Once, not knowing which of several houses was Bizet’s, Saint-Saëns simply stood in the road singing an aria from Les Pêcheurs de Perles. (111)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #GreatsOnGreats
Surely, a clerk from the liquor store where Protagonist had already stopped in two or three times for cheap wine, recognizing him? (112)
#Reader/Protagonist
At twenty, Joseph Conrad tried to commit suicide over gambling losses.
In later life managing to let people believe the bullet wound had come from a duel. (113)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #PoorMadDirtyDrunkAlone
The cemetery is in the oldest section of the town, and the few dwellings on the opposite side of the street, modest and rundown themselves, seem to house very few residents. A point being that no one questions Protagonist’s presence.
Nor is the fence mesh at that, rather it is a more traditional cemetery construction of tall iron spikes. The gate at the entrance is partly unhinged and askew.
The paths inside are of gravel, or were, long since thinned and scattered. (114)
#Reader/Protagonist
Is there a need to explain the house’s availability? (115)
#Reader/Protagonist
Obviously a former gatekeeper’s or superintendent’s. (116)
#Reader/Protagonist
William Butler Yeats was an anti-Semite. (117)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #Bigotry
A neighbor once came upon William Blake and his wife Catherine reading Paradise Lost aloud in their garden. Sitting naked. (118)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #DMBookshelf
Milton in the buff.
Robert Moses Grove. (119)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons
Manet was so vituperatively condemned by critics that for a time he was too embarrassed to ask anyone to pose for him.
Before Cézanne had gained any recognition he once burst into tears when someone sincerely admired his work. (120)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons
Nothing now, but my books. (121)
#Reader/Protagonist
Haller’s books? Selkirk’s? (122)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #Reader/Protagonist #DMCastofCharacters #DMBookshelf
The Persians deployed so many bowmen at Thermopylae that it was said their arrows would blot out the sun.
To which a Spartan commander: All the better, then we will be fighting in the shade. (123)
#DMquotations #DM Map
In his mid-thirties, T. S. Eliot was known to wear pale green face powder. One of the Sitwells said it was to make him look as if he were suffering. (124)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #GreatsOnGreats
Reader’s Block 193 pages, This Is Not A Novel 190 pages
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was an American prisoner of war in Italy at the end of World War II. (125)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #DM Map
Should Protagonist possibly have written books of his own once? Unnamed and undescribed, mentioned almost incidentally?
Once, he wrote a few books. That was long ago. (126)
#Reader/Protagonist
Nobody comes. Nobody calls. (127)
#Reader/Protagonist
Vanishing Point 191 pages, The Last Novel 190 pages.
Rossini wore a wig. In chilly weather he sometimes wore two. (128)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons
In fact only two Spartans survived Thermopylae. One was killed in battle elsewhere. The other hanged himself in disgrace. (129)
#DM Map #ThisIsTheEndMyFriend
800 pages of whatnot.
Cervantes was a tax collector during the outfitting of the Armada.
And was imprisoned when his accounts did not balance. (130)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons
Je crois entendre encore. (131)
#DMquotations
Check out other posts from the Markson Project here.