I Hated to Do It: Stories of a Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

most unusual way. Dexter had always wanted an obituary in the
New York Times
when he died. A short time later, Dexter died and Kurt not only got him an obit, but he managed to arrange for a one-eighth of a page obit with a nice big picture of Dexter. Dexter up in heaven looking down must have been so proud. The only problem was that Kurt, being the humanist that he was, never believed in that heaven stuff.
    David Markson
    David Markson, who was waiting with us for Kurt at the restaurant I mentioned above, was an American novelist and a good friend of ours and of Kurt’s. Kurt admired his writing abilities. While a graduate student at Columbia in 1951, he wrote a master’s thesis on Malcolm Lowry’s
Under the Volcano
, which had been published in 1937. He became obsessed with Lowry and later flew to Mexico to live the life of almost constant drunkenness with Lowry. He attended Union College and Columbia University and started his writing career as a journalist and book editor, periodically working as a college professor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and The New School.
    In my discussions with Kurt, I learned that he admired David’s work because it was eclectic, original, and David was not against taking wild chances with his writing. David’s obsession with Lowry was centered in his admiration for
Under the Volcano
, which later became a motion picture starring Albert Finney.
    During the last years of his life, before he died on June 4, 2010, we would have dinner meetings every three or four months with David and Kurt. It was always personal but also an education in what was the current literary scene of the moment. We would have met more often, but during David’s earlier days, when he was emulating Lowry, he had messed up his body with so much drinking that he could not easily get around.
    We had become friendly with David when Annie was teaching math at LIU in Brooklyn. There was a faculty meeting to discuss a book and they had tables set up for the drinks. Annie went to the martini table and started talking to David. David had given a lecture about the work of Malcolm Lowry. Annie shared with David that our friend Harvey Breit was very close to Lowry. David said that he had called Harvey, whom he had never met, to tell him of Lowry’s death. We soon got David and Harvey together at our house.
    Harvey was so obsessed with Lowry and later wrote a book of the letters of Malcolm with Malcolm’s widow. Harvey at the time was the book editor of the
New York Times
and was on a personal basis with most of the popular current novelists, including Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Nelson Algren, Norman Mailer, and you name it.
    When I say Harvey was steeped in the Malcolm Lowry story, it could be said that David Markson was submerged in the Malcolm Lowry culture. As I said earlier, he went to Mexico to absorb the lifestyle of Lowry. He came back drinking almost all of the time, living the life of Lowry. It was a way of life for Lowry and it became a way of life for David Markson.
    David Markson, during his early writing career, wrote some memorable books, and Kurt loved his work. Actually, I think that David wrote the funniest book ever written,
The Ballad of Dingus McGee
, which was a not so subtle, very clever spoof of Hollywood Westerns. I always told Kurt that I thought
The Ballad of Dingus McGee
was the funniest book that I had ever read, with the exception, of course, of his books. Kurt liked hearing me say his stuff was the funniest, but he agreed with me on this one.
The Ballad of Dingus McGee
was made into a film starring Frank Sinatra. As good as the book was and as funny as it was is how bad the film was and how not funny it was.
    David was paid the huge sum of $50,000 for the film rights in
McGee
, and that was more money than a professor could earn working for a lot of years in the English department at LIU. So when he got the $50,000, before he left for a trip to Europe, he managed to go into the