I lived over near Sixth, and so I’d frequently walk up West Eleventh and we’d run into each other. He was a famous writer, and I had no reputation at all, so I was always kind of quiet around him. He was the Donald Barthelme. Once, I was walking with my daughter, who was about sixteen at the time, and we bumped into him. Afterward, she asked me who he was and I told her, and she said, ‘Dad! You didn’t even introduce me! My friends and I love his work!’ One time, [Barthelme’s editor] Faith Sale passed this message on to my wife; she said, ‘Donald Barthelme wants you to please tell David Markson that he’s not always coming out of that liquor store where you frequently see him. . .It was very funny. I, of course, went to a different liquor store, and was probably there more often than Don was in his!
An anecdote from David Markson, recorded in Tracy Daugherty’s Donald Barthelme biography, Hiding Man.
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