David Markson – författare

Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson or anyone else has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well that she is the only person left on earth.Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and so witty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow her hypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in a series of irreverent meditations on everything and everybody from Brahms to sex to Heidegger to Helen of Troy. And as she contemplates aspects of the troubled past which have brought her to her present state—obviously a metaphor for ultimate loneliness—so too will her drama become one of the few certifiably original fictions of our time.“The novel I liked best this year,” said the Washington Times upon the book’s publication; “one dizzying, delightful, funny passage after another . . . Wittgenstein’s Mistress gives proof positive that the experimental novel can produce high, pure works of imagination.”

In recent novels, which have been called “hypnotic,” “stunning,” and “exhilarating,” David Markson has created his own personal genre. In this new work, The Last Novel, an elderly author (referred to only as “Novelist”) announces that since this will be his final effort, he has “carte blanche to do anything he damned well pleases.” Pressed by solitude and age, Novelist''s preoccupations inevitably turn to the stories of other artists — their genius, their lack of recognition, and their deaths. Keeping his personal history out of the story as much as possible, Novelist creates an incantatory stream of fascinating triumphs and failures from the lives of famous and not-so-famous painters, writers, musicians, sports figures, and scientists.As Novelist moves through his last years, a minimalist self-portrait emerges, becoming an intricate masterpiece from David Markson''s astonishing imagination. Through these startling, sometimes comic, but often tragic anecdotes we unexpectedly discern the entire shape of a man''s life.

Wittgenstein''s Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson or anyone else has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well that she is the only person left on earth.

Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and so witty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow her hypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in a series of irreverent meditations on everything and everybody from Brahms to sex to Heidegger to Helen of Troy. And as she contemplates aspects of the troubled past which have brought her to her present state—obviously a metaphor for ultimate loneliness—so too will her drama become one of the few certifiably original fictions of our time.

“The novel I liked best this year,” said the Washington Times upon the book’s publication; “one dizzying, delightful, funny passage after another . . . Wittgenstein’s Mistress gives proof positive that the experimental novel can produce high, pure works of imagination.”

Die Künstlerin Kate hält sich für den letzten Menschen auf Erden. Doch gab es sie wirklich – jene Apokalypse, die nur sie allein verschont hat? Oder ist Kate wahnsinnig? In einem Strandhaus an einer unbekannten Küste dokumentiert eine Frau ihre Suche nach den Überlebenden einer namenlosen Katastrophe, durchforstet ihre Erinnerung an Kunstwerke, Bücher und Artefakte einer untergegangenen Zivilisation. Und während Kate rastlos über den Globus reist, in den größten Museen der Welt übernachtet und an den verlassenen Monumenten unserer Kultur umherstreicht, entspinnt sich wie nebenbei eine irrwitzige Geschichte der westlichen Welt: von Homer, der womöglich eine Frau war, über Aristoteles'' Lispeln bis zu Rembrandts rostbrauner Katze, von Guy de Maupassants Abneigung gegenüber dem Eiffelturm zu Brahms'' Abneigung gegenüber Kindern. Doch dann und wann, tief verborgen zwischen den Zeilen, scheint eine Trauer auf, die vermuten lässt, dass Kates Geschichte womöglich eine ganz andere ist …

Un hombre se propone familiarizarse con el espacio que habita. Mientras observa el movimiento a su alrededor, lee, acumula citas y toma apuntes. Escritores, filósofos, artistas, la historia del arte y la cultura. Crea, con pocos elementos, una especie de teatro de cámara con dos personajes, el Protagonista y el Lector, y una playa o un cementerio como escenarios posibles.Ese es el relato aparente de esta novela, su engañosa superficie. A poco de avanzar, las citas y los apuntes nos van asomando a un universo en el que debemos desplazarnos como en el tablero de un juego misterioso, tal vez genial, cuyas piezas son la vida, la muerte, el amor, el suicidio, la enfermedad, el arte como juego, el arte como extrema experiencia vital.David Markson, quien debutó en la década del sesenta como uno de los más avezados narradores de género —policial, western—, encontró en los últimos años de su vida la clave única de un proyecto narrativo sorprendente por la sencillez de sus recursos y admirable por su alcance y profundidad.

Como la pipa del cuadro de Magritte que analizó Foucault, Esto no es una novela se proyecta en muchas direcciones y pone a la imaginación en situación de sospecha. ¿De qué se trata? Las pistas son múltiples: la muerte, el amor, la representación, el trabajo, la amistad, la vida "ejemplar" de artistas y científicos, lo singular y lo tautológico, lo indiferente y lo obvio, la lealtad fanática del humor, la hondura angustiosa de la enfermedad y la muerte, "el sufrimiento de ser y el aburrimiento de existir", el arco delicioso de la risa imprevista y la inconstante dicha. El libro a nadie expulsa, y proporciona una sabiduría y un deleite ilimitados.Esto no es una novela es y no es una novela. Y así la colección de datos, citas, hechos, anécdotas, escenas veladas, discretas tragedias, encuentra el cauce, el paso, el ritmo justo de lectura que le impone ese otro personaje admirable al que la novela parece, por fin, asignarle un papel central: el lector.

In this spellbinding, utterly unconventional fiction, an aging author who is identified only as Reader contemplates the writing of a novel. As he does, other matters insistently crowd his mind - literary and cultural anecdotes, endless quotations attributed and not, scholarly curiosities - the residue of a lifetime's reading which is apparently all he has to show for his decades on earth. Out of these unlikely yet incontestably fascinating materials - including innumerable details about the madness and calamity in many artists' and writers' lives, the eternal critical affronts, the startling bigotry, the countless suicides - David Markson has created a novel of extraordinary intellectual suggestiveness. But while shoring up Reader's ruins with such fragments, Markson has also managed to electrify his novel with an almost unbearable emotional impact. Where Reader ultimately leads us is shattering.

"Alive with the pleasures of language . . . terribly funny, formidably intelligent."--Washington Post