I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: NEIL HALSTED-“Wittgenstein’s Arm” (2012).

Halsted was a founder of the band Slowdive, who I knew somewhat.  I don’t know anything of his solo work, although his name rang a little familiar.

This is a very pretty, slow acoustic ballad.  Halsted’s voice is whispery and with proper folk inflections. The chorus has a very catchy melody.  And yet the lyrics are really dark and sad.

And while there is a mention of an arm in the song, there’s no mention of Wittgenstein.

You can check out the video here:

[READ: November 3, 2013] Wittgenstein’s Mistress p. 181-end

This peculiar book draws to a close in much the same way that it started. There are a few interesting revelations or, if not revelations, then perhaps ponderables as to the nature of just what our narrator (who is apparently named Helen) is doing.

As this last section opens, she is revisiting some more of the things that have been on her mind for the book—the waterlogged atlas that lies flat on the shelf and that blasted arthritic should/ankle  .

I have been wondering about her constant references to her period.  In addition to simply being something that happens to her which she is recording, I have to wonder if it is a nod to her fertility and the fact that since she is the last person alive she will never bear children.  On a slightly related note, I also have to wonder if her focus on rape means she was once raped.  It’s not necessarily the case of course, but there is a lot of it in the book, like this next mention:

“For that matter Clytemnestra would have almost certainly learned that Cassandra had been raped, as well…” (198).

Wittgenstein himself does get a few more mentions: “on the afternoon when Wittgenstein found himself with diarrhea and asked is he could use the toilet, and A.E. Housmann said no” (191).  She also says that Wittgenstein used to carry sugar with him to feed horses and

“Wittgenstein was never married by the way.  Well, our never had a mistress either, having been a homosexual” (220).

But despite the repetitions, she has added a new phrase to her repertoire: “On my honor.” And for a few pages she says it quite a lot.  Like the sentence which has the new phrase and alludes back to the baseball book:

“On my honor, there is a separate carton in the basement which contains absolutely nothing except grass that is not real” (190).

She then notes,

“I myself would appear to be saying on my honor extraordinarily frequently as of late” (187).

And we learn a little more about her as an artist: she has had shows as a painter “in group shows with” (212) Georgia O’Keeffe, Louise Nevelson and Helen Frankenthaler.

She also looks more critically at some of the history that she has been mulling over.  And she wonders how much of it one should trust

“Quite possibly Euripides knew perfectly well about the real reason for the war, but decided that in a play Helen would be a more interesting reason” (195).

She also calls into question Homer:

“Surely if a wife [Penelope] had been dutifully avoiding any number of suitors for twenty full years while waiting for her husband to come home she ought to have recognized the husband when he got there” ( 200).

and

“If a woman had written that part one sincerely doubts that the wife would have been avoiding the suitors for all of the twenty years to begin with” (201).

There’s a lot more about the ancient Greeks, like the fact that since all of these people were related, they would likely have been allowed to see each other anyhow “Menelaus having been Agamemnon’s brother, of course” (202). And this amusing conversation:

“Now see here, Helen.  Winter solstice or not, certainly it is pushing things a bit far to expect me to allow that woman to set foot into this place.
Oh, but Menelaus, darling.
Don’t oh darling me.  Not about this, you won’t.” (202).

There’s also a lot of talk about Argus, Odysseus’ dog in The Odyssey.  Which ties to her cat and her writing letters to famous people.

“Martin Heidegger was not even the most famous person I wrote to” (207).

She lists the people she wrote to and says that all of the letters were identical Xerox copies “all stating that I had just gotten a cat” (208).

Well, naturally the letters stated more than that, “One would hardly sit down and Xerox a letter to Picasso or to the Queen of England, simply to state that one had just gotten a cat” (209).

She has also been making more mistakes—mistakes about things about which she was previously correct, like “Then again Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote a novel called The Recognitions, about a man who wears an alarm clock around his neck, which seem less like a lie than just a foolish subject for a book altogether” (196).

Or

“Van Gogh actually painted his famous canvas called The Broken Bottles” (219).

But back to her personal life.  We get this intriguing nugget which seems to offer insight into her past:

“Such as how drunk Adam had gotten on that weekend for instance, and so did not even think to call for a doctor until far too late.” (225).

Continuing:

“And even if it was nobody’s fault that Lucien died after all” (225).   [Although earlier she said her husband was Lucien and her son was Simon].

And then

“although probably I did leave in this part before, about having taken lovers when I was still Adam’s wife” (225).

All of this incredible insight is followed by this utterly undermining follow up:

“and none of what I have just written having been what really happened in either event” (226).

She starts to feel nostalgic though.  And she calls back to an idea she mentioned about Wuthering Heights, saying:

“And life did go on.  Even if one sometimes appeared to spend much of it looking in and out of windows” (226).

In this nostalgic mood, we hear a nice word from her mother:

“You will never know how much it has meant to me that you are an artist, Helen, my mother having said” (228).

And then there’s a few surprising moments about writing like saying that “the image of what one was writing would have been more real than the writing itself” (185).

“So that as I say, there went my novel practically even before I had a chance to start thinking about a novel” (230).

or

“Even if something else that has obviously become evident here is that I would not be able to keep out of my heropine’s head after all….  Doubtless making it just as well that writing novels is not my trade in either case” (232).

She also acknowledges her own writing:

“And Herodotus was almost always spoken about as having been the first person ever to write down any real history, incidentally.
Even if I am not especially overjoyed at being the last” (189).

And then the story ends with an echo of the beginning lines:

“To the castle, a sign must have said.
Somebody is living on this beach” (240).

So, what is one to think of this book?  It is certainly unusual and remarkable.  I enjoyed that it was challenging but not difficult, making it almost fun.  But not exactly.  It raises a lot more questions than it even attempts to answer, and the fact that we never really learn exactly what is going on–is she the last person on earth?  is it all in her head?  is she just writing a novel?  was she raped? seems somewhat beside the point.

I would never recommend this book to anyone unless they asked about it first.  Anyone with a vague interest in this book I think would enjoy it, but anyone interested in conventional storytelling would throw this against the wall.  But I’m glad I read it.  I only wish I had read Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.  And now I’ll have to re-read the David Foster Wallace critique again.