Wittgenstein's Mistress: Shedding away with All That Is The Case.

This post will mostly be somewhere between my review of and reflections on the 1988 novel Wittgenstein's Mistress, by David Markson. I'd like to for perspective's sake, introduce this by how I was introduced to the novel. I was with Morgan at a book store about a block away from my friend Amanda's place. The store is Women And Children First, a fantastic little place in Andersenville, on Clark. I walked in, and I saw all the fiction on my right, lining the wall with little staff picks and recommendation notes. I knew what I wanted to do was find something I didn't know, hadn't heard of, looked interesting, stood out to me. I wanted to pick something not on my reading list and after walking up and down that wall for 40 minutes or so, there was this little staff recommend. It proclaimed first that it's a novel where nothing happens, and the most interesting thing this staff member ever read. Already I'm interested. It says it was rejected 54 times. Whoa. I read the back, and there is a brief synopsis (sounded interesting enough) some good critical blurbs, and maybe my favorite. One blurb from a literary personage, David Foster Wallace, the postmodernist I mourned a couple months ago, never having read one of his books. Lets see if I can take his reading advice, I figured. So, I bought it. Immediately. At the counter the woman said it was about her favorite book, I told her thanks for the recommend, that it made my decision.

Well, enough of this, I need to actually write what I thought of this thing.

The novel is stylistically something very strange. I'm not sure if I would rather say it keeps my interest or loses it, even now. It's one thought to the next and free association. It's her remembering all sorts of things as she sits alone (very alone) at a typewriter. There's a mood at first of novelty towards her own thoughts. She's very charming, you smile at her, giggle a little, and catch her little dry wit. The dry wit is the first thing that grabs you. She'll talk about Guy de Maupassant, or Helen of Troy. You start to realize she's confusing things. (This will confuse any reader too, let me say, and I don't consider this a spoiler, you'll use the internet eventually: T.E. Shaw is another name for Lawrence of Arabia. Remember when you read it.) She'll contradict herself, she gets vaguely frustrated or out of sorts. She is almost undoubtedly insane, and she tells you she at least was at some point. She'll write about absolutely anything, a very honest character. "Ah, me" she says at one point or another. Repeats it here and there. Ah, her.

In the beginning, she left messages in the street, like she tells you at the start of the novel. You realize she means, beginning when there are no people on earth besides her. Seems world population has dropped to an artist named Kate. Don't ask how it happened or what you hear about this, or expect anything deeper from her: she won't tell you. The world that she describes is empty enough that she has lived in the Louvre, the Met, burning frames for warmth. She lives on a beachouse now, like previous ones that she has burned, mostly unintentionally.

She talks about artists a lot. And Greek myths, the Greek plays (which she's read all of these,) Greek legend. She'll talk about philosophers, and writers, or cultural figures. Like in everything else she confuse things here. She'll change the story she told a few pages ago. She refers to all this intellectual stuff as "baggage." She's gotten rid of accouterments. She has some clothing when she stays some place and isn't driving from continent to continent. Right now, on this beach, she's shedding away with her baggage.

"The world is all that is the case." That's the first sentence of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. A sub note to this reads that the world "is a totality of facts, not things." The first of these sentences is repeated in the novel, by the narrator, almost a comple non-sequitur. She doesn't attribute it, or seem to be aware where its from. In fact, a little later she says she's never read a word of what he's written (she corrects this, remembering a sentence that I don't believe Wittgenstein ever wrote.)

Kate has slimmed down the world already. It is no longer populated by people. There might be cats though. Then she gets rid of her things. She burns the Greek plays. Now she's unloading through this typewriter all of the things she has learned, presumably studying as an artist. This might be some sort of answer if you were looking for one, but to me, solving the mystery of the strange world where she seems to be lviing and writing is quite besides the point.

It's also worth noting that she'll make you feel a little bit as if you were mad. This is one of the things I liked about it. Somethign that kept my interest was my amusement at the things she remembered that amused her... all these charming stories about Rembrandt being fooled by his students and the like ... and then the sadness I felt for the stories she tells that make her just a little more sad. The stories seem to be moving this way, by the way. Many of her artists went mad or met very tragic deaths. Her ability to deal with her own mind, even after shedding so much of the world, wavers a little, and it can be downright heartbreaking. If there's any plot whatsoever, it would be the movements of her mind as she drops everything she feels like telling you onto the pages.

Lets call this review a positive one. The book kept me entertained for a week or so, and it gave me plenty to think about. I found some good artists too. I'll make sure I'll add the caveat that not everyone will love the novel, I don't think. Apparently, at least 54 publishers did not

An Objection To Cartesian Dualism

There's a distinct possibility that absolutely no one who reads this cares in the least about this. So skip this one, I'll have a book review up in a day or so (for the 1988 Novel Wittgenstein's Mistress). Maybe less, maybe slightly more. This one will then be for a random person who happens upon my blog, or on the off chance that one of you have any interest.

All right, this probably applies to more than just the dualism in Descartes. In general it applies to any metaphysical dualism (matter + minds) where we also imagine God created these things. And I know Descartes thought this was the case. So on to the spirit of my objection:

We have these ideas: Matter is material, extended objects, not thinking things. The thinking things are minds, not-material, not-extended in space. The interaction, as I understand it, is that perceptions, pains, thought, emotions, and all that takes place in the mind. It takes place in the non-material part, even if caused by the material part. So here's the problem: Material is superfluous. It's unnecessary, and I can't see any reason for a perfect being to create it.

