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Wittgenstein's Mistress
Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson - or anyone else - has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced, and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well, that she is the only person left on earth. Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and so witty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow her hypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in a series of irreverent meditations on everything and everybody from Brahms to sex to Heidegger to Helen of Troy. And as she contemplates aspects of the troubled past which have brought her to her present state, so too will her drama become one of the few certifiably original fictions of our time.
279 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1988
About the author
David Markson
24 books317 followersDavid Markson was an American novelist, born David Merrill Markson in Albany, New York. He is the author of several postmodern novels, including This is Not a Novel, Springer's Progress, and Wittgenstein's Mistress. His most recent work, The Last Novel, was published in 2007 and received a positive review in the New York Times, which called it "a real tour de force."
Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot. While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."
Dalkey Archive Press has published several of his novels. In December 2006, publishers Shoemaker & Hoard republished two of Markson's early crime novels Epitaph for a Tramp and Epitaph for a Dead Beat in one volume.
In addition to his novels, he has published a book of poetry and a critical study of Malcolm Lowry.
The movie Dirty Dingus Magee, starring Frank Sinatra, is based on Markson's first novel, The Ballad of Dingus Magee, an anti-Western. He wrote three crime novels early in his career.
Educated at Union College and Columbia University, Markson began his writing career as a journalist and book editor, periodically taking up work as a college professor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and The New School.
Markson died in his New York City, West Village apartment.
Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot. While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."
Dalkey Archive Press has published several of his novels. In December 2006, publishers Shoemaker & Hoard republished two of Markson's early crime novels Epitaph for a Tramp and Epitaph for a Dead Beat in one volume.
In addition to his novels, he has published a book of poetry and a critical study of Malcolm Lowry.
The movie Dirty Dingus Magee, starring Frank Sinatra, is based on Markson's first novel, The Ballad of Dingus Magee, an anti-Western. He wrote three crime novels early in his career.
Educated at Union College and Columbia University, Markson began his writing career as a journalist and book editor, periodically taking up work as a college professor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and The New School.
Markson died in his New York City, West Village apartment.
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July 31, 2014
Is Wittgenstein’s Mistress For Me?
The following survey is designed to predict your strength of connection to this very distinctive book. Choose the responses that apply best to you and tally the associated points. Then compare your total with the ranges below to see the course of action recommended especially for you.
1. If offered, I’d choose the stack of pages by a) Danielle Steel, Jackie Collins, and Nora Roberts (1 pt.), b) Lee Child, James Patterson, and Vince Flynn (2 pts.), c) Carson McCullers, Richard Russo, and Wallace Stegner (3 pts.), d) William Gaddis, Ben Marcus, and Samuel Beckett (5 pts.)
2. Plot, to me, is a) of primary importance (1 pt.) b) often a great hook, but not always required (3 pts.) c) pretty incidental to my edification and enjoyment (5 pts.)
3. A premise whereby the narrator, Kate, is the last living creature on Earth sounds like a) good science fiction fare if nothing else (2 pts.) b) the potential for a slick empathy vehicle, picturing what life in isolation would be like (3 pts.) c) an intriguing conflict as we decide between a literal interpretation (as the world cracked) and one begot by madness (as the individual cracked) (5 pts.)
4. My tolerance for an unreliable narrator a) approaches zero with every fact overthrown (1 pt.) b) varies – it’s often a contrivance, though it can serve a useful purpose (3 pts.) c) is as high as it needs to be to depict a disturbed state of mind or to get at a greater truth (5 pts.) d) soars when it shows how tenuous the things we truly know can be (5 pts.)
5. Randomness is a) the hobgoblin of preoccupied minds (1 pt.) b) reduced, thankfully, after illuminating patterns of fact and behavior explain all they can (2 pts.) c) next to Godliness (5 pts.)
6. I give bonus points when an author a) eschews obfuscation (thereby cosseting perspicuity) (1 pt.) b) makes nuanced arguments concerning bigger issues that become clearer the more we reflect (4 pts.) c) addresses issues I don’t currently understand, might not appreciate even if I did understand, might never understand no matter how long I contemplate them, and am not entirely sure were intended as issues to begin with – but, hey, it’s all cool when distant synapses connect (5 pts.)
7. Loneliness as a theme can be a) annoyingly solipsistic (1 pt.) b) enticingly solipsistic (5 pts.)
8. A structure with no chapters, very short paragraphs, and little in the way of segues strikes me as a) slapdash and artificial (1 pt.) b) just another device, neither off-putting nor profound (3 pts.) c) a brilliant way of depicting Kate’s state-of-mind as she flits from one inner thought to another (5 pts.)
9. Countless references to museum art, classical music, Greek mythology and German philosophers make me a) yawn (1 pt.) b) interested to the extent that there are insights to be gleaned and connections to be made (2 pts.) c) giddy with delight, even if most of what’s said is misremembered (see #4 above re: narrative reliability) (5 pts.)
10. When an intellectual heavyweight like David Foster Wallace calls a book one of the best of all time, my reaction is likely to be a) that’s the guy with the bandana, right? (1 pt.) b) yeah, but wasn’t he a philosophy major who was into all that existence and imprecision of language stuff; a pea in Markson’s a priori pod? (2 pts.) c) OK, but are we talking about the Wallace who wrote fun social commentary or the one who wrote an honors thesis that began by establishing Greek letter notation for a physical possibility structure, intersecting functional paths on ordered pairs {time, world situation}, and a primitive accessibility relation corresponding to physical possibility understood in terms of diachronic physical compatibility? (0 pts. because nobody would say this except as a gratuitous boffin joke) d) DFW – genius – damn straight! (5 pts.)
11. The thing I would be most curious to know about Kate is this: a) With nobody around to see her, did she wear any clothes? (0 pts. – dude, come on, we’re trying to be serious here) b) Was she crazy because she was alone or did she see herself as alone because she was crazy? (5 pts.) c) What would it be like to be the last person on earth? Would language devolve? Would memories fade quickly? Would memories be more important for keeping yourself together? (5 pts.) d) Was there a precipitating event that put her into that state? Though oblique, hints about a former husband and son were made. Might they have been involved in the collapse? (5 pts.)
Recommendations:
(20 or fewer pts.) – Even with a 20 foot pole, avoid touching this one.
(21 to 33 pts.) – You might give it a go if you’re curious, but don’t feel bad if you don’t. Plenty of people are fulfilled without ever picking it up. And synapses can connect with more ready payouts than this.
(33 to 47 pts.) – I know it’s hard to resist after smart people like DFW and prominent Goodreads friends have praised it. So please do try it if you want, but it’s not like you’re a cretin if you don’t. And even a close reading may have you wondering, “to what end?”
(48 or more pts.) – Drop everything you’re reading right now including cereal boxes, bathroom walls, and Goodreads. Markson is what you need instead.
Reviewer’s note: I scored a 36 myself, good for 3.5 stars rounded to 4. I sometimes wished those synapses that worked so hard to connect would have gotten a better return for the effort. But at least they did better than today’s money market funds.
The following survey is designed to predict your strength of connection to this very distinctive book. Choose the responses that apply best to you and tally the associated points. Then compare your total with the ranges below to see the course of action recommended especially for you.
1. If offered, I’d choose the stack of pages by a) Danielle Steel, Jackie Collins, and Nora Roberts (1 pt.), b) Lee Child, James Patterson, and Vince Flynn (2 pts.), c) Carson McCullers, Richard Russo, and Wallace Stegner (3 pts.), d) William Gaddis, Ben Marcus, and Samuel Beckett (5 pts.)
2. Plot, to me, is a) of primary importance (1 pt.) b) often a great hook, but not always required (3 pts.) c) pretty incidental to my edification and enjoyment (5 pts.)
3. A premise whereby the narrator, Kate, is the last living creature on Earth sounds like a) good science fiction fare if nothing else (2 pts.) b) the potential for a slick empathy vehicle, picturing what life in isolation would be like (3 pts.) c) an intriguing conflict as we decide between a literal interpretation (as the world cracked) and one begot by madness (as the individual cracked) (5 pts.)
4. My tolerance for an unreliable narrator a) approaches zero with every fact overthrown (1 pt.) b) varies – it’s often a contrivance, though it can serve a useful purpose (3 pts.) c) is as high as it needs to be to depict a disturbed state of mind or to get at a greater truth (5 pts.) d) soars when it shows how tenuous the things we truly know can be (5 pts.)
5. Randomness is a) the hobgoblin of preoccupied minds (1 pt.) b) reduced, thankfully, after illuminating patterns of fact and behavior explain all they can (2 pts.) c) next to Godliness (5 pts.)
6. I give bonus points when an author a) eschews obfuscation (thereby cosseting perspicuity) (1 pt.) b) makes nuanced arguments concerning bigger issues that become clearer the more we reflect (4 pts.) c) addresses issues I don’t currently understand, might not appreciate even if I did understand, might never understand no matter how long I contemplate them, and am not entirely sure were intended as issues to begin with – but, hey, it’s all cool when distant synapses connect (5 pts.)
7. Loneliness as a theme can be a) annoyingly solipsistic (1 pt.) b) enticingly solipsistic (5 pts.)
8. A structure with no chapters, very short paragraphs, and little in the way of segues strikes me as a) slapdash and artificial (1 pt.) b) just another device, neither off-putting nor profound (3 pts.) c) a brilliant way of depicting Kate’s state-of-mind as she flits from one inner thought to another (5 pts.)
9. Countless references to museum art, classical music, Greek mythology and German philosophers make me a) yawn (1 pt.) b) interested to the extent that there are insights to be gleaned and connections to be made (2 pts.) c) giddy with delight, even if most of what’s said is misremembered (see #4 above re: narrative reliability) (5 pts.)
10. When an intellectual heavyweight like David Foster Wallace calls a book one of the best of all time, my reaction is likely to be a) that’s the guy with the bandana, right? (1 pt.) b) yeah, but wasn’t he a philosophy major who was into all that existence and imprecision of language stuff; a pea in Markson’s a priori pod? (2 pts.) c) OK, but are we talking about the Wallace who wrote fun social commentary or the one who wrote an honors thesis that began by establishing Greek letter notation for a physical possibility structure, intersecting functional paths on ordered pairs {time, world situation}, and a primitive accessibility relation corresponding to physical possibility understood in terms of diachronic physical compatibility? (0 pts. because nobody would say this except as a gratuitous boffin joke) d) DFW – genius – damn straight! (5 pts.)
11. The thing I would be most curious to know about Kate is this: a) With nobody around to see her, did she wear any clothes? (0 pts. – dude, come on, we’re trying to be serious here) b) Was she crazy because she was alone or did she see herself as alone because she was crazy? (5 pts.) c) What would it be like to be the last person on earth? Would language devolve? Would memories fade quickly? Would memories be more important for keeping yourself together? (5 pts.) d) Was there a precipitating event that put her into that state? Though oblique, hints about a former husband and son were made. Might they have been involved in the collapse? (5 pts.)
Recommendations:
(20 or fewer pts.) – Even with a 20 foot pole, avoid touching this one.
(21 to 33 pts.) – You might give it a go if you’re curious, but don’t feel bad if you don’t. Plenty of people are fulfilled without ever picking it up. And synapses can connect with more ready payouts than this.
(33 to 47 pts.) – I know it’s hard to resist after smart people like DFW and prominent Goodreads friends have praised it. So please do try it if you want, but it’s not like you’re a cretin if you don’t. And even a close reading may have you wondering, “to what end?”
(48 or more pts.) – Drop everything you’re reading right now including cereal boxes, bathroom walls, and Goodreads. Markson is what you need instead.
Reviewer’s note: I scored a 36 myself, good for 3.5 stars rounded to 4. I sometimes wished those synapses that worked so hard to connect would have gotten a better return for the effort. But at least they did better than today’s money market funds.
January 22, 2024
‘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 how the book came to be resold, especially when there is a small inscription on the inside cover such as my hardback edition of Zbigniew Herbert’s The Collected Poems: Dad, Happy 83rd Birthday - 2007. On one hand, the recipient may have disliked the book, or already had a copy, or there is the chance that this owner may no longer be with us. In instances such as this, the small asterisks that precede a handful of titles in the Table of Contents suddenly become an increasing point of interest as I thumb through to these poems and wonder what they meant to the former owner. Is there a message within the lines that provided comfort to someone in their twilight years, be it a laugh or an encouraging sentiment?
Another side effect of purchasing used editions is chance that the former owner was, like myself, the type to underline and take various notes. This has been beneficial at times, such as a dirty softcover of Dylan Thomas’ Selected Poems I purchased from the Dawn Treader in Ann Arbor, MI (my personal favorite bookstore) when I was 19 and just beginning to immerse myself in the world of poetry. Despite seeing a slew of margin notes, my shallow pockets persuaded me to buy it anyways after seeing a $4 price sticker. Later at home while diving into Mr. Thomas’ work, I discovered the notes were incredibly insightful and detailed and further investigation led me to realize that it had once been used by a UofM professor for use in lecture. Without such accessible lecture notes, I may not have ever cracked the Thomas code and may never have become such an avid reader of poetry. However, margin notes can occasionally be distracting – I have a copy of Mice and Men where every single metaphor or simile is denoted in thick black ink, but I cannot complain too much as I also mark up all my books. In his poem ’Marginalia’, Billy Collinsdescribes this act of note taking as showing that ‘we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge’; I find taking notes a unique method of further interacting with the author and leaving a tattoo of consciousness to commemorate my times spent between the covers of each book. It is an old habit born from many hours spent in classrooms discussing literature that I have nurtured to keep from getting lazy with my readings (plus certain authors come in handy to flip through while writing college essays to browse the many defined terms that may come in handy).
When I received Wittgenstein’s Mistress in the mail, I opened to the first page to discover an onslaught of margin notes and underlines. Many of them didn’t seem particularly helpful, and appeared as the previous reader attempting to get their bearings with Markson’s innovative style. Encouraged by their notes, I dove in as well, comforted by the echoes and footprints of a former traveler. Even Kate (it would seem that critics and scholars alike have accepted this as the signifier of our narrator despite it only appearing once in a novel where facts have a revolving list of names attached to them. Kate refers to herself by a different name later on as well.) left messages in hopes of reaching a fellow soul such as ‘someone is living in the Louvre’ Even underlining seems to be encouraged by Markson, as Kate will cite favorite quotes of hers that she underlined in non-required books during her college days. My safety net was not to last though. 11 pages in, the notes stopped and I was flung into the maelstrom of bouncing ideas and fragmented consciousness, left to find my bearings in the dark without a fellow hand to hold as I descended deeper and deeper. Having made it through to the other side, there could be no more fitting way to approach this novel.
