Pg. 175 of David Markson’s copy of Joyce: The Man, the Work, the Reputation by Marvin Magalaner & Richard M. Kain:

     On which Markson placed an x and a check in the margins next to the following Joyce anecdote re: something he said to Al Laney (whose name Markson has also underlined):
     “An acquaintance of Joyce in Paris during the early twenties has recalled to the author of the present study an unpublished anecdote, in which Joyce used a similar figure to describe his view of religion. Men, he said to Al Laney, then a correspondent for the Paris Herald, are like deep-sea fish, swimming in water that is mysteriously irradiated with light from above the surface but unable to rise to the surface to see—a characteristic figure in its grotesquerie and its relevance to Joyce’s own limited sight.”

—

     Swimming in water that is mysteriously irradiated with light from above the surface…

     “A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles, and is there one who understands me?”
     From Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
     From Markson’s The Last Novel. (Pg. 187)

     Unable to rise to the surface to see…

     “Joyce had twenty-five operations on his eyes.”
     According to Markson on pg. 67 of Reader’s Block.

     Its relevance to Joyce’s own limited sight…

     Pg. 1 of David Markson’s copy of Tolstoy: His Life and Work by Derrick Leon:

     On which David Markson underlined Tolstoy’s birthdate (and placed an X in the margin next to it):
     “August 28th, 1828.”

—

     Though Tolstoy’s birthdate is a fact that Markson ended up not utilizing in his tetralogy, he does make mention of the date August 28th in two other capacities.

     “August 28, 1947, Manolete died on.”
     On pg. 163 of The Last Novel.

     “The death of Hector occurred on August 28, 1185 BC.
     Declared an equally perspicacious scholar.”
     On pg. 56 of Vanishing Point.

     Also, maybe not Tolstoy’s birthdate, but…
     Markson does make mention of Tolstoy’s deathdate:
     “A railroad siding, the Astapovo station. November 7, 1910.”
     On pg. 129 of Reader’s Block.

—

     David Markson’s copy of Tolstoy: His Life and Work by Derrick Leon is owned by John Harrison. The above scan is used with his permission. Copyright © John Harrison.

     Pg. 314 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume Two by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

     On which Markson put an X in the margins next to the following line (which he also underlined) from Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis:
     “And so for Helen’s sake my girl is doomed?”

—

     Once again, as always with Euripides, the blame Helen game…

     “There is no description of Helen’s beauty anywhere in the Iliad.
     Strangely like is she to some deathless goddess to look upon, being all that is said.
     Though the Trojan elders do acknowledge that no one could be blamed for having endured a war because of her.”
     - David Markson, This Is Not A Novel, pg. 29.

     “Although what one doubts even more sincerely is that Helen would have been the cause of that war to begin with, of course.
     After all, a single Spartan girl, as Walt Whitman once called her.
     Even if in The Trojan Women Euripides does let everybody be furious at Helen.
     In the Odyssey, where she has a splendid radiant dignity, nothing of that sort is hinted at at all.
     And even in the Iliad, when the war is still going on, she is generally treated with respect.
     So unquestionably it was only later that people decided it had been Helen’s fault.
     Well, Euripides of course coming much later than Homer on his own part, for instance.
     I do not remember how much later, but much later.”
     - David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress, pgs. 194-195.

     “You go wherever you like. I’m not about to get myself killed for that wife Helen of yours.
     Says Agamemnon to Menelaus—essentially about commencing the Trojan War—in the little that remains of a lost play by Euripides.”
     - David Markson, The Last Novel, pg. 132.

     “And which furthermore now makes me realize that if Euripides had not blamed Helen for the war very possibly I would not remember Helen, either.
     So that doubtless it was quite hasty of me, to criticize Rainer Maria Rilke or Euripides.”
     - David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress, pgs. 196.