All of the effects of material objects could be founded completely within minds. As a matter of fact, to the minds it would be all the same. So why create material things at all? What reason would we have to believe they exist, and that minds also exist. Especially if matter is equally capable of doing the work of minds (a trivial point) in which case you have two things that can each do both jobs. However, the way minds are described, at least it seems that that should be all that is necessary. So why both?

I've read it over, and it looks as if Descartes tries to explain his dualism in the Meditations on First Philosophy, in a way which might respond to this, however for several reasons I don't buy his argument. For some of his answers, it's the same I don't generally buy the case of dualism, but here's what is the crux of his argument, from what I can tell: God is not a deceiver. This doesn't respond to anything, as I do not believe (say) an idealist picture (mind, no matter) would claim God IS a deceiver. For after all, our perceptions tell us nothing but what he establishes earlier (med 2) that we perceive x or y quality. Berkely's right here: it's qualities, not objects which we perceive.

An argument from simplicity seems to rule dualism out one way or another, is how it looks to me. Back to Occam's Razor: Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity, or in other words "all other things being equal, the simplest picture is the most reasonable to believe." The reasonable model here doesn't seem likely to be dualism, or not the cartesian case as I've seen it. Spinoza makes sense here, multiple aspects to the same thing.

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I'd love to hear (and respond to) any arguments. I rarely hear this argument against dualism. I'm not sure if it has any history, or if any philosopher has made it, so sources on this would be interesting.

What It Actually Looks Like

First, let me say my father worked (actually, works) for Lucent Technologies. I have seen the aftermath. Lucent was the site of massive amounts of layoffs after they had constructed two of their own office buildings near Naperville, Illinois. I remember walking through nearly empty floors of a company whose workforce had been laid off, outsourced, eliminated, and in fact stripped to its bare minimum. I've seen the lowered morale and people worried about their jobs after they had so many things to pay for already. (That, in fact, for the public might be the first of the fallacies.) And I've heard names vanish, stopped hearing of certain of my fathers coworkers. This is when I was growing up.

My turn. Today, I arrived at work at about 3:30. Fashionably late. I asked the room (the SOC or service operations center, and the other staff who shares the room with their cubicles) how it was going. Some of them replied cheerily. Some didn't look. A couple answers came honestly "not so good." My first instinct is that a site was down, or a product was disabled, or network problems were bad, so these were what I was asking about. When I asked what I could help with, the answer came: "Nothing. Read your email from [the CEO.]" Bad things, and not everyone in the room had even heard. Asking more bluntly the less self-absorbed crew, I got the answer: The company is laying off ten percent of its employees. I'm at their HQ where at least seventy percent of us work. News spreads. The room gets quiet. Intermittently.

"Someone's gotta tell the execs what they're doing wrong. They say no lay offs until January, and then this! They can bite me," said John, dilligently defending the workforce.

"Calm down," Monica said cautiously. She wanted to make sure he didn't get fired either. No doubt both level-headed and very worried for his position and ours. The room was a-buzz when it wasn't dead quiet with this kind of banter. L. quipped about ducking out in there and doing little work, since none was expected with morale so low. Cool, as ever, he just sat around. He waited.

Larry's new and he asks me about it. Eventually he asks if there's any word on where the cuts are going to hit. I tell him there are more than ten people in the room, he won't see them all tomorrow. I tell him, by noon the next day, a bunch of those names are going to be gone.

There's a flood of people at this point, heading towards a big conference room down the hall and a floor away. These are directors, managers, and veterans. Just moving silently through.

It wasn't long then. First, Monica came back in with a bag straight to her desk. Silent. The room is quiet, and nobody knows. More news comes in leaked seemingly without source that Ken's going now. Light shock hits. Monica is now filling her bag with the last and walking off. They say Ken had pulled the power cord right from the wall and his workstation is off. Directors are moving through the floor right up to their employees, in front of everyone. "Have a nice day. Good luck, I hear the economy's not doing so well."

When Monica walked out, people stood up. This was the first I saw people's watery eyes. Hugs were exchanged. To me, she just said "Later, Extraodinaire." She had called me that since a tour she led, and I introduced myself as Michael, Admin Extraordinaire.

A name is heard from across the room when people go back to their desks, and L., who'd been ducking out there and keeping his head low behind me cool as always, he stands up. "No. No. They wouldn't let him go, NOT him. No, I will cry. I will cry. You're kidding me."

People shake their heads at him, somber. He walks straight out of the room, his new Mac on the desk.

I announce I'm going for a cigarette, but I go talk to Lars. His team is safe, looks like most of that floor is. I talk to him and he says I'm probably safe, but his IMs have been basically his RSS feed on who's gone NOW. This is when I hear Lisa's name, and I go smoke my cigarette. Which broke, so the last half I smoke unfiltered. I take the elevator to nine, and there's Lisa with a box, and a lot of quiet people. The one person I hugged. "Onto the next thing."

That's got to be one of the most interesting people I ever met. A storm chaser, a systems expert, and a tech for south pole researchers who was in Antarctica for around two years. Unfortunately, I don't trust the world not to show prejudice to her as a transgendered person whose name was likely not always Lisa.

Back in the SOC, John is fuming. Maybe about Monica, or Steve. "Well, Mr. [CEO], you've just decimated leadership. Are we go for the build?"

People are ending their usual workdays now, but no one is sure who will be coming back.