Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson

I like books about life, books about people, books about things that happen - and David Markson’s books seem to be about the act of writing, about the fragmentation of thought, about, well, about themselves. I’m sure it’s some intellectual failure of my own that’s at work here, but I have no taste for self-referential postmodernism. I tried it and couldn’t figure out what the hell the wandering narrative was trying to do, and ended up closing the book for good, gasping for air, after about seven meandering pages.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of my very favorite philosophers, and I’ve read several thick books by and about him, so David Markson’s postmodern send-up Wittgenstein’s Mistress should have been a natural for me. I’ve tried several of Markson’s later novels and never got anywhere. These tributes prove that this author (who was never very well known or widely read) really broke through to a select group of readers in a unique way.Ĭan I pay respect to an author I’ve never been able to read myself? It’s an interesting question. I’m impressed by the intensity of the reaction at Literary Saloon, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, HTML Giant, Gigantic Sequins, Filthy Habits, The Big Other, The Constant Conversation and Kenyon Review. The experimental novelist and one-time pulp/satire novelist David Markson ( This Is Not A Novel, Wittgenstein’s Mistress, The Last Novel, Epitath For a Dead Beat, Dirty Dingus Magee) has died at the age of 82, and many of the literary folks I follow are posting tributes.

Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson