The New York Times today published an obituary for the writer David Markson, who died last Friday. The headline refers to him as a "Postmodern Experimental Novelist". Postmodern is a term that is hard to define, but if you read any of his recent books you will get a clear picture of what it is. On the other hand, it might be a stretch to refer to these books as novels. They probably deserve a genre all their own.
Wittgenstein's Mistress, which he published in 1988, is one of my all time favorite books. In the narrative of that book everyone has disappeared from the face of the earth, except one women who is living somewhere on the coast, I think in Greece maybe. She relates her shifting memories of the days before everyone disappeared and her subsequent travels around the world living in art museums.
Here is a video of Markson reading the ending of his last book, The Last Novel, a book which I have not read. Appropriately for the ending of his last book, this is about death. References are made in this excerpt to two of Markson's favorites, Wittgenstein and St. John of the Cross. Wittgenstein's Mistress also includes numerous references to these two men.
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