I picked this up because I'd read Berhard's "The Loser" already and the same friend who had leant it to me suggested I check out another Berhard joint. Part of the reason he interests me is because he is so consistently praised and oohed and ahhed over by (at least what I see of) the current literary establishment. So many people suggest that he is (or, more specifically, was) one of the very best of contemporary world writers that I suppose it would be poor form to neglect his work. Plus, it seems he never really wrote a long novel so if he's got more than a few novellas to his name...let's dive right in. I haven't commented on "The Loser" yet because, frankly, I don't know what (in the sense of how) to think about it and/or what (in the sense of why)I think about it. I enjoy all manner of stories about artists, musicians, etc and I really REALLY relate to 'the Salieri complex'- a term I coined as of a minute ago- which has to do with one's proximity to genuis and one's insistent, neurotic, self-loathing awareness of one's inability to approximate this Olympian standard. I think Berhard's runon paragraphs are great, the monologue approach he takes to his deeply bent and strangely ethereal characters is right up my alley, in terms of my taste as a reader. You can go through a novel of his in a series of sittings (I have, and those weren't the longest sittings I've ever had, not by a long shot) and it's interesting how this style and structure plays out in real time. Bernhard's characters monopolize your attention with obsessive and seemingly frantic narration, causing you to to sort of question their motives or their awareness of reality. One gets the feeling one's been buttonholed by a kind of madman, not Hannibal Lecter-brilliant but not the swaying bum with stained pants, either. Just a somewhat aristocratic Austrian with an axe to grind, as it were. I say aristocratic not because Berhard's narrators seem excessively flighty or pompous or particularly elite in any way, it's more about the elaborate disdain they feel for the crudities and stupidities and general shoddiness of the world around them. You constantly hear about obnoxious wallpaper, plagues of bad taste, imbecility and stupidity and narrow-mindedness, bourgeoise pretention, ugly and dull landscapes and disagreeable people doing rather shabby and slighty desperate things. Ok, fair enough. The world is what it is, the modern era isn't exactly teeming with witty and cosmopolitan types; mechanization and microwaves and masscult and political mendacity don't make for a perpetual Symposium on earth, etc etc etc...I get it. I do. I work in a shabby place, surrounded by freaks and burnouts, I live on nothing, I am bitter and recriminating. But so what? At a few points while reading both the novels, I couldn't help but wonder if maybe these unsettling and unsettled characters might want to watch a Marx brothers film (Woody Allen fans, please feel free to nod and chuckle in recognition) or eat some ice cream or jerk off or do whatever the fuck you want to do, but for god's sake give it a rest, already! Life is more, and will always be more, than your own solipsistic, narcissistic miseries. I should know. I've got 'em by the score myself and I can't say I'm alien to a lot of the bellyaching that's going on here but geez, c'mon, in the words of Peter Griffin "somebody throw a freaking pie"! I know, I know. Don't get caught up in the trash talking, forest for the trees, assume the best in people, all that Stuart Smiley shit is fine. But still, I don't see why exquisitely rendered parabolas of glum luck and ill fate are all anyone needs to get their literary fix. I thought of DFW's painfully earnest review of Bret Easton Ellis' work when he said, basically, that of course things are cruel and stupid and ill-designed and deeply unsatisfying...what fiction ought to consider doing is trying to apply CPR to the places where mankind is still alive and the still, small places where there resides what one might be so bold to call 'the human spirit' are still more relevant and necessary than ever. What this approach doesn't call for is preciousness, or cheesy feel-good moral drama. I think it might be more important to specify exactly what pitches and tempos, what angles and edges, what finer points might be put on it when one tries to express oneself, one's society, one's being-in-the-world. We've all heard the same story over and over again- the major difference lies in how we tell it. The reason why I responded to this novel more than "The Loser" (the title of this one, incidentally, isn't as grim and disapproving as you might think) is because in "Wittgenstein's Nephew" you're dealing with one of the things Faulkner liked to call 'the eternal verities and the truths of the heart'. What do I mean? Well, before the novel even begins we are given a glimpse of the rather dire and moving situation at hand: "Two hundred friends will come to my funeral and you must make a speech at the graveside" The friends do not show up. The narrator ("Thomas Bernhard", an author and playwright) doesn't make a speech. C'est la vie. But there are moments like this: "...One night say that he made an early getaway, as his uncle Ludwig had done years before, abandoning everything that had, after all, made them both possible, and transforming himself, like his uncle Ludwig before him, into what the family regarded as a shameless character . Ludwig transformed himself into a shameless philosopher, Paul into a shameless madman. Moreover, it is far from certain that a philosopher can qualify as such only by writing down and publishing his philosophy, as Ludwig did: he remains a philosopher even if he does not publish his philosophizings, even if he writes nothing and publishes nothing. Publishing merely clarifies and causes a stir through what it clarifies, which cannot be clarified or cause a stir unless it is published. Ludwig published his philosophy, Paul did not: Ludwig was the born publisher (of his philosophy), Paul the born nonpublisher (of his philosophy). Yet in their own ways both were great, original, revolutionary thinkers, whose thinking was always exciting and of whom their age can be proud- and not only their own age. It is naturally a pity that Paul left us no written, printed, or published evidence of his philosophy, such as we have from his uncle Ludwig, both in our hands and in our heads. But it is nonesense to compare Ludwig and Paul. I have never talked to Paul about Ludwig, let alone about his philosophy. Only occasionally, and somewhat to my surprise, Paul would say of course you know my uncle Ludwig. That was all. We never once talked about the "Tractatus". On one occasion, however, Paul said that his uncle Ludwig was the maddest member of the family. After all, to be a millionaire and a village schoolteacher is a bit perverse, don't you think?..." I guess you could say, in reading Bernhard, that the thing I'm really looking for is in the words he doesn't quite get around to speaking. They're there, no question, but how full is the emptiness between the lines?
