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