Wittgenstein’s Mistress

Jun 08, 2010 Joshua Nomen-Mutatio rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: The Patient; The Lonesome; Those Who Fill In The Blanks

Shelves: fiction, david-foster-wallace-told-me-so, within-the-dark-there-is-a-spark, dystopic

Okay, right up front, I read this on the basis that David Foster Wallace, who is unambiguously my literary hero, ascribed extremely high praise to this book. Foregoing any knuckle-biting self-analysis over what effect this had on my perceptions of the book I will just give my thoughts directly.

First off, I think I could accept a description of this book as pretentious, self-indulgent, plotless, etc. All the usual suspects. Large swaths of its content are jumbled thoughts about painters, museums,...more Okay, right up front, I read this on the basis that David Foster Wallace, who is unambiguously my literary hero, ascribed extremely high praise to this book. Foregoing any knuckle-biting self-analysis over what effect this had on my perceptions of the book I will just give my thoughts directly.

First off, I think I could accept a description of this book as pretentious, self-indulgent, plotless, etc. All the usual suspects. Large swaths of its content are jumbled thoughts about painters, museums, writers, philosophers, ancient Greek mythology, and other assorted ivory tower, academic name-droppings and trivia. The book is constructed as series of single sentence paragraphs, has no breaks, no chapters. The narrator repeats the same things several times, self-interrogates with a faulty memory about what she's written, failed to mention, perhaps already mentioned, and so forth. However, there's more to it than this. To invoke a cliche about avant garde literature and experimental art more generally: this is a "difficult" book; it takes effort. It takes reading between the lines. In short, it requires patient meditation and perhaps the just-so levels of circumstance equalized just right to fully enjoy.

(After the fact randomly inserted trivia: This book was rejected 54 times before being published. There's a interview with Markson at the end in my copy detailing this.)

I found myself totally smitten with it immediately, before the blizzardy bursts of aforementioned "name-droppings" really kicked in. I think its very necessary to go into this book realizing that it consists of the strange, non-linear, typed thoughts of a woman who is, within the logic of the novel, the very last animal on the planet. No more humans, no more seagulls, no more cats, etc. This circumstance is not explained, at least not explicitly so. What IS explained though are seemingly random accounts of traversing the globe by her lonesome—living in famous European art museums—staying warm by burning art, artifacts, frames of famous paintings—admissions of periods of time where she was undeniably "mad"—descriptions of reading collections of ancient Greek plays and tearing out and burning each page after reading both sides in order to stay warm—sleeping in, driving and destroying and (oddly enough) nearly being killed by some of the millions of abandon vehicles she finds—discovering tapedecks set to 'Play' in said vehicles and listening to beautiful music in them—and many, many other heartbreaking, beautiful little descriptive gems of these kind of things that would transpire eventually in such a reality.

The flurry of meandering thoughts about artists, writers, etc, (and the many dis/connections between them) as annoying as they sometimes became (though much of it was very interesting) really do serve as an excellent device which both obscures and sheds light upon the more fleshed out picture of Kate, our singular "protagonist"/narrator. A character whom I basically fell in love with, perhaps in a superficial way as so much of her person is obscured with the constant asides and gaping holes within the "plot"—but I recant the "superficial" there and want to replace it with the idea that I fell in love with her humanity, as cheesy as that may sound. She is the single loneliest character I've ever encountered. Her descriptions of imagining having seen a cat at the Colosseum in Rome, which becomes a motif throughout the book (like most of her thoughts, they repeat, all motif-ishly) becomes more clearly heartbreaking as they go on. She often has this emotionally detached voice, this sound of resignation, but it cracks and becomes desperate loneliness for the briefest flashes. She describes putting dozens of open cans of cat food about and being unable to tell if any has been eaten or not, though she seems know beneath her desperation and wishful thinking that there are no creatures left but her.

