(1929-2010) US author of the stringently Modernist Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988), whose protagonist may be the last human (> LAST MAN) left on Earth; the novel is couched as an array of assertive, gnomic paragraphs in the style of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), and similarly dramatizes the gap (or perhaps aporia) between the world and the propositions that we fling in what we believe to be the direction of the world (> METAPHYSICS; PERCEPTION). Writers influenced by Markson include David Foster WALLACE. [JC]
born Albany, New York: 20 December 1927