- Paperback: 99 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books USA (13 Oct 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1400077567
- ISBN-13: 978-1400077564
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.2 x 0.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 291,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
It is 1967. In separate wings of a Viennese hospital, two men lie bedridden. The narrator, named Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their once-casual friendship quickens, these two eccentric men begin to discover in each other a possible antidote to their feelings of hopelessness and mortality—a spiritual symmetry forged by their shared passion for music, strange sense of humor, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and great fear in the face of death. Part memoir, part fiction, Wittgenstein’s Nephew is both a meditation on the artist’s struggle to maintain a solid foothold in a world gone incomprehensibly askew, and a stunning—if not haunting—eulogy to a real-life friendship.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Bernhard always grabs me into a trancelike state of reading. Something about those long sentences, the repetitive, rythmical commentary on a process of increasing decay, just seems to captivate me. In this particular book, he is unusually concise and to the point, if that is possible with Bernhard. For Bernhard is a whiner on the grand scale, like Celine, but without Celine's particular madness. Bernhard has of course his own. He also has great insight, both about himself and others; he is unusually honest and completely free of sentimentality. He can be poignant, but without schmalz. Bodil Malmsten, a Swedish poet held in high regard, once remarked in an interview, that she found Bernhard's writing to be a sexual turn-on. I've sometimes tried to imagine that but I haven't made up my mind yet. Perhaps that would demand more maturity on the behalf of the reader, or possibly less...
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Thomas Bernhard is no lover of humanity, but this is a very compassionate book. It is a sympathetic portrait of Paul Wittgenstein as well as of Bernhard himself. Bernhard comes across as rather crotchety, rather irritating, but quite stubborn in getting his point across. His ability to repeat himself - which intially leaves the reader wondering - is ultimately hilarious and endearing. This book is poignant, touching and eventually, sad.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
On sunny afternoon towards the end of June 96 I met a famous Austrian-American psychoanalyst in a bookstore near St Stephan's Dome in Vieanna. I am almost a fan of this analyst/author,after introducing myself (a psychiatrist attending an international conference where he was lecturing),he asked me what I was reading from Austrian authors and I mentioned the only name I knew -Arthur Schnitzler, a contemporary of Sigmund Freud. He said it was OK but had I heard about Thomas Bernhard ? That was the beginning of my relationship with T.B.. The only English title from T.B.'s works was "On the Mountain"; I bought a copy and as soon as I started reading I was in touch with a conglomerate of emotions- anger,"boredom", pain, sorrow, "emptiness" and a very skillfull reflection of probing the realm of self and others in terms of various levels of self representations. As for W.'s Nephew, I should admit it is rather an easy reading title amongst T.B.'s works. Here we have the extremes; body and psyche, mental "disorder" vs medical disease, living upto all or none... W.'s Nephew tries to undo wrongs by helping paupers to the extent of becoming peniless himself (which leads to another episode of "institutionalization" with his relatives' more than willing consent) or is able to mark an opera work with his applause (or silence) as fabulous (or kill it) at the end of a premier. While W.'s Nephew might be perceived as pure emotionality the protagonist represents the "rational mind". Their relationship is based on a very true friendship and conveyed on a stage of Vieennese cafes (Sacher, Havelka..), suburbs and hospitals. I recommenf this book for those who are interested in reading about human relations in a cotext of self and others during post modernity.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A good if difficult read.
At just 100 pages one might think that this is a light read, but then one is faced with aragraoph, no chapters, no breaks. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Elephant Child
Crazier than thou
This is a magnificent book by Thomas Bernhard which is probably the best one to start with from his work. Read more
Published on 4 April 2009 by Mr. J. Carr
A perfect introduction to Bernhard's writing
This is an optimal choice for those who have not read anything else by Thomas Bernhard. It is short enough to be read in one day, but it exemplifies many characteristic qualities... Read more
Published on 2 Feb 2007 by Alexandros Gezerlis
Hilarious nihilism
This is one of my favourite Bernhard novels. It is both funny and pessimistic at once, slamming the borgeois and literary worlds of Vienna, while examining the themes of mental... Read more
Published on 24 July 2003 by Adrian Lever
Mesmerizing Bernhard, and much more.
Anybody familiar with the ranting, repetitive, hauntingly beautiful prose of Thomas Bernhard cannot possibly be disappointed by this short, semi-biographical account of the... Read more
Published on 2 Jan 1999
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