Wittgenstein's Mistress

Wittgenstein's Mistress

First Edition Cover
Author	David Markson
Language	English
Genre	Experimental novel
Publisher	Dalkey Archive Press
Publication date	May, 1988
Publication place	American
Media type	Print.
Pages	248 pp.
ISBN	ISBN 1-56478-211-5 (August, 2005 Reprint Edition)
OCLC	17926827

Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel by David Markson. It is a highly stylized, experimental novel in the tradition of Samuel Beckett. The novel is mainly a series of statements made in the first person; the protagonist is a woman who believes herself to be the last human on earth. Though her statements shift quickly from topic to topic, the topics are often recurrent, and often reference Western cultural icons, ranging from Zeno to Beethoven to Willem de Kooning. Readers familiar with Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus will recognize striking stylistic similarities to that work.

Though Markson's original manuscript was rejected fifty-five times, the book, when finally published in 1988 by Dalkey Archive Press, met with critical acclaim. In particular, the New York Times Book Review praised it for "address[ing] formidable philosophic questions with tremendous wit." A decade later, David Foster Wallace described it as "pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country" in an article for Salon entitled "Five direly underappreciated U.S. novels >1960."

Release details

• 1988, USA, Dalkey Archive Press, May 1988, Hardback
• 1989, UK, Jonathan Cape, ISBN 0-224-02685-2, August 1989, Hardback
• 1990, USA, Dalkey Archive Press, February 1990, Paperback (reprinted twice)
• 1995, USA, Dalkey Archive Press, ISBN 0-916583-50-3, May 1995, Second paperback edition (with afterword by Steven Moore)
• 1999, USA, Dalkey Archive Press, ISBN 1-56478-211-5, March 1999, Third paperback edition (with afterword)