The second page of the Table of Contents of David Markson’s copy of Tevye’s Daughters: Collected Stories of Sholom Aleichem by Sholom Aleichem:

     On which Markson has placed two dashes/marks in the margin next to two stories:
     1) “Tevye Goes to Palestine”
     2) “Get Thee Out”

—

     Both of these stories feature the character Tevye the Milkman.

     Yes, also of The Fiddler on the Roof fame.
     (The landmark Broadway musical was based on Sholom Aleichem’s stories.)

     Otherwise known as:
     “Tevya der Milchiger”
     A name mentioned on pg. 49 of Markson’s novel Reader’s Block.

     The first page of the table of contents of David Markson’s copy of The Satires of Juvenal by Juvernal:

     On which Markson placed dashes next to the first and second satires, and an arrow next to the third.

—

     On pg. 165 of the Markson novel This Is Not A Novel, it is written:
     “Juvenal’s poetry is not mentioned anywhere, by anyone, during his lifetime or until almost two hundred years after his death.
     By the era of Petrarch and Boccaccio and Chaucer, he has become O Master Juvenal.”

     And still in the era of Markson, Juvenal remains a major name of Roman poetry, even if not exactly read by the masses anymore.

     O Master Juvenal.

     The first page of the Table of Contents of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

     On which Markson made a number of markings.
     He underlined various titles of plays.
     As well as placed dashes next to various titles of plays.
     In addition to placing checks next to the page numbers of every play.

     He also bracketed the plays Agamemnon, The Choephori and The Eumenides, and wrote next to them:
     “The Oresteia Trilogy.”

     He also wrote next to The Choephori:
     “Libation Bearers.”
     A translation of the term “Choephori.”

     He also made lines to Oedipus the King, Antigone and Oedipus ay Colonus and wrote:
     “Theban Plays.”

—

     These three playwrights are mentioned in this same order—Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides—in Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress in a lovely passage about Kate burning books for warmth:
     “One winter, I read almost all of the ancient Greek plays. As a matter of fact I read them out loud. And throughout, finishing the reverse side of each page would tear it from the book and drop it into my fire.
     Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides, I turned into smoke.” (Pg. 16).

     Pg. 425 of David Markson’s copy of An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on 20th-Century Literature by Sven Birkerts:

     On which Markson placed two dashes, an X, and an asterisk in the index of the book marking the places in which he is mentioned.

—

     Markson is mentioned often in discussions of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano because of his master’s thesis which later became a major published work of Lowry critical scholarship: Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano: Myth Symbol Meaning.

     When asked in an interview with Alexander Laurence:
     “Do you admire Ulysses and Modernists in general because of their allusions? I feel that many of them were trying literary traditions in their books.”
     Markson responded:
     “That I love. Obviously. The books that I care about like Joyce, and Malcolm Lowry’s Under The Volcano, which I wrote about in great length about four years after it came out. I wrote my master’s thesis on Lowry where I wrote about all those allusions before anyone else. Nobody had written anything. I wrote about William Gaddis’ first book The Recognitions. I’m mentioned as one of the earliest people to have written about it. It’s a great book. Much of the Lowry criticism mentions my book. I went to a Lowry conference nine years ago. They were pleased to see me because I was able to inform them about what Lowry was like in person. I visited Lowry in Canada in 1952, and he stayed with me in New York a few years later.”

     In a different interview, this one with Conjunctions, Markson said of his relationship with Under the Volcano:
     “A great percentage of the people in the world haven’t had this experience, but sometimes you read a book, and it’s almost as if it’s been written for you, or you’re the only one who really understands it. The impulse—creatively, artistically, spiritually—was to say, ‘Be my daddy. Be my father.’”

     In An Artificial Wilderness, on pg. 197, Sven Birkerts writes of Markson’s Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano: Myth Symbol Meaning:
     “By the end of the book Markson has nearly convinced us that Lowry out-Joyced Joyce.”

     Towards the end of his life, Markson was often quoted as saying that he no longer read anything, except Ulysses—not even his other favorites, not Dostoevsky, not Faulkner, not Gaddis…and not even Lowry.

     I wonder if Markson still thought at the end of his life, when the only fiction he felt motivated to read was Ulysses, that Lowry had out-Joyced Joyce?
     Or I even wonder if he ever thought that at all?

     The Table of Contents of David Markson’s copy of Literary Essays by Ezra Pound:

     On which Markson placed dashes next to four essays:
     1) “Arnaud Daniel”
     2) “Cavalcanti”
     3) “Notes on Elizabethan Classicists”
     4) “Translators of Greek: Early Translators of Homer”

—-

     One of those essays, “Notes on Elizabethan Classicists,” ends with a line in which Pound says:
     “That editors, publishers, and universities loathe the inquisitive spirit.” (Pg. 248).

     When reading Markson’s tetralogy, I find that society as a whole seems to loathe the inquisitive spirit, the artistic spirit, the creative spirit and the intellectual spirit.

     It is as though society thinks the same as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who, as Markson explains in his The Last Novel, asserted:
     “A cobbler makes a greater contribution to society than does a Homer or a Plato.” (Pg. 106).

     Interestingly, elsewhere in Markson’s tetralogy we again hear about cobblers and artists:
     “She wouldn’t care a straw whether her husband was an artist or a cobbler, said Haydn of his wife.
     Whom he also called an infernal beast.” (Pg. 36 of Vanishing Point).

     I apologize to cobblers everywhere, for their profession having been apparently chosen to represent the opposite of artistic and intellectual endeavors, but if I am allowed to continue with those poles—cobbler vs. artist—may I ask how does a cobbler contribute to society more?

     Admittedly, I love the comfort of shoes, but I’d go my whole life without any shoes before I’d go my whole life without any art.

     Shoes may keep your feet warm and clean and comfortable, but art does so much more:
     “For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.”
     Which is a quote from Markson’s Vanishing Point. On pg. 54.
     And which Markson borrowed/stole from Walter Pater.

     I would gladly go shoeless, if a choice had to be made…

     But wait…how did I get from Pound essays to shoeless?

     Reader (of Markson Reading) often finds himself confused as to his own thought processes, and how one thing trails to another with seemingly the most tenuous of connections…

     But then discovering often greater connections in the trajectory of the movement.

     Always coming back around, and focusing on some key themes and ideas.

     Has he read too much Markson?

     Is he attempting, if admittedly failing in the task, to emulate him in some way?

     Regardless, now I’m shoeless…

     Granted, Reader (of Markson Reading) is essentially the I in instances such as that.

     “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.