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