مقتطف/ صداقة............قلت لنفسى وأنا أجلس فوق دكة فى منتزه المدينة، إن هذه ربما تكون آخر مرة أرى فيها صديقى. لم أكن اعتقد أن جسدا بهذا الوهن، خبت فيه جذوة الحياة وانطفأت شعلة الإرادة، سيتحمل أكثر من بضعة أيام. زُلزل كيانى لرؤيته هكذا يعانى الوحدة فجأة، هذا الإنسان الذى هو بسليقته إنسان اجتماعى، كما يقولون، منذ مولده وحتى بلوغه، وظل اجتماعيا إلى أن أمسى كهلا ثم شيخا. ثم خطر على بالى كيف تعرّفت إلى هذا الإنسان الذى أضحى بالفعل صديقى، الذى طالما أسعدَ وجودى غاية السعادة، هذا الوجود الذى لم يكن بائسا قبل التعرف إليه، إلا أنه كان شاقا مُجهدا. كان هو الذى فتح عينى على أشياء كثيرة كنت أجهلها تماما، وأرشدنى إلى دروب لم يكن لى علم بها، وفتح لى أبواباً كانت موصدة بإحكام فى وجهى، وأعاد لى نفسى فى تلك اللحظة الحاسمة عندما كدت أهلك فى ريف ناتال. حقا لقد كنت أصارع فى تلك المرحلة قبل التعرف إلى صديقى كى أقهر مزاجا سوداويا مَرَضيا، أو لنقل اكتئابا، سيطر علىّ منذ سنوات حتى أننى عددت نفسى فى عداد الضائعين. سنوات طويلة لم أعمل خلالها عملا ذا قيمة. فى معظم الأحيان كنت أبدأ يومى وأنهيه بلا مبالاة تامة. كم من مرة أوشكت آنذاك على وضع نهاية لحياتى بيدى. سنوات طويلة لم أكن أفعل شيئا سوى الهروب فى هواجس الانتحار الفظيعة والقاتلة للروح، هواجس جعلت كل شىء فى حياتى غير مُحتَمَل، وجعلتنى أنا نفسى لا أُحتَمل أكثر من أى شىء آخر، كنت أهرب من مواجهة العبث اليومى المحيط بى، والذى كنت أندفع إليه، ربما لضعفى العام، ولضعف شخصيتى على وجه خاص. طوال سنوات لم أعد أرغب فى تخيل إمكانية مواصلة الحياة، ولا حتى مجرد الوجود. لم يعد لى هدف، وهو ما أفقدنى السيطرة على ذاتى. كنت- بمجرد استيقاظى فى الصباح الباكر- أجد نفسى رغما عنى فريسة لأفكار الانتحار التى لا أستطيع التغلب عليها طيلة النهار. هجرنى الجميع آنذاك، لأننى هجرت الجميع، هذه هى الحقيقة، ولأننى لم أعد أرغب فى رؤية أحد، ولم أعد أرغب فى شىء. لكننى جبُنت عن إنهاء حياتى بيدى. ربما عندما وصلت إلى قمة يأسى، لا أخجل من لفظ الكلمة، إذ لم أعد أرغب فى خداع ذاتى وتجميل شىء، ليس هناك ما يمكن تجميله فى مجتمع وعالم يُجمِّل باستمرار كل شىء بطريقة مقيتة، فى ذلك الوقت ظهر باول، وتعرفت إليه فى شارع بلومنشتوك عند صديقتنا المشتركة إرينا.
