Wittgenstein's Mistress

by David Markson

For that matter the sky was white, too, and the dunes were hidden, and the beach was white all the way down to the water's edge.

  So that almost everything I was able to see, then, was like that old lost nine-foot canvas of mine, with its opaque four white coats of gesso.

  Making it almost as if one could have newly painted the entire world one's self, and in any manner one wished.

  Assuming one had also wished to paint outdoors in such chilly weather, that is.

  Although the cold had been coming on for quite some time before that too, naturally.

  So that I had already been to the town any number of times in the pickup truck, in fact.

  Well, scarcely wishing to be caught short for supplies once I am basically locked in here, obviously.

  And which is to say that I have now dismantled a good deal more of the house next door, as well.

  Making two toilets fastened to pipes on the second floors of houses which no longer possess second floors that I now see when I go for my walks along the beach.

  Now and again when I was calculating which of the boards I could get at next with my crowbar up there, by the way, I was reminded of Brunelleschi and Donatello.

  Early in the Renaissance when Brunelleschi and Donatello had gone about measuring ancient ruins in Rome, this would be, and with such industry that people believed they could only be searching for buried treasure.

  But after which Brunelleschi returned home to Florence and put up the largest dome since antiquity.

  While Giotto built the beautiful campanile next door.

  Even if there would appear to be no record in art history as to whether Giotto did that before or after he had painted the perfect circle freehand, on the other hand.

  And as a matter of fact Giotto's campanile is square.

  Although there is practically no place in Florence from which one cannot see either of those structures, incidentally.

  Well, as there is practically no place in Paris from which one cannot see the Eiffel Tower, either.

  And which might certainly disturb one's lunch, should one not wish to look at the Eiffel Tower while eating one's lunch.

  Unless like Guy de Maupassant one had taken to crawling about on a floor and eating one's own excrement, say.

  God, poor Maupassant.

  Well, but poor Friedrich Nietzsche, too, actually.

  If not to mention poor Vivaldi while I am at it also, since I now remember that he died in an almshouse.

  And for that matter poor Bach's widow Anna Magdalena, who was allowed to do the same thing.

  Bach's widow. And with all of those children. Some of whom were actually even more successful in music at the time than Bach himself had been.

  Well, but then poor Robert Schumann as well, in a lunatic asylum and fleeing from demons. One of whom was even Franz Schubert's ghost.

  For that matter poor Franz Schubert's ghost.

  Poor Tchaikovsky, who once visited America and spent his first night in a hotel room weeping, because he was homesick.

  Even if his head at least did not come off.

  Poor James Joyce, who was somebody else who crawled under furniture when it thundered.

  Poor Beethoven, who never learned to do simple child's multiplication.

  Poor Sappho, who leaped from a high cliff, into the Aegean.

  Poor John Ruskin, who had all those other silly troubles to begin with, of course, but who finally also saw snakes.

  The snakes, Mr. Ruskin.

  Poor A. E. Housman, who would not let philosophers use his bathroom.

  Poor Giovanni Keats, who was only five feet, one inch tall.

  Poor Aristotle, who talked with a lisp, and had exceptionally thin legs.

  Poor Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who I also now remember was one more person who died in a plague. But in her case while taking care of other nuns who were more ill than she.

  Poor Karen Silkwood.

  Well, and poor all the young men who died in places like the Hellespont, by which I mean the Dardanelles, and then died again three thousand years after that, likewise.

  Even if I hardly mean the same young men.

  But meaning poor Hector and poor Patroclus, say, and after that poor Rupert Brooke.

  Ah, me. If not to add poor Andrea del Sarto and poor Cassandra and poor Marina Tsvetayeva and poor Vincent Van Gogh and poor Jeanne Hebuterne and poor Piero di Cosimo and poor Iphigenia and poor Stan Gehrig and poor singing birds sweet and poor Medea's little boys and poor Spinoza's spiders and poor Astyanax and poor my aunt Esther as well.

  Well, and poor all the youngsters throwing snowballs in Bruegel, who grew up, and did whatever they did, but never threw snowballs again.

  So for that matter poor practically the whole world then, more often than not.

  And of course without even thinking about that Wednesday or Thursday morning, this is.

  Even if for the life of me I have no idea why I am talking about one bit of that now, either. Any of it.

  When all I had actually been about to say was that I have no real explanation for not having written anything in these past seven or eight weeks.

  Even if I have already listed several, such as going for supplies, or devoting more time than usual to my dismantling.

  Although another reason may very well be that I have appeared to be frequently tired lately, to tell the truth.

  As a matter of fact what I ought to have perhaps just said was not that I have no explanation for not having written anything in the past seven or eight weeks, but for having been so frequently tired during that period.

  In fact I am feeling tired right at this moment.

  Perhaps I was feeling tired when I spent that week lying in the sun before I last did do any writing, too, now that I stop to think about it.

  So that I am less than positive that I have brought in as many items for winter as I will need after all, actually.

  Or that I have done nearly as much dismantling as is necessary, either.

  Especially since any number of the boards are still waiting to be sawed, as it happens.

  Although I have never considered sawing the boards to be part of the process of dismantling, incidentally.