Now that the overlong introduction is through, it is time to encourage you to read this wonderful novel. Despite being rejected fifty-four times (Moore), this novel was picked up by Dalkey Archive Press (who have done great things to keep the dream of literature alive) and has lived to literary glory. David Foster Wallace called it ‘a work of genius’ and wrote an extensive essay, The Empty Plenum, dissecting and praising Markson’s masterpiece. It is not an easy novel, which can most likely be ascertained considering such praise by DFW, but it is a novel that unfolds into powerful messages of loneliness, language, art, and the human condition.
As the title would suggest, Markson alludes heavily to Ludwig Wittgenstein and particularly to his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a major work of modern philosophy, and of which the single sentence paragraphs found in WM seems to mimic. The first line of Tractatus, ‘the world is everything that is the case,’ is referenced often by Kate, and the nature of this novel further investigates what Wittgenstein meant by such a statement. In Tractatus, Wittgenstein furthers with:
‘1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not things.
1.2 The world is divided into facts
Kate illuminates her life to the reader through a churning smattering of facts of art, music, literature, and events of her life. It is through the jigsaw pieces of various facts falling into place that we are able to view the world through her eyes. She, however, views ‘Things’, as not important beyond the facts they deliver. Books she loves and cites often are burned up page by page – or ripped apart to watch them soar on the wind ‘like seagulls’; favorite painting are burned or painted over; clothing, watches, electronic devices and any other ‘baggage’ she carries is all left behind. Wittgenstein writes that:
2. What is the case--a fact--is the existence of states of affairs.
2.021 Objects make up the substance of the world,’
and ‘2.0271 Objects are what is unalterable and substantial; their configuration is what is changing and unstable.’,
thus showing Kate’s burning of books and houses a method of transforming them from being simple things, into objects, an idea, which make up the substance of the world, This ‘substance of the word’ is a fact, which is the world. Through destruction, Kate is creating a world of facts. It is fitting then, that Kate is an artist, a person who creates, and Markson does an excellent job of showing creation and destruction as two parts of a whole.
Much of Kate’s writings double back in an attempt to portray the most precise and accurate use of language possible in expressing herself. This often becomes comical, redundant, and often obscures her original intentions by sidetracking into a different branch of thought. She pays such close attention to phrases:
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frighten me. For instance I thought about them like that, also.
In a manner of speaking, I thought about them like that.
The more she attempts to affect concise language, urging the reader to believe her more and more by employing phrases such as ‘on my honor,’the more she exposes the latent fallacies and impreciseness of language. Occasionally, when she double backs to exemplify the multiple interpretations that exist for these arrangements of words. Word, Wittgenstein argues in works such as The Blue and Brown Books, are merely ‘dead and trivial’ signs and symbols that only ‘get their significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs’. Essentially, words are meaningless signs and we only apply meaning to them through our arrangement of signs to create a set reaccepted connotations, denotations, and, well, meaning. By calling to mind the possible variations of interpretation for each phrase, she is ‘checking’ our preconceived notions and making us more aware of the analogous nature of words. Many times, the sentence in question was accepted by the reader and wouldn’t have seemed cumbersome without her direction, or, as Kate says ‘even if for some curious reason one’s meaning would generally appear to be understood, in such cases.’ While she often questions if she is ‘mad’, observing her acute sense of language makes the reader wonder if this awareness comes from madness (as it would initially seem), or a higher sense of consciousness and understanding. It should be mentioned as well that such attention to the multiple interpretation of words can be applied to the enigmatic conclusions of the novel itself. Markson leaves room for many interpretations while simultaneously, as DFW posits, cries out to be interpreted while also directing the reader towards the tools for interpretation.
Validity is crucial to Kate. She stresses the importance of believing her fractured mind, yet bombards the reader with facts that are constantly morphing. A reader should be wary of prematurely spouting out exciting factoids, as pages later they may find the factoid was attributed to the wrong artist. Late in the book, Kate questions why writers such as Homer would blatantly lie or stretch the truth on matters such as the number of ships involved in the battle of Troy.
It is curious how ‘lies’ and impreciseness can be more effective that the truth, and that falsities of language may not be intended to deceive but actually have an honorable impetus of furthering a deeper literary meaning. ‘Certain writers are sometimes smarter than one thinks’. Therefor, Kate’s revolving names and facts may be more than the slip-ups of a damaged mind. Various facts get paired, or mis-paired, in a method that furthers the understanding of one fact by using the other as a ruler of sorts, some system of measurement or reference such as the back of Kate’s hands are a reference to her age. When facing the harsh reality of her past, Kate refers to herself by a different name, Helen. Kate has spent much energy examining the impossibilities of the Trojan war being just over ‘one Spartan girl’, and applying the name to herself may be her method of accepting full responsibility while also expressing that it is foolish to actually believe all the blame could rest on her shoulders.
Wittgenstein’s Mistress boils down to a gorgeous climax that should not be missed. This novel, which almost never saw publication, is a true gem of literature. Through her exploration of language, validity, and madness, Kate leaves the reader questioning their own perceptions. Free yourself from the safety harness of the world and take the plunge into the eye of the hurricane that is Wittgenstein’s Mistress.
5/5
Works Cited:
Wallace, David Foster - The Empty Plenum
Moore, Steven – Afterword to the WM
Wittgenstein, Ludwig - Major Works: Selected Philosophical Writings
Thank you to Mike Puma for recommending David Markson, and for joining me in my read of this wonderful book.
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 how the book came to be resold, especially when there is a small inscription on the inside cover such as my hardback edition of Zbigniew Herbert’s The Collected Poems: Dad, Happy 83rd Birthday - 2007. On one hand, the recipient may have disliked the book, or already had a copy, or there is the chance that this owner may no longer be with us. In instances such as this, the small asterisks that precede a handful of titles in the Table of Contents suddenly become an increasing point of interest as I thumb through to these poems and wonder what they meant to the former owner. Is there a message within the lines that provided comfort to someone in their twilight years, be it a laugh or an encouraging sentiment?
Another side effect of purchasing used editions is chance that the former owner was, like myself, the type to underline and take various notes. This has been beneficial at times, such as a dirty softcover of Dylan Thomas’ Selected Poems I purchased from the Dawn Treader in Ann Arbor, MI (my personal favorite bookstore) when I was 19 and just beginning to immerse myself in the world of poetry. Despite seeing a slew of margin notes, my shallow pockets persuaded me to buy it anyways after seeing a $4 price sticker. Later at home while diving into Mr. Thomas’ work, I discovered the notes were incredibly insightful and detailed and further investigation led me to realize that it had once been used by a UofM professor for use in lecture. Without such accessible lecture notes, I may not have ever cracked the Thomas code and may never have become such an avid reader of poetry. However, margin notes can occasionally be distracting – I have a copy of Mice and Men where every single metaphor or simile is denoted in thick black ink, but I cannot complain too much as I also mark up all my books. In his poem ’Marginalia’, Billy Collinsdescribes this act of note taking as showing that ‘we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge’; I find taking notes a unique method of further interacting with the author and leaving a tattoo of consciousness to commemorate my times spent between the covers of each book. It is an old habit born from many hours spent in classrooms discussing literature that I have nurtured to keep from getting lazy with my readings (plus certain authors come in handy to flip through while writing college essays to browse the many defined terms that may come in handy).
When I received Wittgenstein’s Mistress in the mail, I opened to the first page to discover an onslaught of margin notes and underlines. Many of them didn’t seem particularly helpful, and appeared as the previous reader attempting to get their bearings with Markson’s innovative style. Encouraged by their notes, I dove in as well, comforted by the echoes and footprints of a former traveler. Even Kate (it would seem that critics and scholars alike have accepted this as the signifier of our narrator despite it only appearing once in a novel where facts have a revolving list of names attached to them. Kate refers to herself by a different name later on as well.) left messages in hopes of reaching a fellow soul such as ‘someone is living in the Louvre’ Even underlining seems to be encouraged by Markson, as Kate will cite favorite quotes of hers that she underlined in non-required books during her college days. My safety net was not to last though. 11 pages in, the notes stopped and I was flung into the maelstrom of bouncing ideas and fragmented consciousness, left to find my bearings in the dark without a fellow hand to hold as I descended deeper and deeper. Having made it through to the other side, there could be no more fitting way to approach this novel.
Now that the overlong introduction is through, it is time to encourage you to read this wonderful novel. Despite being rejected fifty-four times (Moore), this novel was picked up by Dalkey Archive Press (who have done great things to keep the dream of literature alive) and has lived to literary glory. David Foster Wallace called it ‘a work of genius’ and wrote an extensive essay, The Empty Plenum, dissecting and praising Markson’s masterpiece. It is not an easy novel, which can most likely be ascertained considering such praise by DFW, but it is a novel that unfolds into powerful messages of loneliness, language, art, and the human condition.
As the title would suggest, Markson alludes heavily to Ludwig Wittgenstein and particularly to his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a major work of modern philosophy, and of which the single sentence paragraphs found in WM seems to mimic. The first line of Tractatus, ‘the world is everything that is the case,’ is referenced often by Kate, and the nature of this novel further investigates what Wittgenstein meant by such a statement. In Tractatus, Wittgenstein furthers with:
‘1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not things.
1.2 The world is divided into facts
Kate illuminates her life to the reader through a churning smattering of facts of art, music, literature, and events of her life. It is through the jigsaw pieces of various facts falling into place that we are able to view the world through her eyes. She, however, views ‘Things’, as not important beyond the facts they deliver. Books she loves and cites often are burned up page by page – or ripped apart to watch them soar on the wind ‘like seagulls’; favorite painting are burned or painted over; clothing, watches, electronic devices and any other ‘baggage’ she carries is all left behind. Wittgenstein writes that:
2. What is the case--a fact--is the existence of states of affairs.
2.021 Objects make up the substance of the world,’
and ‘2.0271 Objects are what is unalterable and substantial; their configuration is what is changing and unstable.’,
thus showing Kate’s burning of books and houses a method of transforming them from being simple things, into objects, an idea, which make up the substance of the world, This ‘substance of the word’ is a fact, which is the world. Through destruction, Kate is creating a world of facts. It is fitting then, that Kate is an artist, a person who creates, and Markson does an excellent job of showing creation and destruction as two parts of a whole.
Much of Kate’s writings double back in an attempt to portray the most precise and accurate use of language possible in expressing herself. This often becomes comical, redundant, and often obscures her original intentions by sidetracking into a different branch of thought. She pays such close attention to phrases:
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frighten me. For instance I thought about them like that, also.
In a manner of speaking, I thought about them like that.
The more she attempts to affect concise language, urging the reader to believe her more and more by employing phrases such as ‘on my honor,’the more she exposes the latent fallacies and impreciseness of language. Occasionally, when she double backs to exemplify the multiple interpretations that exist for these arrangements of words. Word, Wittgenstein argues in works such as The Blue and Brown Books, are merely ‘dead and trivial’ signs and symbols that only ‘get their significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs’. Essentially, words are meaningless signs and we only apply meaning to them through our arrangement of signs to create a set reaccepted connotations, denotations, and, well, meaning. By calling to mind the possible variations of interpretation for each phrase, she is ‘checking’ our preconceived notions and making us more aware of the analogous nature of words. Many times, the sentence in question was accepted by the reader and wouldn’t have seemed cumbersome without her direction, or, as Kate says ‘even if for some curious reason one’s meaning would generally appear to be understood, in such cases.’ While she often questions if she is ‘mad’, observing her acute sense of language makes the reader wonder if this awareness comes from madness (as it would initially seem), or a higher sense of consciousness and understanding. It should be mentioned as well that such attention to the multiple interpretation of words can be applied to the enigmatic conclusions of the novel itself. Markson leaves room for many interpretations while simultaneously, as DFW posits, cries out to be interpreted while also directing the reader towards the tools for interpretation.
Validity is crucial to Kate. She stresses the importance of believing her fractured mind, yet bombards the reader with facts that are constantly morphing. A reader should be wary of prematurely spouting out exciting factoids, as pages later they may find the factoid was attributed to the wrong artist. Late in the book, Kate questions why writers such as Homer would blatantly lie or stretch the truth on matters such as the number of ships involved in the battle of Troy.
’Quite possibly Homer knew perfectly well himself about the real number of ships, but decided that in a poem one thousand, one hundred and eighty-six would be a more interesting number as well.
Well, as it undeniably is, as is verified by the very fact that I remember it.’
It is curious how ‘lies’ and impreciseness can be more effective that the truth, and that falsities of language may not be intended to deceive but actually have an honorable impetus of furthering a deeper literary meaning. ‘Certain writers are sometimes smarter than one thinks’. Therefor, Kate’s revolving names and facts may be more than the slip-ups of a damaged mind. Various facts get paired, or mis-paired, in a method that furthers the understanding of one fact by using the other as a ruler of sorts, some system of measurement or reference such as the back of Kate’s hands are a reference to her age. When facing the harsh reality of her past, Kate refers to herself by a different name, Helen. Kate has spent much energy examining the impossibilities of the Trojan war being just over ‘one Spartan girl’, and applying the name to herself may be her method of accepting full responsibility while also expressing that it is foolish to actually believe all the blame could rest on her shoulders.
Wittgenstein’s Mistress boils down to a gorgeous climax that should not be missed. This novel, which almost never saw publication, is a true gem of literature. Through her exploration of language, validity, and madness, Kate leaves the reader questioning their own perceptions. Free yourself from the safety harness of the world and take the plunge into the eye of the hurricane that is Wittgenstein’s Mistress.
5/5
Works Cited:
Wallace, David Foster - The Empty Plenum
Moore, Steven – Afterword to the WM
Wittgenstein, Ludwig - Major Works: Selected Philosophical Writings
Thank you to Mike Puma for recommending David Markson, and for joining me in my read of this wonderful book.
June 17, 2022
Desolation… Abandonment… Solitude… Aloofness…
Uncertainty… Anxiety… Alienation… Mental instability…
Although influences are rather apparent – first of all, Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka – David Markson is absolutely on his own and Wittgenstein’s Mistress is a psychedelic slumber of reason… It is unlike any other book… “To sleep, to dream...”
A purely philosophical existence is a sick joke.
In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street…
Nobody came, of course. Eventually I stopped leaving the messages.
To tell the truth, perhaps I left only three or four messages altogether.
I have no idea how long ago it was when I was doing that. If I were forced to guess, I believe I would guess ten years.
Uncertainty… Anxiety… Alienation… Mental instability…
And of course I was quite out of my mind for a certain period too, back then.
I do not know for how long a period, but for a certain period.
Time out of mind. Which is a phrase I suspect I may have never properly understood, now that I happen to use it.
Time out of mind meaning mad, or time out of mind meaning simply forgotten?
Although influences are rather apparent – first of all, Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka – David Markson is absolutely on his own and Wittgenstein’s Mistress is a psychedelic slumber of reason… It is unlike any other book… “To sleep, to dream...”
Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.
A purely philosophical existence is a sick joke.
November 24, 2012
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.
