsing on a Saturday before heading to a music festival in Coney Island—you know, for reading material. It’s a long subway ride. Also, I ‘m weak.

Regardless, I’m browsing the stacks, hitting the swath of postmodernists that’ve come to dominate my reading: Gass, Pynchon, Gaddis. Gaddis: there were three more Gaddis books than the last time I’d been, and I opened one, and there was that inscription, first thing I saw: Markson, East Hampton ’85. I made the connection, hoped I was right, bought two of the three, and went to meet my girlfriend, giddy over my purchase. The music was good, too.

A few days later, after I got paid, I went back and bought the other. And then earlier this week, I headed over from work, having seen Alex Abramovich’s post on the London Review of Books blog earlier that day about Markson’s library spread out among the stacks, how Abramovich and his friends had snapped up a bunch, how somebody’d found a copy of White Noise that Markson had just savaged. (The criticism didn’t surprise me, considering the postscript he’d written in Agapē Agape, Gaddis’ posthumous, final work: “Monotonous. Tedious. Repetitious. One note, all the way through. Theme inordinately stale + old hat. Alas, Willie.” Such brutal, perfect criticism.) My suspicions basically confirmed, I bought The Counterlife, doubly exciting due to the Philip Roth worship of which I’ve been guilty since high school, and The Lime Twig by Hawkes, which I’d been hunting for months and got FOR A DOLLAR in the racks outside—I didn’t even realize it was Markson’s until after I’d paid, stoked enough that I’d found it at all.

So now I have these five books, which seem to me like they belong in a museum, or somewhere they can be properly venerated. Instead, I’ll treasure them in private, warmed by the thought of Markson reading them before me, hoping that his talent, his craft was some sort of contagion, that maybe he smeared it on the books either purposefully or by accident, maybe he realized that after he died the books would be sold and bought again by someone who couldn’t believe his good luck, getting not only a book that he’d wanted anyway, that he would’ve paid for all the same, but one that had history scrawled inside it with a year and a location.

After all, Markson knew that every writer’s a reader, and that most writers are readers first—see Reader’s Block. And, considering his approach to the work of his heroes, I imagine that he’d be happy to see his works in the hands of an aspiring writer, open to the idea that maybe one day he’d become a part of an art that built on the art he’d made from the stuff of what he’d read.

You know, something nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage.

Kevin Lincoln is a student at Duke University and interns at A Public Space. Follow him on Twitter (http://twitter.com/KTLincoln). He currently lives in New York City, though he has to leave in August. But let’s face it, he’ll probably come back. He can be reached at kevin.t.lincoln [at] gmail [dot] com

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26 Comments

  1. Tyler Flynn Dorholt

      Hey Guest,

      Could you, over time that is, return here to note some of the comments, if there are any, that he made on the work of Gaddis? To begin with, there is little to no criticism on Gaddis, nor are there many people out there reading him (if there are, they aren’t talking about him) and secondly, the three Gaddis books you picked up are the least read in his oeuvre. This makes me quite curious.

  2. Tyler Flynn Dorholt

      Kevin,

      Sorry, I did not see the name at the end of the Guest so I called you Guest. Kevin, thank you greatly for sharing this bit and you did in fact post the notes from Agapē Agape, so thank you for that as well. If there is additional noting to share from the other Gaddis stuff I’d love to hear some of it.

  3. KTL

      Tyler— absolutely. I’ll throw what other notes I can find up in the comments section of this essay once I get home from work.

  4. Red

      Do most of you write your names in your books? As kids. of course, we all do. Or maybe you recieved nameplates for a birthday! I did, no longer do. Wish I could. Can’t. But I think it’s delightful that Markson did.

  5. Steven Augustine

      Markson’s Counterlife! Lucky son.

  6. Steven Augustine

      Something like this would be *impossible* in Berlin; an important writer’s library with all that marginalia…? Surely the books would go in a University’s vault somewhere. I still can’t quite believe it but I’m glad for the lucky few who can walk out the door and snap these up.

  7. Paul Legault

      It’s not over yet — I just purchased Markson’s Keith Douglas, Dylan Thomas, Wallace Stevens, Sor Juana de la Cruz, and Andrew Marvell. I always thought he had strangely old-school taste in poets considering the prose writers’ work he continually references —

      I left a James Merrill book of his in the stacks and his collected Malcolm Lowry (woof) — if there are any takers. I’m sure there’s more than that —

      It feels somehow sadder to take part in it — but comforting?

