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Correction

4.36 of 5 stars 4.36 · rating details · 620 ratings · 59 reviews

Roithamer, a character based on Wittgenstein, has committed suicide having been driven to madness by his own frightening powers of pure thought. We witness the gradual breakdown of a genius ceaselessly compelled to correct and refine his perceptions until the only logical conclusion is the negation of his own soul.

Paperback, 253 pages

Published March 6th 2003 by Vintage (first published 1975)

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Apr 12, 2013 [P] rated it 5 of 5 stars

After a period of unhappiness, of so-called depression, a period during which [P], as a member of the website goodreads, was stalked by numerous female members, hacked by who knows, and plagiarized by one who will remain nameless, a period that included the death of Margaret Thatcher, who [P] despised, [P] died, just like the despised Margaret Thatcher, although the despised Margaret Thatcher didn’t take her own life, unlike [P], who covered his body with his goodreads reviews using a biro and t...more After a period of unhappiness, of so-called depression, a period during which [P], as a member of the website goodreads, was stalked by numerous female members, hacked by who knows, and plagiarized by one who will remain nameless, a period that included the death of Margaret Thatcher, who [P] despised, [P] died, just like the despised Margaret Thatcher, although the despised Margaret Thatcher didn’t take her own life, unlike [P], who covered his body with his goodreads reviews using a biro and then jumped naked from the top of a high rise council estate; before his death [P] was working on a review of Thomas Bernhard’s Correction, the much-loved Thomas Bernhard, much-loved by [P], who had read nearly all of the much-loved Thomas Bernhard’s novels, and so it was no surprise that he was working on a review of one of Thomas Bernhard’s much-loved novels before he took his own life, the much-loved Thomas Bernhard had also taken his own life but long before [P], or the despised Margaret Thatcher, had died; the much-loved Thomas Bernhard had taken his own life in 1989, whereas [P] took his own life in 2013 after a period of unhappiness and so-called depression. [P]’s writings, including the review of Correction by the much-loved Thomas Bernhard, were left to me by [P], probably because [P] knew that I would appreciate them more than anyone else he knew, and he was right that I would appreciate them probably more than anyone else he knew as it was the case that at one time I even thought like [P], that his thoughts were my thoughts or that I was so influenced by [P]’s thoughts that I stopped having my own and could only think like [P], so of course I was going to appreciate [P]’s writings, probably more than anyone else he knew, including the review of Correction by the much-loved Thomas Bernhard; he did not leave his writings to his brother because he knew that his brother would not appreciate them, his brother was and still is Sheffield-to-the-core, he is still and always was and always will be the most Sheffield of Sheffielders, and this being Sheffield-to-the-core would have prevented him from appreciating [P]’s writings including the review of Correction by the much–loved Thomas Bernhard, [P] despised this Sheffield-to-the-core way of being and way of seeing things, this Sheffield-to-the-core way of not appreciating anything that wasn’t an example of the most Sheffield of attitudes, and this is one of the reasons he so loved the work of Thomas Bernhard and why he spoke in his writings about how he would have given Correction five stars, those writings which were bequeathed to me and which include the review of Correction; in Correction, the much-loved Thomas Bernhard writes about a man, Roithamer, whose own brothers did not appreciate his genius, in the same way that [P]’s brother did not appreciate [P]’s genius, Roithamer spent an inheritance amounting to millions on building a cone in the centre of the Kobernausser forest for his sister who he loved more than anyone else, this spending of millions in order to build a cone in the forest for the sister who was loved more than anyone else convinced Roithamer’s brothers that Roithamer was crazy, Roithamer’s brothers were Altensam through-and-through and would always be Altensam through-and-through, as far as Roithamer was concerned, just like [P]’s brother is and always will be Sheffield through-and-through, and so they would never be able to appreciate Roithamer’s desire to build a cone in the Kobernausser forest for the sister he loved more than anyone else, [P] did not have a sister and he did not have millions of pounds that could have been spent on building a cone in the centre of a forest for a sister he did not have but he did spend a lot of money on a pedigree cat which hated [P] probably more than [P] hated people who are Sheffield-to-the-core; Roithamer’s sister, although loved by Roithamer more than anyone else, did not appreciate the cone either, the cone that Roithamer built for his sister in the Kobernausser forest, even though Roithamer spent millions on building it, a task that many thought impossible, but which Roithamer accomplished, a cone that was unique, the like of which had never been built before nor even designed before, a cone that was habitable, which is important if you’re going to build a cone-shaped building for a sister that you love more than anyone else. According to [P]’s notes Thomas Bernhard, who was much-loved by [P], wrote Correction in 1975, which is some time before he took his own life in 1989, and before [P] took his in 2013, and that it can be considered as possibly the fullest expression of his genius, Thomas Bernhard’s genius, in that it displays, unlike some of his earliest novels, a fully mature style and, unlike some of the much-loved Thomas Bernhard’s later works, is less ranting, more measured, than the books that came after it, although it should be noted that [P] loved these too, that he believed that these later books were funnier and easier to relate to, while the much-loved Correction is stranger and darker and more intensely insular than anything else he wrote, if that is possible, yet is does still feature many of the standard and beloved Bernhardian themes such as suicide, sister-obsession, Austria-hating, and the mental processes of a damaged genius, in fact it is possible, as many have pointed out, to draw parallels between Thomas Bernhard’s damaged genius Roithamer and Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian, like Roithamer, and like Bernhard, who was equally damaged and possessed of genius, but in his notes and his review [P] glosses over these parallels or similarities as he believed that unless one had an interest in the damaged genius Ludwig Wittgenstein a discussion of these similarities or parallels may bore or isolate the readers of his review and ultimately dissuade these readers from checking out the much-loved Thomas Bernhard’s book, in any case, [P] believed, one does not need to be aware of these similarities and parallels in order to enjoy the much-loved Thomas Bernhard’s book, that perhaps the most interesting aspect of Thomas Bernhard’s book is alluded to in the title, Correction, which is the exploration of an obsession with the refining of practice, ideas, and perception, of Roithamer’s obsession with refining his practices, his ideas and his perceptions, this perhaps uniquely human ability to refine our practices, ideas and perceptions, to seek to improve, or correct, our practices, ideas, and perceptions, that an obsession with these things is a characteristic of genius, for it was certainly a characteristic of [P]’s genius, as it was Roithamer’s, that, as [P] said in his notes, he couldn’t stop thinking, that his every waking moment was taken up with intense thinking, that this thinking or introspection involved a process of refinement, a need to get to the root of something, to understand something from every possible angle, to improve and correct his intellectual mistakes, to the extent that he often put himself in danger because he was too taken up with this process and was known to have crossed roads without checking for traffic, and so this process could have led to his death, although ultimately it didn’t, because [P], like Roithamer, took his own life, and left behind only his notes, including his review of the much-loved Thomas Bernhard’s Correction.(less)