Good grief, this book is appearing more beautiful to me upon reflecting on it right now than it was while I was reading it. Another cliche about "difficult" art: it makes for slow digestion. Thinking about it more now I realize that there are hundreds of beautiful little descriptions scattered throughout this book, cropping up amongst the scatterbrained trivia—some so beautiful that to try to describe them out of context just feels . . . wrong.

I could go on giving sketches of her sketches, but I think, to somewhat relevantly quote Wittgenstein, "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."(less)

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Jan 25, 2013 Jenn(ifer) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cross-continental-book-club, 5-f-ing-stars, game-changers, gr-friends-recommend, own, read-in-2013, the-tops, you-should-read-this, my-reviews-that-dont-suck, dfdubs5

But when they succeed, as I claim David Markson's 'Wittgenstein's Mistress' does, they serve the vital & vanishing function of reminding us of fiction's limitless possibilities for reach & grasp, for making heads throb heartlike... ~ David Foster Wallace

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I reserve the right to tweak this review at will.
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One of many things I love about this book is how ardently it made me want to get inside of the mind of the narrator. A lot of readers have written reviews describing 'Wittgenste...more

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Jul 10, 2012 s.penkevich rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Just read it.

Recommended to s.penkevich by: Mike Puma

Shelves: favorites, po-mo, dalkey, mike_puma_made_me_do_it

‘The world is everything that is the case’

When looking to purchase a book I always try to buy them used. This allows me to stock my personal library with nice hardcover editions that often cost just as much, or occasionally less, than the price of a new paperback edition while also supporting small businesses that do their part to keep the dream of physical books alive. Used copies of books also come with an elusive presence of the previous owner haunting the pages. Occasionally I will wonder ho...more

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Jun 10, 2012 Megha rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Megha by: Thomas Bernhard, sort of

Shelves: reviews

It probably took me less than 20 pages to be enamored with Wittgenstein's Mistress and I turned the last page quite in awe of David Markson.

What we read as the novel is an unbroken series of sentences being typed by a woman, who could be the last animal alive on the earth. One by one she pulls out little threads out of the tangled yarn that her fading and cluttered memory has become. As she unloads her intellectual baggage, she constantly corrects and contradicts herself. We see her struggle to...more
It probably took me less than 20 pages to be enamored with Wittgenstein's Mistress and I turned the last page quite in awe of David Markson.

What we read as the novel is an unbroken series of sentences being typed by a woman, who could be the last animal alive on the earth. One by one she pulls out little threads out of the tangled yarn that her fading and cluttered memory has become. As she unloads her intellectual baggage, she constantly corrects and contradicts herself. We see her struggle to hold on to a train of thought and connect her ideas in some manner. Many of the thoughts are repeated and re-visited, except by the time she comes back to a thought, she may be misrembering what she had said earlier. Different ideas blend into one another, time is bent out of shape, resulting in inaccurate and mixed-up facts. There are times when something which had existed only in her head takes the shape of reality that she completely believes in. She sees some broken bottles by the garbage disposal and imagines how Rembrandt could have painted that. Several pages later she informs us that Rembrandt's painting The Broken Bottles had been painted by him standing by a garbage disposal. Sometimes details from her present or past life project themselves onto learned knowledge of hers and color it with subjectivity. Within these seemingly disorganized sentences, there is an intricate pattern through which Markson brings forth the nature of memory, the close connection between imagination and our concept of reality.

"What an extraordinary change takes place...when for the first time the fact that everything depends upon how a thing is thought first enters the consciousness, when, in consequence, thought in its absoluteness replaces an apparent reality." - Kierkegaard

Her meandering thoughts on literature, art history, philosophers etc., perhaps have to do with escapism. Her ramblings are sprinkled with little tidbits of her daily life, but one rarely finds her talking about her past life or the family she once had. Slipping into madness may be the only way she can have an iota of sanity. While her being the last animal alive on the earth is an acceptable premise, there is some hint that this world may be existing only in her head. I see the possibility of this being a coping mechanism for her to deal with her son's death. Perhaps her trying to name the cat she thought she saw at the Colosseum or the tape that makes a cat-like scratching sound, is only an attempt to name the cat that her son used to have but never gave a name to. Cat was all they called it. However the dam does break at times and what it gives away is devastating. Throughout there is a sense of sadness lurking just beneath the words, that one can't shake off. Be it her trying to play tennis with herself, or her putting out cans of cat food for a cat she knows she had only imagined.

