WITTGENSTEIN'S MISTRESS PA

Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything DavidMarkson'”or anyone else'”has ever written before. It is the story of awoman who is convinced'”and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince thereader as well'”that she is the only person left on earth.Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and sowitty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow herhypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in aseries of irreverent meditations on everything and everybody fromBrahms to sex to Heidegger to Helen of Troy. And as she contemplatesaspects of the troubled past which have brought her to her presentstate'”obviously a metaphor for ultimate loneliness'”so too will herdrama become one of the few certifiably original fictions of our time."The novel I liked best this year," said the Washington Times upon the book's publication in 1988; "one dizzying, delightful, funny passage after another . . . Wittgenstein's Mistress gives proof positive that the experimental novel can produce high, pure works of imagination."