So a little while ago I was lamenting my inability to delve beyond a basic story line lately, and determined that the best thing to do would be to read some books that would force the matter, citing House of Leaves as an example of a book that cannot be simply read. Well, I did some Googling and came up with the Library Thing Book Suggester. It takes a book you liked, and then tells you other books you might like based on, well, frankly I don't know what. Either way, out of this came Wittgenstein's Mistress.
The first thing I'm going to say about this book is that I should have read it twice, and that at some point in the future I will, and I'll get a lot more out of it the second time. It's not dense or convoluted like House of Leaves was (I've read that three times, and I would say I only fully understood it the last time). Rather, it's difficult to get into because of the way it's written. The book is purportedly the writings of a woman who believes herself to be the last living creature on Earth. It doesn't follow a plot, but rather reads like a stream of consciousness, where she just types anything that comes into her head. This makes it difficult for me to get into because, as I mentioned, lately I'm all about the plot line - tell me what happens and then let's all move one with our day. This simply wasn't possible with this book, because the protagonist would veer from her story of wandering the world looking for other people to postulating what Rembrandt's cat might have been named and how others would react to the possible names he might choose. The plot itself as far as a "here's what happened" story could probably have been covered in ten pages. Maybe less.
The plot itself, however, was clearly not the point of the book. The woman's ramblings center around a few groups - famous characters from Greek literature, writers, and painters. The common thread was that everyone she talked about was famous. She spent far more time discussing Wittgenstein (who she didn't talk about all that much) that she did discussing her husband, her lovers, or her deceased son. This, rather, would seem to be the point of the narrative. The woman ceaselessly discusses those that one would consider famous in a world where fame is now a meaningless concept. What is it to be famous when your the only person left?
The other pervasive question throughout is if the protagonist is, as I like to say, bat#$*& insane. She herself claims that at various times in her journeys looking for others, she would go mad for a time. In her writings, though, she makes a lot of weird mistakes, even going so far as to forget her son's name, then give his name much later, and then near the end swap the given name for the name of a lover she had discussed earlier. Oddly, her mistakes don't actually make what little plot line there is harder to follow, but it does bring about the question of whether she is truly intended by the author to be the last living creature on Earth, or simply bonkers.
Now, I learned a hard lesson here - read the afterword first. Had I done so, I would have approached the book with some knowledge of the themes contained therein ahead of time, and I would have been able to appreciate the humor and philosophy presented a bit more. Instead, I spent most of the book interested but not entirely engaged. It was the prose version of watching a news ticker - she was constantly changing the subject and then only gave enough information to tease a topic. Each paragraph in the book was only a sentence or two long, and seriously, that's how often the topic changed. I'm a firm believer in using Cliff notes for what they claim they are created for, to help the reader identify themes, references and whatnot when they might otherwise be missed. I could have used some of those here.
So, would I recommend Wittgenstein's Mistress? I think it depends on the reader. The style of the text definitely won't appeal to everyone (I would go so far as to suggest it might annoy some people), and like I said, it takes a while to get into it. At the same time, it was interesting, often funny, and had I approached it differently, I think I would have gotten a lot more out of it. In the end, I would say that I liked it, and will definitely go back and give it another run through.
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