Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson or anyone else has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well that she is the only person left on earth.Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and so witty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow her hypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in a series of irreve...

Unlike David Markson's most recent works, including Vanishing Point and Wittgenstein's Mistress, which David Foster Wallace described as "pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country," his early novel, Going Down, is a more traditional effort, a masterfully plotted narrative set in Mexico in the 1960s. Three Americans, a man and two women, are living together in obvious intimacy. Their habits, strange to the Mexicans, are strangest of all to...

In recent novels, which have been called "hypnotic," "stunning," and "exhilarating," David Markson has created his own personal genre. In this new work, The Last Novel, an elderly author (referred to only as "Novelist") announces that since this will be his final effort, he has "carte blanche to do anything he damned well pleases."Pressed by solitude and age, Novelist's preoccupations inevitably turn to the stories of other artists—their genius, their lack of recognition, ...

Before achieving critical acclaim as a novelist, David Markson paid the rent by writing several crime novels, including two featuring the private detective Harry Fannin. Together here in one volume, these works are now available to a new generation of readers.In Epitaph for a Tramp, Fannin isn't called out to investigate a murder—it happens on his doorstop. In the sweltering heat of a New York August night, he answers the buzzer at his door to find his promiscuous ex–wife ...

Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson or anyone else has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the listener as well that she is the only person left on earth.Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and so witty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow her hypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in a series of irre...

Winner of the Hugo Award for Best NovelBook 1 in the record-breaking triple Hugo-Award-winning trilogy***One of Time Magazine's top 100 fantasy books of all time******Shortlisted for the World Fantasy, Nebula, Kitschies, Audie and Locus Awards******A New York Times Notable Book and the inaugural Wired.com book club pick ***THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS . . . FOR THE LAST TIME.I...

From Holbein to Hockney, from Norman Rockwell to Pablo Picasso, from sixteenth-century Rome to 1980s SoHo, Robert Hughes looks with love, loathing, warmth, wit and authority at a wide range of art and artists, good, bad, past and present.As art critic for Time magazine, internationally acclaimed for his study of modern art, The Shock of the New, he is perhaps America’s most widely read and admired writer on art. In this book: nearly a hundred of his finest essays o...

R enowned French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre references artists such as Tintoretto, Calder, Lapoujade, Titian, Raphael, and Michaelangelo in discussing how great art of the past relates to the challenges of his eraEssays in Aesthetics is a provocative collection that considers the nature of art and its meaning. Sartre considers the artist's "function," and the relation of art and the artist to the human condition. Sartre integrates his deep concern for the...

Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky is a seminal work that explores the relationship between art, spirituality, and the emotional impact of color and form. Written during a time of profound artistic experimentation and upheaval, this book lays the groundwork for abstract art and articulates Kandinsky's vision of how art can transcend the material world to evoke deeper spiritual experiences.In the first part of the book, Kandinsky discusses the philosophical foundations of ...

The renowned French philosopher lays the foundation for an Existentialist approach to psychology and aesthetics in this pair of classic works.In The Emotions: Outline of a Theory, Jean-Paul Sartre explores the role of emotions in the human psyche, presenting a phenomenological approach to psychology. Analyzing the universal, yet subjective, experiences of fear, lust, anguish, and melancholy, Sartre asserts that human beings develop their emotional capabili...

What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, What Art Is challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as o...

Wassily Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist, now celebrated as one of the pioneers of pure abstraction in modern painting. Delphi’s Masters of Art Series presents the world’s first digital e-Art books, allowing digital readers to explore the works of the world’s greatest artists in comprehensive detail. This volume presents Kandinsky’s collected works in beautiful detail, with concise introductions, hundreds of high quality images and the usual Delphi bonus m...