Bound Up With Books: Wittgenstein’s Mistress

This article I’ll be reviewing Wittgenstein’s Mistress, by David Markson.

There’s a quote on the cover that reads: “As precise and dazzling as Joyce…”, which I thought is a bit presumptuous and pretentious. (Look! I’ve read so much Joyce I can compare other writers to him!) After reading the book I see her point of view (although I still think it was presumptuous and pretentious).

I picked up this book on a whim. I just like the name Wittgenstein. I’ve never actually read any Wittgenstein, although I’ve read quite a bit about him, very little of which I recall. I find him somewhat fascinating as a historical figure, so when the title caught my eye I decided to check it out.

The above paragraph was not tangential – it was a small example of what you are likely to find in the book. Although more to the point than most of what you’ll read there.

At the heart of this story is a woman whose mind has turned in on itself. She sits at her table, day after day, typing, fixated on the little facts that she remembers – commentary on those thoughts, and on the strange way that seemingly disconnected facts or events come together in her mind. Commentary on the typed recitation/memoir, etc. The sort of thing that the mind does when it has nothing much else to occupy it than itself.

Is she crazy? Possibly. She opens with relating how she used to live in the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, burning frames to keep warm in the winter and shooting holes in the skylights for the smoke to go through. Such a thing is patently impossible – people would come to take you away if you even made a move like that. And yet, as one keeps reading, one wonders if she is crazy, or at least if that is the manner in which she is crazy. In between the tangents, ellipses and repetitions little hints are dropped that begin to make one wonder…where is everybody else? Is she as alone as she makes herself sound? If so, where did they all go? Since the narrative (for lack of a better word) isn’t actually about that issue, will she ever tell us what happened? And can we believe her if she does? All we have is her point of view, and she mentions in the beginning that she went through a period of madness. Perhaps she still is mad, and isn’t living in a beachhouse on the East Coast at all. Or perhaps the details have gone hazy with the passage of time, like other details and factoids that come up in the course of her typing.

This mystery doled out slowly and skillfully over the course of the book make it a fascinating read and save it from being merely pretentious flotsam. The search for clues to this mystery draws one in and allows the other mystery – why and how do we pick up all this trivia? Why do we keep it (even if only in a distorted form) for so long? What, exactly, is going on in our heads, really?

A very subtle and skillfully written book. Highly recommended.