Hallock Hill

Goodbye, David Markson

I learned today, through his one-time publisher Dalkey Archive, that David Markson has died within the last few days. At 82. For those of you unfamiliar with his work, Markson was one of the best voices in American post-war writing, a meticulous thinker and stylist, a careful orchestrator of words into phrases into a music that was at once jarring and soothing. Reading his work could be akin to listening to the radio: sometimes hitting harshly, the sense unwanted, and then quickly turning to a beautiful place to rest and wait.  Markson’s deep reading in philosophy produced a perspective unique in much of the writing of the last half-century. His final four works — Reader’s Block, This is Not a Novel, Vanishing Point and The Last Novel — are so immensely moving in their sparsity and in the ingenuity of their design that I defy you to put one of them down once you’ve read the first page.

My mission here has been from the start to write about music, and for me Markson’s work shows how language can achieve the heights of musical expression. He etches pure thought into the page. I spent an absolutely magical afternoon with him many years ago, and corresponded with him for several years after. He was generous and beguiling, demanding and caring, hard and soft. He was, in the brief glimpse I had of him, the best of what we can all be — a multifaceted prism reflecting the varieties of experience, thought and being.

What he can be for all of us I don’t know. My meager and brief reflection here only throws a dull dart at a target too distant now to ever reach. I write it, I suppose, merely to express that what he wrote had a depth and power unique to itself, and certainly left a firm impression. David Markson will always be one of our finest voices. Quiet now.

Read.