All of David Markson’s references in The Last Novel to Walt Whitman

All of David Markson’s references in The Last Novel to Walt Whiman:

I am he that aches with amorous love.            Wrote Whitman.

Walter, leave off.

Wrote D. H. Lawrence.

 

Walt Whitman’s claim — never in any way verified — that he had fathered at least six illegitimate children.

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins, on realizing that he feels a certain kinship with Whitman:

As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a very pleasant confession.

 

A writer of something occasionally like English — and a man of something occasionally like genius.

Swinburne called Whitman.

 

Future generations will regard Bob Dylan with the awe reserved for Blake, Whitman, Picasso and the like.

Said an otherwise seemingly rational writer named Jonathan Lethem.

 

Before the Euro, the portrait of Yeats on Ireland’s twenty-pound note.

America’s Whitman twenty-dollar bill, when?

The Melville ten?

 

Twenty-five years after his death, Poe’s remains were disinterred from what had been little better than a pauper’s grave and reburied more formally.

Walt Whitman, who made the journey from Camden to Baltimore in spite of being disabled from a recent stroke, was the only literary figure to appear at the ceremonies.

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough (Walt Whitman)

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From Leaves of Grass, illustrated by Rockwell Kent.

Errors on Walt Whitman (Jorge Luis Borges)

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Almost as if it was one person

Never was there more hollowness at heart than at present (Walt Whitman)

I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the States are not honestly believ’d in, (for all this hectic glow, and these melodramatic screamings,) nor is humanity itself believ’d in. What penetrating eye does not everywhere see through the mask? The spectacle is appaling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout. The men believe not in the women, nor the women in the men. A scornful superciliousness rules in literature. The aim of all the littérateurs is to find something to make fun of. A lot of churches, sects, &c., the most dismal phantasms I know, usurp the name of religion. Conversation is a mass of badinage. From deceit in the spirit, the mother of all false deeds, the offspring is already incalculable. An acute and candid person, in the revenue department in Washington, who is led by the course of his employment to regularly visit the cities, north, south and west, to investigate frauds, has talk’d much with me about his discoveries. The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-devouring modern word, business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain. The magician’s serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents; and money-making is our magician’s serpent, remaining to-day sole master of the field.

From Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas (1871).

The Muse’s Revenge — Ilya Milstein

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The Muse’s Revenge, 2019 by Ilya Milstein

“Himself let him unknown contain” — Tom Clark

“Himself let him unknown contain”

by

Tom Clark


Wyatt, with no insurance on his own head,
watching the execution of Anne Boleyn
from his cell in the Tower, while beyond
on Tower Hill her lovers also are executed,

reflects upon his wasted virtue and now
redundant innocence, rueful he ever did
let his name be known beyond the door of
his soul or hung his star from fate thrones.

(see also)

Classic I — Kati Heck

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Classic I, 2014 by Kati Heck (b. 1979)

Undine Giving the Ring to Massaniello, Fisherman of Naples — JMW Turner

Undine Giving the Ring to Massaniello, Fisherman of Naples exhibited 1846 by Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851

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Undine Giving the Ring to Massaniello, Fisherman of Naples, 1846 by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851)

 

Woman in a Summer Kimono — Goyo Hashiguchi

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Woman in a Summer Kimono by Goyo Hashiguchi (1880–1921)

Deer Hunter No. 1 — Wei Dong

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Deer Hunter No. 1, 2010 by Wei Dong (b. 1968)

Entopicon 1 — Jean-Pierre Roy

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Entopicon 1, 2016 by Jean-Pierre Roy (b. 1974)

William Burroughs’ Nova Express (Book acquired sometime last week)

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So I couldn’t pass up this first edition hardback Grove Press edition of William Burroughs’ 1964 novel Nova Express (with cover design by Grove Press stalwart Roy Kuhlman) that I found a few hot days ago, wandering decomposing stacks of pressed leaves here in North Florida. It ate up half of my credit at this particular used bookstore and yet was still cheaper than a new hardback NYT bestseller. Haven’t read the damn thing sense college, and don’t own a copy so. Here’s the back cover with an author photo of Burroughs in which he looks like a goddamn baby (how did he live so long?):

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“[T]he greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift”! I’m sure Jack Kerouac wouldn’t like hyperbolize even a smidge. What was Burroughs satirizing? Like modernism, modern machine life, etc. Control, as in all Burroughs.

Biologic Agent K9 called for his check and picked up supersonic imitation blasts of The Death Dwarfs — “L’addition — Laddition — Laddittion — Garcon — Garcon — Garcon” — American tourist accent to the Nth power — He ordered another coffee and monitored the café — A whole table of them imitating word forms and spitting back at supersonic speed — Several patrons rolled on the floor in switch fits — These noxious dwarfs can spit out a whole newspaper in ten seconds imitating your words after you and sliding in suggestion insults — That is the entry gimmick of The Death Dwarfs: supersonic imitation and playback so you think it is your own voice — (do you own a voice?) they invade The Right Centers which are The Speech Centers and they are in the right — in the right — in thee write — “RIGHT” — “I’m in the right — in the right — You know I’m in the right so long as you hear me say inside your right centers ‘I am in the right’” — While Sex Dwarfs tenderize erogenous holes — So The Venusian Gook Rot flashed round the world —

Read the rest of the death dwarf routine.

Double Self-Portrait with Lobster — Maria Lassnig

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Double Self-Portrait with Lobster, 1979 by Maria Lassnig (1919-2014)

Sunlight on Water — Harry Callahan

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Sunlight on Water, 1943 by Harry Callahan (1912–1999)

“next to of course god america i” — e.e. cummings

“next to of course god america i”

by

e.e. cummings


“next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn’s early my
country ’tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.

“Lament” — Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Lament”

by

Edna St. Vincent Millay


Listen, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I’ll make you little jackets;
I’ll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There’ll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there,
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.