Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson (1988)
W’s M is a dramatic rendering of what it would be like to live in the sort of universe described by logical atomism. A monologue, formally very odd, mostly one-sentence ¶s. Tied with Omensetter’s Luck for the all-time best U.S. book about human loneliness. These wouldn’t constitute ringing endorsements if they didn’t happen all to be simultaneously true—i.e., that a novel this abstract and erudite and avant-garde could also be so moving makes Wittgenstein’s Mistress pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country.
—1999