Wittgenstein’s Mistress

I’m reading Wittgenstein’s Mistress right now on the beaches of Anguilla.

That line is actually a misnomer, since I’m sitting inside my hotel room typing these lines, but since my hotel room is on the beach, the location wasn’t false, just the act of reading Wittgenstein’s Mistress versus writing about it.

This actually isn’t the first time I’ve read it either, which is why I was so excited to read it on the beach, because I knew it would give me a closer feeling to the text, possibly bring me closer to Kate, maybe even her loneliness, something I overlooked the first time around because I was so astounded by the prose, and taken with the references.

I was so taken that I bought all the rest of Markson’s works and read most of them over the summer.

Reader’s Block being my favorite, though they’re all fantastic, some of the quotes even ended up on my wall.

It seemed as if Markson was toying with the idea that a novel didn’t require a body, meaning a protagonist, and he was leaving the idea of its creation up to the reader.

I even started wondering if Reader’s Block was a continuation of Wittgenstein’s Mistress.

He quotes himself a few times: “There’s somebody living on this beach.” It sent chills up my spine, and then I put the book down and thought heavily about death for a few moments.

Ryan’s been writing a chapter about Death and the Maiden, as well as Laura, but really Lauren, changing her name for the sake of protection, which I assume is legal protection more than her feelings.

Schubert composed 998 compositions before his untimely death at 31, meaning if he began at birth he composed a composition every 11.6 days.

One could easily compare him with Mozart.

I’m writing about that because Death and the Maiden has been playing on repeat, which I don’t mind at all, being that I’m very into Schubert these days, Schubert and Djuna Barnes.

I wanted to find a way to incorporate the quote: “Djuna Barnes wrote in bed. Wearing make-up and with her hair done,” into my presentation, but I couldn’t find a way to make it fit.

That quote being from This is Not a Novel, which certainly follows Reader’s Block, both being about death, specifically the facts surrounding famous artists’ deaths, but the latter focuses more on suicides, and Jews.

Also, Markson collapses the protagonist into the author in This is Not a Novel, telling us about writer’s aches and pains, but this in turn makes us aware that he is the one relaying all these facts to us, that he has experienced reading this information somewhere.

Although I said I was reading Wittgenstein’s Mistress on the beach, I’ve been experiencing many aches this vacation and spending very little time on the beach actually.

My head seems to be giving me a lot of trouble because of the flight and the humidity, and every event we attend for the wedding includes very loud steel drumming renditions of classical rock, which is torturous in and of itself, but the sheer volume of the music, and the intense sea breezes, have kept me mostly in my hotel room.

This, alone with the book’s themes, may have been what has enabled me to feel Kate’s loneliness more acutely.

But I cannot figure out if her sense of loss is heightened or softened by creating an Other simply by creating a book. In writing, a reader is automatically created, therefore a writer can never be alone, but in Reader’s Block, the author asks the reader questions that will forever be unanswered.

Well, they may be answered individually, by each reader, but Markson may never see the results, and one can’t imagine him retyping another version with the decision to place the protagonist at the cemetery as opposed to the beach.

The unanswered questions haunt the text, lengthen the gap between reader and writer, maybe to an infinite degree.

This would undoubtedly increase Kate’s loneliness.

But is she alone if she has her thoughts?

Wittgenstein supposes that a thinker can never be apart from their thoughts, and I think he was also the first to announce that the word “pipe” and most certainly not a pipe.

Persons, bodies and minds inhabit language, they play games with it, but are never separated from it, ever.

This might be one of the reasons Kate is thought to be mad, since her words are merely words, and not to be taken literally, as she herself often points out the mistakes within her own precision.

But I don’t think it’s very fun just to think that the death of her son caused her to fantasize about the rapture, or some kind of apocalypse, killing everyone, everything, except herself, and plants- I’d rather willingly suspend disbelief.

If she is mad, then we cannot take her at her word, and if we cannot take her at her word, our entire web of language fails at its primary function, which is to communicate to an Other.

Another reason to suppose she is mad, and therefore pretending she is the only person on the planet, is that she is writing this for herself, and then has no need to communicate with anyone, and could say whatever she likes, but then why desperately try to write with such precision?

The kind of precision that reminds one of Beckett.

Being here is starting to depress me, here as in Anguilla.

Or maybe it was the thought of Beckett.

