Wittgenstein's Mistress (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

Rating:
Summary: The Dementia of Solitude
Review: When I found myself describing to my friends the beguiling concept behind this book, I had to grin in spite of myself. The last person on earth sits down and starts to write, in a very particular style, whatever is on her mind. The inevitable questions flooded me: "how did everybody die?" "What about animals?" "What does she do for food?" And while these questions are certainly at the back of one's mind as one pores over her mental effluvia, it is much more entrancing to follow her trains of thought about philosophical questions, historical puzzles (not puzzles so much as head-cocking queries), and anecdotal information about great western artists, from Homer to Rembrandt to Martin Heidegger. Certainly the idea of being the last person on earth for years and years is appealing and frightening in and of itself; but what makes this such a fascinating book is that the narrator "was" an artist, and, without any real audience left, challenges the whole idea of the inherent value of knowledge, or for that matter beauty. Anybody who had fun with epistomology in philosophy class will like this one; also a treat for art majors, as a healthy literacy with art history is helpful in following those trains. A great read, slow in the middle, but utterly digestible on the whole.