IN THE opening sentence of his autobiography, David Marcus recalls how a love for literature broke over him “like a tidal wave” in his early teens. As pre-eminent literary editor, anthologist, advocate of the primacy of the short story, discoverer of new voices, and guide and mentor to young writers, few – if any – have matched his services to Irish literature for the past 60 years.
The magnitude of the tributes of gratitude paid to him by Irish writers is rare indeed, but is simply commensurate with the magnitude of his legacy.
As an editor, Marcus became literary father to generation after generation of writers, especially to many whose first appearance in print was in the New Irish Writing page of the Irish Presswhich he established in 1968. Singlehandedly he created a new air of excitement among writers and readers. The deeply felt eulogies are testament to the esteem in which he is held by these writers – and they make an impressive roll-call of some of our most celebrated fiction authors and poets of the past 40 years. Marcus's commitment – and his discerning and keen eye – as a literary editor long predate that initiative to launch the Irish Pressnew writing page at a key time in the development of the literary arts in this country in the 60s and 70s, when something of a changing of the guard was taking place.
When in the 1940s, with the encouragement of Frank O'Connor, he bravely founded the journal, Irish Writing, its authority and status was guaranteed by the willingness of so many of the major writers – among them O'Connor, O'Faolain, Kavanagh, O'Casey, MacNeice, O'Flaherty and James Stephens – to trust in him as an arbiter of literary taste and standards. He also had the confidence to approach some of the great international names – including GB Shaw and Dylan Thomas – who rarely refused him.
He delighted in his nurturing role as an editor and, it could be said, he sacrificed his own talents and career as a writer for the sake of the selfless act of guiding and championing the promising novice. His own novels, poetry, and translations from the Irish have received due acclaim; his memoir, Oughtobiography, is a vividly recollected and absorbing account of his literary adventures, as well as of life in Ireland's Jewish community and the Cork of his youth. But it was his enthusiastic support for the survival and renewal of the short story tradition that was central to his mission as an editor: a passion born out of that "tidal wave" that broke over him all those years ago.