The entire Caribbean reminds me of places people go to save their marriages, even if I’ve only been to Aruba and Anguilla, and both were for weddings.

Meaning I visited these islands to attend weddings.

And it’s not like I mind missing the wedding’s festivities, but I do mind that my body is slowing me down.

I often feel like my body is working against me, which is why I liked the bodyless aspect of Markson’s later works.

By working against me, I mean not in conjunction with my mood, or my goals, that is my body often wrecks my mood and impedes the completion of my goals.

Certainly I don’t mean that I am beside myself, although I am quite angry at the thought of nursing a headache when I could be reading on the beach, as I said I was doing.

I’ve decided to open the curtains, photophobia be damned, because at least then I can see the ocean, even if I can’t stand the noise.

Though it’s not the noise of the ocean that bothers me at all, that would be quite lovely, it’s the steel drums, and my hyperacusis is too much to bear.

Hyperacusis has an alternate spelling, hyperacousis, though neither seem to be in my Mac’s dictionary.

Is Wittgenstein’s Mistress a window or a mirror?

That seems to relate to whether she’s writing this book for herself or to create an Other.

Her book, is very similar to her canvas, both being a box, both extend outwards, meaning neither has a frame, or boundaries. All the frames are burned, the canvas is burned. Does this mean everything is what it is not?

A crazy woman living on a mountaintop once told me that no matter what era you live in, you’ll always have to chop wood and carry water.

Reading this book here really made me lament that I had to wear clothing down to the beach.

The text of Wittgenstein’s Mistress is formatted like the sea, every sentence is like a wave, and with each being a different length they visually remind me of the ebb and flow of the tides.

If I erase this last sentence does it continue to exist?

When Kate’s mother dies does Kate continue to exist?

Does she become nameless?

Since no one is around to recognize her, is this book her validation?

Or because of solipsism, would an Other make not the slightest of difference?

Wittgenstein seemed to understand the concept of solipsism, thought there was a germ of truth in it.

Kate is the world, but she is also its limits, but it is impossible for her to draw a boundary around herself.

She cannot be outside of her thoughts, meaning she has no outside ego that can confer and think about what she sees and thinks.

Kate reminds us that in the mirror she only sees her reflection, not herself, and certainly not her “I” .

There is a language of thought, and “I” is the formal point of reference for it.

I couldn’t help but want to make a Hyperlink out of Markson’s later books, as they invariably reach outside of themselves.

One could click on Prokofiev’s name highlighted in blue and find out all about him, and his music, and his relations.

Not unlike Wikipedia.

But unlike Wikipedia, there will be a narrative base, the optional hyperlinks would take one to the factual reference pages, just as one could surf through them, but the artistic foundation would be the narrative and its patterns laid out within Markson’s text.

Incidentally, I have not seen a single surfer during my stay here.

Wittgenstein’s favorite composers were Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann, and he also thought thinking, since it was done in the head, could cause a headache.

He knows, rather, he thought up the hypothesis that humans cannot isolate a thought from what it accompanies, meaning there are no pure thought processes. It is not an inner process which we communicate by means of language.

What I think is no more in my head than the facts that make it true are in the world.

It is pleasing to think about Wittgenstein listening to Death and the Maiden while thinking these thoughts, just as I am listening to Death and the Maiden, thinking his thoughts.

Well, certainly not thinking his thoughts, but a translation of his thoughts, an understanding of his thoughts, because if they were his thoughts then that would presuppose that he lost his and I stole them.

But I don’t want to steal Wittgenstein’s thoughts, even if I have thought about stealing his heart.

I mean, I wouldn’t mind being his mistress, even if that word has gone out of fashion. Though I don’t think it has. I just loath that there’s no masculine equivalent, so usually people just go with the unbiased “lover.”

I wouldn’t have minded being Wittgenstein’s lover.

He was apparently a deeply serious man, and put his soul into everything he did.

That probably means he was good in bed.

Achilles probably was too, but I bet more selfish than Wittgenstein.

But probably still not as selfish as Michelangelo, nor as smelly.

All this has given me a strong desire to reread the Odyssey, and a small desire to read the Iliad.

And has caused me to order Maria Callas singing Cherubini’s Medea off of Amazon.

I laughed loudly when Markson compared Germaine Greer to Medea.

And I loved the image of all those tennis balls rolling down the Spanish Steps.

It’s stuff like that that makes me recommend this book to many, many people.