  8. KTL
  9. KTL
  10. Tyler Flynn Dorholt

      Hey Guest,

      Could you, over time that is, return here to note some of the comments, if there are any, that he made on the work of Gaddis? To begin with, there is little to no criticism on Gaddis, nor are there many people out there reading him (if there are, they aren’t talking about him) and secondly, the three Gaddis books you picked up are the least read in his oeuvre. This makes me quite curious.

  11. Tyler Flynn Dorholt

      Kevin,

      Sorry, I did not see the name at the end of the Guest so I called you Guest. Kevin, thank you greatly for sharing this bit and you did in fact post the notes from Agapē Agape, so thank you for that as well. If there is additional noting to share from the other Gaddis stuff I’d love to hear some of it.

  12. KTL

      Tyler— absolutely. I’ll throw what other notes I can find up in the comments section of this essay once I get home from work.

  13. Matt K

      Is any of the marginalia interesting? It doesn’t look like he actually wrote much in his books, or am I wrong about this? I’m all for preserving Markson’s archive, but curious how much he actually wrote in the margins, and if there’s any academic use to it – that’s not to say in any way that academic use is the only reason to preserve his library, but I think I might disagree that this stuff should be in a vault (or more likely, a library) if it consists of his name and a few underlinings – maybe something could be gleaned from having all of this together, but I think it’s cool that this is falling into the hands of Markson fans who are sharing what they find, and the inspiration they find from the texts. If this stuff was in a library, I doubt very much most of us would a) go check it out and b) even know about it. Does anybody know what happened to his notebooks, manuscripts, and computer (if he used one)?

  14. Red

      Do most of you write your names in your books? As kids. of course, we all do. Or maybe you recieved nameplates for a birthday! I did, no longer do. Wish I could. Can’t. But I think it’s delightful that Markson did.

  15. Steven Augustine

      Markson’s Counterlife! Lucky son.

  16. Steven Augustine

      Something like this would be *impossible* in Berlin; an important writer’s library with all that marginalia…? Surely the books would go in a University’s vault somewhere. I still can’t quite believe it but I’m glad for the lucky few who can walk out the door and snap these up.

  17. Paul Legault

      It’s not over yet — I just purchased Markson’s Keith Douglas, Dylan Thomas, Wallace Stevens, Sor Juana de la Cruz, and Andrew Marvell. I always thought he had strangely old-school taste in poets considering the prose writers’ work he continually references —

      I left a James Merrill book of his in the stacks and his collected Malcolm Lowry (woof) — if there are any takers. I’m sure there’s more than that —

      It feels somehow sadder to take part in it — but comforting?

  18. KTL
  19. KTL
  20. Rachel

      Did you leave the Merrill and the Lowry together in the poetry section? If so, I bought them both (along with his copy of a Seamus Heaney collection.) A part of me sort of thinks he’d love the idea of his books going back to the Strand, adopted by other bookish types and integrated into different personal libraries.

  21. Matt K

      Is any of the marginalia interesting? It doesn’t look like he actually wrote much in his books, or am I wrong about this? I’m all for preserving Markson’s archive, but curious how much he actually wrote in the margins, and if there’s any academic use to it – that’s not to say in any way that academic use is the only reason to preserve his library, but I think I might disagree that this stuff should be in a vault (or more likely, a library) if it consists of his name and a few underlinings – maybe something could be gleaned from having all of this together, but I think it’s cool that this is falling into the hands of Markson fans who are sharing what they find, and the inspiration they find from the texts. If this stuff was in a library, I doubt very much most of us would a) go check it out and b) even know about it. Does anybody know what happened to his notebooks, manuscripts, and computer (if he used one)?

  22. Rachel

      Did you leave the Merrill and the Lowry together in the poetry section? If so, I bought them both (along with his copy of a Seamus Heaney collection.) A part of me sort of thinks he’d love the idea of his books going back to the Strand, adopted by other bookish types and integrated into different personal libraries.

  23. JMW

      I’m curious as to how people are so easily finding these various Markson-owned books if they’re scattered around the Strand. That place is enormous. Do the books have any external identifying marks?

  24. noted « with hidden noise

      […] A thread at MetaFilter about Jack Green’s Fire the Bastards!. Tangentially related: David Markson’s library appears at The Strand; some of his Gaddis annotations have appeared online. […]

  25. JMW

      I’m curious as to how people are so easily finding these various Markson-owned books if they’re scattered around the Strand. That place is enormous. Do the books have any external identifying marks?

  26. Anonymous

      Not sure if you’ve been able to check out my tumblr, but over at http://readingmarksonreading.tumblr.com I’ve been posting scans from the 200 or so Markson books I picked up. I figured if they’re not gonna be in a museum, sharing em with the world via the internet is the next best thing…