#WittgensteinsMistress | Reviews of Wittgenstein's Mistress in English Books| Hashreview

#WittgensteinsMistress

Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson is a highly stylized, experimental novel 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 Read More..

Ratings

Likes

Reviews

HASH INFO

Review# tag	WittgensteinsMistress
Review# tag
Hash title	Wittgenstein's Mistress
Hash title
Description	Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson is a highly stylized, experimental novel 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.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, 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." "Five direly underappreciated U.S. novels >1960", Salon, April 12, 1999. Wallace also 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. (It was added as an afterwordBoth this and the Salon piece are anthologized in Both Flesh and Not (2012) to the novel in 2012.)
Description	Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson is a highly stylized, experimental novel 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.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, 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." "Five direly underappreciated U.S. novels >1960", Salon, April 12, 1999. Wallace also 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. (It was added as an afterwordBoth this and the Salon piece are anthologized in Both Flesh and Not (2012) to the novel in 2012.)

Created By

Admin

DETAILS

Name	Wittgenstein's Mistress
Name
Authors	David Markson
Authors
Translator
Translator
Genre	Experimental novel , Philosophical fiction , Postmodernism
Genre
Series
Series
Number in series
Number in series
Language	English
Language
Country	American
Country