David Markson
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

David Merrill Markson (December 20, 1927 – June 4, 2010)Legacy.com Featured Tribute: David Markson
as of June 7, 2010, when this article was published, the exact time of Markson's death is not known. This article states that his body was found on June 4, 2010
was an American
novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...
. He was the author of several postmodern novels, including ''Springer's Progress'', '' Wittgenstein's Mistress'', and ''Reader's Block''. His final book, '' The Last Novel'', published in 2007, was called "a real tour de force" by ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''. Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional and experimental approach to narrative, character development and plot. The late writer
David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and professor who published novels, short stories, and essays. He is best known for his 1996 novel ''Infinite Jest'', which ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine ...
hailed ''Wittgenstein's Mistress'' as "pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country". While his early works draw on the modernist tradition of
William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...
and
Malcolm Lowry Clarence Malcolm Lowry (; 28 July 1909 – 26 June 1957) was an English poet and novelist who is best known for his 1947 novel ''Under the Volcano'', which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list.
, his later novels are, in Markson's words, "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage." In addition to his output of modernist and postmodernist experimental literature, he published a book of poetry, a critical study of Malcolm Lowry, three crime novels, and an anti-Western, ''The Ballad of Dingus Magee'', adapted into the film '' Dirty Dingus Magee'', starring
Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Honorific nicknames in popular music, Nicknamed the "Chairman of the Board" and "Ol' Blue Eyes", he is regarded as one of the Time 100: The Most I ...
.


Biography

He was of
Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
origin. David Merrill Markson was born in
Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. Albany is the oldes ...
, on December 20, 1927.Niagara Falls Reporter
/ref> Educated at
Union College Union College is a Private university, private liberal arts college in Schenectady, New York, United States. Founded in 1795, it was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, and second in the s ...
and
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
, Markson began his writing career as a journalist and book editor, periodically taking up work as a college instructor at
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
,
Long Island University Long Island University (LIU) is a private university in Brooklyn and Brookville, New York, United States. The university enrolls over 16,000 students and offers over 500 academic programs at its main campuses, LIU Brooklyn and LIU Post on Long I ...
, and
The New School The New School is a Private university, private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for p ...
. Though his first novel was published in the late 1950s, he did not gain prominence until the late 1980s, when he was over 60 years old, with the publication of ''Wittgenstein's Mistress''. From that point, his reputation as a writer steadily grew, so much so that he told an interviewer: "One of my friends told me to be careful before I become well known for being unknown." Markson died in
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, in his
West Village The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The West Village is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to ...
apartment where, according to the author's literary agent and former wife Elaine Markson, Markson's two children found him on June 4, 2010 in his bed.Long Island Press: David Markson, postmodern master, dead at age 82
Upon David Markson's death, his entire personal library was donated to the Strand Bookstore, according to his wishes.


''Wittgenstein's Mistress''

'' Wittgenstein's Mistress'', widely considered his masterpiece, was published in 1988 by
Dalkey Archive Press Dalkey Archive Press is an American publisher of fiction, poetry, foreign translations and literary criticism specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works. The company has offices in Funks Grove, Il ...
. Though Markson's original manuscript was rejected 54 times, the book, when finally published, met with critical acclaim. It is a highly stylized, experimental novel in the tradition of Beckett. The novel is mainly a series of statements made in the first person; the
protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a ...
is a woman who believes herself to be the last human on earth. Though her statements shift quickly from topic to topic, the topics are often recurrent, and often reference Western cultural icons, ranging from
Zeno Zeno may refer to: People * Zeno (name), including a list of people and characters with the given name * Zeno (surname) Philosophers * Zeno of Elea (), philosopher, follower of Parmenides, known for his paradoxes * Zeno of Citium (333 – 264 B ...
to
Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...
to
Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning ( , ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married pa ...
. Readers familiar with
Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Witt ...
's ''
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus The ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' (widely abbreviated and Citation, cited as TLP) is the only book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that was published during his lifetime. The project had a broad goal ...
'' will recognize striking stylistic similarities to that work. Amy Hempel praised it for "address ngformidable philosophic questions with tremendous wit." A decade later,
David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and professor who published novels, short stories, and essays. He is best known for his 1996 novel ''Infinite Jest'', which ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine ...
described it as "pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country" in an article for Salon entitled "Five direly underappreciated U.S. novels >1960."


Markson's Tetralogy (aka ''The Notecard Quartet'')

