Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.

This novel may suffer from the Bernhard Disorder, which might frighten many readers. The Disorder is revealed by the tics and recursions which predominate. This particular iteration benefits from a boundless charm. Perhaps I should place that charm within quotes, as the premise is anything but overtly glib. I won't spoil that but the web of references and allusions are allowed to distort and in other cases diminish and tighten--spawning a set of different realities, most of which are terrifying. Yet this sense-making , this bricolage she even quotes, is mesmerizing. Perhaps this soliloquy is a testament to mortal ends and untimely madness? The novel regardless is a rearrangement of the Western Tradition but the fact one can envision both the logic of the permutations as well as the consequences of such is in itself an endorsement of this literary achievement.

De wereld is alles wat het geval is.

Volgens het nawoord zou het manuscript van Wittgensteins minnares (1988) door maar liefst 54 uitgevers zijn geweigerd. Hoewel het boek drie decennia later alom gelauwerd is als een culthit, kan ik me iets voorstellen bij de vertwijfeling die uitgevers destijds moeten hebben gehad. Het werk van David Markson tart niet alleen met de conventies van de literatuur, maar ook met het gerief van de lezer: in plaats van een plot bevat het boek een aaneengesloten reeks van overpeinzingen van een vrouw die alleen op de wereld is overgebleven en zich vermeit met het opschrijven van haar gedachten – op een typmachine wel te verstaan, waarmee ze de lezer trakteert op tal van herhalingen en feitjes die ze later al dan niet ‘corrigeert’, al blijft het telkens de vraag wat er werkelijk nog klopt van haar geheugen. Taal speelt een wezenlijke rol.

Natuurlijk was het niet de storm zelf die Turner wilde schilderen. Hij wilde een voorstelling van de storm schilderen.

Tussen de culturele en filosofische gedachtesprongen door krijgt de lezer af en toe een blik in het leven van de hoofdpersoon, die haar gedachten laat gaan langs de tijd dat ze over de wereld zwierf en in bekende musea woonde. De voorbeelden die ze geeft – zo hing ze haar eigen schilderwerk voor de aardigheid op in het Metropolitan – zijn niet alleen hilarisch, maar roepen ook interessante vragen op, zoals wat de waarde van kunst nog is als er niemand meer is om naar te kijken. Gaandeweg kreeg ik de indruk dat de grenzen tussen werkelijkheid en fantasie steeds vager worden.

Het lezen van Wittgensteins minnares is als televisie kijken terwijl er achter het raam iemand staat te zappen: het ene kleine fragment volgt het andere op. Markson maakt van namedropping een kunst op zichzelf; een lange rij van iconen passeert de revue, van Helena van Troje tot Johannes Brahms. Uiteraard spelen de ideeën van Wittgenstein om de wereld te bevatten een bijzondere rol. Marksons keuze om zich te richten op eenzaamheid en de betekenis van cultuur brengt met zich dat bepaalde vragen onbeantwoord blijven. Hoe houdt de hoofdpersoon zich in leven? Hoe lukt het haar een oceaan over te steken? Waarom heeft de natuur (bossen, wolven) de beschaving nog niet overgenomen? Wittgensteins minnares is beslist geen boek om een avond ‘lekker’ te lezen, maar wel een boeiend gedachte-experiment.

Lawrence van Arabië leek trouwens niet heel erg op Peter O’Toole, ook al was hij op sommige foto’s wel net zo gekleed als Peter O’Toole.
Dan heb ik het natuurlijk over de manier waarop Peter O’Toole gekleed ging in de film over Lawrence van Arabië.
Ik heb geloof ik al vermeld dat ik Peter O’Toole heb gezien in de film over Lawrence van Arabië.
Hoewel, aan de andere kant, als ik zeg dat Lawrence van Arabië niet heel erg op Peter O’Toole leek, dan moet ik misschien ook zeggen dat ik helemaal niet zeker weet hoe Lawrence van Arabië er eigenlijk uitzag.

Turner - Snow storm

An exploration of culture and the ruthless imparting of baggage it leaves one with, Wittgenstein's Mistress is quite stunning. What kind of world does the mind create when facts and tidbits mean more than real people and real relationships? Kate, the narrator of the book, is the only person in the world. She sustains herself with fantasies of dead artists and musicians, ancient Greek heroes, and philosophers. The meaningless scraps of information and gossip she dwells in is so hollow, yet she does try to humanize these glorious and canonized figures.

The touch of humanity is missing from her life; she is desperately searching for it in half-forgotten memories and random factoids. It is tragic and frustrating to witness her humanity slipping away from her frantically clutching fingers.

The last twenty or so pages are wonderful. I was very skeptical about how this book could possibly end when about 3/4's through it, but it pulls it off well. If not exactly satisfying, it leaves the brain with something to munch on. David Markson pushed the boundaries of writing, and I would only recommend this book to someone with a penchant for post-modern literature and experimental writing styles. I can see this book staying with me for a long time.