In her own rambling and scatterbrained manner, she brings up many a philosophical questions. Though I am not familiar with the related works, one of the themes I did notice was about Wittgenstein's concern with logic and precise use of language. She often discusses questions of This is not a pipe variety and worries about expressing herself accurately. The novel itself could be an example of some such philosophical theme in that the literal meaning of the words you see printed on the paper won't explicitly tell you the meaning of the novel. You have to peel the layer and discover the order in disorder. It is amazing how much Markson says without putting it into words.

Amidst all the trivia, philosophy and a heartbreaking depiction of loneliness, there are several beautiful scenes that leave quite an impression ... her sitting in an automobile watching Stratford-on-Avon fill up with snow, rolling hundreds of tennis balls down the Spanish steps or the transcendental view of the Parthenon in the afternoon Sun.

And the ending - the first 220 pages might be worth reading just to be able to experience those last 20 pages in the light of the rest of the novel. (less)

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Feb 28, 2013 Anthony Vacca rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Anthony by: Jenn(ifer)

Shelves: 2013, existential-action-figure-set

ONE

Grief is the great isolator, even though everyone, for better or worse, has to experience it at least once in their life. And if you can manage to get by with experiencing just only one moment of grief? Then you’ve lived something of a blessed life. If you say you’ve lived a life free of grief? Then you’re a dirty liar. Or a heartless robot.

The weird thing about grief is that there is nothing really communal about it, even though we try pretending there is. We give condolences when someone su...more

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Nov 23, 2012 Paul rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone with a rodent infestation

Shelves: too-avant-for-my-garde, novels

Beaten senseless by the author's large brains I slumped to the ground. When I awoke I found rats had eaten the rest of the book and they had all died with uncanny expressions of horror on their little furry faces. I wasn't disappointed. This novel was a little too avant for my garde.

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Feb 20, 2013 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars

For people who are even aware that this book exists, it's difficult to fold over the title page without expecting a total balls-out masterpiece. Reviews hanging around online in archives and elsewhere, few and far between though they may be, fawn over it as much as they can, and David Foster Wallace listed it as one of the five most underrated books of last century. Resisting an unexplainable urge to buck the critical current, I submit that yes, it is very good. Almost certainly the work of a ge...more

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Jun 21, 2011 Jimmy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: male, novel, year-1980s, truly-madly-deeply-original

The protagonist, a painter, finds herself to be the last person on earth. More accurately, the last mammal, as even cats and seagulls are nowhere to be found except in bits of tape and pieces of floating ash. For years she wanders the earth alone. Looking for people in store windows. Feeding imaginary cats. Is she mad? Has she imagined all this?

That alone would've been a good premise for a novel. But Markson takes that premise as just the backdrop, the starting point for many other investigation...more The protagonist, a painter, finds herself to be the last person on earth. More accurately, the last mammal, as even cats and seagulls are nowhere to be found except in bits of tape and pieces of floating ash. For years she wanders the earth alone. Looking for people in store windows. Feeding imaginary cats. Is she mad? Has she imagined all this?

That alone would've been a good premise for a novel. But Markson takes that premise as just the backdrop, the starting point for many other investigations into a mind's slow deterioration (and thus, the decay of language, memory, knowledge). Meanwhile, we are reading every word she types into a typewriter from a house on a beach.