September 4, 2022
“Los límites de mi lenguaje son los límites de mi mundo” (Ludwig Wittgenstein)Por fin leo a David Markson, uno de esos empeños que a veces me atacan sin una razón clara que lo justifique (leer literatura experimental, en mi caso, es un riesgo que a menudo termina en fracaso), es como una sensación imperiosa de leerlo, un fuerte presentimiento de un encuentro felicísimo (no se hagan ideas raras, no soy de los que ven en los aciertos presentidos ningún tipo de extraño signo: los errores en mis presagios abundan).
“Todo es indudablemente cierto, aunque como ya he dicho sucedió hace tiempo. Y aunque, como también he dicho, tal vez estuviera loca.”Pero no es este el caso, lo que también es raro, porque es una novela (¿es una novela?) muy particular, tanto en su punto de partida —una mujer de una amplia cultura, posiblemente artista, con grandes conocimientos sobre historia, pintura, literatura y arte, ahora inconexos, incompletos y confusos, lo que nos hace pensar que sufre algún tipo de desequilibrio psicológico que parece ser fruto de un hecho dramático relacionado con su hijo, y quizás con su marido, acaecido en un pasado indeterminado, está sentada ante una máquina de escribir en lo que, si nos fiamos de lo que escribe, parece ser un mundo en el que ella es la única superviviente ("¿Qué hay que no esté en mi cabeza?")— como en su forma —un collage de párrafos cortos, a menudo de una o dos frases, en forma de escritura automática incontenible y continua en la que la protagonista encadena frases con una ligazón no siempre clara, con una intención incierta y de una veracidad dudosa, acerca de su vida presente y pasada sazonada con una multitud de anécdotas de artistas, recuerdos de músicas, libros, historia, cuadros, filosofía, lo que conforma un discurso caótico que sin embargo fluye con una facilidad pasmosa y te empuja a seguir y seguir a pesar de sentir la poderosa sospecha de que todo será igual ad infinitum—.
“Hay preguntas que parecen incontestables… Como, por ejemplo, si he llegado a la conclusión de que no hay nada en el cuadro salvo formas, ¿acaso también he de concluir que no hay nada en estas páginas salvo letras del alfabeto?”Se Dice que el libro es una forma ingeniosa de explicar las ideas de Wittgenstein acerca del lenguaje y de las dificultades que existen en la comunicación, lo complicado que es expresar lo que se piensa y se siente, la constatación de que el lenguaje se vuelve insuficiente para según qué, quizás para el qué más importante, y, por tanto, es un libro sobre la soledad a la que esta incomunicación nos aboca.
“Mi obra se compone de dos partes: de la que aquí aparece, y de todo aquello que no he escrito. Y precisamente esta segunda parte es la más importante… Le aconsejaría ahora leer el prólogo y el final, puesto que son ellos los que expresan con mayor inmediatez el sentido.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein)Esto comentaba el filósofo acerca de su famoso libro «Tractatus logico-philosophicus», y de igual forma podría ser un comentario acerca del libro de Markson pues el texto es tanto lo que en él se dice, como lo que el texto, tomado como un todo, dice, es lo que dice por cómo lo dice, es lo que dice por todo lo que no dice, es lo que dice por el simple hecho de decir. Y del mismo modo, también bastaría (aunque no aconsejaría) con leer las veinte primeras páginas, el resto es casi una acumulación de pensamientos similares, y las veinte últimas, dónde se insinúa el por qué de todo lo contado y se da una posible explicación al hecho de contarlo (nada concluyente, de hecho).
“Los cuadros nunca son esencialmente lo que uno cree que son.”Una de las muchas anécdotas que se recogen en la novela (o lo que sea que sea) es acerca de Leonardo Da Vinci, del que se cuenta que corrió a pie medio Milán para añadir una única pincelada a su lienzo de «La última cena» supuestamente ya terminado. Uno se puede llegar a imaginar cuántas veces pudo hacer esto mismo Markson con su libro (o lo contrario, quitar “pinceladas”) pues, como les comento, toda la novela es una sucesión de textos del tipo que a continuación les traigo aquí, por lo que la pregunta «¿por qué 200 páginas y no 50 o 400?» es algo que también quedará sin respuesta:
“El gato que Pintoricchio puso en el cuadro de Penélope tejiendo podía ser gris, tengo la impresión.Por lo que nos sentimos como la protagonista cuando comenta que…
Una vez soñé con la fama.
Por lo general, incluso entonces, estaba sola.
Hoy, un poco más tarde, es probable que me masturbe”
“Hay cosas más fáciles de hacer que llenar ocho o nueve cajas de libros.
Llenar once cajas de libros no es una de ellas, de hecho.
Pero lo que este planteamiento parece resolver… es la cuestión de si los estantes de esta casa deben considerarse medio vacíos o medio llenos, cuestión por la cual una desde luego considera satisfactorio ser capaz de dejar de preocuparse.”
“… yendo por una carretera de La Mancha, cerca de un castillo que no dejaba de ver, pero al que parecía no acercarme nunca. Había una explicación para el hecho… el castillo estaba construido sobre una colina, y que la carretera dibujaba un círculo alrededor de la base de la colina sobre la que estaba construido el castillo… una podría haber conducido eternamente alrededor de ese castillo sin llegar nunca a él.“Mi última pincelada es por si no les he mencionado que “no es este un libro para recomendar de forma general sino para recomendarlo solo a los amigos lectores de confianza, como usted”, no es este un libro para recomendar de forma general sino para recomendarlo solo a los amigos lectores de confianza, como usted.
October 17, 2021
Imaginative Impedimenta
Having just read Lowry’s Under the Volcano, I suppose I was prepared for Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress. The former is an account of life seen through an alcoholic haze. The latter is a life seen through dementia. There are remarkably similarities between them, with the notable exception that Markson’s Kate is much more self-aware than Lowry’s Geoffrey. Kate knows that almost everything about her life is a delusion or a distortion of her experience. She knows neither her age (somewhere perhaps between 47 and early 50’s), nor what she does to make a living (a painter perhaps but there are other possibilities), nor very much about her history at all (she has vague memories of living in various museums around the world). So her condition is a tad less debilitating than that of Geoffrey Firmin. At least she isn’t paranoid and she accepts the possibility of her own madness.
The radical Scottish psychiatrist R D Laing created a wonderfully concise aphorism for his field and for his patients: If you don’t know that you don’t know, then you think you know; if you don’t know that you know, then you think you don’t know. Kate is unsure about almost everything in her life. She knows she doesn’t know - about everything and anything. This is an entirely different logical category to Laing’s classification about knowledge. Knowing that you don’t know is in fact an attribute of wisdom. It also breeds humility, and a certain form of honesty which is sometimes difficult to accept. If none of Kate’s writing is a narrative of actual events, why spend the time writing - or reading - about them? She immediately contradicts almost everything she says. On the other hand, isn’t that precisely the presumption of all fiction? The fact that a fictional character is constantly spilling the frijoles about her lack of concrete existence shouldn’t be so disconcerting.
How does something real, a house say, get to be something mental, a thought in one’s head? What is the connection between the imaginary and the real thing. Clearly it is not language because there are also painting and music and ancient artifacts (not to mention smells and random noise) to consider. These things ‘get in our head’ as well. And they ramify. For example, Kate, thinking about a person in a painting which hangs upstairs in another room: “Although I have also just closed my eyes, and so could additionally say that for the moment the person was not only both upstairs and on the wall, but in my head as well.” In other words she has the mental image of a mental image. And by the way, who is that person in the painting? Why is she there? Who else can be imagined in the house? What is the relationship between her and the painter? Imagination runs rampant as soon as the questions arise. Where might it end? Words, paintings, music, all representations go adrift like rowboats on the ocean, never to be brought back to shore.
All this weight of imagination constitutes excess baggage. The Romans called it impedimenta. And it certainly is that, an impediment to an easy life. Kate has gotten rid of her physical impedimenta - anything run on electricity, flush toilets, in fact all modern conveniences. But she can’t get rid of her imaginative impedimenta. That stuff comes with the territory called age, an accumulation of imaginative connections which multiply even as one tries to restrict them. Imagination is what we can’t control. Imagination is what is behind sex, and greed, and religion, and even violence just as the Ancient Greeks knew. Restricting imagination demands more imagination, not less. Clytemnestra killed her husband Agamemnon not because he sacrificed their child but because she imagined him doing it. And her children, Electra and Orestes, murdered her and her new husband, probably because of a lack of imagination about maternal love. Imagination: Can’t live with it; can’t live without it.
All of Markson’s paragraphs are exactly one sentence long and in the first person. The effect is not so much train of thought as a barrage from long distance artillery. The shells burst everywhere within his landscape in a random pattern. But nevertheless there is a pattern. Somewhere in this pattern lies Kate’s truth. This is a mystery to her: “In addition to remembering things that one does not know how one remembers, one would also appear to remember things that one has no idea how one knew to begin with.” How does a pattern consisting of Archimedes, Bertrand Russell, Brahms and Kathleen Ferrier, for example, cohere? That’s an inductive question. But it requires more than induction to answer. It requires what might be called empathy, that is a presumption that there is a pattern, a purpose, in Kate’s musings to begin with. Kate can supply the raw data points as it were but not the the gesso, the glue and paint necessary to prepare a canvas for for a painting. This is supplied by her readers or not at all. In short, it’s hard to say which requires more imagination, writing or reading. The alternative in both cases is solipsistic delusion.
Having just read Lowry’s Under the Volcano, I suppose I was prepared for Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress. The former is an account of life seen through an alcoholic haze. The latter is a life seen through dementia. There are remarkably similarities between them, with the notable exception that Markson’s Kate is much more self-aware than Lowry’s Geoffrey. Kate knows that almost everything about her life is a delusion or a distortion of her experience. She knows neither her age (somewhere perhaps between 47 and early 50’s), nor what she does to make a living (a painter perhaps but there are other possibilities), nor very much about her history at all (she has vague memories of living in various museums around the world). So her condition is a tad less debilitating than that of Geoffrey Firmin. At least she isn’t paranoid and she accepts the possibility of her own madness.
The radical Scottish psychiatrist R D Laing created a wonderfully concise aphorism for his field and for his patients: If you don’t know that you don’t know, then you think you know; if you don’t know that you know, then you think you don’t know. Kate is unsure about almost everything in her life. She knows she doesn’t know - about everything and anything. This is an entirely different logical category to Laing’s classification about knowledge. Knowing that you don’t know is in fact an attribute of wisdom. It also breeds humility, and a certain form of honesty which is sometimes difficult to accept. If none of Kate’s writing is a narrative of actual events, why spend the time writing - or reading - about them? She immediately contradicts almost everything she says. On the other hand, isn’t that precisely the presumption of all fiction? The fact that a fictional character is constantly spilling the frijoles about her lack of concrete existence shouldn’t be so disconcerting.
How does something real, a house say, get to be something mental, a thought in one’s head? What is the connection between the imaginary and the real thing. Clearly it is not language because there are also painting and music and ancient artifacts (not to mention smells and random noise) to consider. These things ‘get in our head’ as well. And they ramify. For example, Kate, thinking about a person in a painting which hangs upstairs in another room: “Although I have also just closed my eyes, and so could additionally say that for the moment the person was not only both upstairs and on the wall, but in my head as well.” In other words she has the mental image of a mental image. And by the way, who is that person in the painting? Why is she there? Who else can be imagined in the house? What is the relationship between her and the painter? Imagination runs rampant as soon as the questions arise. Where might it end? Words, paintings, music, all representations go adrift like rowboats on the ocean, never to be brought back to shore.
All this weight of imagination constitutes excess baggage. The Romans called it impedimenta. And it certainly is that, an impediment to an easy life. Kate has gotten rid of her physical impedimenta - anything run on electricity, flush toilets, in fact all modern conveniences. But she can’t get rid of her imaginative impedimenta. That stuff comes with the territory called age, an accumulation of imaginative connections which multiply even as one tries to restrict them. Imagination is what we can’t control. Imagination is what is behind sex, and greed, and religion, and even violence just as the Ancient Greeks knew. Restricting imagination demands more imagination, not less. Clytemnestra killed her husband Agamemnon not because he sacrificed their child but because she imagined him doing it. And her children, Electra and Orestes, murdered her and her new husband, probably because of a lack of imagination about maternal love. Imagination: Can’t live with it; can’t live without it.
All of Markson’s paragraphs are exactly one sentence long and in the first person. The effect is not so much train of thought as a barrage from long distance artillery. The shells burst everywhere within his landscape in a random pattern. But nevertheless there is a pattern. Somewhere in this pattern lies Kate’s truth. This is a mystery to her: “In addition to remembering things that one does not know how one remembers, one would also appear to remember things that one has no idea how one knew to begin with.” How does a pattern consisting of Archimedes, Bertrand Russell, Brahms and Kathleen Ferrier, for example, cohere? That’s an inductive question. But it requires more than induction to answer. It requires what might be called empathy, that is a presumption that there is a pattern, a purpose, in Kate’s musings to begin with. Kate can supply the raw data points as it were but not the the gesso, the glue and paint necessary to prepare a canvas for for a painting. This is supplied by her readers or not at all. In short, it’s hard to say which requires more imagination, writing or reading. The alternative in both cases is solipsistic delusion.
June 8, 2010
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."
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."
Read
March 16, 2022So many thoughts tumbled out while reading this book that it seems impossible now to gather them up. My situation is a bit like the scene near the beginning where the nameless narrator (well, she was nameless then) came upon a Volkswagen van full of tennis balls at the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome, and tumbled the hundreds and hundreds of balls down into the Piazza di Spagna.
If my thoughts were those balls, I'd be tired already at the idea of having to track them all down and pick them all up. But the thing is, that scene with the tennis balls could be a metaphor for the entire book. The narrator's many thoughts tumble onto the page, bouncing off this and that on the way—as did a particular tennis ball from the van which bounced catty-corner and struck the house where John Keats died. That tennis ball leads her to share a fragment of memory about Keats, a fragment that recurs several times in the book in different iterations, as indeed does the incident of the van, because her fragmentary thoughts never stop tumbling and bouncing, sometimes off new notions, sometimes off the same ones, and often catty-corner fashion so that the connection doesn't seem obvious at first but it is there nevertheless and the reader may spot it the next time that particular thought bounces back (although as the book progresses, certain of the recurring thoughts deteriorate in terms of accuracy just as tennis balls might loose their bounce over time). But what remains certain is that all the balls/thoughts are finally picked up though it seems like a Trojan task.
Speaking of things Trojan, Homer's account of the Trojan war, plus several later Greek dramas featuring the main players in that war, are referenced often, as are famous paintings of those events, including one of Penelope sitting at home, far from the action, alternately weaving and unraveling a shroud, accompanied by her cat. The narrator's situation is not unlike Penelope's. She too is cut off from everything as she sits in her house weaving her narrative in a kind of eternal present, often revising what she may have said the previous time she sat at her typewriter. If the narrator's name had turned out to be Penelope, I wouldn't have been surprised. To add to the comparison, she is also accompanied by a cat, though, like Penelope's cat, we don't really know if the narrator's cat ever existed. There are three versions of the cat—Rembrandt, a russet cat she claims she once owned. Then there is the grey cat playing with a ball of yarn she thought she saw one evening in the Colosseum but could never find again. The third cat is the one she hears scratching at an upstairs window as she types her narrative. She knows he is only a loose piece of tape she once stuck on the broken glass of the window which flaps in the wind (the tape, that is, not the window), but she names him Vincent nevertheless. Just because she can't see him doesn't mean he doesn't exist seems to be her rationale.
