Overview: In this new book, Walker Zupp demonstrates the need to reevaluate the connection between Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy and the extraordinary life that he led, and how the best way to do this, ironically, is by examining novels whose central characters were inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s persona.

Verdict: In Wittgenstein Fiction, Zupp offers comprehensive biographical cross-sections of novels by Thomas Bernhard, Bruce Duffy and Lars Iyer in an attempt to define the genre of Wittgenstein Fiction for the very first time.

He argues that Wittgenstein Fiction satirizes the empirical world and the contemporary university, and that authors who work in this genre have to re-create themselves, to some extent, in the form of their fictional Wittgenstein characters, so that fictional biographies of Wittgenstein become strange autobiographies of the authors themselves.

OK, so taking it from the top, considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein played a central, if controversial, role in mid-20th-century analytic philosophy. He also continues to influence, and incur debate in, current philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture, and even political thought.

Furthermore, a central factor in investigating Wittgenstein’s works is the multifarious nature of the project of interpreting them; this leads to untold difficulties in the ascertainment of his philosophical substance and method.

Originally, there were two commonly recognized stages of Wittgenstein’s thought—the early and the later — both of which were taken to be pivotal in their respective periods. In this orthodox two-stage interpretation, it is commonly acknowledged that the early Wittgenstein is epitomized in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

By showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics, via language, he provided new insights into the relations between world, thought, and language and thereby into the nature of philosophy. It is the later Wittgenstein, mostly recognized in the Philosophical Investigations, who took the more revolutionary step in critiquing all of traditional philosophy including its climax in his own early work.

The nature of his new philosophy is heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive to genuine philosophical understanding of traditional problems.

However, in more recent scholarship, this division has been questioned: some interpreters have claimed a certain unity between all stages of his thought, while others talk of a more nuanced division, adding stages such as the middle Wittgenstein and the post-later Wittgenstein.

And so what author Walter Zupp has done here within his openly captivating, informative and wholly engrossing new book is to himself explore the novel’s capacity to perform its own Philosophical Investigations. Regardless of the fact that it stands outside philosophy, investigating its philosophers themselves is now central to the author’s many provocative insights found within these mesmerizing pages of prose.

Running at only 80 pages in length, I myself did not have a complete grasp on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy or his life therein, but was curious enough last night to open the book to see where Zupp was going to take me. Simply put, he took me on a journey of a couple of hours solid reading as before I knew it the book had been completely read and I was already starting to replay things said within, via the newly-informed scope of my mind’s eye.

About the Author - Walker Zupp is a Bermudian writer with an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. He went on to study for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. He splits his time between Cornwall, UK and Bermuda.

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