David Markson is dead.
The news came to me here in Montecatini, near Lucca in Italy. A nice place to be aware that I am alive and he is dead.
A mean and nasty man.
I had been one of those who read the manuscript of Wittgenstein's Mistress and urged Jack O'Brien to publish it.
Markson objected to an essay I wrote about knowing him as a writer which was published in the Review of Contemporary Fiction. He threatened to beat me up... I am not kidding and he was not kidding as he was a barroom brawler or at least aspired to that role...a boozed up blowhard that gave the unlamented Lion's Head in a New York City some sort of reputation where midst Joe Flaherty and Pete Hamill he never tired of exploiting the accident of his friendship with the drunk Malcolm Lowry, a far better writer.