What does and doesn't exist preoccupies her a lot. Is there or isn't there someone at the window of the house in the painting of the very house whose window she often sits at? That's the kind of circular thinking she engages in, at the level of each sentence, and stretching to the entire narrative which wraps around itself—not unlike one of the few pieces of clothing she owns, a wrap-around skirt, though the skirt, since she never seems to wear it (being totally alone, she has dispensed with clothing), may not exist. I ended up wondering, since there is no one to actually see the narrator, if she even exists—and then I laughed at my deep involvement with this fictional character and her existential dilemmas.
As to my own dilemma at the beginning of this review, well, I haven't picked up all the balls. The book is just so full of literary and art references, which, because they are often oblique, I found myself constantly trying to figure out, and often finding odd connections to books I've read, lines of poetry I remember, paintings I've seen. But the connections may exist only in my mind so I will keep them there for the present...
If my thoughts were those balls, I'd be tired already at the idea of having to track them all down and pick them all up. But the thing is, that scene with the tennis balls could be a metaphor for the entire book. The narrator's many thoughts tumble onto the page, bouncing off this and that on the way—as did a particular tennis ball from the van which bounced catty-corner and struck the house where John Keats died. That tennis ball leads her to share a fragment of memory about Keats, a fragment that recurs several times in the book in different iterations, as indeed does the incident of the van, because her fragmentary thoughts never stop tumbling and bouncing, sometimes off new notions, sometimes off the same ones, and often catty-corner fashion so that the connection doesn't seem obvious at first but it is there nevertheless and the reader may spot it the next time that particular thought bounces back (although as the book progresses, certain of the recurring thoughts deteriorate in terms of accuracy just as tennis balls might loose their bounce over time). But what remains certain is that all the balls/thoughts are finally picked up though it seems like a Trojan task.
Speaking of things Trojan, Homer's account of the Trojan war, plus several later Greek dramas featuring the main players in that war, are referenced often, as are famous paintings of those events, including one of Penelope sitting at home, far from the action, alternately weaving and unraveling a shroud, accompanied by her cat. The narrator's situation is not unlike Penelope's. She too is cut off from everything as she sits in her house weaving her narrative in a kind of eternal present, often revising what she may have said the previous time she sat at her typewriter. If the narrator's name had turned out to be Penelope, I wouldn't have been surprised. To add to the comparison, she is also accompanied by a cat, though, like Penelope's cat, we don't really know if the narrator's cat ever existed. There are three versions of the cat—Rembrandt, a russet cat she claims she once owned. Then there is the grey cat playing with a ball of yarn she thought she saw one evening in the Colosseum but could never find again. The third cat is the one she hears scratching at an upstairs window as she types her narrative. She knows he is only a loose piece of tape she once stuck on the broken glass of the window which flaps in the wind (the tape, that is, not the window), but she names him Vincent nevertheless. Just because she can't see him doesn't mean he doesn't exist seems to be her rationale.
What does and doesn't exist preoccupies her a lot. Is there or isn't there someone at the window of the house in the painting of the very house whose window she often sits at? That's the kind of circular thinking she engages in, at the level of each sentence, and stretching to the entire narrative which wraps around itself—not unlike one of the few pieces of clothing she owns, a wrap-around skirt, though the skirt, since she never seems to wear it (being totally alone, she has dispensed with clothing), may not exist. I ended up wondering, since there is no one to actually see the narrator, if she even exists—and then I laughed at my deep involvement with this fictional character and her existential dilemmas.
As to my own dilemma at the beginning of this review, well, I haven't picked up all the balls. The book is just so full of literary and art references, which, because they are often oblique, I found myself constantly trying to figure out, and often finding odd connections to books I've read, lines of poetry I remember, paintings I've seen. But the connections may exist only in my mind so I will keep them there for the present...
August 5, 2015
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
******
This novel is a genius exploration into the limitations of language (are my roses still red in the dark?), the fragmented, unreliability of memory... all of the varied imperfections of the mind. The repetition can be tiresome, but it's necessary. If you think about what one thinks anyway...the way one tends to ruminate.
I think about thinking a lot.
I have a lot more to say and would love to discuss this novel with those of you who have read it. But in the mean time....
******
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
******
(Helen of Troy, Wittgenstein, painting by Modigliani, Giotto's Tower, Jane Avril, John Ruskin, Penelope, Guy de Maupassant, painting by Artemesia, Erased de Kooning Drawing, and the brilliant man behind WM, David Markson)
August 6, 2014
Till yesterday...Castles in the air was just a phrase for me, today I built one and burned it. I gave myself a new name and wrote it on the sand, the waves took with them a different me. I took a ladder and climbed the moon; the yonder earth looked both sad and serene. With colors from nature, I painted an ocean, where the seashells were crooning and pearls were flying. I asked a tree if my words will live, forever is a myth it replied before dying. Am I alone or am I lonely? Such questions I raised for no reason or rhyme. When the sun was a little far but the stars were within reach, I used to leave messages in the street. That someone is living on that mountain. Somebody is living on this beach.Once in a while, when I was not mad, I would turn poetic instead.
How often does a book leave you with a brand new imagination by the time you finish it? No. That’s not what I want to ask. How often does a book entreat you to imagine everything you always wanted to imagine? I’ll come to the language, the words, the literature and the art later. I want to engage in abstract first. I want to think about a time before Adam and beyond Eve. It’s easier said than done. Or, easier to write. The things that are capable of existing in my head rarely make their way on a piece of paper or a blank page of a word document and even if they do, the medium doesn’t waste any time in pointing out the mistakes in my thoughts and highlight the same with green or red crinkly lines. Digressions can be futile but I really want to say something. About this book. About Kate. About Wittgenstein’s Mistress.
We can never be sure what can cause us deep sorrow. Why tears welled up in my eyes when I turned the last page of this book have no coherent explanation or I’m simply incapable of explaining. This book has facts which were sad, it mentions people who suffered ill fate, it has Kate who probably, may be, perhaps is alone or lonely. She is compensating her solitude with her writing and nursing her grief by construing a world of which she is the sole curator. She is living her life with one sentence at a time. Her story starts on a beach and ends up in books. It starts with typing on her typewriter and ends with writing on sand. It starts with looking at paintings and ends with looking at castles. It starts with cats and ends with seagulls. It starts with Shakespeare and ends with Wittgenstein. It starts in certitude and ends in doubts. It starts with words and ends in silence. Her story starts in nothingness and ends in nothingness. She’s a mystic creature throughout who embraced the facts of the universe and carved a fiction of her own. And once I got acquainted with her, I mixed some of my personal dilemmas with her confusions mainly because Kate came dangerously close to some of the buried emotions that quietly stay in the deepest recesses of my being and forced me to acknowledge their obscure existence. At this point I realized that the damn book was reading me and that’s precisely why I loved it.
Kate has a baggage to shed. Emotional baggage, material baggage, rational baggage, some indefinable baggage and in shaking off that baggage, she travels the world and visit numerous places or she thinks she does. Her mind is an abode for reminiscences about Helen of Troy. Her heart is full of pities for the great artists and philosophers who used to fret about inconsequential perplexities. Her words are a tribute to Modigliani and Johannes Brahms. Her soul is in desperate search for alternatives, for what ifs - the result of which is a resolute happiness and better endings. Her uncertainties give birth to outlandish episodes while her imagination renders the past as funny and ironic with her playful jiggle with the nuances of language and its limitations. All the conclusions she draws by distorting several facts reflect the ingenuity of David Markson and affirm his talent as a writer, a talent which is free from the universal humdrum.
There is naturally nothing in the Iliad, or in any of the plays, about anybody menstruating.
Or in the Odyssey. So doubtless a woman did not write that after all.
At the outset she might come across as delusional and somewhat mad. But who am I to say she’s mad even if she herself believes so. May be the world around her is filled with so much insanity that she in turn remains the only sane person alive on the face of this earth. In fact, when she recalls few world-wide historical references based upon her unreliable memory, we actually realize that the world has so much collective madness to offer us. God, the things men used to do. She’s in race with her thoughts and attempt to register the same by articulating them into words and in doing so she unfolds copious facets of language and its complexities. A world in words. A world devoid of words. What is said to be done, what is actually done. What we think exists, what actually exists. How to capture the palpability of something intangible? What is an ideal expression for anything we experience by way of seeing, listening, reading or writing?
When I state that any of these things were done or said, incidentally, what I more truthfully mean is that they were alleged to have been done or said, of course.
Among various school of thoughts, Kate tries to provide her two cents where only she is capable of right and wrong, acceptance and rejection, truth and lies and we simply become privy to a life led by a supreme dependence on thoughts and supreme freedom of conventions. In this way, she softly urges the readers to question the significance of philosophy of mind in our lives and to recognize a white canvas which we all carry but at the end it is either left blank or splashed with glorious colors. Although it takes some effort to get inside her mind but once we become aware of her unique ways, we find ourselves hopelessly in love with her story and feel a sense of responsibility that if there is a mistress of Wittgenstein somewhere, then lets leave her with a bundle of happy memories to summon up to herself.
Highly Recommended with Five virtual stars and Five bright stars on loan from the night sky.
It might have been interesting to see one's messages beginning to deteriorate even before they were finished being written after all.
June 10, 2012
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.
July 12, 2012
I'm having a quarrel with DFW. He loves this book, and I do not.
It hurts me that we disagree.
But I read the book, read Wallace's argument (this essay) and the flaws that he points out (and forgives) I can't get past. Here is his defense, which I summarize:
There you have it. Wallace sees a world in a grain of sand and he makes it brilliant and convincing in his essay. But for me, it is a little book of 240 pages, perhaps 10 allusions on each page (none obscure), strung together with quirky asides, and expressions like "well", "as a matter of fact", "oops", "the things one knows", "hm", and so on, and all narrated by a person whom I did not believe in.
WM reminded me of something I do think about though: how would I live and act in a world with no other person in it? Aside from the real possibility of going mad...I sort of believe I would just keep on keeping on, doing what I do. Why not, if you had no other choice?
Silly me.
For the Wittgenstein, and for the lovely title, 3 stars.
It hurts me that we disagree.
But I read the book, read Wallace's argument (this essay) and the flaws that he points out (and forgives) I can't get past. Here is his defense, which I summarize:
-this is one of those novels which cry out for critical interpretation and directs it, like a waltz does in music.
-a cross between fiction, and a weird cerebral roman à clef.
-he was attracted to the book because of the title, noting it would be in some way about Wittgenstein. The title is a sort of epigraph. And an intellectual shibboleth.
-Kate the narrator gets a lot of Wittgenstein wrong. Her errors serve as original art and interpretation.
-Wittgenstein's idea are sprayed all over the book - the epigraph about sand; "The world is everything that is the case"; speculations about tape.
-the book renders the bleak mathematical world of the Tractatus. It asks the question what if somebody really had to live in that world.
-the prose is hauntingly pedestrian.
-allusions to everything are difficult to trace.
-the transformation of a philosophy to a world, reveal that philosophy is about spirit. This might explain why Wittgenstein was so unhappy.
-it is indirect, devices like repetition, return, free association, slipping sand of English, self-consciousness.
-if Kate is mad so are we.
-shows what cannot be expressed, like good comedy.
-it is not a letter, a diary or journal, or a monologue: she is shouting into the blank paper.
-the need to write is the need for an affirmation of an "Outside". I EXIST. Yet this begs the question; it only proves writing exists.
-the reader is directed to the Tractatus. It is a kind of philosophical sci-fi. It's a portrait of what it would be like to live in the world that Wittgenstein posits. A logical heaven ends up a metaphysical hell.
-the Tractatus explores the relation between language and the reality it captures. Like a mirror and the mirrored.
-Kate's textual obsession is to find connections between things, genuine connections elude her, only finds an occasional synchronicity.
-Markson makes facts sad.
-Kate makes external history her own, rewrites it as personal. She is the final historian.
-the most affecting rendition is her description of tennis without a partner.
-she has nothing left except memory, imagination the English language.
-the solipsistic nature of her reality is the same whether it's a response to it, or out of touch with it.
-at stake: ethics, guilt and responsibility. The Tractatus denied these, making Wittgenstein at odds with himself.
-Kate's central identification is with Helen of Troy and haunted by the passive sense that everything is her fault.
-Markson's idea of the female voice says more about the 1988 male received doctrine.
-Homer's Helen is guilty, because of her effect on men. This is to be "Classically" feminized, responsible without freedom to choose or act.
-in contrast to Eve.
-Markson clumsily reminds us that Kate is a woman by references to menses, like bad science fiction constantly mentioning the antennae or whatever.
-Wallace does not like the explanation of Kate's fall, the world's fall: her betrayal of her husband and son, 10 years ago at the same psycho-historical point at which Kate's world emptied. This threatens to make WM just another madwoman monologue and becomes conventional fiction.
-Eve's (Evian) betrayal of the world, alluded to over and over, coyly, a scary blend of Hellenic and Evian misogyny.
-guilty as object (Helen) and guilty as subject (Eve).
-ambitious for the late 80s. Markson has fleshed Wittgenstein doctrine into the concrete theatre of human loneliness, its relation to language itself.
-the Philosophical Investigations concern to show the impossibility of private language, and our bewitchment of ordinary language. Expressions like the flow of time, making time seem external to us.
-although the book is sometimes tiresome with all the allusions, it refines and opens up later, to a fragile weltschmerz.
-Kate's text is a desperate attempt to recreate a world by naming it, obsessively naming persons, figures, books, symphonies, towns.
-Markson communicates her extreme upset when she can’t summon facts up properly.
-it is an imperfect book because of voice, over-allusion, and explanation, but succeeds in evoking a truth, both sides of the solipsistic bind:"If I exist, nothing exists outside me / But / If something exists outside me, I do not exist."
[This quote is not in WM. It might be based on something W.J. Turner wrote].
-Kate's actions summons the final prescription of the Tractatus, loosely translated "Anybody who understands what I'm saying eventually recognizes that's nonsense, once he's used what I'm saying - rather like steps - to climb up past what I'm saying - he must, that is, throw away the ladder after he's used it." But what it's really about is the plenitude of emptiness, the importance of silence in terms of speech.
There you have it. Wallace sees a world in a grain of sand and he makes it brilliant and convincing in his essay. But for me, it is a little book of 240 pages, perhaps 10 allusions on each page (none obscure), strung together with quirky asides, and expressions like "well", "as a matter of fact", "oops", "the things one knows", "hm", and so on, and all narrated by a person whom I did not believe in.