This is several years since she's been "alone". So almost everything she writes are facts and tidbits still floating around in her mind like the debris of candy-wrappers in the streets, or the El Caminos with flat tires frozen mid-bridge. Her thoughts are understandably a bit neurotic; she doubts her own memory and doubts language's ability to capture those memories:

All things considered, most likely T.E. Shaw was somebody Lawrence of Arabia once fought with in Arabia, which I do remember many scenes of in the movie.
Although when I say fought with, I should perhaps point out that I mean fought on the same side as, incidentally.
Frequently when one says that somebody fought with somebody one could just as readily mean that person was fighting against that person, as it happens.
So that when Marlon Brando and Benito Juarez were in Mexico, for instance, as in another movie I once saw, one could say that one side was fighting with the other side and mean exactly the opposite from what one means when one says that T.E. Shaw most likely was somebody that Lawrence of Arabia was fighting with in Arabia

What's also interesting about the above passage is that T.E. Shaw and Lawrence of Arabia was the same person. Often her recollections are half-formed, or mis-remembered like this. But it's not important for you to know (she never realizes herself) these errors (and I probably missed many also).

Elsewhere she talks about how two objects can be anything but equidistant from each other, whether she can say she burned down the house when not the entire house burned down, or whether she can use the same expression to describe another house that she's taking apart to burn plank by plank, whether to truly ignore the rain would mean to walk in it, which is opposite of what one would first think, etc., etc., etc..

She concerns herself mainly with these "inconsequential perplexities" and, as she quotes someone as saying, these perplexities can become the "fundamental mood of existence". Thus, her talk centers mainly around the lives of painters (Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Giotto, Rauschenberg), writers (William Gaddis, Rilke), musicians(Beethoven, Brahms, Maria Callas) and mythical figures (Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, Cassandra).

Oh yeah, and philosophers, like Wittgenstein. Because even in not talking about Wittgenstein's ideas (she claims to have never read a word of his, just as Wittgenstein has never read a word of Aristotle, she also claims), she gets at the core essence expressed in many of Wittgenstein's "language games".

Which is: to show that much of what we know, expressed through language, is a kind of short-hand notation. When that tent is dismantled, we realize we didn't mean what we originally thought we meant. And that many of the questions we ask ourselves are basically illusions set up by words so that we think we are talking about something when in reality we aren't (like the cat that doesn't exist in this novel, but is named and given a personality, and thus exists in her mind, and on the page).

Nevertheless, the world is all that is the case.

Surely there is much more thought to be given to this topic, but as someone who has never read a word of Wittgenstein either (I've only read a biography on him, which was highly illuminating and I'm very glad I read it before reading this), I should probably not continue talking about that which I do not know. (update: read this by DFW if you want more on the philosophical side of this novel)

Lastly: though this might sound like a semantic philosophy text, it isn't. It's a highly entertaining and moving novel. There is something eerie and relatable about her predicament and her state of mind, and through these word games (though they are not games to her) she is still able to get across her personality and deep sadness. It's a truly affecting novel without pulling on your emotions too directly, but through many indirect gradations.(less)

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Sep 05, 2012 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: lifetime-favorites

LONG overdue for a reread.
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12AUG12. Someone read the foregoing five-word review and told me "Long overdue for a REVIEW!" which flummoxed me a bit because I thought I had at least jotted a few thoughts in here. Not only had I not commented here (apart from the reread comment), I haven't commented on my personal page! What the hell damn guy! WM is on my list of lifetime favorites, and yet now that I've sat down to write I find myself glaring into an empty "What did you th...more

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Mar 05, 2007 Erika Jo rated it 4 of 5 stars

I wish there was a four-and-a-half rating. I loved it because it was scholarly, multi-genre and experimental.

If you don't know your worth in art history, philosophical references or European history, it might be a less enjoyable reading experience, but those are the things I get off on, so I had an a-ok relationship with it.