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Sep 29, 2010 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Who hasn't experienced that 3 AM clarity, when—having been rudely yanked away from the dreamy re-runs currently playing in slumberland—wakefulness descends upon you with an unwanted crispness, retuning your awareness to one that acutely perceives and identifies things and strains formerly subsumed into your everyday existence—personality traits, crippling delusions and illusions, carefully constructed battlements and barriers that have been erected to ward off select discernment or apprehension...more

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Oct 11, 2007 Lee rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the novel Ben Marcus referred to in his contra-JFranz defense of difficulty in that Harper's essay. He says that according to a little function that used to be on Amazon.com, to read and comprehend Thomas Bernhard's "Correction" requires 355 years of education. Like all Bernhard, it's never really difficult reading -- it's more about endurance, this one more than any of the others because it's three or four times longer than any of the others. This one includes for example at least ten p...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Oscar rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mainstream, míos

Bernhard no da concesiones al lector, no busca su complacencia, es el lector el que se ha de adaptar a Bernhard y no al contrario. Has de dejarte llevar por el remolino de su escritura, algo que cuesta al principio, y una vez dentro del remolino, has de dejarte arrastrar. Porque Bernhard escribe con la tiranía y la obsesión de una gota que va horadando una roca poco a poco a lo largo del tiempo. Te somete a una atención constante, torturante. Bernhard escribe sin puntos y aparte, todo forma un ú...more Bernhard no da concesiones al lector, no busca su complacencia, es el lector el que se ha de adaptar a Bernhard y no al contrario. Has de dejarte llevar por el remolino de su escritura, algo que cuesta al principio, y una vez dentro del remolino, has de dejarte arrastrar. Porque Bernhard escribe con la tiranía y la obsesión de una gota que va horadando una roca poco a poco a lo largo del tiempo. Te somete a una atención constante, torturante. Bernhard escribe sin puntos y aparte, todo forma un único y sólido bloque de frases, que te obliga a continuar leyendo hasta encontrar un punto, un punto y coma, a veces una simple coma, así que te ves obligado a leer y leer incansablemente. Y entonces me pregunto si el estilo de Bernhard está al servicio de la historia, o si la historia está al servicio del estilo. Me inclino por lo segundo. Un ejemplo:

”Porque la buhardilla de los Höller estaba toda llena del espíritu de Roithamer, le dije a Höller, y por eso no conocía ningún lugar más apropiado para ocuparme del legado de Roithamer que la buhardilla de los Höller, que era apropiada en un ciento por ciento para ocuparse del legado de Roithamer, también me sería posible en la buhardilla de los Höller, mientras me ocupaba del legado de Roithamer, echar una ojeada a los libros y escritos que Roithamer había reunido en la buhardilla de los Höller, sobre todo para la construcción del Cono, y que había que poner en relación con el legado de Roithamer, lo que él había leído con lo que finalmente había escrito, yo tenía que poner en relación una cosa con la otra y todo junto en relación con Roithamer.”

La prosa de Bernhard (y aquí hay que alabar el gran trabajo de traducción de Miguel Sáenz, traductor habitual de Bernhard) tiene ritmo musical en esa reiteración constante. Bernhard estudió música, arquitectura y lógica, y eso queda patente en su obra.

Pero Bernhard es mucho más que su característico estilo. Nos habla del absurdo de la vida, pesimista nato como era, de esa delgada línea que separa la demencia de la cordura, nos habla de la soledad, de la vejez, de la muerte, de las limitaciones del ser humano para establecer una comunicación con sus congéneres.

’Corrección’ tiene un narrador que regresa al valle del Aurach, en Austria, para encargarse del legado de su amigo Roithamer tras su suicidio. Roithamer resulta ser un ser excéntrico que trabajó durante seis años en un proyecto de construcción, el Cono, que construyó en el centro del bosque de Kobernauss para su hermana. Este narrador se hospeda en la buhardilla de los Höller, donde Roithamer pensaba en el Cono, y donde se encuentran todos sus papeles, fórmulas, pensamientos y recuerdos.

Mediante una reiteración constante, iremos conociendo de las vidas del narrador, de Höller y sobre todo de Roithamer, y como si de una lupa se tratase, Bernhard nos va acercando más y más a los detalles de sus existencias.

’Corrección’ no me ha gustado tanto como ‘Trastorno’ o ‘El malogrado’, pero contiene elementos que hacen merecedora su lectura.(less)

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Jun 16, 2012 Mauro Javier rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Recently, in a dark booth at a so-called restaurant, some friends and I, and by ‘some friends’ here I mean a stellar group of fellow members of the [Sans Name] Writing group, including the great Vauhini Vara, read out loud from the first 85 pages of Correction, one person per period, continuously for approximately four hours, and either because of the Bloody Marys or the maddening repetition (and here I mean 'maddening' as a compliment), I fell in love with Correction more than the first time I...more

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Feb 04, 2011 Cody rated it 5 of 5 stars

loved the wittgenstein artist scientist man conehouse, loved the grump, loved the forest, loved my own sister, loved it all...

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... he, the scientist, must incessantly examine what he is thinking at the moment, which should be everything, because unless one is thinking of everything at each moment one is not thinking at all, according to him.

Basically we have here a people given to a constant discussion of its own suicide, while at the same time constantly having to prevent tself from committin...more loved the wittgenstein artist scientist man conehouse, loved the grump, loved the forest, loved my own sister, loved it all...