     Pg. 754 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 underlined three passages in Euripides’ Medea, just after the titular character has slain her children offstage:
     1) “Thy sons are dead; slain by their own mother’s hand.”
     2) “MEDEA appears above the house, on a chariot drawn by dragons; the children’s corpses are beside her.”
     (This also gets an angular bracket marking in the margins.)
     3) “Having borne me sons to glut thy passion’s lust, thou now hast slain them.”
     (This also gets an X in the margins.)

—

     The scene of Medea murdering her sons is not shown, interestingly enough.

     In fact:
     “Not one of the violent moments in Greek tragedy occurs on stage. Medea murdering her sons, for instance. Or Orestes bloodying Clytemnestra.”
     Wrote Markson on pg. 70 of Reader’s Block.

     Pg. 401 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 underlined most of the lines on the page in an exchange between Oedipus and Messenger in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King).
     (And placed an X next to one line.)

—

     One of the lines underlined in the above scan is the Messenger saying to Oedipus:
     “Found thee in Cithaeron’s winding glens.”

     “Cithaeron.”
     Markson hauntingly brings up on pg. 117 of Reader’s Block with no other reference to the play in the general vicinity to give hint to meaning or to anchor one’s reading of the allusion.
     As is often the case with Markson…

     Markson is everything that is the case?

     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?

     Pg. 15 of David Markson’s copy of Cervantes: A Collection of Critical Essays by Various (Ed. Lowry Nelson, Jr.):

     On which Markson underlined part of a sentence from Gerald Brenan’s essay on Cervantes, and then placed an X in the margins next to it:
     “Elderly, shabby, obscure, disreputable, pursued by debts, with only a noisy tenement room to work in, he was still, in whatever spare time he could find, carrying on his unescapable vocation of literature.”

—

     This quote of Gerald Brenan’s is used by Markson in his novel This Is Not A Novel:
     “Elderly, shabby, obscure, disreputable, pursued by debts, with only a noisy tenement room to work in.
     Being  a description by Gerald Brenan of the man who was writing Don Quixote.”

     Markson feel some affinity with this hardship?

     “Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.”
     Being Markson’s own self-description of the man who was writing The Last Novel.

     In an interview for Conjunctions, Tayt Harlin mentioned to Markson:
     “It seems that so much of your writing has to do with how artists get treated horribly. At one point, you quote Octavio Paz: ‘Writers are the beggars of Western society.’”  
     Markson responded:
     “Of course, there are important writers who become rich and famous. But there have always been—and I have an awful lot of quotations saying this—artists who are forgotten for decades or centuries. I quote Vasari about painters ‘who, not only without reward, but in miserable poverty, brought forth their works.’ It’s a fact of the creative life. On the other hand, I found another quotation, and I was pleased to see it, by Jules Renard, about how ‘Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.’”

     Elderly. Shabby. Obscure. Disreputable. Pursued by Debts. With only a noisy tenement room to work in.
     Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.

     Pg. 250 of David Markson’s copy of Man the Measure: A New Approach to History by Erich Kahler:

     On which Markson placed an X next to the following information from a paragraph about the misuse of papal power by Popes that “did not behave at
all differently from the other Renaissance princes”:
     “And Pope Leo X, the son of Lorenzo Medici, was credited with saying: ‘This story of Jesus has helped us a lot.’”

—-

     On pg. 184 of his novel (?) This Is Not A Novel, Markson made use of the above information:
     “This story of Jesus has helped us a lot.
     Allowed Pope Leo X.”

     Pg. 654 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 marks around a sung speech by the Chorus in Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles.
     He placed a line in the margin next to the entire speech.
     He underlined the sentence:
     “Whoso craves the ampler length of life, not content to desire a modest span, him will I judge with no uncertain voice; he cleaves to folly.”
     He, lastly, placed an X next to the quote:
     “Not to be born is, past all prizing, best.”

—-

     Yesterday I mentioned a quote in Reader’s Block on page 115, where Markson wrote:
     “Never to have been born is best.”

     Françoise Palleau-Papin made a connection to a couple stories by Mary Caponegro where this idea was present, but I think that quote is more directly a reference to this line that Markson Xed by the Chorus in Sophocles.  In some translations it is actually translated exactly as:
     “Never to have been born is best.”