What initially enticed me, of course, was the title (although I am fond of the cover, which quotes the first strange line of the book, "In the beginning I left messages on...more

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May 03, 2012 brian rated it 5 of 5 stars

the 'message' behind nele azevedo's melting ice people might've been environmental, but for me it's all about death and impermanence and the horrible fleetingness of... everything. of course, for me, the subtext of everything from homer's iliad to the newest kate hudson romcom is death in that everyone involved will someday die, and then the last person to know anyone involved will someday die, and then the last person to know of somebody involved will die, and then the last person will someday...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: list-pomo

I once wrote a letter to Selma Blair and told her she was really good in the movie Cruel Intentions. This was before I had seen the movie, in fact. But she was really nice on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and I wanted her to feel good that someone enjoyed her movie. Even though I was probably not the only one who enjoyed the movie. But I wanted to have something to say to her and since her show on the WB was still a few months off I didn't have anything else to say, factually, expect, "You did...more

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Dec 11, 2012 [P] rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bitchin

Martin Kippenburger is responsible for a work of art called [appropriately enough] 'Wittgenstein,' which is a shelving unit shoddily painted grey. I couldn't find an actual picture of his piece, but here is essentially what it looks like:

description

[Courtesy of Ikea]

When I first saw Kippenberger's shelving unit I laughed [briefly], then I immediately moved on without compunction. I mention this because a great deal of experimental literature is, in my opinion, comparable to Kippenberger's artwork. It is, y...more Martin Kippenburger is responsible for a work of art called [appropriately enough] 'Wittgenstein,' which is a shelving unit shoddily painted grey. I couldn't find an actual picture of his piece, but here is essentially what it looks like:

description

[Courtesy of Ikea]

When I first saw Kippenberger's shelving unit I laughed [briefly], then I immediately moved on without compunction. I mention this because a great deal of experimental literature is, in my opinion, comparable to Kippenberger's artwork. It is, yes, momentarily engaging, but lacks any real depth. Indeed, one could garner as much satisfaction from being told the idea behind the work as from actually reading or studying it yourself, that actively engaging with the book or artwork beyond that initial exposure is, to all intents and purposes, pointless. The Ouilpo movement, for example, threw up a great number of these kinds of novels; Raymond Queneau's 'Exercises in Style' is so pointless, in fact, as to approach the level of evil genius.

I mention this because before reading it I feared Wittgenstein’s Mistress was going to just such a work. Gimmicky, is the term that springs to mind. Even so, I found myself intrigued by it. I knew, from having read some reviews, that a sizable proportion of those who read it hated it, found it too difficult, and/or too boring. [The word 'difficult,' however, when used in relation to literature is one of my buttons; press it and I immediately become aroused]. On the other hand, I was also aware of its reputation as a fine contemporary American novel, that David Foster Wallace [someone who had generally good taste] was a champion of it. What I was not prepared for was to be so totally captivated and moved by it.

The style: the novel is written in short statements, often one sentence per paragraph. [I haven’t read the reviews of the book on this site, but I imagine some cad may have composed one in the style of Wittgenstein's Mistress, it being so particular and therefore so easy to reproduce]. These statements logically follow each other, even if they do not seem to be obviously connected.

The title: some people will make a point of exploring the relationship between Wittgenstein's Mistress and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [which, being a philosophy graduate, I've rolled around on the floor with from time to time]. However, I want to make it clear that in order to enjoy the book one needs no knowledge of him or his work. Indeed, what struck me most about Markson's style was that it was a little bit like reading an auto cue.

The plot: Wittgenstein's Mistress is, quite simply, the type written notes of a woman, Kate, who believes that she is the last person on earth. These notes encompass her thoughts and opinions on various subjects, including music, art, literature and ancient myths. [Kate quite often, and amusingly, makes mistakes when sharing an anecdote or some information, as do all of us from time to time. This review may include its fair share, in fact, as I read the book some time ago]. She also recounts some of her experiences and adventures in what, aside from herself, is an unpopulated world. One such adventure involves a cat that the narrator thinks she has seen.

There is a very real sense of loneliness in the book, as one would expect of course, of wanting to reach out and connect with something that is alive. I'm not ashamed to say that I was a little damp about the eyes at various points. Regarding the cat, there was something in the idea of the last person on earth searching for a probably non-existent feline that swelled my heart. Call me a sentimental not-so-old fool, but this desire for contact with another living creature had a strong emotional effect on me, especially when you consider that we live in a society where a good number of our species go to great lengths to avoid other people.