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... he, the scientist, must incessantly examine what he is thinking at the moment, which should be everything, because unless one is thinking of everything at each moment one is not thinking at all, according to him.

Basically we have here a people given to a constant discussion of its own suicide, while at the same time constantly having to prevent tself from committing suicide, this is as true of each individual as of the population as a whole, they're always at it, singly and collectively, and what it actually amounts to is a state of incessant suffering made bearable, however, by the high intelligence applied to it by each individual and therefore by the people as a whole. It's a folk art of sorts, I said to Hoeller, always longing to kill oneself but being kept by one's watchful intelligence from killing oneself

The universal chaos in the world today, especially in recent times, is chiefly the result of every kind of precipitate action taken without first carefully considering what should be done, precipitateness and rushing things are the most terrible characteristics of our world today

We reject everything having to do with contracts, because we reject bureaucracy in toto, but in fact the world is only held together by a patchwork of contracts, as soon as we perceive, and in the network of hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands and millionns and billions of contracts the trapped human beings are squirming.

The world around us is constantly balking and hindering us and it is precisely by this constant inhibiting and hindering action that it enables us to approach our aim and finally even reach it.

We enter a world which precedes us but is not prepared for us, and we have to cope with this world, if we can't cope with this world we're done for, but if we survive, for whatever constitutional reason, then we must take care to turn this world, which was a given world but not made for us or ready for us, a world which is all set in any case, because it was made by our predecessors, to attack us and ruin us and finally destroy us, nothing else, we must turn it into a world to suit our own ideas, acting first behind the scenes, inconspicuously, but then with all our might and quite openly, so that we can say after a while that we're living in our own world, not in some previous world, one that is always bound to be of no concern to us and intent upon ruining and destroying us.

People who get together and marry even though they can foresee their future together only as a lifelong shared martyrdom

Everything is ultimately the cone.(less)

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Mar 20, 2012 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Correction is the story of one man's investigations into a man named Roithamer, a 'sifting and sorting' of the papers he left behind after his suicide. These papers tell of a cone-shaped home Roithamer built for his sister in the precise centre of a great Austrian forest. The story is drawn in part from the life of Wittgenstein, who also designed and built an unusual house for his sister in Vienna.

I've not read Wittgenstein, but I'd be inclined not to get too hung up on this comparison. Indeed,...more Correction is the story of one man's investigations into a man named Roithamer, a 'sifting and sorting' of the papers he left behind after his suicide. These papers tell of a cone-shaped home Roithamer built for his sister in the precise centre of a great Austrian forest. The story is drawn in part from the life of Wittgenstein, who also designed and built an unusual house for his sister in Vienna.

I've not read Wittgenstein, but I'd be inclined not to get too hung up on this comparison. Indeed, it might even be beneficial to know little more about Wittgenstein than Wikipedia can tell you to enjoy Correction. The reason for this is that the book is really about Bernhard's style, which is like nobody else I have ever read. Words pile upon phrases pile upon sentences which run across pages upon pages; no paragraph breaks, only a wall of text. It is intimidating, and for the first time in a while I found myself marking key passages in pencil, if only because I felt I would never otherwise be able to find them again. Constantly doubling back on myself, my reading in this way began to feel like carrying an infinitely unspooling ball of wool through a labyrinth.

The overused term 'stream of consciousness' comes to mind, but it is inadequate to describe what happens here; in modernist literature the term frequently refers to a sense in which an author is trying to capture a sense of simultaneity in necessarily linear prose. But Bernhard's writing is nothing if not always progressing towards something. One line does not co-exist with its precedent - instead, it builds upon what came before. Even as the writing becomes increasingly unhinged, vitriolic and narcissistic, it's evident that the author is trying to express something quite precise.

Express what? That human life is short, finite and horribly fallible. That the act of interpretation is a censorious crime. That politicians are fools. That our lives are mostly determined not our own decisions but by circumstances beyond our control. That the existence of an idealist is bounded everywhere by their own limits. That the most complete and perfect rendition of our own ideas will leave us with nothing for which to live. That the natural end of a relentless but perfectly rational condition of refinement is a state in which one can only execute the final correction: the rectification of the ultimate error, the end of one's own existence.

