Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
However difficult Bernhard's prose may be, it's excelent., 8 Aug 1999
By A Customer
I consider Correction as one the best works of his author. I've read Miguel Saenz' translation into Spanish and I've found it excellent. I can't quite say wether English traslation is as good or it's not. The main Bernhard obsession are shown in this book. His peculiar, rather tough style is displayed in all its intensity as well. Amongst the former the suicide topic and the relationship between the man and Nature are worth mentioning. Among the latter, I guess those endlessly soliloques whose secret only Bernhard seems to know, would be the most characteristic. The plot is based upon Wittgenstein's life or, rather, upon Wittgenstein's philosophy. The method of this philospher has been described as a spiral -rather than lineal way of thought. He rounds the same issues all the time but getting deeper and deeper every time. In Bernhard prose, the same process can be verified. In a lineal following of the plot, not many things can be registered. But the thoughts of the protagonist are able to discover always a new view of those few issues he is obsessed with. At last, the suicide of his friend (known for the reader since the first page) can be interpreted as his last step in his impossible way from civilization (in wich he has been thrown against his will) back to Nature. Highly significative in this regard is the place where the suicide takes place: a spot in the woods exactly in the half of the way between the town and his house in the mountains. The style and the strange use of the lenguage can be interpreted in the same way. Wittgenstein once said: "When you can't talk about things is better to keep silence." Bernhard try to fight this assumption by writing. No matter what he is writing about, keep writing, unceaselessly, correcting the former phrase with the current one, and recorrecting it again, and again and againg. This effort is highly evident Bernhard work. Like the life of the suicidal, his literature is a continuos process of correction, of amending, improvement, redefinition. But is never enough. There is no end, no limit, measure bound in this toil. Written words in Bernhard are just useful to realize they can't quite convey what they are trying to. But is not a failure what he gets as a result. On the contrary, by means of suggesting what he is not able to convey, he remarks exactly what the rest of the literature always tries to hide: its dispatched of the essential, its lack of hinges, its desperately seeking in a world where no points of reference have been left.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
When a Novel Critiques a Philosopher, 31 Dec 1997
By A Customer
In Correction, Thomas Bernhard arranges an interlocution between poet and thinker, between his own protagonist's theories and Heideggerrian thought. Correction seems to undertake a "mock-up" of Heideggerian thought, a parody of Heidegger's essays on "Clearing," "Origin," "Thinking." Inasmuch as there are similarities between the novel and Heidegger's essays, a "fictional-critique" of Heidegger becomes apparent. Essentially, Bernhard's novel evolves its critique not through close examination or critical analysis, but by embracing Heideggerian thought whenever Roithamer (the protagonist) attempts to enact it--in short, making it "literal." Even where Heidegger cautions that this poetic space of Origin must remain beyond the temporal capabilities of the present, Bernhard makes it exigent in his text, makes it concrete. Bernhard, however, is less interested in showing the weaknesses or contradictions in Heidegger's thinking than in illustrating the results of its realization, its literalization. Roithamer, in fact, models his architectural plans to build a Cone in the middle of a forest on Heidegger's writings on architecture and his insistence on the "mutual articulation" of city, surrounding landscape, and human culture. Similarly, throughout the novel, Roithamer is engaged in a rigorous correction of all the ideas which he had previously written in his architectural journals. Yet--having read the accumulated logic of Roithamer's dissembling--I was not left with a reduced and refined record of his thinking at the end of the novel, but ironically with an excess of meaning, the architectural plan including all its corrected ideas. In effect, as a reader, I was presented with the residue of meaning: a hard copy of the correction of Roithamer's "originary" thinking, a protuberant eulogy for the ideas which cannot be cancelled into oblivion.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Correct your life by leaving it?, 26 Sep 2006
"Actually I'm shocked by everything I've just written, what if it was all quite different, I wonder, but I will not correct now what I've written, I'll correct it all when the time for such correction has come and then I'll correct the corrections and correct again the resulting corrections andsoforth ... We're constantly correcting, and correcting ourselves, most rigorously, because we recognise at every moment that we did it all wrong (wrote it, thought it, made it all wrong), acted all wrong, how we acted all wrong, that everything to this point in time is a falsification, so we correct this falsification, and then we again correct the correction of this falsification and we correct the result of the correction of a correction andsoforth ... But the ultimate correction is one we keep delaying ..." And that ultimate correction is made at the point of death.
This (semi-autobiographical?) novel raises profound issues about the meaning of existence, the interpretation of memory, the lack of certainty about our own interpretations, and - as a side issue - the importance of cherishing intellectual and social diversity in children.
Whilst Bernhard made me think deeply about these issues, his response - suicide - is the ultimate cop-out. At the end of the work I was left underwhelmed by the conclusion (if, indeed, there IS a conclusion) but impressed by his method and viewpoint.
I would recommend that everyone who has an interest in these issues should read this book for the originality of thought and style. But I would find it difficult to love this book and rate it five stars.
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