So, in anticipating all the very interesting marginalia next week, I thought I’d share a site that I’m rather in love with.

http://readingmarksonreading.tumblr.com/

If you’re not familiar with him, David Markson (died at 82 in summer of 2010) was a great writer, but under-read. He was arguably one of the better read writers around, although one wouldn’t intuit that until a late tetraology of books:

Reader’s Block, This is Not a Novel, Vanishing Point, & The Last Novel.

Each one of these is a mix of throwaway moments or what one could consider marginalia in their own right. Yet Markson arranged them in a fascinating way. They are some of the best, most manic, and most pleasing reading I’ve ever done.

In any case, Markson also was an inveterate scribbler inside of books. When he died, sadly, his whole library was sold to The Strand in NYC. And not until a few perspicacious fans saw his inscription inside, did they decide to hunt for ALL OF THEM. Then begin posting the marginalia and connecting it with whatever he’d written in the past, etc.

My favorite marginalia is from his copy of Don DeLillo’s Mao II where he just writes, “Bullshit” next to a comment about art that he was not fond of.

I think people should be arguing and talking to the book, even in a banal way. I’m always so much more appreciative of books when I receive them and they are already in the middle of an argument or absurd digression. There’s a sense of mystery mixed with linearity that I don’t often get otherwise in life.

I’m going to post some marginalia by me and others that I’ve gotten soon…