WM reminded me of something I do think about though: how would I live and act in a world with no other person in it? Aside from the real possibility of going mad...I sort of believe I would just keep on keeping on, doing what I do. Why not, if you had no other choice?
Silly me.
For the Wittgenstein, and for the lovely title, 3 stars.
May 29, 2018
Bu yıl okuduğum en iyi, uzun süredir okuduğum en özgün metinlerden biriydi. Nasıl anlatmalıyı cevaplayabilirsem bir şeyler karalayacağım.
March 15, 2022
If I had understood why I was doing that, doubtless I would not have been mad.I’m not even sure how to begin to review Wittgenstein’s Mistress, a unique work of experimental fiction that grew on me even though I’m sure I failed to really understand it, so take everything I’m about to say with a pile of salt. The narrator, Kate, believes she is the only person left alive on Earth, though she never explains how that might have come to pass at a global level (her personal loneliness is slowly explained). And can you even believe her, when she plainly has trouble remembering things and freely admits that she was mad for a considerable length of time?
Had I not been mad, doubtless I would not have done it at all.
…
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?
…
Surely one cannot type a sentence saying that one is not thinking about something without thinking about the very thing that one says one is not thinking about.
…
Leonardo wrote in his notebooks backwards, from right to left, so that they had to be held up to a mirror to be read.
In a manner of speaking, the image of Leonardo’s notebooks would be more real than the notebooks themselves.
…
Once, that same winter, I signed a mirror. In one of the women’s rooms, with a lipstick.
What I was signing was an image of myself, naturally.
Should anybody else have ever looked, where my signature would have been was under the other persons image, however.
…
One would certainly give almost anything to understand how one’s head sometimes manages to jump about the way it does.
Wittgenstein’s Mistress has almost no plot at all. Kate is living at a house on the beach after traveling the world alone over the last decade. The novel is Kate typing recollections, thoughts, her story—a story anyway—in a unbroken string of staccato paragraphs, most of which are only a single sentence long. She talks about events in her past: driving across much of the Northern Hemisphere looking for anyone else, living in museums, visiting her son’s grave in Mexico, struggling to name a couple of cats (really). She circles personal, painful memories until finally clarifying (or at least hinting at) what happened. She makes observations about art and artists, books and authors, music and composers. She thinks again and again about Odysseus, Achilles and Hector, Sappho, Cassandra and Helen of Troy. She’s constantly commenting on the imprecision of language and evaluating philosophical questions about perception, the importance of naming things, reality, truth, and the difference between an image and an object.
But why, you ask? What does it all mean? Great questions that I can’t answer. My copy had an afterward by David Foster Wallace—he called the novel “a work of genius”—which tried to explain it, but that too was a challenge to follow. Apparently, Wittgenstein’s Mistress is a thought experiment, a “philosophical sci-fi” novel in which the author is attempting to depict someone living in the lonely world envisioned by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s first great work, the Tractatus. Okay, but my knowledge of philosophy doesn’t go much beyond having read Sophie’s World a few years ago, which grafted a mystery onto essentially a crash course on Western Philosophy. This novel is like a twisted, Ph.D-level version of that book.
Still.
I kinda liked it, even though I know I wasn’t getting close to everything out of it that was there. There’s a rhythm to Kate’s circling thoughts that drew me in. And her focus on imprecise language (e.g., how “fighting with” someone can mean either fighting together or as opponents, solely dependent on context) got me thinking about my own writing and speaking. So if Wittgenstein’s Mistress sounds remotely interesting to you (or if, like me, it’s on a list of the top 100 novels of all time that you’re working your way through), give it a go. You’ll know within 20 pages whether you want to keep reading or not. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
January 15, 2022
Bricolage (in art or literature) is construction or creation from a diverse range of available things. I’ve looked it in the dictionary. The narrator of this novel, Kate, does not know what it is, but she mentions the word at least twice. Everything in this novel is guaranteed to be mentioned at least twice. And where am I going with that? Yes, I was about to say that without knowing it, she creates a bricolage of a novel.
Here we go. Unintentionally, I’ve created a little pastiche how this narrative works. There is a lot of circularity and a lot something that initially looks like repletion, but each time there is a little difference, a little twist. Kate rarely repeats herself but to notice those differences one must pay constant attention to the novel and to keep in one’s head a considerable amount of information without visible links between individual fact bits. And it is a hard work. At least it was for me.
Another way of looking at this creation is as a novel taken to the absurd level of fragmentation. Often, those fragments ending up having an absurd meaning themselves. For example I’ve just opened the book on a random page (p191) and here is a passage:
“The instrument that Ludwig Wittgenstein used to play was a clarinet, by the way.
Which for some curious reason he carried in an old sock, rather that in a case.
So that anybody seeing him walk dawn the street with it might have thought, there goes that person carrying an old sock.
Having no idea whatsoever that Mozart could come out of it.
Doubtless A. E. Housman thought he was just somebody carrying an old sock, in fact, on the afternoon when Wittgenstein found himself with diarrhoea and asked if he could use the toilet, and A. E. Housman said no.”
I kept the syntax: it is a sentence per paragraph. And the narrative jumps from this “sad” episode to the American Civil War within ten lines through similar chain of free but absurd associations.
That is how this novel goes. It is funny, it is poignant and unashamedly intellectual. Kate talks about the high culture and its representatives. I’ve opened another random page (p185) and counted five names on it: da Vinci, Michelangelo, Medici, Shakespeare and Galileo. So it is useful to have a phone in hand just to check her references while you reading. But as you could see, she does not pick up the obvious facts and makes up a fair amount of them on the go. She also talks about herself and what she sees around her.
The novel is written by a male author from the perspective of a single woman. This woman just types a few sentences a day on her typewriter about everything. Many would ask whether the author has managed to create a female voice credible enough to pull this off. My answer would be - yes. Though I’ve had some reservations. I do not think a woman would think about her periods so many times in a short while as a man would think about sex or his penis (I’ve been told it was a lot). For Kate, on the other hand, periods seem to be the topic for excessive observations. It looks a bit like overcompensation on the author's part. However, it is wonderful to see how Kate subverts a lot of the Ancient Greek literature. For example, her doubts that Helen was the real reason for the Trojan war and her imaginary meetings between Cassandra, Helen and Clytemnestra are a lot of fun.
Sometimes, the novel has reminded me an act of good stand up comedy. Equally sometimes, her predicament would properly strike me and make me feel for her.
But who is Kate? Slowly sieving through all her factoids, we are gathering some knowledge about her. But what is going on? Almost at the beginning, I’ve realised it has reminded me of the story told by the character in another novel:
“A person wakes up in the empty world. There is no-one and nothing. He remembers the last days and realises he is guilty that everything disappeared. He does not recall any names. How the objects were called; what were the names of the people? It seems to him that everything would reappear again if he just could recall those names. The world should be searched for in his memory.” This is the plot of a traditional play put on the stage on the one of the islands in Indonesia. The amazing fact is I’ve heard it from the one of my patients almost verbatim. He was telling me about his recurring mental experience. He has been thrown in that place in his hallucinations. He walks in the empty world and tries to recall the names.”
This character in that novel was a psychiatrist. And this passage seemed to be exactly describing Kate’s experience. I do not know whether there is really such a play in Indonesia or the rest of it. But such unexpected echo between the two novels written in different languages in different countries is quite daunting. Kate is indeed unsure about her mental health. She indeed tries to recall as many facts as possible to make her existence seem more real. And she is in the world where there is no single alive creature. Though the worlds still possess a lot of objects.
We can interpret the novel in many ways. Kate could be indeed mentally ill and simply hallucinating. Alternatively, she might find herself in the empty world imposed on her by the author. Or even she might be writing a book herself, typing on that typewriter of hers, imagining her character going through this experience.
In any case, the extent of her loneliness is heartbreaking. It does not really matter what is really going on. Loneliness. She tries to fight it by hectically recalling and registering different facts she used to know. She tries to weave some coherent patterns between those facts by imagining the connections between the bits she considers as facts. And those patterns are quite often counter-intuitive, hardly obvious and visible only to herself. But she does it again and again and never repeats herself and never stops trying.
David Foster Wallace said in his essay:
“..both defined & imprisoned by the epistemic strands she knows only she can weave. And weave she does, constantly, unable to stop, self-consciously mimicking Penelope of the antiquity that obsesses her.”
That is how she makes sense of her reality whatever is the source of that reality could be. That is what helps her to keep going. But how lonely that feels. And for me the most poignant impression I took from the book is how incredibly isolating and lonely a mental illness could be. But equally how it makes people be creative out of necessity as there is no other escape routes.
And what about Wittgenstein? I only point out the obvious. Wittgenstein was a gay man. So connecting “Wittgenstein” and “Mistress” together is another absurd which is indeed possible in Kate’s head. For the deeper philosophical references I recommend reading DWF’s essay "The Empty Plenum" collected in this Both Flesh and Not: Essays book. But I do strongly believe it is not essential to know Wittgenstein philosophy of language to enjoy this book.
It is a novel where new people like Rainer Maria Raskolnikov are thrown into existence by Wittgenstein’s Mistress. However, being funny and absurd, it remains the tale of penetrating, existential loneliness.
Here we go. Unintentionally, I’ve created a little pastiche how this narrative works. There is a lot of circularity and a lot something that initially looks like repletion, but each time there is a little difference, a little twist. Kate rarely repeats herself but to notice those differences one must pay constant attention to the novel and to keep in one’s head a considerable amount of information without visible links between individual fact bits. And it is a hard work. At least it was for me.
Another way of looking at this creation is as a novel taken to the absurd level of fragmentation. Often, those fragments ending up having an absurd meaning themselves. For example I’ve just opened the book on a random page (p191) and here is a passage:
“The instrument that Ludwig Wittgenstein used to play was a clarinet, by the way.
Which for some curious reason he carried in an old sock, rather that in a case.
So that anybody seeing him walk dawn the street with it might have thought, there goes that person carrying an old sock.
Having no idea whatsoever that Mozart could come out of it.
Doubtless A. E. Housman thought he was just somebody carrying an old sock, in fact, on the afternoon when Wittgenstein found himself with diarrhoea and asked if he could use the toilet, and A. E. Housman said no.”
I kept the syntax: it is a sentence per paragraph. And the narrative jumps from this “sad” episode to the American Civil War within ten lines through similar chain of free but absurd associations.
That is how this novel goes. It is funny, it is poignant and unashamedly intellectual. Kate talks about the high culture and its representatives. I’ve opened another random page (p185) and counted five names on it: da Vinci, Michelangelo, Medici, Shakespeare and Galileo. So it is useful to have a phone in hand just to check her references while you reading. But as you could see, she does not pick up the obvious facts and makes up a fair amount of them on the go. She also talks about herself and what she sees around her.
The novel is written by a male author from the perspective of a single woman. This woman just types a few sentences a day on her typewriter about everything. Many would ask whether the author has managed to create a female voice credible enough to pull this off. My answer would be - yes. Though I’ve had some reservations. I do not think a woman would think about her periods so many times in a short while as a man would think about sex or his penis (I’ve been told it was a lot). For Kate, on the other hand, periods seem to be the topic for excessive observations. It looks a bit like overcompensation on the author's part. However, it is wonderful to see how Kate subverts a lot of the Ancient Greek literature. For example, her doubts that Helen was the real reason for the Trojan war and her imaginary meetings between Cassandra, Helen and Clytemnestra are a lot of fun.
Sometimes, the novel has reminded me an act of good stand up comedy. Equally sometimes, her predicament would properly strike me and make me feel for her.
But who is Kate? Slowly sieving through all her factoids, we are gathering some knowledge about her. But what is going on? Almost at the beginning, I’ve realised it has reminded me of the story told by the character in another novel:
“A person wakes up in the empty world. There is no-one and nothing. He remembers the last days and realises he is guilty that everything disappeared. He does not recall any names. How the objects were called; what were the names of the people? It seems to him that everything would reappear again if he just could recall those names. The world should be searched for in his memory.” This is the plot of a traditional play put on the stage on the one of the islands in Indonesia. The amazing fact is I’ve heard it from the one of my patients almost verbatim. He was telling me about his recurring mental experience. He has been thrown in that place in his hallucinations. He walks in the empty world and tries to recall the names.”
This character in that novel was a psychiatrist. And this passage seemed to be exactly describing Kate’s experience. I do not know whether there is really such a play in Indonesia or the rest of it. But such unexpected echo between the two novels written in different languages in different countries is quite daunting. Kate is indeed unsure about her mental health. She indeed tries to recall as many facts as possible to make her existence seem more real. And she is in the world where there is no single alive creature. Though the worlds still possess a lot of objects.
We can interpret the novel in many ways. Kate could be indeed mentally ill and simply hallucinating. Alternatively, she might find herself in the empty world imposed on her by the author. Or even she might be writing a book herself, typing on that typewriter of hers, imagining her character going through this experience.
In any case, the extent of her loneliness is heartbreaking. It does not really matter what is really going on. Loneliness. She tries to fight it by hectically recalling and registering different facts she used to know. She tries to weave some coherent patterns between those facts by imagining the connections between the bits she considers as facts. And those patterns are quite often counter-intuitive, hardly obvious and visible only to herself. But she does it again and again and never repeats herself and never stops trying.
David Foster Wallace said in his essay:
“..both defined & imprisoned by the epistemic strands she knows only she can weave. And weave she does, constantly, unable to stop, self-consciously mimicking Penelope of the antiquity that obsesses her.”
That is how she makes sense of her reality whatever is the source of that reality could be. That is what helps her to keep going. But how lonely that feels. And for me the most poignant impression I took from the book is how incredibly isolating and lonely a mental illness could be. But equally how it makes people be creative out of necessity as there is no other escape routes.
And what about Wittgenstein? I only point out the obvious. Wittgenstein was a gay man. So connecting “Wittgenstein” and “Mistress” together is another absurd which is indeed possible in Kate’s head. For the deeper philosophical references I recommend reading DWF’s essay "The Empty Plenum" collected in this Both Flesh and Not: Essays book. But I do strongly believe it is not essential to know Wittgenstein philosophy of language to enjoy this book.
It is a novel where new people like Rainer Maria Raskolnikov are thrown into existence by Wittgenstein’s Mistress. However, being funny and absurd, it remains the tale of penetrating, existential loneliness.
February 28, 2024
VERSE:
Dasein
Martin Heidegger
Is not somebody I thought
I once understood.
Whispered Genius
[In the Words of David Markson]
What I believed was
A person was a shadow,
If not a curtain.
On the Beach
A note for myself:
Somebody lives in this state
Of solipsism.
Naming Cats and Dogs
Did you know Rembrandt
Named his cat after the dog
In the Odyssey?
PASTICHE: [I Looked Her in the Eye]:
One morning I finally determined not to make a major project out of doing this review.
