Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard

[Diane]

Rating: 4 Stars
Read: July 2016

I guess you could call this a fictionalized memoir, though I'm not sure where the the truth stops and the fiction begins. In the story, the author is in the hospital recuperating from a recent tumor removal from his lung. He is told he only has a few months left to live. He befriends another patient at the hospital who is suffering from from mental illness. This man is the nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher and is also a philosopher of sorts. The two men find out they have a lot in common. We follow the two friends through the progression of their illnesses and treatments, as well as the progression of their friendship. The basic theme is death and dying. It sounds depressing, but really isn't. The book is also written using only one paragraph.

This is my first book by Bernhard and he has several on the list. I look forward to reading the rest.

[John]

Diane wrote: "Rating: 4 Stars
Read: July 2016

I guess you could call this a fictionalized memoir, though I'm not sure where the the truth stops and the fiction begins. In the story, the author is in the hospita..."

I had a very different reaction. Suffice it to say I'm not looking forward to my next Bernhard.

[Gail]

This is my first Bernhard and I am not exactly sure what to make of it. I think I will have to process a bit.
This one long paragraph narration, introduces us to a shadow of the author and his friend, a nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The language use is quite constrained with little descriptive phrasing, and limited use of adjectives and adverbs so the reader has a sense of crispness. On the other hand, each individual sentence is often repeated in slightly different ways, or with additions or with clarifications, so there is a quality to the narration that suggests music. However, there is none of the rhythm, not even the rhythm of Beckett. Perhaps the "music" gets lost in translation from the German. This reiteration is both effective and exhausting for the reader, or rather for this reader.
To quote Wittgenstein: "The limits of my language are the limits of my world" and Bernhard seems to work at clarifying his world for the reader through this crisp, repetitive language usage.

The theme of the short book is friendship and dying and is, in fact, a collection of notes that Bernhard or rather his shadow narrator collected during a time when Paul Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein's nephew, and the narrator were building a friendship based on a mutual understanding and love of music, opera, and a belief in the political decadence of Austria and the death of any real culture in Vienna. Paul is committed to insane asylums regularly and Bernhard's narrator suffers from lung diseases that commit him to medical asylums also. By coincidence, they end up in the same asylum with two different wings for mental disease and lung disease. Bernhard's narrator takes the reader through his friendship and one comes to understand that in many ways, Paul was one of the only people in our narrator's life that understood him and allowed him to understand parts of himself. In the end, however, the narrator can not stand to be with his friend because he is more dead than alive. The narrator is afraid to embarrass his friend with his own ability to live, but largely is fearful of interacting with death any more than he has to. Although not an apology for not visiting his friend during his last days, or even an apology for not visiting his grave, there is something in the book that elevates their friendship to a sphere where by the author is clarifying the depth of feeling he had for his friend and the extent in which he was able to understand his friend which is as much as Bernhard could give. Very interesting book...I gave it 4 stars but am still thinking about it. There are many other Bernhard books on the list and I wonder if I will find any of them readable.

[Leni]

A novella length semi-autobiographical account of friendship and illness, written as one 100 page long paragraph and best read in one sitting. A eulogy over an acerbic, tragicomic bromance between two aging men who don't quite fit in the world.

[[deleted user]]

3 Stars

Steam of consciousness writing covering the author’s experiences in and out of hospital for a chest complaint and his friendship with Wittgenstein’s nephew a friendship that lasts for years while the author observes that for much of the friendship Paul Wittgenstein has been slowly dying an event the author will ultimately miss.

The book is written as one continuous paragraph (not easy on the eyes) and covers various ramblings of an old man. It includes cynical observations of the medical profession and how doctors will do anything to protect their reputations; the dangers of hospitals and the likeliness of death therein; how sanity and madness are so very close together and that while he and Paul are equally mad it is Paul’s behaviour that sees him sectioned for it while the author is treated as “normal”. The book also includes debates about the arts and the lack of appreciation thereof, it also covers his winning of the Grillparzer prize, a prize he only values for its monetary value, a prize he feels is given by those with no appreciation of his writing.

Overall an interesting insight into the mid of a writer but its inclusion on the 1001 list bothers me, it is not in the true sense a novel so what does it add to the development of the novel?

[Pip]

When I read this I did not research the book first so I did not know whether Bernhard actually knew Paul Wittgenstein or that the whole story was fiction. Trying to puzzle that out was a compelling mystery which kept me reading. Is Bernhard the character the same as Bernhard the writer? And did Wittgenstein the philosopher really have a nephew who was committed to psychiatric wards? It seems the answer to both questions is yes, and that Bernhard really did recover from tuberculosis in a hospital where Paul Wittgenstein was receiving electric shock treatment in another ward. The novella is a reflection on death and Bernhard's guilt at neglecting his friend before he died. It sounds terminally morose, but it is sometimes blackly humorous and constantly thought-provoking. "The healthy have never had patience with the sick, nor, of course have the sick ever had patience with the healthy. This fact must not be forgotten". Or the puzzling "The truth is that I am happy only when I am sitting in the car, between the place I have just left and the place I am driving to. I am happy only when I am travelling, when I arrive, no matter where, I am suddenly the unhappiest person imaginable. Basically I am one of those people who cannot bear to be anywhere and are happy only between places." Thia last is an example of how Bernhard belabours a point to exhaustion or until it finally seems faintly amusing. Altogether this is an intriguing little book.

[Rosemary]

The Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard was a friend of Paul Wittgenstein, the nephew of the philosopher Ludwig W. I must say I was hoping for a bit of philosophy in this, but did not find it. Instead we are treated to a grumpy memoir by a chronically sick man mourning the loss of his friend along with everything else he used to appreciate about his country (such as the food in the cafés). The curmudgeonly Bernhard is entertaining, though difficult, as grumpy old men always are. I may have found things funny that weren't intended to be, but I did enjoy it.

[Diane]

4 stars
Some of my favorite quotes.

"You're my only friend, the only person I have, the one and only.”

“With people like us nothing could be left to chance or carelessness - everything had to be thought out with geometrical, symmetrical, and mathematical precision.”

“I reflected that in my whole life I had possibly never had a better friend than the one who was compelled to lie in bed, probably in a pitiful condition, in the apartment above me, and whom I no longer visited because I was afraid of a direct confrontation with death."

[Pamela]

This was rather touching, although Bernhard is certainly quite waspish and vicious at times (his rant about the actors of the Burgtheater who he feels ruined his play is just wonderful) and reveals more about himself than he ever does about Paul Wittgenstein. He feels isolated by his intellectual superiority and rails against the rest of society. This (rather typical) quote made me smile

“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.”

Paul is an escape from this stultifying bourgeois world, a kindred spirit, yet at the end an ageing Bernhard cannot face confronting mortality and withdraws.

This is much shorter than the other works by Bernhard I’ve read - Extinction and Correction - and has a more straightforward and accessible style. Yet it contains a wealth of emotions and ideas that give plenty of food for thought. Bernhard is undoubtedly very intelligent, and in this work we see also the feelings that fuel his work, but he’s also very grumpy and cynical which made me laugh but at other times could have been irritating.

[Kristel]

Reason read: botm April 2023, Reading 1001
This is written by Thomas Bernhard, with the narrator being Thomas Bernhard, set in 1967. The narrator and his friend Paul are hospitalized. The book is brief, encompassing passions, music, humor, and a great fear of death. It is fiction but it is also part memoir.