University of South Carolina Libraries - Rare Books and Special Collections

Wallace Markfield

In many of his short works and in his first three novels–-To An Early Grave (1964), Teitelbaum’s Window (1971), You Could Live If They Let You (1974)—Wallace Markfield wrote with satiric wit and Jewish humor about working-class New York characters he had observed during his growing-up years in Brooklyn from the 1930’s to 1950’s. Greatly interested in the movies, he often turned a camera eye on details of his milieu. Having suffered some disappointments in his own academic studies of history and in his academic appointments, he also turned a satiric eye on American academia. His fourth novel, Multiple Orgasms (1977), was published as a segment of a novel he never finished. There followed a long hiatus before he published his fifth novel, Radical Surgery (1991), a political thriller. He published little or no additional work. Wallace Markfield died May 24, 2002 at the age in 75 in Roslyn, New York.

For further bio-critical discussion, begin with WALLACE MARKFIELD inDictionary of Literary Biography (DLB 2, 1984), and Contemporary Jewish-American Novelists (DLB 28, 1997), ed. Joel Shatsky and Michael Traub, pp. 215-217.

The collection of Wallace Markfield’s papers in the Rare Books and Special Collections Department in the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina spans the years of publication of the last four of his five novels. Included in the collection are various outlines, typescript drafts and proofs of critical essays, and two unpublished plays. Also included are letters to Matthew J. Bruccoli dating from 1975-1983. In addition to the Markfield papers, Professor Bruccoli donated a collection of Markfield's published writings, accessible through the library's online catalogue USCAN.

Clyde H. Dornbusch
April 2002

Contact Information:
Rare Books and Special Collections
Thomas Cooper Library
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Phone: 803-777-3847
Email: TCLRareBooks@mailbox.sc.edu

Introduction | Chronology | Finding List

The Wallace Markfield Papers

Introduction