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-obviously a metaphor for ultimate loneliness-so too will her drama become one of the few certifiably original fictions of our time.
"The novel I liked best this year," said the Washington Times upon the book's publication; "one dizzying, delightful, funny passage after another . . . Wittgenstein's Mistress gives proof positive that the experimental novel can produce high, pure works of imagination."
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Community Reviews
Granted, Wallace's afterword helped bridge the gaps with the scant few things I felt I could connect to in here (i.e. the imperfection and innate ambiguity of language, circular references throughout the story, and Kate's constant struggle with both physical and abstract loneliness), but he could not convince me that this was worth another read to parse it all out.
It's not that this book was weird and experimental: that was a drawing point for me. but the whole thing was so mind-numbingly boring and aimless. It went absolutely nowhere, and ended up pretty much exactly where it started, aided by some high-minded references to greek mythology and art that mostly flew over my head. There's only so much menial crap I can put up with.
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