  Being rather a question of turning dismantled lumber into firewood.

  After it has been dismantled.

  Even if such a distinction is doubtless no more than one of semantics.

  And in either case perhaps I will do some more of that, later today.

  Perhaps I will find the painting I have lost later today, also.

  Although doubtless I have not mentioned that I have lost a painting.

  Well, assuredly I have not mentioned having lost it, what with not having written one solitary word since some time before that happened.

  It being the painting of this very house, that I am talking about, and which until at least last August had been hanging directly above and to the side of where this typewriter is.

  I believe the painting is a painting of this very house.

  In fact I believe there is a representation of a person lurking at the window of my very bedroom in it, even, although one had never been able to be positive about that.

  Well, because of the brushwork being fairly abstract at that point, basically.

  Still, through all of this time I had been certain that I had put the painting into one of the rooms here that I do not often make use of, and to which the door is generally closed.

  As a matter of fact it is a room I surely must have mentioned, since I had been equally certain it was the identical room in which I had more than once noticed a life of Brahms and an atlas.

  The former having become permanently misshapen because of dampness, in fact, whereas the latter was lying on its side.

  Because of being too tall for the shelf.

  And with the shelf being the identical shelf that the painting was leaning against, additionally.

  Nonetheless the painting is not in that room.

  And for the l
ife of me I have not been able to locate the life of Brahms or the atlas either, even though I have also looked into every other room in this house, including the several additional rooms to which the doors are likewise generally closed.

  As a matter of fact I have also walked to the house in the woods behind this house, suspecting that I might have been mistaken as to the whereabouts of all three items, but the painting and the life of Brahms and the atlas do not appear to be in that house, either.

  In fact the only item in that house which I remembered having ever given even a second glance, in addition to a reproduction of a painting by Suzanne Valadon that is taped to the living room wall, was a soccer shirt with the name Savona printed across its front.

  Which I have now washed at the spring and am wearing as I type.

  As a matter of fact I have been wearing the soccer shirt for some days.

  Even if I have no idea what it is, really, about wearing the soccer shirt.

  And even if I am still at a total loss in regard to that painting.

  Which I may or may not have painted myself, incidentally, if I have not said.

  Actually I have no recollection whatsoever of having painted that painting.

  Still, ever since it turned up missing I have had the curious impression that I just could have.

  Or at least that I certainly once imagined it as a painting that I might possibly paint but then did not.

  Which is the sort of thing that a painter will now and again do, of course.

  Or not do, rather.

  But in which instance there could have scarcely been a painting for me to have lost after all, obviously.

  Or would that have to mean that there might have been no life of Brahms and no atlas either, then?

  Except that if there had not been any atlas how could I have once looked up Lititz, Pennsylvania, in it, on an occasion when I happened to be curious about Lititz, Pennsylvania?

  And if there had not been any life of Brahms how could I have once lighted some torn-out pages from it on the beach and then tossed them into the air to see if the breeze might make them fly?

  When I was trying to simulate seagulls?

  Even if most of the pages happened to fall right next to me, as a matter of fact.

  Because of having been printed on extraordinarily cheap paper, doubtless.

  But so that there must have unquestionably once been a life of Brahms in this house.

  And in which a part I always liked was when Clara Hepburn gave Ludwig Wittgenstein some sugar.

  Although what I would really like to find even more than I would like to find the painting is my missing cat, to tell the truth.

  Even if it is not really a cat and is not really missing, actually.

  Well, being only Magritte, who used to be Vincent.

  Which is to say that the tape would appear to have blown away from the outside of that broken window, being all.

  Still, one had gotten to be quite fond of that frisky scratching.

  Although even just to see some floating ash again would be agreeable, too.

  Even if one would hardly go to the trouble to name some floating ash, on the other hand.

  There is a numeral on the back of the soccer shirt, by the way.

  Possibly it is a nine. Or a nineteen.

  In fact it is two zeros.

  Have I mentioned that I have taken to building fires down near the water, after my sunsets, incidentally?

  I have taken to building fires down near the water, after my sunsets.

  Now and again, too, looking at them from a distance, what I have done is to make believe for a little while that I am back at Hisarlik.

  By which I really mean when Hisarlik was Troy, of course, and all of those years and years ago.

  So that what I am more truthfully making believe is that the fires are Greek watchfires, where they have been lighted along the shore.

  Well, that certainly being a harmless enough thing to make believe.

  Oh. And I have been hearing The Alto Rhapsody again also, these days.

  Which is to say the real Alto Rhapsody this time, what with all of that having finally been sorted out.

  Even if it is still hardly the real one either, naturally, being still only in my head.

  But still.

  And at any rate it is far too chilly this morning to be fretting about inconsequential perplexities of that sort.

  In fact it is far too chilly to be typing here to begin with, actually.

  Unless I might wish to move the typewriter closer to my potbellied stove, some way.

  Although what I really ought to do before doing that is to go out to the spring again, to tell the truth.

  Having completely forgotten about the rest of my laundry, which is spread across various bushes.

  So that by now there could very well be some new skirt sculptures out there, even.