Now that I think about it, I suspect I've done it while trying not to, however.
Though to tell the truth I doubt very seriously I am writing this.
At least not if and when you're reading it.
I could have stopped.
Of this I am convinced.
Although I have nothing to verify my conclusion.
I just seem to have made up my mind.
As if I was a figment of my own imagination.
You know that feeling you get?
When your imagination runs away with you?
It's worse when it runs away without you.
Trust me.
While I am on the subject, let's talk about me.
Better still, let's talk about you thinking about me.
I could be your subject.
Can you imagine me, here, of all places?
But I'm only here in a manner of speaking.
By now I am probably no longer here but there instead.
Although you could say it still feels like here to me.
Wherever I might be.
You, on the other hand, are neither here nor there.
Hypothetically.
I mean I'm just saying.
I don't want to start an argument.
Except now I feel disorientated.
I've lost my train of thought.
Worse still, I can't remember how to find it.
Even now, later.
Which is to say that it's tomorrow again.
I can't determine in retrospect what happened next.
Did I ever catch my train of thought once more?
I'm sure time passed.
Unless it just passed me by.
It left me alone.
Perhaps that is all that happened.
Maybe time just got away from me.
Or I got ahead of myself.
Or behind.
Time immemorial.
Time out of mind.
Out of my mind.
My fairies' coachmakers.
In this state.
Dreaming of love.
Night by night.
Keep your eyes on the sky.
This is your chance to believe.
I'm sorry.
I can't help it.
Can you?
Please?
If you don't mind.
Would you mind?
Love?
Or is it too late?
I should have asked you to mind it for me.
When we both had the time.
Or her.
Well, I followed it to the station.
I mean my train of thought.
I am next to positive I looked for it.
In fact I am certain.
But it's hard to tell.
Hard to tell.
When all your love's in vain.
This much is true.
Undoubtedly.
I am not the first person to say this.
Actually, I tell a lie.
I don't remember looking for it at the station.
But I am positive that looking for it is something I would have done.
Even if it had entered my mind not to look.
Which is to say I am assuming that I looked.
Perhaps now you have it in your head that I looked?
Of course, it's possible that it wasn't it that I was looking for.
But her.
Maybe I was looking in a gallery.
Which would explain why there was a portrait of her.
On the wall.
It was one of those paintings where the subject looks right at you.
Or is it the object?
They appear to follow you as you move around the room.
Well, me, anyway.
The viewer if you know what I mean.
The looker.
I looked her in the eye.
But not without apprehension.
Just in case she was still looking at me.
After I had moved.
I can't speak for her however.
Or whatever she thought she was looking at.
Assuming she was thinking about it.
She might have been looking straight ahead.
Or out of the window.
Beyond the curtains.
Past me.
Standing in the shadows.
I might have been in the way.
She might have ignored me without even thinking about it.
There are so many ways of looking.
When you think about it.
See what I mean?
It's hard to tell.
SOUNDTRACK:
Dasein
Martin Heidegger
Is not somebody I thought
I once understood.
Whispered Genius
[In the Words of David Markson]
What I believed was
A person was a shadow,
If not a curtain.
On the Beach
A note for myself:
Somebody lives in this state
Of solipsism.
Naming Cats and Dogs
Did you know Rembrandt
Named his cat after the dog
In the Odyssey?
PASTICHE: [I Looked Her in the Eye]:
One morning I finally determined not to make a major project out of doing this review.
Now that I think about it, I suspect I've done it while trying not to, however.
Though to tell the truth I doubt very seriously I am writing this.
At least not if and when you're reading it.
I could have stopped.
Of this I am convinced.
Although I have nothing to verify my conclusion.
I just seem to have made up my mind.
As if I was a figment of my own imagination.
You know that feeling you get?
When your imagination runs away with you?
It's worse when it runs away without you.
Trust me.
While I am on the subject, let's talk about me.
Better still, let's talk about you thinking about me.
I could be your subject.
Can you imagine me, here, of all places?
But I'm only here in a manner of speaking.
By now I am probably no longer here but there instead.
Although you could say it still feels like here to me.
Wherever I might be.
You, on the other hand, are neither here nor there.
Hypothetically.
I mean I'm just saying.
I don't want to start an argument.
Except now I feel disorientated.
I've lost my train of thought.
Worse still, I can't remember how to find it.
Even now, later.
Which is to say that it's tomorrow again.
I can't determine in retrospect what happened next.
Did I ever catch my train of thought once more?
I'm sure time passed.
Unless it just passed me by.
It left me alone.
Perhaps that is all that happened.
Maybe time just got away from me.
Or I got ahead of myself.
Or behind.
Time immemorial.
Time out of mind.
Out of my mind.
My fairies' coachmakers.
In this state.
Dreaming of love.
Night by night.
Keep your eyes on the sky.
This is your chance to believe.
I'm sorry.
I can't help it.
Can you?
Please?
If you don't mind.
Would you mind?
Love?
Or is it too late?
I should have asked you to mind it for me.
When we both had the time.
Or her.
Well, I followed it to the station.
I mean my train of thought.
I am next to positive I looked for it.
In fact I am certain.
But it's hard to tell.
Hard to tell.
When all your love's in vain.
This much is true.
Undoubtedly.
I am not the first person to say this.
Actually, I tell a lie.
I don't remember looking for it at the station.
But I am positive that looking for it is something I would have done.
Even if it had entered my mind not to look.
Which is to say I am assuming that I looked.
Perhaps now you have it in your head that I looked?
Of course, it's possible that it wasn't it that I was looking for.
But her.
Maybe I was looking in a gallery.
Which would explain why there was a portrait of her.
On the wall.
It was one of those paintings where the subject looks right at you.
Or is it the object?
They appear to follow you as you move around the room.
Well, me, anyway.
The viewer if you know what I mean.
The looker.
I looked her in the eye.
But not without apprehension.
Just in case she was still looking at me.
After I had moved.
I can't speak for her however.
Or whatever she thought she was looking at.
Assuming she was thinking about it.
She might have been looking straight ahead.
Or out of the window.
Beyond the curtains.
Past me.
Standing in the shadows.
I might have been in the way.
She might have ignored me without even thinking about it.
There are so many ways of looking.
When you think about it.
See what I mean?
It's hard to tell.
SOUNDTRACK:
May 3, 2012
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 die, and then the last trace of all people will disappear, and then the last trace of our planet, our galaxy, and our universe will disappear.
wittgenstein's mistress should've been written on a frozen ice tablet left in the sun or on some kinda andy goldsworthylike mound of mud too close to the shore. a sad, funny, tragic, wonderful, wonderful book. and, one which, incidentally, pretty much captures the way my brain works.
wittgenstein's mistress should've been written on a frozen ice tablet left in the sun or on some kinda andy goldsworthylike mound of mud too close to the shore. a sad, funny, tragic, wonderful, wonderful book. and, one which, incidentally, pretty much captures the way my brain works.
July 23, 2016
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 experienced neither menstruation nor menopause, but has nevertheless managed to find himself feeling a bit "out of sorts" at times himself.
Now, a few facts about the book: 1) One edition has a beautiful cover, and the other looks like it was designed by someone with no concept of beauty whatsoever. 2) It's very repetitive and boring at points. 3) You probably shouldn't read based it on this review alone.
Actually, some of these facts are probably not facts at all. Which is to say that some of them are more like opinions, or lies. I think that this is probably a fact as well.
One finds it agreeable to be positive as to what one is talking about at least part of the time.
Wittgenstein's Mistress: "A work of genius" (DFW)
Wittgenstein's Mistress: "blah blah blah Brahms blah blah blah blah Brahms.. something something Brahms" (JLG)
Wittgenstein's Mistress: Now a Major Motion Picture (???)
It might even be an interesting novel, in its own way.
One of these days, I should very much like to review Wittgenstein's actual mistress, too.
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 experienced neither menstruation nor menopause, but has nevertheless managed to find himself feeling a bit "out of sorts" at times himself.
Now, a few facts about the book: 1) One edition has a beautiful cover, and the other looks like it was designed by someone with no concept of beauty whatsoever. 2) It's very repetitive and boring at points. 3) You probably shouldn't read based it on this review alone.
Actually, some of these facts are probably not facts at all. Which is to say that some of them are more like opinions, or lies. I think that this is probably a fact as well.
One finds it agreeable to be positive as to what one is talking about at least part of the time.
Wittgenstein's Mistress: "A work of genius" (DFW)
Wittgenstein's Mistress: "blah blah blah Brahms blah blah blah blah Brahms.. something something Brahms" (JLG)
Wittgenstein's Mistress: Now a Major Motion Picture (???)
It might even be an interesting novel, in its own way.
One of these days, I should very much like to review Wittgenstein's actual mistress, too.
May 10, 2013
The five star, in all good conscience, should only be awarded after a second run-through and piece-together. I am stunned and throat-constricted after finishing this and need to catch my breath, regroup. I have my notes and a review kernel ready but it does no justice to this novel. I don't want to review it. Instead, I want to read it a thousand times.
October 10, 2015
Kate is the only person living in the world.
Well, what I should have said is the only creature living.
On my honor, there is nobody else. There are no dogs or cats or seagulls or scorpions.
Quite possibly there are no fish either.
I did not verify that for certain about the fish, however.
A part I always liked is when she was living at the Louvre and used the frames to make a fire. She nailed the paintings back into place.
Actually that was at the Tate where she did that.
Helen, being the name of the person this happened to.
The narrator of Wittgenstein’s Mistress is engaging, witty, and completely unreliable. Her existence is as solitary as it is possible to be, but she anchors her reality by connecting fact after fact in a corkscrewing collection of allusions to artists, musicians, philosophers, and classical Greek works. She is living in a world governed by the logic of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a world that is “the totality of facts, not of things.”
Her allusions, expressed with a curious precision, move in spirals, sometimes accelerating to a dizzying pace and other times slowing to a more contemplative speed. She takes an anecdote and applies it to one person after another. At times the fact is correct, but the person isn’t (or the person is correct, but the fact isn’t?) With nothing linking her to anyone else, since there is no one else, she looks for other connections, testing them quickly one by one then moving on to the next.
Kate tells us she is an artist, and she does have a knack for invoking powerful but surreal images in a kind of performance art. Yet she balks at the opportunity presented by a blank canvas and only obliquely refers to her own paintings. Despite her carefully maintained detachment, she seems almost too self-conscious to paint anything, just as she is self-conscious in the language she chooses, even though there is no one around to look.
Occasionally there are intrusions into Kate’s strangely hushed world, causing interactions with objects that aren’t quite consistent with her inanimate environment. These brushes with a bygone outside world can be dangerous. Whether the danger is physical or metaphorical is harder to discern.
The reader is left to determine whether Kate’s tragedy is global, personal, or philosophical, though in the end it may make little difference. She is caught in a surreality where facts and their reflections have changed places so often that truth itself is questionable. In discussing a painting, Kate says:
"So in other words what I am ultimately seeing is not only a painting which is not a real painting but is only a reproduction, but which is also a painting of a fire which is not a real fire but is only a reflection."
"On top of which the reproduction is hardly a real reproduction itself, being only in my head, just as the reflection is not a real reflection for the same reason." (WM 153-154)
In this hall of mirrors, the only certainties are ambiguity and inconsequential perplexity.
Well, what I should have said is the only creature living.
On my honor, there is nobody else. There are no dogs or cats or seagulls or scorpions.
Quite possibly there are no fish either.
I did not verify that for certain about the fish, however.
A part I always liked is when she was living at the Louvre and used the frames to make a fire. She nailed the paintings back into place.
Actually that was at the Tate where she did that.
Helen, being the name of the person this happened to.
The narrator of Wittgenstein’s Mistress is engaging, witty, and completely unreliable. Her existence is as solitary as it is possible to be, but she anchors her reality by connecting fact after fact in a corkscrewing collection of allusions to artists, musicians, philosophers, and classical Greek works. She is living in a world governed by the logic of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a world that is “the totality of facts, not of things.”
Her allusions, expressed with a curious precision, move in spirals, sometimes accelerating to a dizzying pace and other times slowing to a more contemplative speed. She takes an anecdote and applies it to one person after another. At times the fact is correct, but the person isn’t (or the person is correct, but the fact isn’t?) With nothing linking her to anyone else, since there is no one else, she looks for other connections, testing them quickly one by one then moving on to the next.
Kate tells us she is an artist, and she does have a knack for invoking powerful but surreal images in a kind of performance art. Yet she balks at the opportunity presented by a blank canvas and only obliquely refers to her own paintings. Despite her carefully maintained detachment, she seems almost too self-conscious to paint anything, just as she is self-conscious in the language she chooses, even though there is no one around to look.
Occasionally there are intrusions into Kate’s strangely hushed world, causing interactions with objects that aren’t quite consistent with her inanimate environment. These brushes with a bygone outside world can be dangerous. Whether the danger is physical or metaphorical is harder to discern.
The reader is left to determine whether Kate’s tragedy is global, personal, or philosophical, though in the end it may make little difference. She is caught in a surreality where facts and their reflections have changed places so often that truth itself is questionable. In discussing a painting, Kate says:
"So in other words what I am ultimately seeing is not only a painting which is not a real painting but is only a reproduction, but which is also a painting of a fire which is not a real fire but is only a reflection."
"On top of which the reproduction is hardly a real reproduction itself, being only in my head, just as the reflection is not a real reflection for the same reason." (WM 153-154)
In this hall of mirrors, the only certainties are ambiguity and inconsequential perplexity.
July 18, 2017
Because it took me 5 days to read this, at only 240-pages, I feel that it would have gone even better in a single blast.
But life happens in the form of visitors, friends, birthdays, yard work.
When I say yard work, what I really meant was getting a new car.
Still, I can't help but shake the feeling that Markson could have tightened up the page count and lost nothing in the process, rather, strengthening the book's stunning denouement.
Which, even though more telegraphed than Samuel F. Morse, is still a fantastic, masterful piece of work.
Samuel Morse was a painter and Calvinist, something most people don't know but I do for some reason, and one can see this combination best in his Landing of the Pilgrims at the same Pilgrim Hall Museum that I am currently living in.
Let's say 60-pages.
Of course, when I say Pilgrim Hall Museum I really meant the Louvre.
It would be interesting if someone wrote a review of this book in the style of the book, even if it was completely low-hanging fruit and the annoyingly-obvious thing to do.
Which, of course, it both is and isn't.
I don't know what I meant by that last sentence.
Long ghosts walk these halls.
Lately I keep mirrors.
But life happens in the form of visitors, friends, birthdays, yard work.
When I say yard work, what I really meant was getting a new car.
Still, I can't help but shake the feeling that Markson could have tightened up the page count and lost nothing in the process, rather, strengthening the book's stunning denouement.
Which, even though more telegraphed than Samuel F. Morse, is still a fantastic, masterful piece of work.
