Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson
Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson
Publication date: 1988
Number of Pages: 240
Influences: Wittgenstein's Tractatus, plus a whole slew of classical and cultural references I was too lazy to fully investigate
Occasionally mind-bending, more often just silly, Markson's "last woman on earth" stream-of-consciousness novel was worth reading mainly because I've never read anything quite like it.
I was happy to get this book assignment because I like both philosophy and post-apocalyptic narratives. The only real character is a middle-aged artist, who is, or believes herself to be, the last human on earth. Having been alone for many years, she seems to have gotten out of the habit of talking with people, which may have influenced her ability to tell a coherent story. She is an extremely unreliable narrator. There is nothing subtle about the way her memory changes events--she is constantly correcting and contradicting herself on trivial points. Though she used to travel around the world looking for other people, using abandoned cars and boats as she found them, now she is in a beach house writing her memoir, which is this book. But what a strange, unconventional way of writing she has! She focuses less on her own experiences and original opinions than on haphazard, quirky reminiscences and speculations about various figures from classical literature, mythology, art and music history. The format is also unconventional, with no chapter breaks or other breaks of any kind. Most paragraphs are only one sentence long. This relentless continuity creates a disorienting effect, since there are no dates, and no way for the reader to tell that she is coming back to write on a different day unless she deigns to clue us in.
There were two things I found disappointing about Wittgenstein's Mistress, but they probably had to do with my own misplaced expectations. The post-apocalyptic setting and philosophical underpinning led me to hope for something epic, like mixing the philosophy of Sophie's World with the bleak setting of The Road, for example. The idea of one human mind with the whole world to roam around in sounds grand on a large scale. In contrast, the impression given by the prose was more mundane, with a lot of disjointed rambling by a prosaic woman.
Secondly, the type of the conflict within this novel would be best represented as internal conflict, which is fine, but since there is no second character present to keep her accountable for her lies and mistakes, she gets away with less than complete honesty whenever she wants. She puts up a half-hearted attempt to deliver the truth, and then gives up because she's tired. And who could blame her for not being sufficiently motivated for intellectual rigor, when she believes it is unlikely that her memoir will ever be read?
What I liked best about it was the occasional moments of beauty. The Wittgenstein quote, "The world is everything that is the case," seemed incredibly beautiful and profound in the context of all the confusion and regret of her lonely life. There were moments of humor, too. I liked the way she kept playing with certain phrases and ideas, like the idea of two things being "equidistant from each other".
Two recurring themes stood out for me among her repetitions and mini-obsessions. One was epistemology. She often questions how we know what we know, and her offbeat observations took me to pleasantly novel tangents of thought. The other was how people are connected to each other. Since she had no connections among living persons, she spent much of her time wondering how the individuals peopling her thoughts and imagination (Rembrandt, Helen of Troy, Achilles, Cassandra, and Brahms to name a few) were connected with each other and how they were perceived in their time.
In conclusion, it wasn't The Road, nor was it a great work of philosophy disguised as fiction. I think you can enjoy it if you approach it with an open mind and let it open doors for you. It may inspire you to consider new possibilities of thought, and it certainly inspired me to learn more about Wittgenstein! In a nutshell, the plot of this book could be summarized as "Last woman on earth plays 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon' with apocryphal anecdotes about her favorite figures from the past."
Publication date: 1988
Number of Pages: 240
Influences: Wittgenstein's Tractatus, plus a whole slew of classical and cultural references I was too lazy to fully investigate
Occasionally mind-bending, more often just silly, Markson's "last woman on earth" stream-of-consciousness novel was worth reading mainly because I've never read anything quite like it.
I was happy to get this book assignment because I like both philosophy and post-apocalyptic narratives. The only real character is a middle-aged artist, who is, or believes herself to be, the last human on earth. Having been alone for many years, she seems to have gotten out of the habit of talking with people, which may have influenced her ability to tell a coherent story. She is an extremely unreliable narrator. There is nothing subtle about the way her memory changes events--she is constantly correcting and contradicting herself on trivial points. Though she used to travel around the world looking for other people, using abandoned cars and boats as she found them, now she is in a beach house writing her memoir, which is this book. But what a strange, unconventional way of writing she has! She focuses less on her own experiences and original opinions than on haphazard, quirky reminiscences and speculations about various figures from classical literature, mythology, art and music history. The format is also unconventional, with no chapter breaks or other breaks of any kind. Most paragraphs are only one sentence long. This relentless continuity creates a disorienting effect, since there are no dates, and no way for the reader to tell that she is coming back to write on a different day unless she deigns to clue us in.
There were two things I found disappointing about Wittgenstein's Mistress, but they probably had to do with my own misplaced expectations. The post-apocalyptic setting and philosophical underpinning led me to hope for something epic, like mixing the philosophy of Sophie's World with the bleak setting of The Road, for example. The idea of one human mind with the whole world to roam around in sounds grand on a large scale. In contrast, the impression given by the prose was more mundane, with a lot of disjointed rambling by a prosaic woman.
Secondly, the type of the conflict within this novel would be best represented as internal conflict, which is fine, but since there is no second character present to keep her accountable for her lies and mistakes, she gets away with less than complete honesty whenever she wants. She puts up a half-hearted attempt to deliver the truth, and then gives up because she's tired. And who could blame her for not being sufficiently motivated for intellectual rigor, when she believes it is unlikely that her memoir will ever be read?
What I liked best about it was the occasional moments of beauty. The Wittgenstein quote, "The world is everything that is the case," seemed incredibly beautiful and profound in the context of all the confusion and regret of her lonely life. There were moments of humor, too. I liked the way she kept playing with certain phrases and ideas, like the idea of two things being "equidistant from each other".
Two recurring themes stood out for me among her repetitions and mini-obsessions. One was epistemology. She often questions how we know what we know, and her offbeat observations took me to pleasantly novel tangents of thought. The other was how people are connected to each other. Since she had no connections among living persons, she spent much of her time wondering how the individuals peopling her thoughts and imagination (Rembrandt, Helen of Troy, Achilles, Cassandra, and Brahms to name a few) were connected with each other and how they were perceived in their time.
In conclusion, it wasn't The Road, nor was it a great work of philosophy disguised as fiction. I think you can enjoy it if you approach it with an open mind and let it open doors for you. It may inspire you to consider new possibilities of thought, and it certainly inspired me to learn more about Wittgenstein! In a nutshell, the plot of this book could be summarized as "Last woman on earth plays 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon' with apocryphal anecdotes about her favorite figures from the past."