(It's also quite funny. There's one scene involving a 'black rubber sausage' which is unforgettably droll.)(less)

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Jun 15, 2012 Philip Lane rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked the topics and themes tackled in the book, so Philip, such as correction which is tackled in the book, By correction he Bernhard , means re-visiting, re-working and if necessary destroying, so Bernhard, destroying underlined. This includes one's life which can be reviewed and even destroyed, so suicide is seen as a form of correction. What was not so easy to cope with was the form which does not make use of many layout features such as chapters and paragraphs or speech marks. Irritatingl...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Sam Price rated it 4 of 5 stars

the first section is interesting, but the second part is killer. even though the style is unchanged, the voices manage to differentiate themselves.

it's interesting, this idea of sifting and sorting. it'd made me think of the stack of papers DFW left behind that became the pale king. one man sifts and sorts while another edits.

'no matter who is editing what, he never has a right to do it, even though everywhere in the whole world so-called unfinished works, the labors of heads which suddenly cou...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Sean rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: architect-hating suicide enthusiasts

Recommended to Sean by: giant asparagus stalks of death

Shelves: somewhere-else

Supreme happiness comes only in death.

Midway through reading this book I was struck down by a most vile stomach bug, one of such relentless eviscerating power that I was disoriented to the point where I, Sean, the reader, began thinking that Thomas Bernhard, the author, was trying to purge himself of his all-consuming contempt for Austrian society (easily extrapolated to Western society as a whole), whose anti-intellectualism he so passionately abhorred, and which he so graphically represented...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Emmett rated it 5 of 5 stars

So this is part four of my current 'project' of reading all of Bernhard's novels in the order they were published. All of Bernhard's novels thus far have been essential reading, and the Lime Works is (from my perspective) already an absolute classic, but Correction is even better--a brilliant and ultimately uncharacterisable book that works by playing off opposites (indeed, the whole book is about playing off opposites, in what could almost be read as a parody of Romantic irony (cf. Hegel's def...more

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Jun 20, 2007 Tom Evans rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Relentless, compelling exegesis of Wittgenstein's philosophy in fiction, this is Bernhard's masterpiece. The first sentence is 250+ words long and there are no paragraphs in the whole book. It mirrors perfectly the way the mind works, compulsively reiterating over and over again its themes (obsessions).

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Nov 15, 2012 Atomman rated it 3 of 5 stars

Original, impressive, but still something of an endurance test. The incessant inner dialog of one man as he reads the incessant inner dialog of another. At least one of them must be crazy yet the obsessive repetitive musings, the endless reexaminations are occasionally eerily familiar.

I recall hearing an interview with Jill Bolte Taylor who noted that her inner dialog went completely silent immediately after her stroke. Such silence is hard to imagine; Roithamer probably would have insisted tha...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Marcello rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

L'edizione francese. Uno sfogo

A un certo punto ho deciso che avrei voluto leggere Correzione, una delle opere fondamentali di Bernhard, senonché questa mia decisione e predisposizione d'animo a intraprendere questa lettura è stata ostacolata da quello che è a ben vedere solo un altro esempio di come l'industria letteraria di questo paese, l'Italia intendo, costituisca una vergogna nazionale, affiancandosi a innumerevoli altre vergogne e non tra le meno dannose. Correzione, una delle opere fondam...more

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May 23, 2012 Eddie Watkins rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

~~Lichtung~~

I posit that Roithamer would authorize this rewrite of his masterwork "About Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, with special attention to the Cone". Of course his ultimate correction of a correction of a correction, etc. would have been a blank page with only the memory of now non-existent verbiage, with heavy traces of extreme anguish, but my rewrite has the advantage of not only representing this blankness but of showing what that blankness represents, which is a clearin...more

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May 12, 2012 Fionnuala rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this some years ago but it remains vivid in my memory. In fact I think it might be one of the most fascinating reading experiences I've ever had. I felt physically hypnotised by the writing, completely drawn in to the narrator's world which is really the main character Roithamer's world because the narrator becomes involved in the editing of his childhood friend's writings after his death. Those writings have already been subjected to so much correction by Roithammer that the resulting id...more

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Jul 14, 2007 John Beck rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Read the first paragraph and you'll understand why I like this book.