As one progresses through the book certain ideas are repeated, certain personal memories and preoccupations returned to; these things are obviously important to Kate, have some special meaning for her. There is a gradual revealing of, hints at, some kind of personal crisis. This leads the reader to wonder if the woman is indeed the last person on the earth or whether she is suffering from some form of madness precipitated by a tragic or painful event(s).

It is to Markson's great credit that one comes away from the novel without a definite opinion. He allows just enough of a peek into Kate's personal life to create some doubt as to the veracity of her claims. Whether she is mad or not is for you to decide, of course, but what is beyond question is that this is a poignant, sophisticated, wise and funny book. Perversely, for a novel about the last woman on earth reading it made me feel less alone. (less)

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Apr 25, 2013 S. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2013, 5-stars, lonely-hearts

...as if I have been appointed curator of all the world."

This book is one continuing monologue of a woman named Kate who is convinced she is the last remaining person (and animal) on earth. She has given up looking for other people, but many of her reflections concern traveling the world in search. Finally persuaded of her isolation, her companions become her thoughts and musings on artists, paintings, music, writers, characters of myth and philosophers.

She tells us Wittgenstein was too difficu...more ...as if I have been appointed curator of all the world."

This book is one continuing monologue of a woman named Kate who is convinced she is the last remaining person (and animal) on earth. She has given up looking for other people, but many of her reflections concern traveling the world in search. Finally persuaded of her isolation, her companions become her thoughts and musings on artists, paintings, music, writers, characters of myth and philosophers.

She tells us Wittgenstein was too difficult to read. Yet she is Wittgenstein’s mistress apparently because she represents what he called our struggle against the bewitchment of language. I assume this is why. I also have not read Wittgenstein. I’m pretty sure everything I’ll ever learn about Wittgenstein I will have learned by reading this book. Which isn’t saying much, but seems appropriate.

This is a person holding herself together with tape. She resists the personal, allowing herself instead to be occupied with randomly and purposefully connected thoughts and anecdotes that swirl and morph and repeat. When the rare personal memory emerges it is something worth reading a few times. And yet the “personal” is also the impersonal, since Kate identifies with Helen of Troy, with Medea, Artemisia Gentileschi. Not to mention Magritte and Icarus. And Clytemnestra.

I did wonder once or twice if it wasn’t a bit monotonous, but the cumulative impact is strong.

And I wonder if the end is really that sad. Of course it is sad because life and loneliness and bewilderment are sad. But the beach watchfires, and affirmative declaration is also a testament.

Not being a reader who’s on top of all the new tastes and directions in fiction, I dislike seeing this labeled all over the place as “the high point” of “80’s experiemental fiction,” as if it were so over. It’s not over. I read for the book itself, not where it fits in.

Actually we’re all quite alone and somewhat addled by it when you come to think about it.

How many times a week does my train stop at a station and I see an otherwise sane-looking person mumbling to himself? Many. Or a kid carving his name into a seat while waiting for the subway.

Most of us also didn’t read Wittgenstein.
(less)

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Dec 13, 2007 Carolyn rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those I loathe.

Is there a negative three stars rating? If this was the last book on earth, and destroying it would mean that all future generations would be illiterate, I would DESTROY IT and save all those unborn children the senseless pain of attempting to take any point away from this author's vulgar display of hoity-toity "I know all about art and greek mythology, so I'm going to talk about it but mix it up just enough for you to buy that I know SO MUCH MORE ABOUT IT THEN YOU that YOU MUST BE STUPID. And i...more

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Apr 22, 2007 St. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: apocalyptic-melodrama, digressive-fiction

In an oceanside house that is not her own, Kate--who, admittedly, has been insane from time to time--narrates her experience as the last person on earth. Whether or not that's true, she is no less entirely alone. Her mind wanders, going through a lifetime of collected musings on art and history and everything else.

