A review by casparb
Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson

This a wild number, more or less unspoken of in the UK, or, I'm just not listening hard enough. But it should be louder, what an installation. There's a real trend toward the fragmentary / aphoristic / vanishing prose - I'm thinking of something like Jenny Offill's Weather - which is probably a distant relation of Wittgenstein's Mistress, but often they seem to aim toward the transcendental, the divine. This is no Lispector-work, not an atom's voice. Character is very real in a monomaniacal way, obsessing as one does over (roughly) Europe: returns upon returns to Classics, dallying with yr Renaissance & after. Vermeer ; Rubens ; Rembrandt. I contrast with Lispector because I think there's an immense vapidity behind it which is possibly intentional - a big EDUCATION flag which as if by design won't convince. & speech's defensive certainties like in Pereira Maintains. a real nice piece anyway & I want to find more of Markson