Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson

Her son, who may be named Simon, died young. (She admits to suffering through a period of insanity, which she calls “time out of mind.”) We know little about her past.

Whether or not any of this actually happened is unclear.

Since finding herself alone on earth, she’s lived in a loft in SoHo, driven through Siberia, sailed to Byzantium, camped out in the Met and the Uffizi, and searched for a cat in the Colosseum. This all sounds very dire - and it assuredly is - though Kate’s is a witty and charming narrative presence. It presents a state of ultimate solipsism, a lean, Cartesian nightmare in which the world has fallen away into language-habits, echoes, and ghosts. But despite its irreverence, Wittgenstein’s Mistress hews ever more closely to philosophical terror. Slipped significations form the phantom scaffolding of a comedy, something like “Who’s on Second” as told by a depressive metaphysician. The document doubles as a rumination on the inadequacy of language. Kate, the aforementioned woman, lives on an empty beach - no apocalyptic event is offered - where she composes a daily record of memories and loosely associated facts.

It is lonely in its premise (the last woman on earth meditates on language, history, and culture), lonely in its publication journey (Markson’s manuscript was famously rejected fifty-four times), lonely in its execution (a monologue of obsessive consciousness), and lonely-making in its ultimate effect upon the reader. David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988) is the loneliest of American novels.

Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson