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Obstructive Fictions #1: Wittgenstein's Mistress

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David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988) is the loneliest of American novels. It is lonely in its premise (the last woman on earth meditates on language, history, and culture), lonely in its publication journey (Markson’s manuscript was famously rejected fifty-four times), lonely in its execution (a monologue of obsessive consciousness), and lonely-making in its ultimate effect upon the reader. Kate, the aforementioned woman, lives on an empty beach — no apocalyptic event is offered — where she composes a daily record of memories and loosely associated facts. The document doubles as a rumination on the inadequacy of language. Slipped significations form the phantom scaffolding of a comedy, something like “Who’s on Second” as told by a depressive metaphysician. But despite its irreverence, Wittgenstein’s Mistress hews ever more closely to philosophical terror. It presents a state of ultimate solipsism, a lean, Cartesian nightmare in which the world has fallen away into language-ha

Obstructive Fictions #1: Wittgenstein's Mistress David Markson's Cartesian nightmare. Dustin Illingworth Jan 28, 2021 24 3 Share David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988) is the loneliest of American novels. It is lonely in its premise (the last woman on earth meditates on language, history, and culture), lonely in its publication journey (Markson’s manuscript was famously rejected fifty-four times), lonely in its execution (a monologue of obsessive consciousness), and lonely-making in its ultimate effect upon the reader. Kate, the aforementioned woman, lives on an empty beach — no apocal

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