WITTGENSTEIN'S MISTRESS is a novel unlike anything David Markson - or anyone else - has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced - and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well - that she is the only person left on earth. Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and so witty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow her hypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in a series of irreverent meditations on everything and everybody from Brahms to sex to Heidegger to Helen of Troy. And as she contemplates aspects of the troubled past which have brought her to her present state - obviously a metaphor for ultimate loneliness - so too will her drama become one of the few certifiably original fictions of our time.

'A work of genius ... an erudite, breathtakingly cerebral novel whose prose is crystal and whose voice rivets and whose conclusion defies you not to cry.' -David Foster Wallace

Staff Review:
I'm just getting into Markson, one of those authors who has a dedicated cult following, but remains a marginalized figure within the literary community. Apparently he started out writing pulp novels and a screenplay or two back in the 50s and 60s, and then popped back up with this abstract experimental "novel" -- and hasn't looked back since. This one's basically a collection of musings by a woman who either is the last person alive on Earth, or just believes that she is. She talks a little about the primitive post-apocalyptic life she's carved out for herself -- at times claiming to live in the middle of nowhere, and at other times in some of the more famous museums of the world -- but mostly she discusses the tragic lives and foibles of artists, musicians, and authors from antiquity to the present. Interesting patterns begin to emerge, as she's clearly fascinated with personalities who either won little respect in their lifetime, or had great success in the arts but horrible problems in their personal lives. At first glance, it looks like it'd be hard to digest -- but for me, at least, it went down smooth. My only complaint was that having read some of Markson's subsequent novels which featured male protagonists, the narrator's voice here struck me as too similar (a few references to childbirth and menstrual cycles aside). Otherwise, fascinating.
-Eric Allen Hatch, Atomic Books Blog