Samuel Morse was a painter and Calvinist, something most people don't know but I do for some reason, and one can see this combination best in his Landing of the Pilgrims at the same Pilgrim Hall Museum that I am currently living in.
Let's say 60-pages.
Of course, when I say Pilgrim Hall Museum I really meant the Louvre.
It would be interesting if someone wrote a review of this book in the style of the book, even if it was completely low-hanging fruit and the annoyingly-obvious thing to do.
Which, of course, it both is and isn't.
I don't know what I meant by that last sentence.
Long ghosts walk these halls.
Lately I keep mirrors.
February 17, 2012
This is the first Markson I have read with, at least, his own linear sentences (if not structure or plot). As with certain Dalkey Archive titles, it helps to read around the book first (Foster Wallace’s RCF review from 1990 being a good place to start) to understand the technical philosophy being explored alongside the devastating depiction of loneliness and madness that forms the upfront textual heft. On a prose level, each sentence occupies its own little island of significance, standing alone as separate paragraphs, as the memory and trivia flux zigzags along the page, offering rare titbits from the narrator’s past, along with increasingly crazed factual inaccuracies. Namedropped as a former lover is Lucien—the protagonist in Springer’s Progress, perhaps?—and the slight chilling reference to her dead son and arson tendencies add a grave shade to a world of apocalyptic art references and extremely long menstrual cycles. Comparison points might be made with B.S. Johnson’s more basic exploration of grief The Unfortunates or Lynne Tillman’s American Genius: A Comedy, but the novel stands alone as a bewitching original.
April 13, 2014
Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities.
Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.
Doubtless this is the passage that works best for me in suming up the experience of reading Markson’s anti-novel.
There’s no plot, no characters to speak of, no structure and no final illuminating revelations about fundamental aspects of human nature.
Unless one considers that we live in a constant state of bafflement, wasting our precious conscious seconds and minutes engaged in trivial pursuits and meaningless thoughts.
Than this tome arguably becomes the ultimate philosophical treatise.
Or maybe not.
I should rather talk about it in terms of the perfect Off-Topic novel.
In which case, a proper review of ‘it’ needs must be similarly off-topic to the contents of the ‘book’ and should include such trivialities as pass though my mind as I’m writing my review.
If one wishes to see a cat badly enough, one would doubtless see one.
Said cat sneaking in while I visit the Colliseum in Rome, or read about the memoirs of Rembrandt, or listen to the sound of the wind through a broken window upstairs.
Nevertheless, this cat of many names could, in a manner of speaking, be the instrument that frees one from a constant state of anxiety.
Anxiety being one of the scourges of existence, according to Michelangelo.
You will say that I am old and mad, was what Michelangelor wrote, but I answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.
Speaking of mad ...
Our guide through this stream of conscience labyrinth is a woman named Kate, and she confesses right from the start that she used to be mad. Years ago and for an indefinite interval .
I’m guessing she is sane now.
Or she is just, like Michelanelo, looking for a way to escape from anxiety.
By writing the journal I’ve been reading all along.
Apparently, Kate woke up some Wednesday or Thursday to discover that she is the last person living in the world. She has no idea how this happened (allegedly she was mad before she woke up).
Now she has two main preoccupations:
- She leaves messages.
- She is looking in and out of windows.
I will return to the issue of messages if I ever find a way to close my non-review, because somehow I suspect they are the point of the Markson exercise.
If I decide that Markson did indeed planned to make a point by writing his anti-novel.
And if I don’t lose the thread of my thoughts.
Because, speaking of points, I am now trying to remember if The Beatles composed the soundtrack for the movie Oblio .
That being a movie all about points. And arguably relevant to my review, so not at all off-topic.
Even if Markson never once mentions The Beatles in his ‘novel’.
But memory is such a fickle thing, as Kate demonstrates in page after page of journal entries filled with cultural minutiae about art history, classical music, literature, Greek mythology, philosophy, baseball.
And even if the Beatles didn’t write Oblio’s soundtrack, I did thought of them as the proper companions to my lecture of Kate’s journal.
The Fool On The Hill in particular was the one that I hummed as Kate’s theme song in my mind.
Even if she lives not on a hill, but on a beach, in a house without a cat. And even as she may possibly burn the house she lives in, with or without a reason.
I may be myself a dormant pyromaniac, because I can sympatize with Kate’s need for a cleansing, illuminating blaze in her life.
Now and again, things burn. I do not mean only when I have set fire to them myself, but out of natural happenstance. And so bits and pieces of residue will sometimes be wafted great distances, or to astonishing heights.
Another Beatles tune that Kate doesn’t mention in her journal (she’s more of a Brahms, Schuman person) is I’ll Follow the Sun
She actually says so in the text, but for the life of me I cannot remember in what context.
I made a note of it, and then I forgot the reason why. But felt that I should mention it here.
Before moving to the house on the beach, Kate was a squatter in museums around the world. Museums being apparently the best places to squat in when you are the last living person on earth.
What she did in museums was looking. She doesn’t mentions what she was looking for, but I guess I am supposed to draw my own conclusions from all the trivia she writes down about The Prado, The Hermitage, The Louvre, The Smithsonian, The Pitti Galeries, etc.
Kate also looked in Hisarlik, where ancient Troy used to be thousands of years ago and where so many young men died without a purpose. Since I consider Helen a pretext, not a purpose.
And where many more thousands of young people died again in a new war in the place now called Canakkale, which I visited myself a couple of years ago.
I saw there monuments to the fallen of Gallipoli. Among them Rupert Brooke, reminds me Kate, because poets are not exempted from the slaughter.
I didn’t think about Rupert Brooke when I was in Canakkale. I did think of Troy, but only because I saw the wooden horse the Greeks used to trick the Trojans into opening their gates.
Of course this is not the same wooden horse built by Oddyseus. This one was built by Hollywood carpenters for one of those tasteless tentpole summer blockbusters. And then it was donated to the city by the Hellespont.
So many names for one and the same place on the map.
What was I talking about?
Kate is looking after something.
Many people died, in ancient and not so ancient wars.
Kate’s son also died, so it not much of a stretch to suppose she is still anxious about that loss and she is looking for him. Or that it was the event that pushed her into madness.
Anyway, she is all alone now with her thoughts, alone in the whole wide world.
Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover, when I did all that looking, or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?
In either event, people continually looking in and out of windows is doubtless not such a ridiculous subject for a book, after all.
Kate is a painter, not a poet, yet she moves effortlessly between genres, showing me how all such endeavours are related and tied together, form being just a coat/skirt for an emotion or an idea.
Have I said that on certain mornings, when the leaves are dewy, some of them are like jewels where the earliest sunlight glistens?
Her preoccupations are more about the artist that about the works of art, tracing improbable connections between Cervantes and El Greco and Zurbaran, then crossing from Giotto to Michelangelo to Tintoretto, Pascal to Rembrandt to de Koenig, Brahms to Jane Avril in a Paris cabaret, John Ruskin to Robert Rauschenberg, Kierkegaard to Bertram Russell to Wittgenstein.
By the way, did I mention that Wittgenstein never had a mistress? A man who never married couldn’t have a mistress, right?
Does Kate claim carnal knowledge of the philosopher? Not in so many words.
I suspect the title refers to some sort of philosophical exchange that will become clear to me once I read to works of the guy.
Is the title relevant to my reading of the novel? I guess not, even if my review finally proves to be more off-topic than I intended. Such as this next passage that I extracted from wikipedia, only because I read Dostoyevsky myself last month:
In 1916 Wittgenstein read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov so often that he knew whole passages of it by heart, particularly the speeches of the elder Zosima, who represented for him a powerful Christian ideal, a holy man "who could see directly into the souls of other people".
When she talks about artists, Kate is actually talking about baggage.
I know what she’s talking about, as I’ve been carrying a lot of this kind of baggage myself, even as I appear to outsiders to be travelling light.
In any event, all that any of these stories would appear to add up to, one suspects, is that many more people in the world than one’s self were never able to shed certain baggage.
One may give up on the trappings of technology and on the company of one’s peers, go live an ascetic life without electricity, television, hot showers or haute-cuisine. But one cannot forcibly empty one’s mind of the accumulated detritus of information gathered over a lifetime of reading, watching, listening.
In time, memoy being the fickle mistress we are all familiar with, this critical mass of cultural information gets jumbled up, misremembered or misattributed, forgotten but still waiting behind the scene to come forward at the beck of a name, of a sound, of an emotion.
This is not really so complicated, although it may seem to be.
All it actually means is that even when one remembers something one did not remember one remembered, one may have still no more than scratched the surface in regard to things one does not remember one remembers.
Clear as mud. Or as something Wittgenstein might have said. Yes, Kate can be funny this way, when she forgets to be anxious. What made the journey through her mind entertaining for me was actually the way she connects the dots between the disparate facts, the way everything is related to everything else, and the trivial becomes the essential as fancy replaces logic and consistency.
Many books frequently containing things that are connected to other things that one would never have expected them to be connected to.
As a matter of fact, what the present novel seems more suited for is to serve as a catalyst in examining my own baggage, and noting similarities in areas of interest, such as favoring art and artists over politics and even over cold scientific data.
Not that there’s anything wrong with politics and with science, but when I’m looking for the fundamental concepts that define life, the universe and everything, artists are my go to people.
They spend their lifes looking in and out of windows.
They put their findings into paintings, sonatas, poems, cinema, philosophical treaties.
What Kate reveals in her musings is not so much the result of the artists looking, as much as the price they pay.
In terms of anguish, anxiety, madness.
So we don’t have to experience directly these extremes of torment.
Kate ends up with an impressive list of broken people.
Tomorrow in the battle I will think on them.
I have decided that this is not a scholarly speculation in the manner of Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger after all, by the way. Although it may have something to do with meteorology.
Kate’s unreliable recollections of a life spent in museums are balanced by her pedantic, almost obsessive, preoccupation with semantics. (I did cheat here and checked out Wittgenstein on Wikipedia to note that semantics was one of his favorite subjects)
An aim of the Tractatus is to reveal the relationship between language and the world: what can be said about it, and what can only be shown. Wittgenstein argues that language has an underlying logical structure, a structure that provides the limits of what can be said meaningfully, and therefore the limits of what can be thought. The limits of language, for Wittgenstein, are the limits of philosophy.
Language is such an imprecise instrument of communication. Surely this is why we need artists in order to transcede the limitations of common speech.
What I actually thought about as I read Markson’s short sentences with their dry delivery and black humor was that he must have been a pupil of Kurt Vonnegut.
They must have met each other on the streets of New york, or Chicago, or on the planet Tralfamagoria, and exchanged greetings or dirty jokes or favorite pasta recipes.
At least, I like to imagine it happened like this.
What I would like to talk about next, if I don’t run out of alloted words for a review on Goodreads, is equidistance.
And loneliness.
Because this is how I have come to interpret Kate’s isolation, and to recognize myself in her journals.
Although one curious thing that might sooner of later cross the woman’s mind would be that she had paradoxically been practically as alone before this happened as she was now, incidentally.
What they taught me in school about philosophers was that they can basically be split into materialists and idealists. I guess what Kate is trying to say here is that we always live inside our own minds, forever alone.
Probably this is why she dismisses the material world as irrelevant, shedding as much baggage as she possibly can in order to focus on her spiritual / cultural journey. She takes her virtual tour through the worlds’s museums, looking for an answer to a question I am still unfamiliar with.
But then what is there that is not in my head? So that it is like a bloody museum, sometimes.
Or as if I have been appointed the curator of all the world.
Well, as I was, as in a manner of speaking I undeniably am.
When Kate talks about equidistance, what I’m actually thinking about is Hemingway and his claim that nobody is an island.
Although it may have been John Donne who said that.
And, arguably, we are islands, you as far away from me as I am far away from you.
In other words, equidistant.
Loving and sharing being just an illusion. Or pointless. But something we continue to do, nevertheless.
Says Kate:
Nobody paying attention to a word one ever said.
Although one continues to take still other lovers, naturally.
And then to separate from other lovers.
Leaves having blown in, or fluffy Cottonweed seeds.
And then again one sometimes merely f_cked, too, with whomever.
Time out of mind.
Returning to Kate all alone on her beach, what possible conclusion can be drawn? What comfort for her solitude? What answer from all her haunting of marble halls filled with paintings and statues? From her perusing of books filled with words?
What happened next was that I realized just as quickly that writing a novel would not be the answer anyhow.
Yet Kate persists in writing her incomprehensible messages in the sand (see, I didn’t forget about the messages!), to be washed away by waves before she even finishes scratching the letters.
And she keeps lighting those bonfires.
Somebody may be looking.
In and out of windows.
Somebody might notice this beach is not empty of life.
And Wittgenstein might have already found what his mistress was looking for all along.
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
That’s what it says in the afterwords.
For those who actually read the afterwords.
January 12, 2016
My head is suitably bent-out-of-shape after reading this peculiar meta-meta-meta po mo 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— is quite a mind-bending read. It's written with logical precision and poetic intensity.
My understanding of dear ole'Ludwig's classic is that it seeks to convey an unmeasurable dimension which makes possible a proper ordering of both experience and action. The World consists only of facts. Anyway, and but so, before attempting to hypothesise any further, I should point out I gleaned most of this meaning from Markson's novel.
I first became aware of Ludwig Wittgenstein through reading DFW's Broom Of The System. DFW's essay in Both Flesh and Not compelled me to read Wittgenstein's Mistress. It appears the novel's protagonist is the last surviving woman on earth and attempts to reconcile her existence through the system of memory and language; through facts and things. It's written in, what initially feels like, an absurd sea of statements and declarations but over the course of the novel the rhythm and pattern of writing begins to hypnotise and mesmerise.
I did find it difficult. And I loved that in itself; feel as if a reset and reboot switch has been flipped in my mind.
My understanding of dear ole'Ludwig's classic is that it seeks to convey an unmeasurable dimension which makes possible a proper ordering of both experience and action. The World consists only of facts. Anyway, and but so, before attempting to hypothesise any further, I should point out I gleaned most of this meaning from Markson's novel.
I first became aware of Ludwig Wittgenstein through reading DFW's Broom Of The System. DFW's essay in Both Flesh and Not compelled me to read Wittgenstein's Mistress. It appears the novel's protagonist is the last surviving woman on earth and attempts to reconcile her existence through the system of memory and language; through facts and things. It's written in, what initially feels like, an absurd sea of statements and declarations but over the course of the novel the rhythm and pattern of writing begins to hypnotise and mesmerise.
I did find it difficult. And I loved that in itself; feel as if a reset and reboot switch has been flipped in my mind.
May 16, 2011
My last review before this was about a novel with only one paragraph.
This time, it is about a novel with no paragraph.
Or maybe with many paragraphs.
I guess it depends on what a paragraph is.
When is a sentence just a sentence, and when does it become a paragraph?
Here, the paragraphs are composed of just one sentence each.
Sometimes not even a sentence.
Just phrases each ending with a period.
So if they're not paragraphs then this novel has no paragraphs.
