Title:: [[Wittgenstein's Mistress]] Authors:: [[David Markson]] Tags:: #experimentalfiction #fiction #philosophy Read:: [[2024-04-22]] Instagram :: https://www.instagram.com/jeronimo_ficus/p/C6FD-GKPFAe/ ## Editions - Edition:: First [[Dalkey Archive Press]] Archive Essentials Edition, 2023 - Original Copyright:: 1988 (1990 w/ Wallace's afterward) - Pages:: 306 ## Purchase * Bookshop.org:: https://bookshop.org/a/94437/9781628973914 ## Annotations The narrator of Wittgenstein’s Mistress is named Kate. She is either the last living thing on Earth or is experiencing an episode of psychosis that makes her think she is.  Kate is lonely. She deals with this loneliness by recounting things she knows about a coterie of writers, philosophers, and artists she’s either heard of or whose works she’s encountered. Most of what she knows about these people is made up or flat out wrong. Accuracy does not matter, as Markson makes Kate’s imaginative and delusional remembrances feel urgent in the way of dealing with the suffocation of loneliness. Her “facts” bounce around quickly and erratically like balls in a bingo machine. You get the sense she is grasping to ground her reality by saying whatever comes to mind as a matter of fact. It’s less about what she’s saying, and more about what she’s trying to feel or be by saying it.  This is one of the more demanding things I’ve read, particularly in form and style. You won’t find breaks or chapters, and Kate’s short and quick observations endlessly riff on one another unfolding like a dare that she can’t possibly keep going. It’s often hilarious without escaping a fundamental sadness.