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Aug 31, 2012 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm sure Thomas Bernhard won't be to everybody's taste, unless everybody loves a single, 300 page paragraph containing an erudite, repetitive rant about something Austrian. But Bernhard rants in such an entertaining fashion that he has become another of my favorites. I've got all his books lined up to read (probably won't read them one after another, need a little break in between). If you're interested, Wittgenstein's Nephew is by far the shortest but still gives you the full Bernhard experienc...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Scott Gates rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of the things Bernhard’s novels don’t seem to have is an overall form, or imposed sense of organization, there are no chapter-like blocks for example, and along with this there is never a section within one of his novels that strikes out on a new path, rarely a part that reads fresher than the thousands of words preceding it, there is never a “new” section, or even a so-called paragraph, there is relentlessly and always never a new paragraph, a so-called new starting point, never the novel t...more One of the things Bernhard’s novels don’t seem to have is an overall form, or imposed sense of organization, there are no chapter-like blocks for example, and along with this there is never a section within one of his novels that strikes out on a new path, rarely a part that reads fresher than the thousands of words preceding it, there is never a “new” section, or even a so-called paragraph, there is relentlessly and always never a new paragraph, a so-called new starting point, never the novel taking a strange turn that perhaps the reader hadn’t foreseen, Bernhard never says Hang it all, and begins a new chapter, in fact there are no chapters, there aren’t even paragraphs, there are no paragraph-like divisions between the sentences, there is never a given sentence that is tabbed five spaces to the right relative to the preceding sentences, his novels are one ruthless fixation on a given worldview with strictly confined interrelations between two, maybe three characters maximum, one of whom will likely be pursuing a vague so-called scientific endeavor, and one or more will have a strange lung disease, as many as one might be a sister who will compel one of the others to commit suicide, and more than one will take as a philosophical starting point that you must be absolutely alone and never go outside in order ever to attack a piece of work with maximum, to-the-exclusion-of-all-else effort, that is, you must ignore the innkeeper’s wife who will show up in every one of Bernhard’s novels, ignore the wretched Austrian town the characters live in, always the most repulsive town in Austria, Austria the most ruthlessly stupid country with the stupidest politics, always only the stupidest politics and stupidest people in Austria, a country that contains cretinism within its borders to an unheard-of degree, all of which must be ignored, particularly if you want to sit with a score of music, relentlessly and only sit with a score of music by Schumann or Bach, and for hours study the score, needing not even to hear the music, reading the score better than listening to the music, listening to the music worse than reading the score, to sit in a chair and read the score, to immerse yourself completely in the score to the exclusion of everything else, before you go on to spend five hours at the minimum preparing your room so that you might be in the right state to write a review of one of Bernhard’s novels or all of them it doesn’t matter, might be able to attack the writing with heedless energy and relentless will, prepare everything just so, so that there are no crumbs on any table and no dirty socks on any piece of flooring, to pick up everything and organize everything, pick up and organize, pick up and organize, always to pick up everything and put it someplace else and always to organize things to construct the perfect environment for the utmost discipline for ruthlessly working on this piece of writing.(less)

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May 15, 2009 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: desert-island, read-2009

Well, I'm pretty much out of superlatives for Bernhard. I guess I'll just say this may be the best one yet, though I'm now beginning to see that some of his books are a bit funnier than others. This one's pretty grim (though not without humor) but ranges wide and seemingly takes in the whole world before the whole world collapses in upon itself into irredeemable darkness.