Just sentences standing separately from each other.
And phrases with dots in the end.
And words, like: "Well."
My previous review was of "Wittgenstein's Nephew" by Thomas Bernhard.
This one is of "Wittgenstein's Mistress" by David Markson.
Bernhard said Ludwig Wittgenstein and his nephew Paul Wittgenstein were both mad.
Markson's fictional narrator thinks she's the only remaining person left on earth.
She is therefore likewise mad.
In fact, she admits she's sometimes mad.
But not all the time.
She thinks.
I think Ludwig's thought was this: everything is just language.
Politics, philosophy, religion, culture, arts, literature and the like are just language.
We are bewitched and often deceived by language.
But maybe that was not what Ludwig said.
Because I do not remember reading any of Ludwig's work.
And even if I did, I'm sure I didn't understand it.
I know nothing.
And it's swell.
Markson's madwoman wrote on page 103: "What do any of us ever truly know, however?"
I do not know who she asked.
She was supposed to be alone in this world.
She wrote: "The world is everything that is the case."
Then she wrote: "I have no idea what I mean by the sentence I have just typed, by the way."
Neither do I, Madam.
This time, it is about a novel with no paragraph.
Or maybe with many paragraphs.
I guess it depends on what a paragraph is.
When is a sentence just a sentence, and when does it become a paragraph?
Here, the paragraphs are composed of just one sentence each.
Sometimes not even a sentence.
Just phrases each ending with a period.
So if they're not paragraphs then this novel has no paragraphs.
Just sentences standing separately from each other.
And phrases with dots in the end.
And words, like: "Well."
My previous review was of "Wittgenstein's Nephew" by Thomas Bernhard.
This one is of "Wittgenstein's Mistress" by David Markson.
Bernhard said Ludwig Wittgenstein and his nephew Paul Wittgenstein were both mad.
Markson's fictional narrator thinks she's the only remaining person left on earth.
She is therefore likewise mad.
In fact, she admits she's sometimes mad.
But not all the time.
She thinks.
I think Ludwig's thought was this: everything is just language.
Politics, philosophy, religion, culture, arts, literature and the like are just language.
We are bewitched and often deceived by language.
But maybe that was not what Ludwig said.
Because I do not remember reading any of Ludwig's work.
And even if I did, I'm sure I didn't understand it.
I know nothing.
And it's swell.
Markson's madwoman wrote on page 103: "What do any of us ever truly know, however?"
I do not know who she asked.
She was supposed to be alone in this world.
She wrote: "The world is everything that is the case."
Then she wrote: "I have no idea what I mean by the sentence I have just typed, by the way."
Neither do I, Madam.
March 17, 2013
Holy crap. Blimey, that is one hell of an impressive piece of writing. I have no idea how he pulled it off - how do I end up having a powerful, concerned, empathic connection with the narrator, when she can only truly be seen out of the corner of your eyes. How does one invent such a structure? looping like a slinky slightly stretched and laid horizontal on the floor...
Thank you to all my new goodreads friends whose plundered shelves gave this to me.
Thank you to all my new goodreads friends whose plundered shelves gave this to me.
July 19, 2017
Duizelingwekkende experimentele roman in een verteltrant die doet denken aan Becketts Molloy en Joyce's Molly Bloom. Het is een zinderende opeenvolging van korte, dagboekachtige notities, in de prangende stijl van Wittgensteins beschouwingen maar in de toegankelijke taal die we kennen uit Marksons andere romans (ik raad die stuk voor stuk van harte aan, overigens). Samen vormen die aantekeningen een soort van lang uitgesponnen, bevreemdende, aangrijpende en vaak hilarische 'monologue intérieur' van Kate, een vrouw die haar kind verloor en langzaam in waanzin verglijdt. Vanuit een verlaten strandhuis schrijft ze alles wat haar overkwam (en overkomt) in ondraaglijk precieze details neer. Bovendien is ze ervan overtuigd dat ze de laatste nog levende mens op Aarde is. De belangrijkste thema's zijn taal, geheugen en eenzaamheid. Het boek bulkt van de referenties naar onder meer Vincent van Gogh, William Gaddis, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Achilles, William Shakespeare, Johannes Brahms en in het bijzonder Helena van Troje, in wie Kate haar alter ego meent te zien. Marksons taal is ingenieus: zijn roman is een heus spiegelkabinet, waarin je je als lezer meer dan eens verliest in het wervelende spel met de verwijzingen en hun relatie met de werkelijkheid (bijvoorbeeld hoe Kate haar kat Argos noemde en waarom precies: fenomenale scènes!).
David Foster Wallace beschouwde deze roman als een van de belangrijkste boeken uit de Amerikaanse literatuur (hij schreef er een lang essay over, dat hier trouwens als nawoord in deze editie is opgenomen). Het manuscript werd destijds in totaal 54 keer verworpen, tot in 1988 Dalkey Archive Press het uitgaf. Het werd meteen een moderne klassieker. 'Wittgenstein's mistress' is een absoluut meesterwerk.
David Foster Wallace beschouwde deze roman als een van de belangrijkste boeken uit de Amerikaanse literatuur (hij schreef er een lang essay over, dat hier trouwens als nawoord in deze editie is opgenomen). Het manuscript werd destijds in totaal 54 keer verworpen, tot in 1988 Dalkey Archive Press het uitgaf. Het werd meteen een moderne klassieker. 'Wittgenstein's mistress' is een absoluut meesterwerk.
June 21, 2011
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:
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.
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.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).
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
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.
Read
November 17, 2020David Foster Wallace was right that this is "pretty much the high point" of the American experimental novel.
What matters isn't the science-fiction frame, in which the narrator is the last living person; and the novel certainly isn't somehow philosophically profound. Reviewers were also distracted by the supposed erudition of the book (the narrator remembers bits and pieces of art history and philosophy). "Wittgenstein's Mistress" doesn't address "formidable philosophic questions" as the New York Times reviewer said. It doesn't contain "profound investigations of epistemology," as Steven Moore says in his Afterword. (Why did the book need an Afterword? Is it so strange and indigestible that even an experimental press like Dalkey Archive needed to explain it?) It certainly doesn't matter that the narrator's "cultural allusions... differ from the usual ones" by placing more emphasis on anecdotes than on the work. (How could that possibly be innovative?) And the book doesn't succeed in "tempting the reader to equate Western civilization's greatest works of art and philosophy with the futile messages" the narrator leaves in the streets, hoping somehow to attract some other survivor.
I haven't found any review, except Wallace's, that sounds right. I agree with his notion that the book is one of the best evocations of Wittgenstein's own frame of mind, including descriptions that are implicit in the philosophic literature from Max Black to the present. Markson has an uncanny ability to conjure a mental state in which a person imagines him- or herself to be the last person on Earth, a person who has been "mad" for some long, indeterminate period of time (in the novel, that is the period in which the narrator had desperately searched the world for other survivors). The book is written in short propositional sentences, with complex grammatical links, implying they are all part of one enormous logical statement -- as in the "Tractatus." The narrator mistrusts her ability to describe, remember, and recount, and she often moves rapidly back and forth between propositions about states of affairs in the world and propositions about the reliability and sense of the language in which she puts those propositions (as in the transition from the "Tractatus" to the later work). She lives in desolate places, as Wittgenstein did, concentrating, apparently, on everyday tasks, as he must have done. There were unspeakable traumas in her past. She wants, above all, to say a few accurate things, which are indisputably true, and -- as in so much of Wittgenstein -- she knows she fails, again and again, although -- unlike in Wittgenstein -- we often know just how she has failed.
The concentration on the everyday here makes McCarthy's "The Road" look maudlin, cheaply apocalyptic, and self-absorbed, and it makes Barthes's "The Neutral" and de Certeau's "Practice of Everyday Life" seem inflated and airy.
Of many, many passages that deserve to be typed out (again Wallace is right in saying no word is wasted), here is one. The narrator has been recounting, repeatedly (without realizing she's repeating herself), the fact that the actual town of Troy was tiny.
"Even if Troy itself was disappointingly small. Like little more than your ordinary city block and a few stories in height, practically.
"Although now that I remember, everything in William Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon was astonishingly tiny, too. As if only imaginary people had lived there then.
"Or perhaps it is only the past itself, which is always smaller than one had believed.
"I do wish that that last sentence had some meaning, since it certainly came close to impressing me for moment.
"There is a great deal of sadness in the Iliad in either case, incidentally." (p. 126)
The book isn't perfect; Markson succumbs to the temptation to have his narrator speculate what would happen if she wrote a novel, and those pages of metafiction -- in which we are invited to remember that we're reading an experimental prose piece on the idea of experimental writing -- don't add anything to the concerted and barely controlled voice that is the book's strength. There is no need to lift the veil of the suspension of disbelief if the entire novel is about failures of belief. In a few places, too, Markson shows off without needing or meaning to. Those passages are helped by a few places where he has his narrator say, "Perhaps I was just showing off there." But Markson himself seems to have been unaware how academic it sounds, and how unlikely it is, that a person who does not read German, on looking through a book by Heidegger, will be struck by the recurrence of the word Dasein, which is, as philosophically inclined readers know, actually crucial to the novel's sense. That really is showing off, and it's inadvertent on Markson's part. I also think the book could have done without the very brief synopsis near the end, in which we learn facts about the narrator's family that we didn't need to know, because they don't help us understand her inexorably deteriorating mental state.
But the book is astonishing, continuously, and it is also, incidentally to its own project, one of the most provocative readings of Wittgenstein: not because it makes claims about his claims, but because it tests our own understanding of the mental state that could have produced his writing.
What matters isn't the science-fiction frame, in which the narrator is the last living person; and the novel certainly isn't somehow philosophically profound. Reviewers were also distracted by the supposed erudition of the book (the narrator remembers bits and pieces of art history and philosophy). "Wittgenstein's Mistress" doesn't address "formidable philosophic questions" as the New York Times reviewer said. It doesn't contain "profound investigations of epistemology," as Steven Moore says in his Afterword. (Why did the book need an Afterword? Is it so strange and indigestible that even an experimental press like Dalkey Archive needed to explain it?) It certainly doesn't matter that the narrator's "cultural allusions... differ from the usual ones" by placing more emphasis on anecdotes than on the work. (How could that possibly be innovative?) And the book doesn't succeed in "tempting the reader to equate Western civilization's greatest works of art and philosophy with the futile messages" the narrator leaves in the streets, hoping somehow to attract some other survivor.
I haven't found any review, except Wallace's, that sounds right. I agree with his notion that the book is one of the best evocations of Wittgenstein's own frame of mind, including descriptions that are implicit in the philosophic literature from Max Black to the present. Markson has an uncanny ability to conjure a mental state in which a person imagines him- or herself to be the last person on Earth, a person who has been "mad" for some long, indeterminate period of time (in the novel, that is the period in which the narrator had desperately searched the world for other survivors). The book is written in short propositional sentences, with complex grammatical links, implying they are all part of one enormous logical statement -- as in the "Tractatus." The narrator mistrusts her ability to describe, remember, and recount, and she often moves rapidly back and forth between propositions about states of affairs in the world and propositions about the reliability and sense of the language in which she puts those propositions (as in the transition from the "Tractatus" to the later work). She lives in desolate places, as Wittgenstein did, concentrating, apparently, on everyday tasks, as he must have done. There were unspeakable traumas in her past. She wants, above all, to say a few accurate things, which are indisputably true, and -- as in so much of Wittgenstein -- she knows she fails, again and again, although -- unlike in Wittgenstein -- we often know just how she has failed.
The concentration on the everyday here makes McCarthy's "The Road" look maudlin, cheaply apocalyptic, and self-absorbed, and it makes Barthes's "The Neutral" and de Certeau's "Practice of Everyday Life" seem inflated and airy.
Of many, many passages that deserve to be typed out (again Wallace is right in saying no word is wasted), here is one. The narrator has been recounting, repeatedly (without realizing she's repeating herself), the fact that the actual town of Troy was tiny.
"Even if Troy itself was disappointingly small. Like little more than your ordinary city block and a few stories in height, practically.
"Although now that I remember, everything in William Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon was astonishingly tiny, too. As if only imaginary people had lived there then.
"Or perhaps it is only the past itself, which is always smaller than one had believed.
"I do wish that that last sentence had some meaning, since it certainly came close to impressing me for moment.
"There is a great deal of sadness in the Iliad in either case, incidentally." (p. 126)
The book isn't perfect; Markson succumbs to the temptation to have his narrator speculate what would happen if she wrote a novel, and those pages of metafiction -- in which we are invited to remember that we're reading an experimental prose piece on the idea of experimental writing -- don't add anything to the concerted and barely controlled voice that is the book's strength. There is no need to lift the veil of the suspension of disbelief if the entire novel is about failures of belief. In a few places, too, Markson shows off without needing or meaning to. Those passages are helped by a few places where he has his narrator say, "Perhaps I was just showing off there." But Markson himself seems to have been unaware how academic it sounds, and how unlikely it is, that a person who does not read German, on looking through a book by Heidegger, will be struck by the recurrence of the word Dasein, which is, as philosophically inclined readers know, actually crucial to the novel's sense. That really is showing off, and it's inadvertent on Markson's part. I also think the book could have done without the very brief synopsis near the end, in which we learn facts about the narrator's family that we didn't need to know, because they don't help us understand her inexorably deteriorating mental state.
But the book is astonishing, continuously, and it is also, incidentally to its own project, one of the most provocative readings of Wittgenstein: not because it makes claims about his claims, but because it tests our own understanding of the mental state that could have produced his writing.
May 5, 2021
Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.
This novel may suffer from the Bernhard Disorder, which might frighten many readers. The Disorder is revealed by the tics and recursions which predominate. This particular iteration benefits from a boundless charm. Perhaps I should place that charm within quotes, as the premise is anything but overtly glib. I won't spoil that but the web of references and allusions are allowed to distort and in other cases diminish and tighten--spawning a set of different realities, most of which are terrifying. Yet this sense-making , this bricolage she even quotes, is mesmerizing. Perhaps this soliloquy is a testament to mortal ends and untimely madness? The novel regardless is a rearrangement of the Western Tradition but the fact one can envision both the logic of the permutations as well as the consequences of such is in itself an endorsement of this literary achievement.
This novel may suffer from the Bernhard Disorder, which might frighten many readers. The Disorder is revealed by the tics and recursions which predominate. This particular iteration benefits from a boundless charm. Perhaps I should place that charm within quotes, as the premise is anything but overtly glib. I won't spoil that but the web of references and allusions are allowed to distort and in other cases diminish and tighten--spawning a set of different realities, most of which are terrifying. Yet this sense-making , this bricolage she even quotes, is mesmerizing. Perhaps this soliloquy is a testament to mortal ends and untimely madness? The novel regardless is a rearrangement of the Western Tradition but the fact one can envision both the logic of the permutations as well as the consequences of such is in itself an endorsement of this literary achievement.
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