     And actually Markson does elsewhere in the tetralogy specifically make mention of this quote from Sophocles:
     “Not to be born is far best.
     Wrote Sophocles.”
     From pg. 105 of The Last Novel.

     Markson then, immediately after quoting Sophocles reminds us though that no single person has a monopoly on any idea—which is why he may have also been referencing Caponegro and any number of writers when he wrote “Never to have been born is best” in Reader’s Block (pg. 115)—by adding:
     “Not to be born at all would be the best thing.
     Wrote Theognis, at least a half-century earlier.”
     Also from pg. 105 of The Last Novel.

    Also, I found out that Heinrich Heine in his poem “Death and His Brother Sleep (‘Morphine’)” also says:
     “Never to have been born is best.”

    So Theognis, Sophocles, Heine, Caponegro…who else has said something similar???

    I’m sure countless writers…

Pg. 511 of David Markson’s copy of Modigliani by Pierre Sichel:

On which Markson placed an X next to a list of many of the attendees at Amedeo Modigliani’s funeral.

—-

On pg. 184 of Vanishing Point, speaking of Modigliani’s funeral, Markson wrote:
“Brancusi.  Soutine.  Léger.  Vlaminick.  André Derain.  Jacques Lipchitz.  Suzanne Valadon.  Kees van Dongen.  Picasso.
All of whom attended Modigliani’s—after his death in a paupers’ ward.”

One notably absent from Modigliani’s funeral procession:
A woman whom Markson lists in chapter 23 of part 2 of Springer’s Progress among his list of archetypal women:
Modigliani’s 9-months-pregnant lover and muse Jeanne Hébuterne.

She committed suicide by self-defenestration the day after Modigliani died.

Markson wrote of this in Reader’s Block on pg. 95:
“Jeanne Hébuterne, with child, jumped from a window on the morning after Modigliani’s death.”

Or, as he explained in greater depth in Wittgenstein’s Mistress, on pg. 103:
“Besides Briseis, the name of another mistress I remember is Jeanne Hébuterne, who had a child by Modigliani. Although that particular story is one of the saddest I know.
What happened was that Jeanne Hébuterne threw herself out of a window, on the morning after Modigliani died.
While again being pregnant.
The things women used to do, too, one is almost tempted to add.
What do any of us ever truly know, however?
And at least the word mistress had finally gone out of style.”

Markson gave us even further insight into her suicide on pg. 145 of Vanishing Point:
“During the night after Modigliani’s death, and before her suicide from a fifth-floor window, Jeanne Hébuterne repeatedly sketched self-portraits that showed her stabbing herself with a knife.”

Hébuterne’s family blamed Modigliani for her self-destruction, and thus did not allow them to be buried together.

Finally, after ten years, the Modiglianis convinced the Hébuternes that the two should be resting in peace together.

As Markson explained in This Is Not A Novel:
“It took ten years after her suicide for Jeanne Hébuterne’s family to allow her remains to be reburied beside Modigliani’s in the Jewish section of Père Lachaise.” (Pg. 110).

Now they rest in peace side-by-side under a single stone in that famous French cemetery that houses other such luminaries mentioned in Markson’s Notecard Quartet as: Guillaume Apollinaire, Honoré de Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Bizet, Frédéric Chopin, Colette, Alphonse Daudet, Eugène Delacroix, Isadora Duncan, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Jean de La Fontaine, Théodore Géricault, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Marie Laurencin, Molière, Alfred de Musset, Gérard de Nerval, Édith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Gioachino Rossini, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Oscar Wilde and Richard Wright.

On pg. 35 of Reader’s Block Markson wrote:
“Modigliani died of tuberculosis in a pauper’s ward.”

Under Amedeo Modigliani’s name the gravestone reads:
“Struck down by Death at the moment of glory.”

Poor Modigliani…

Under his lover’s name the gravestone reads:
“Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice.”

“…and poor Jeanne Hébuterne…”
Wrote Markson on pg. 235 of Wittgenstein’s Mistress.