This is a digressive monologue told in short declarative statements deliberately parallelling Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Which gives you some idea of how brilliant Markson is, because i...more

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Aug 13, 2008 Carl rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this book, so much so that right after I finished it I began reading David Foster Wallace's 25 page book review, which, according to Markson himself, was very in depth and insightful. About 4 pages into that I stopped and realized that I perhaps didn't understand the book as well as I thought I did, and that a working knowledge of Wittgenstein actually would have helped. Not a knowledge of a few of his catch phrases but a fundamental understanding of his work. Who takes titles so...more

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Jan 01, 2008 Crystal T rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended by Jason, reading presently.

The best thing about the book was the narrator's way of over explaining her sentences when they didn't need to be explained. It was the best depiction of a person going insane. I also enjoyed the one liners, such as "The things one becomes tardily aware of," and "God. The things men used to do."

I finished this book on New Years Eve 2007; I expected to cry after reading the quotes on the cover that dared me not to at the end but... I didn't cry. It was ver...more

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Oct 24, 2011 Aaron Mcquiston rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: dalkey-archive

This book has been recommended to me for years, mostly by websites who try to sell me books based on my high ratings of other books that might be relevant.

Not that every other book I have read is relevant to this one of course.

The websites, mostly selling stuff, lump certain books into certain piles.

Like "Infinate Jest" and "You Bright and Rising Angels" and "Under the Volcano" for example.

When someone has read and highly reviewed these books, per se, "Wittgenstein's Mistress" comes up as a must...more

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Sep 12, 2007 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone

I'm really glad The Last Novel is getting a lot of attention -- but I hope it leads people back to his earlier novels, like this one, which is The most influential book I've read in the last ten years. Really, there's jut nothing like it. Other top favorites: Reader's Block, This is Not a Novel, Springer's Progress, The Ballad of Dingus Magee.

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Jan 29, 2013 Arthur Graham rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Naturally what follows is a review of Wittgenstein's Mistress. Not his actual mistress, mind you (with whom I've never had the pleasure), but merely the book named after her.

One's language is frequently imprecise in that manner, I have discovered.

First, a few facts about the reviewer: 1) Has never read DFW's essay on WM, or anything else by Markson. 2) Is passingly familiar with about 66% of the writers, artists, and composers mentioned throughout, as well as their major works. 3) Has experience...more

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Feb 19, 2013 Max rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: postmodern

My initial impression after finishing Wittgenstein’s Mistress was one of a clever rendering of the ranting of a cultured amphetamine addict. However David Foster Wallace's afterword showed me the method in the madness. Per DFW, Markson’s novel is “a powerfully critical meditation on loneliness’s relation to language itself”.

The idea based on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosohphicus is that language itself is structured so that it obstructs one’s connection with reality. Language is a fract...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Patty rated it 5 of 5 stars

Today I was walking around the Met, thinking of her.

2013: 4 years later, I still think about this book so frequently that I feel it would be dishonest of me not to bump it up to 5 stars.

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Dec 02, 2012 Nick Craske rated it 4 of 5 stars

My head is suitably bent-out-of-shape after reading this peculiar avant garde piece of writing. Inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstien's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a classic 20th century book, about 70 pages, consisting of remarks on the essence of language, the nature of The World, of logic, mathematics, science and philosophy and ending with comments on ethics, religion and mysticism. It's quite a mind-bending reading in itself but is written with logical precision and often poetic intensity.

My...more

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Jul 21, 2012 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

In the beginning she told me she was the last person on Earth. Which, I admit, was difficult to understand.
Because I was listening to her tell me that.
Well, the point being that she was hard to trust.
Though of course it is people who are hard to trust who are often most compelling.
All the protagonists we find most memorable, in fact. Ahab, Heathcliff, Stavrogin, even all the way back to Don Quixote—every one of them is certifiable.
I met her here a year ago. We’ve been comparing notes sin...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Mike Puma rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: you know who you are

Shelves: dalkey-archive, 2012, favorites

David, David, David. How you Wow!* me.** You found your way to me at exactly the right time, and I’m devouring you at a pace McCarthy and Bolaño and Marías could only hope for. Don’t worry Chuck, Bobby, Javi, I’m still yours, but David has earned his place in your esteemed company. I am most pleased that this group seems to have so little in common—other than me.