  Even if Michelangelo would not think them that, but I think them that.

  And even if I will more probably leave the rest of the laundry where it is until I am feeling less tired, on the other hand.

  Doubtless I will not trouble to move the typewriter, either, when one comes down to that.

  Once, I had a dream of fame.

  Generally, even then, I was lonely.

  To the castle, a sign must have said.

  Somebody is living on this beach.

  AFTERWORD

  THE EXTRAORDINARY NOVEL you have presumably just finished reading almost didn't see the light of day. The sorry state of contemporary publishing emerges from this conversation between David Markson and critic Joseph Tabbi (from the Review of Contemporary Fiction's special issue on Markson, summer 1990, from which the second half of this afterword is adapted). With self-deprecating humor—where sputtering outrage would have been fully justified—Markson tells Tabbi that he suspects Wittgenstein's Mistress set a record for the number of rejections it received:

  For years, the highest number of turndowns I'd ever heard of was thirty-six, on The Ginger Man. Then I read in that Deirdre Bair biography that Murphy had about forty-two. Ironweed had a dozen, as I recall, and I once jokingly told Bill Kennedy while Wittgenstein was going around that if rejections were any sign of quality, then mine was already twice as good as his. But then I left Donleavy and Beckett in the dust also.

  JT: What sort of figure are we finally talking about?

  DM: I almost hate to announce it. Fifty-four.

  JT: For a novel that well thought of since? Wasn't one editor in fifty-four capable of seeing something in it?

  DM: Obviously it wasn't all black and white. Oh, about a third of them didn't like it at all, and perhaps another third made it inadvertently evident that they didn't understand a word. And OK, you can't fault the totally negative responses—or the vapid ones either, since they pretty much correspond with the percentage of editors you know are C students to begin with. But it's the other third that really cause grief. I mean when the letters practically sound like Nobel Prize citations—"brilliant," "twenty years ahead of its time," "we're honored that you thought of us" .. .

  JT: And?

  DM: The predictable kicker, of course. It won't sell. Or worse, we couldn't get it past the salespeople. Actually acknowledging that those semiliterates don't simply participate in the editorial process, but dictate its decisions. God almighty.

  I began corresponding with Markson in 1984, met him shortly after, and in the autumn of 1987 was allowed to read the manuscript of the novel. I loved it, and since I was just then talking with John O'Brien about joining his Dalkey Archive Press, I suggested that Markson send it there. That he did and, with no aesthetic obtuseness or commercial considerations hindering the process, the novel was immediately accepted and published the following May. It was widely and favorably reviewed, went through two printings in hardcover, then several more in paperback, and was published in England and (in translation) in Spain and France. The novel has been the subject of several scholarly essays and has be
come a staple of college classes in contemporary fiction (and even the occasional philosophy class). Fifty-four rejections.

  At first glance, Wittgenstein's Mistress seems to have little in common with Markson's previous work—or anyone else's, for that matter. (The nearest precedent for it might be Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 story "The Yellow Wallpaper," also narrated in short paragraphs by a woman seesawing between sanity and madness, with a fertile if disordered imagination.) It has the least amount of dramatic activity of all of his novels, being (at the simplest level) the rambling meditations of a woman named Kate who seems to be the last person on earth. And yet it has the greatest amount of intellectual activity, being (at this level) one of the most profound investigations of episte-mology in literature and the best fictional illustration I know of Wittgenstein's proposition that "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."

  Like all of Markson's protagonists, Kate views the world through the lenses of culture: "one does not spend any time viewing castles in La Mancha without being reminded of Don Quixote," she writes. "Any more than one can spend time in Toledo without being reminded of El Greco" (39). And like both Fern in Markson's novel Going Down (1970) and Lucien in Springer's Progress (1977), Kate has a huge fund of anecdotal material on painters, supplemented by a general knowledge of writers, composers, singers, and philosophers—often the kind of material (as Kate is the first to admit) that one picks up from such places as the liner notes on record albums, dust-jacket copy, or digressive footnotes in biographies. Kate can't remember where she learned many of these items—like the fact manuscripts of Sappho's poems were once used to stuff mummies—nor why such trivia has stayed with her all these years while more substantial matters have slipped her mind. Nor does she always remember such trivia correctly, and it is here that Markson's use of intertextuality differs most not only from his earlier work but from that of other allusive writers.

  For earlier writers (and in Markson's earlier works), culture was stable and objective, an orderly accumulation of facts— names, dates, compositions, critical opinions—that could be called up by the writer (and/or his characters) as in a user-friendly data-retrieval system. In Wittgenstein's Mistress, however, culture is unstable and subjective, a fading memory of "baggage" that teases Kate with false connections, "inconsequential perplexities," and meaningless coincidences. It is a disorderly jumble where Euripides seems to have been influenced by Shakespeare, where Anna Akhmatova is a character in Anna Karenina, and where Willem de Kooning wears a soccer jersey in Giotto's Renaissance studio. Kate lives in a world of cultural relativity similar to the physical one described by Einstein and the historical one described by recent historians, who likewise have realized that history is not an objective set of facts but a subjective welter of interpretations.