Markson's late works further refine the allusive, minimalist style of '' Wittgenstein's Mistress''. He hoped that these four novels might eventually be published together in one volume. Thus, critics often discuss them as a tetralogy and, though Markson himself gave no title to this collection of novels, many critics have adopted the name ''The Notecard Quartet'' to describe this work as a whole. Markson described the action of this tetralogy as a character "sitting alone in a bedroom with a head full of everything he’s ever read." Most of the traditional comforts of the novel form are absent, as an author-figure closely identified with Markson himself considers the travails of the artist throughout the history of culture. In ''Reader's Block'', he is called Reader; in ''This Is Not A Novel'', Writer; in ''Vanishing Point'', Author; in Markson's last novel, ''The Last Novel'', he is known as Novelist. His working process involved "scribbling the notes on three-by-five-inch index cards" and collecting them in "shoebox tops" until they were ready to be put "into manuscript form." The first in the “personal genre,” ''Reader's Block'', was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1996. It was followed by ''This Is Not A Novel'' (Counterpoint, 2001), ''Vanishing Point'' (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004) and ''The Last Novel'' (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007). Of ''Reader's Block'', fellow writer and friend Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "David shouldn’t thank Fate for letting him write such a good book in a time when large numbers of people could no longer be wowed by a novel, no matter how excellent." The second book, ''This Is Not a Novel'', describes itself in a number of terms: * "A novel" (p. 18) * "An epic poem" (p. 21) * "A sequence of cantos awaiting numbering"(p. 23) * "A mural of sorts" (p. 36) * "An autobiography" (p. 53) * "A continued heap of riddles" (p. 70) * "A polyphonic opera of a kind" (p. 73) * "A disquisition on the maladies of the life of art" (p. 86) * "An ersatz prose alternative to ''
The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important English-language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United ...
''" (p. 101) * "A treatise on the nature of man" (p. 111) * "An assemblage onlinear, discontinuous, collage-like (p. 128) * "A contemporary variant on 'The Egyptian Book of the Dead''">The_Egyptian_Book_of_the_Dead.html" ;"title="'The Egyptian Book of the Dead">'The Egyptian Book of the Dead'' (p. 147) * "A kind of verbal fugue" (p. 170) * "A classic tragedy [in many ways]" (p. 171) * "A volume entitled 'Writer's Block'" (p. 173) * "A comedy of a sort" (p. 184) * "His synthetic personal ''Finnegans Wake''" (p. 185) * "Nothing more than a fundamentally recognizable genre all the while" (p. 189) * "Nothing more or less than a read" * "An unconventional, generally melancholy though sometimes even playful now-ending read." In ''This Is Not a Novel'', the Writer character states, "A novel with no intimation of story whatsoever, Writer would like to contrive" (p. 2). ''Reader's Block,'' likewise, calls itself "a novel of intellectual reference and allusion, so to speak minus much of the novel" (p. 61). Rather than consisting of a specific plot, they can be said to be composed of "an intellectual ragpicker's collection of cultural detritus." This seemingly-random set of quotes, ideas, and nuggets of information about the lives of various literary, artistic, and historical figures cohere to form a new kind of novel. Despite their unconventional form and appearance, Markson insisted on calling them "novels." Though the last three novels of ''The Notecard Quartet'' have been published together in one book, ''This Is Not a Novel and Other Novels'', because the first book of the tetralogy was published by a different publisher, the entire quartet of novels has yet to be published together in one collection.


Works

* ''Epitaph for a Tramp'' Dell, 1959. * ''Epitaph for a Dead Beat'' Dell, 1961. * ''The Ballad of Dingus Magee; Being the Immortal True Saga of the Most Notorious and Desperate Bad Man of the Olden Days, His Blood-Shedding, His Ruination of Poor Helpless Females, & Cetera; also including the Only Reliable Account ever offered to the Public of his Heroic Gun Battle with Sheriff C. L. Birdsill, Yerkey's Hole, New Mex., 1884, and with Additional Commentary on the Fateful and Mysterious Bordello-Burning of the Same Year; and furthermore interspersed with Trustworthy and Shamelessly Interesting Sketches of "Big Blouse" Belle Nops, Anna Hot Water, "Horseface" Agnes, and Others, hardly any Remaining Upright at the End. Composed in the Finest Modern English as taken diligently from the Genuine Archives'' Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. (Filmed as '' Dirty Dingus Magee'' (1970), * ''Miss Doll, Go Home'' Dell, 1965. * ''Going Down'' Holt Rinehart Winston, 1970. * ''Springer's Progress'' Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977. * ''Malcolm Lowry's Volcano: Myth, Symbol, Meaning'' Times Books, 1978. * '' Wittgenstein's Mistress'' Dalkey Archive, 1988. * ''Collected Poems'' Dalkey Archive Press, 1993. * ''The Notecard Quartet'', 1996-2007 ** ''Reader's Block'' Dalkey Archive Press, 1996. **''This Is Not a Novel'' Counterpoint, 2001. **''
Vanishing Point A vanishing point is a point (geometry), point on the projection plane, image plane of a graphical perspective, perspective rendering where the two-dimensional perspective projections of parallel (geometry), parallel lines in three-dimensional ...
'' Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004. **'' The Last Novel'' Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007.


References


Further reading

* John Barth / David Markson Number. ''Review of Contemporary Fiction''. 10.2 (Summer 1990): 91-254. * Palleau-Papin, Francoise. ''Ceci n'est pas une tragédie. L'écriture de David Markson''. ENS Editions, 2007. . English version (translated by the author): ''This Is Not a Tragedy: The Works of David Markson''. Dalkey Archive Press, 2011. * Sims, Laura. ''Fare Forward: Letters from David Markson''. powerHouse Books, 2014. * "David Markson and Solitude." ''The Scofield'', 1.1 (August 2015)


External links


Biography and critical overview from American Writers Supplement XVIIIntroduction and Bibliography on David MarksonMarkson's Pier, a novella published in Essays & Fictions in the style of David Markson, by David Ewald and Stuart RossBookslut.com Interview with David Markson

Review of ''This is Not a Novel''
obituary from
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
published June 7, 2010
"Address Unknown: David Markson, 1927-2010"
in memoriam from n+1 * This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 18.36 BST on Monday 14 June 2010. A version appeared on p35 of the Main section of the Guardian on Tuesday 15 June 2010. * This article appeared in the online version of ''Intelligent Life'' (Summer 2010). * {{DEFAULTSORT:Markson, David 1927 births 2010 deaths 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American male novelists Columbia University faculty Union College (New York) alumni Columbia University alumni Writers from Albany, New York American postmodern writers 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers Novelists from New York (state) People from Greenwich Village Writers from Manhattan