What do You think about Wittgenstein's Nephew (1990)?
http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/7864075...This is one of those Bernhard books that most devotees say they loved but speak little about why or how it happened. Those who do are predictable in their comments regarding Bernhard's plot, his friendships, judgments, and in general, death. Nothing wrong with either approach, but it just doesn't get the uninitiated where she needs to be. This particular Bernhard tale is quite unlike anything else he has written. Almost easier to stomach the vitriol and rants present in almost any other Bernhard offering. This one cuts you deep emotionally, and it is remarkable how lasting it feels. There isn't really much to laugh at. The typical Bernhard is so absurd in its level of vitriol that it often becomes funny in the face of its extremity. There are just not that many good examples of Bernhard's vitriolic absurdity in Wittgenstein's Nephew. The following quote will have to do.…For let us not deceive ourselves: Most of the minds we associate with are housed in heads that have little more to offer than overgrown potatoes, stuck on top of whining and tastelessly clad bodies and eking out a pathetic existence that does not even merit our pity.Indulge me just a bit and follow along with this next thread I might expose. Believe me that it most certainly has everything to do with this fine book. Please know that for some time now I have admired the way in which the quite adorable ex-Beatle Ringo Starr seemed to pretty much just sit up there and nonchalantly perform his job perched on that silly platform. He was unlike any other drummer I have known or ever seen perform. Seriously, I was once friends with a boy my own age named Giles Hofacer who was a pretty good stickman himself and he played professionally in a rock band after high school. Though nothing like The Beatles, and probably more like Todd Rundgren, they weren't half bad. I have always liked Giles Hofacer ever since the time back in elementary school when he invited me to his house about five miles outside of town on North US23 for his most-exciting and hospitable birthday party. Years later as teenagers we smiled a lot as we smoked marijuana together in a grove of trees fifty yards from the doors of our high school. For years other students used this same semi-private area as a place to smoke cigarettes instead of attending class so it was relatively easy to get away unawares with smoking our illegal substances. Giles and I remained on friendly terms until I moved far away from our mutual home town to begin a new life with a woman from The South who was not from up there where I had been had in northern Michigan. I read a couple years ago that Giles had contracted some form of hard-to-beat cancer, that there had been some effort to raise funds enough to help support his fight against this deadly disease. And then one day I noticed while reading the local paper from that same town that Giles Hofacer had actually died. I felt then the wish that I had gone to see him. It had probably been at least thirty years since we last had a beer or a joint together. He wasn't the first acquaintance that I have lost and had remorse over either. Truth is I have never been a very good friend to anybody. Reading this book again made me realize in a more poignant manner that the narrator Thomas Bernhard wasn't a very good friend to others either. … He was only the shadow of a man, in a very real sense, and his shadow suddenly frightened him. I did not dare to go up and speak to him. I preferred to have a bad conscience rather than to meet him. As I watched him, I suppressed my conscience and refrained from approaching him, because I was suddenly afraid. We shun those who bear the mark of death, and this is a form of baseness to which even I succumbed.The narrator of this book was ashamed of himself and it was clear there was no malice in his sin of omission. He was just afraid. He was driven by his fear. But it did take courage to admit this on the page and to also face the facts. Still, it never changed a thing for me except make me even more aware of my own shortcomings. And it is not as if I will ever do anything about these particular character defects of mine. But it was good to know I was not alone in my despicable and unbecoming behavior.
—M. Sarki
A quickie review, so put on your non-porous splash suit and buckle yourself in. Eschewing his emblematic deranged, run-on style, Bernhard serves up Wittgenstein's Nephew as both a eulogy of his friend Paul Wittgenstein, the famed philosopher's mentally unbalanced nephew, and a bleak rumination on death -- or more pointedly, the slow, surreptitious death that constitutes life. If you know someone who is despairing about about his or her physical deterioration and impending death, do not be so thoughtful as to give this book to said person as a gift. As the saying goes, 'Misery loves company' but death, as Wittgenstein's Nephew makes clear, is a solitary endeavor. It can not be shared. Even simultaneous, proximal deaths are not shared -- just juxtaposed. The narrative of this pithy novel is less a conventional plot point A to plot point B affair than a rueful meandering. The impetus is the narrator's (i.e., Thomas Bernhard's) stay in a lung disease ward in Vienna -- where prevailing medical opinion agrees that Bernhard will die, imminently. Adjacent to the lung disease ward in a spatial relation that is not quite clear to me is the mental ward, where Paul Wittgenstein is temporarily residing. Bernhard describes the medical complex (quite specifically) as only a mental ward and a lung disease ward. Nothing more. Which seems an odd commingling, but nevertheless... it affords him the opportunity (or the hypothetical opportunity) to visit his friend. The meeting doesn't go well, however. Something is lost, something is missing. Everything has changed. Mortality and illness ruin everything. Lock up the handgun and booze because this won't go down easy.
—David
Brutal, brilliant���no words can do this justice.
—Proustitute
