Books like Wittgenstein's Mistress — picked by fans

Alphonse Daudet’s notebooks on pain are among the most explicit, honest, and consoling treatments of chronic illness ever written. Daudet was a contemporary of Flaubert, admired as a novelist of provincial France by such luminaries as Charles Dickens and Henry James. Like Flaubert, Daudet suffered from syphilis and he planned to write a book about his experience. He died before he could do that, but his notebooks survive. As someone who lives with chronic pain, I cherish Daudet’s frank but never saccharine advice and his commitment to compassion for others in the teeth of his own suffering.

I don’t know if misery loves company but I’m convinced that failure does. When their projects fall flat, my kid likes nothing better than to hear about the wreckage of mine: romantic fiascos, flunked tests, athletic defeats. Joe Moran’s “book of solace,” If You Should Fail, is in part a compendium of stories like these, in part an effort to dislodge our tendency to think of human beings as winners or losers at all. “To call any life a failure, or a success, is to miss the infinite granularity, the inexhaustible miscellany of all lives,” Moran writes. “A life can’t really succeed or fail at all; it can only be lived.” 

One of the most profound attempts to capture grief in prose is due to the British experimental novelist B. S. Johnson. Published in 1969, The Unfortunates is a book in a box: twenty-seven booklets to be read in any order, except for “First” and “Last.” Its narrator is a journalist returning to a city he last knew seven years ago, visiting an old friend, Tony, who later died of metastatic cancer. The visit triggers memories that arrive in random order, scattered through the day’s events as chance dictates. Grief has no narrative order, the book in a box seems to warn; and any closure is temporary. Grief can be opened and reshuffled again and again. 

Although it is more academic than the others I’ve recommended, this book is both practical and urgent: it asks how we’re responsible for facing up to the structures of injustice in which we are implicated—the legacies of colonialism and slavery, the ongoing catastrophe of climate change. Young’s answer is that responsibility here is not about guilt or shame but the obligation to work for change, an obligation we can only meet through collective action, working with others to transform the systems around us. Young’s argument is rich, provocative, and inspiring.

This was provocative in a different way, in that it made me realize how accurately an author can capture the voice of the opposite sex.

Dolly’s portrayal of Andy was, in many ways, both convincing and emotionally resonant, and she achieves this while sustaining a thoroughly entertaining narrative. It was a bittersweet experience because, as enjoyable as the read was, it set an excessively high benchmark for my own attempt.

Thankfully, by the time I got around to reading her book, it was too late to do anything about it, other than make a mental note of how much work would be required if I ever decided to make another run at it.

One of the most interesting and influential writers of all time, he was banished from society for being too provocative before inspiring and appearing in the works of Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe.

Heroides is one of my favorite works from his long list of great titles, in no small part due to the sheer creativity of the undertaking. It not only retells Greek myths from the perspective of a woman but also restructures the narratives around love rather than war and destruction.

Not bad for 20BCE and probably about as comforting a reference as one could ask for when writing from the perspective of the opposite gender.

There’s so much to like about this book, whether it’s the quality of writing, entertaining narrative, or intriguing character study.

But for me, the most memorable aspect was that it brought an entirely new appreciation for the beauty of cross-gender narratives. Specifically, the uniqueness such endeavors offer through the introspection they invite.

Whether it’s on a conscious or subconscious basis, you’re encouraged to evaluate the voice on a deeper level than you otherwise would—its accuracy, its sincerity, and so on. And in doing so, you inevitably draw on your own experiences and perhaps become aware of your own biases or limitations.

It adds a whole new dimension to the work, and one that can arguably feel more personal than what you might find in other types of narratives.

I came across this at the Tate Modern, where they were featuring a room of works highlighting gender fluidity, named after Rachilde’s work, along with an accompanying narrative.

I’m all about serendipity, and the fact that I was in London promoting Vesper and stumbled across this the day before I left; well, I found it timely and intriguing. What followed was one of the most provocative reads I’ve come across of late, particularly when you contextualize the impact it likely had when it was written in 19th-century Paris.

What’s noteworthy about the piece is the author’s bold inversion of gender stereotypes, dramatized through the power dynamic between an aristocratic woman and her impoverished but highly attractive lover. The subversion is so pronounced that it pushes you to form an opinion on how such perceptions are treated in contemporary times; another example of the unique qualities these kinds of works can… show more.

When I read Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus logico-philosophicus’ some 50 years ago, I was immediately fascinated. Throughout my academic career, this most mysterious—and at the same time clearest—philosophic mind of his generation has inspired me in many ways.

He had tried to nail down the clarity of mathematical argumentation in his early work, only to escape to the jungle of arguments following his concept of ‘sprachspiele’ in his second philosophical stage. And parallel to this mental journal, he physically escaped to a lonely hut in Norway to live in solitude.

Constantine Sandis, the author of this brand-new book, is the leading expert on Wittgenstein studies. He takes the reader on a journey that leads right up to the current debates on artificial intelligence. Wittgenstein returns!   

In most introvert-theme fiction, not much “happens.” Instead, the author focuses on the texture of characters’ thoughts, experiences, and memories. I found this novel, by an Austrian writer not well known in the English-speaking world, fascinating for two reasons. First, it explores the life, work, and thinking process of an obsessive genius – someone introverted to the nth degree. And second, it does so in a book of just two paragraphs, going on and on in musical prose where the repetitive rhythms of the sentences have just as much impact as what they’re narrating. The architectural genius in Correction is partly based on Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, which added interest for me since I find Wittgenstein a uniquely inspiring figure.