Wittgenstein's Mistress is a 1988 experimental novel written by David Markson. A highly stylized work in the tradition of Samuel Beckett, the novel is mainly a series of statements made in the first person. The protagonist is a woman named Kate who believes herself to be the last human on earth; though her statements shift quickly from topic to topic, the topics often recur, and often refer to Western cultural icons, ranging from Zeno to Beethoven to Willem de Kooning. Readers familiar with Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus will recognize stylistic similarities to that work.
David Foster Wallace wrote a long essay on the novel detailing its connections with Wittgenstein, entitled "The Empty Plenum: David Markson’s Wittgenstein's Mistress" for the 1990 Review of Contemporary Fiction. In 2012, it was added to the novel as an afterword.Both this and the Salon piece are anthologized in Both Flesh and Not (2012)
Allusions Wittgenstein's Mistress is heavy with allusions, references, and parallels right from the title. Several of these include, but are not limited to: Vincent van Gogh, William Gaddis, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Helen of Troy, Achilles, William Shakespeare, and Johannes Brahms.Steven Moore, "David Markson and the Art of Allusion," Review of Contemporary Fiction 10.2 (Summer 1990): 174-78. Many of these are used to play with the themes, particularly language and memory, and draw parallels between the narrator, Kate, and figures from other works, most notably Helen of Troy.
Reception Though Markson's original manuscript was rejected fifty-four times,See Markson's list reproduced in Lists of Note, ed. Shaun Usher (Canongate Books, 2014/Chronicle Books, 2015), pp. 162-63 the book, when finally published in 1988 by Dalkey Archive Press, was met with critical acclaim. In particular, the New York Times Book Review praised it for "address[ing] formidable philosophic questions with tremendous wit." A decade later, David Foster Wallace described it as "pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country" in an article for Salon entitled "Five direly underappreciated U.S. novels >1960.""Overlooked: Five direly underappreciated U.S. novels >1960", Salon, April 12, 1999.
Release details 1988, USA, Dalkey Archive Press, May 1988, Hardback 1989, UK, Jonathan Cape, , August 1989, Hardback 1990, USA, Dalkey Archive Press, February 1990, Paperback (reprinted twice) 1995, USA, Dalkey Archive Press, , May 1995, Second paperback edition (with afterword by Steven Moore) (reprinted five times) 2012, USA, Dalkey Archive Press, , March 2012, Third paperback edition (with afterword by David Foster Wallace)
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