Why is this the best of the ones I've read? The structure of the narrative is perhaps even more perfect than usual, divided in...more

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Sep 14, 2008 maria rated it 4 of 5 stars

it is difficult to say i liked this book. liking has very little to do with how the book impacts one. i am certain i would give this book five stars in the future. after more time. after a longer life. thomas bernhard has my respect. the book is tough and unwavering as most of his writing is. it does not aim to do anything other what its aims to do are. the whole thing could perhaps come off as repetitive if it weren't for the way in which that repetition slightly shifts to draw us into corners....more

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Oct 13, 2010 lyell bark rated it 5 of 5 stars

if you want to read a 2 paragraph long obsessive rant about death, art, architecture, building weird phallic house for your sister who you want to have sex with, rottenness of austrian state, rotteness of catholicism, rottenness of educaiton system, rottenness of the ruling classes, rottenness of teh petit-bourgeoise, rottenness of the proletariat, isolation, shoving stuffing up a dead bird's butt-whole, putting "so-called" in silly places that will make u laff then this book is 4 u.

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Dec 15, 2012 Toni Salas rated it 5 of 5 stars

This novel is based on L.Wittgenstein's family and on his own life. This is the best T.B's novel I've read so far. Like all the previous I've read, it's a hard reading text and a difficult one. Reviews consider Bernhard as a pessimistic, although I think there's a lot of light in it if you make and insightful reading. It's also a funny author, though it's not an easy humour and the reader must be quite experienced in life and how we people really are and behave in western civilizations to compre...more

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May 03, 2013 hirtho rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bernhard

I didn't love this like I did Concrete. There's a level of remove as this narrator recounts and sorta recreates Roithamer the real subject of the novel. There's glimpses of Nabokov-esque persona biting and blending, but never quite the magic of a first-person diatribe like Concrete. The run-on paragraph breathless style is still stunning but seems less thematic here. Still looking forward to more but I better not burn through them all in a row like I was planning to.

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Aug 12, 2011 Bernard rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Calque de Ludwig Wittgenstein, Roithamer a laissé à sa mort un manuscrit que son exécuteur testamentaire tente de décrypter. Ce faisant, il pénètre dans l'univers mental torturé du philosophe-architecte, lequel a transformé son obsession pathologique de la "correction" en mode d’écriture : du texte corrigé naît un autre texte, qui sera corrigé à son tour pour mener à une "correction de la correction de la correction", jusqu'à ce qu'en définitive il ne reste plus rien. Et comme souvent chez Bernh...more

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Sep 03, 2008 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

not for everyone. i started off reading this to my dad on a trip, and after 40 pages he said he couldn't take it anymore. in fact, i'm shocked it has so few ratings of 1 or 2 stars. i guess it's obscure enough that people know what they are in for.

in a very cool way, he transitions from one speaker to another: from a neurotic, rambling, bitter hanger-on to a neurotic, bitter, rambling genius. my only beef is that the hanger-on gets about half the book, instead of maybe a fifth. more genius, plea...more

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Feb 26, 2011 John Wilmes rated it 4 of 5 stars

The only reason I don't give this 5stars is because I put it down for a few days; by default, I can't give a book I put down for a few days a 5star rating. But yeah, this book is fucking brilliant, and this is book is not explainable by anything but the text of this book, so just go fucking read it already, right now, bye.

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Apr 11, 2013 Fernando rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Un monumento inmenso, impenetrable y retador en cada página. Esa prosa densa de Bernhard construye el Cono imposible que impulsa la trama. Una exploración de la inteligencia, de la locura, de la enfermedad y de la labor creativa que es como un torrente de ideas y de odio. Venenoso, pero también poderoso y desgastante. No puedo recomendarlo más.

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Apr 04, 2011 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: barthelme-syllabus

Such a strange book about a man who builds an architecturally odd but perfect cone for his beloved sister to live in. The obsession is palatable, but seeing as this is Bernhard, there is a death, a suicide, and a philosophical monologue of sorts. You won't find a paragraph break, or any real chapters, and while it makes a more difficult read, the style also lends to a rhythm that is almost hypnotic at times.

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Jan 23, 2013 Shy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, genre_literary, 1001-must-read-challenge, read-in-2013

A tough, exhausting read that is choke full with repetition, which in its own awkward way draws readers into the heart of the story and keeps us in trepidation of the doom that we know is approaching from the very beginning. I can't really say that I "liked" this book but it is surely impactful in so many ways.

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“Nature, not yet polluted by human beings, hence his early rising.” — 2 people liked it

“Toda idea, al fin y al cabo, es una idea demencial.” — 2 people liked it

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