But first, the obligatory: a MUCH better review is to be found by JN-M here (read it, Like it, then read it again), if I were to quibb

...more

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Feb 11, 2008 Robert Beveridge rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: defenestrated, owned-and-gave-away

David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (Dalkey Archive Press, 1988)

I gave up on it. I understand its appeal for many, and it's probably the best example of what stream-of-consciousness would look like written down in first person by someone with an obsessive mental editor, but that as a convention doesn't hold up for as many pages as this novel wants to be. It would have been a great plotless short story, though. The narrator's voice rings true, if somewhat grating, like reading the two-hundred-...more

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Dec 21, 2007 Ryan Dieringer rated it 4 of 5 stars

A super heady super inventive rollercoaster of a narrative. Its written in short, often disjointed sentences in 1st person by a narrator who is a (formerly yet totally?) insane woman. We slowly learn about her and her life through a novel full of ramblings that she types out over the course of a season, concerning objects in her house, fragments of her past, and ample waxings on the lives of famous artists and philosophers. Its focus on references and a post-modern fuck-with-your-head disjointed...more A super heady super inventive rollercoaster of a narrative. Its written in short, often disjointed sentences in 1st person by a narrator who is a (formerly yet totally?) insane woman. We slowly learn about her and her life through a novel full of ramblings that she types out over the course of a season, concerning objects in her house, fragments of her past, and ample waxings on the lives of famous artists and philosophers. Its focus on references and a post-modern fuck-with-your-head disjointed and imperfect narrative experience make the moments of pure character and prose explode off the page. Sometimes I was like, "fuck this I don't wanna think so goddamn hard when I read a book" cause I had just read Steinbeck before it, and I told myself that I wanted to read another "character book" cause Steinbeck is the absolute king of that, it appeared to me. But then, what I got was a actually in the end a very pure narrative experience. What Markson does is he presents a character that is a product of her own narrative, and her own relationship to a life governed by symbols and refracted references. It was one of those post-modern books that gets you depressed about how complex the modern character is, but then reminds you that perhaps the world has always been so complicated, and that's why its beautiful. Despite a few dry sections, Markson pretty much has our experience in his pocket the whole time. I'd get bored and think, wait why am I bored: "because of all the fucking references!" and then I'd think, wait, maybe this is supposed to be happening, and then BOOM, there would come a sentence so beautiful in a sort of Gertrude Stein visual kind of way that I'd forget all my boredom, and allow the references to enrich my growing understanding of a flawed narrator. Very far out shit. I was glad I read it and then ready to hit up something older and simpler. Is the cerebral novel like this the future of literature? What have characters become? Anywho, definitely took me higher...(less)

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Jan 27, 2009 Mari rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Mari by: Mel

Shelves: literature-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. "Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover, when I did all of that looking, or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?"

Wittgenstein's Mistress is about a woman who may or may not be the last woman on earth - who may or may not have traveled across Eastern and Western Europe, the United States and Mexico. She may or may not have had a husband named Adam and a son named Simon. She may or may not have seen a cat in the Colliseum in Rome. She may or may not have surviv...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Aseem Kaul rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-novel

To turn Wittgenstein's Tractatus - with all its complex (not to say unintelligible) ideas about cognition, meaning and reality - into a novel is to attempt an incredible intellectual feat.

To render that novel into a work of post-apocalyptic fiction, told from the perspective of a solitary female narrator left all alone in the world, is to join thematic brilliance to narrative inspiration.

To structure this narrative as a 240 page long sequence of one sentence paragraphs, the paragraphs not so muc...more

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