A woman at the end of the world who no longer reads books or listens to music talks about books and music. Escapism in the form of repetitive yapping about random art trivia interspersed with lonely vignettes of life as the last living creature.

Pietro Torrigiano broke Michelangelo’s nose while he was in a state of enragement. That would be Torrigiano in the state of rage, not Michelangelo, naturally.
And 500 years later, in the self-same city, a man by the name Laszlo broke the nose off of Michelangelo’s Pieta in a state of insanity. That would be Laszlo having a psychotic episode, not Michelangelo’s Pieta, naturally.
Laszlo was never criminally charged. He and the Pieta had remained equidistant from one another throughout the encounter.
Laszlo having descended from Laszlo Solom.
Or was he a descendant of Philip de Laszlo.
Actually I don’t believe that he would be related to either of them.
There is a piece by Philip de Laszlo in the National Portrait Gallery, a portrait of Flinders Petrie. I know this for having wheeled by it countless times.
Pietro Torrigiano has six works in the National Portrait Gallery.
Michelangelo, in the creation of his Pieta, did not consider whether Mary may have been menstruating.
Jesus, in Michelangelo’s Pieta, was not descended from anybody, naturally.
This is scarcely to suggest Mary was not the mother of Jesus.
Giotto similarly depicts Jesus and Mary in Lamentation of the Death of Christ. Mourners and angels alike are illuminated by an aura of light around their heads. The auras are round but they are not perfect circles.
When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle. If Giotto were to trek through the woods would his trail take the form of a perfect circle? If he moved tangentially to this circle would he continue making perfect circles? Beckett’s Molloy states that circles in the forest will make straight lines just as the straight lines have made circles.
David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress reads similarly to Beckett. One can imagine Markson painting gold coins onto Beckett’s floor. One can imagine Beckett painting gold coins onto Joyce’s floor.
Rembrandt’s cat was, in fact, looking at the pointing finger, not the painted coins pointed at.
God, the things men used to do.
Perhaps I have not mentioned that Samuel Beckett had a pet seagull at Trinity College that came to his window to be fed.
Perhaps I have not mentioned that I am menstruating.

Markson attempts to demonstrate Wittgenstein’s ideas on logical atomism and analytic philosophy by creating a story out of hundreds of short statements spoken in a void. Language is the attraction here, there is no actual story to be discerned. Not a great read for guys like me with below-average levels of media literacy.

I believe that the urgency with which I read, fueled by guilt and shame for not reading for so many years of my life, is not compatible with really subtle works of experimental fiction like this, I just cannot slow myself down enough to fully enjoy the prose and end up missing a lot of the charm. I think I understand what Markson is going for but I don’t think that I, as a reader, have quite enough patience for it. Personally not the biggest fan of the experimental plotless Beckettian stream-of-consciousness style novel. WM has its moments, there are some memorable quotes, the narrator Kate has a distinct and fun way of thinking about things, however I probably wouldn’t read this again or recommend this to anybody

Perhaps I'm merely in a troubled state of mind these days, however, this novel, as well as the other text that I'm currently struggling through, Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, struck me as both brilliant and, as the same time, as a wholly unsatisfying read. That is to say, I loved the unique voice/style of the novel right from the get-go, I got (at least some of) the many references to so many things that I know and love--Wittgenstein's Tractatus, galleries, paintings, and the lives of the famous painters, places in the world with which I'm familiar and love, the identification of the narrator with the women of ancient Greek literature, the many other literary references and the personal anecdotes about various composers, writers, and visual artists, even the text's nostalgic use of cats--but, in the long run, these accumulated trivia and the staccato style of one sentence/statement per paragraph, and then usually one or two more re-questioning or re-calibrating what has just been said, although clever and philosophical... and the many, many other types of repetition... made the actual reading of the novel rather more tedious than pleasurable. I read one reviewer here below who actually liked the character and the accumulated trivia until she read the essay/afterword by David Foster Wallace at the end explaining the Wittgensteinian references, which ruined it for her. I had exactly the opposite feeling--that without the clever references to nominalism and the nature of reality as a linguistic re-presentation this would have been terribly repetitive and largely a long series of inconsequential chit-chat. Despite the novel's being constructed out of all of that, I did get a feel for the character and found myslef somewhat immersed in its situation, a rather hellish, post-apocalyptic scenario--to be a lone voice coming through a type-script in a world rendered utterly meaningless in terms of communication because there is no longer anyone else to speak with, interact with, nor will there ever again be someone to read one's words; still, this would appear to be the challenge that Markson set for himself: to write an entertaining novel about the inability of anything important or communicative happening because of said situation. Nice and worthy try. I put it on the shelf for a re-read one day, but I cannot say that I enjoyed it this first time through. And I've immediately turned to a Hubert Selby Jr. novel in order to counteract the dryness I found here with full-scale assault on my humanity through torture and empathy. Perhaps it's because my roommate has gone away for a month of research abroad, my son will spend the Easter holiday with my ex's family and with various other of his friends, and, without my classes running, I will probably come to feel the same loneliness over the next week or so that Wittgenstein's Mistress narrates.