Following on from the excellent Stefan Grabinski collection Dark Domain, I've now recently completed my first Thomas Bernhard novel, Wittgenstein’s Nephew and I have to say this is undoubtedly another significant work to be added to the canon of World Literature and Bernhard clearly possessive of a scathing intellect. Is this a clear masterpiece?...well that may depend largely upon whether or not you “get” Bernhard’s writing technique and more importantly are able to appreciate it. Some will no doubt find Bernhard’s views to be a little on the pretentious side, reeking of intellectual snobbery and even unpalatable at times but then it is clear that Bernhard was not the type of person to suffer fools gladly or have much time for the banalities of mundane existence or the so-called herd mentality.
The story itself is part biographical, part eulogy as it is essentially a memoir tribute of Bernhard’s relationship with Paul Wittgenstein, the troubled genius and little known nephew of the more famous Ludwig Wittgenstein, regarded by many as the most significant philosopher of the 20th Century. The opening scenes find the two principal characters in separate wings of an Austrian hospital; Bernhard enduring a lung complaint and Wittgenstein suffering from his periodic and ever worsening bouts of “madness”. From there, a deeper friendship develops over the following years and as is common with Bernhard’s novels, a scathing diatribe or intellectual discourse ensues as Bernhard tries to make sense of multiple themes including the role of the thinker in modern society, death, the insincerity of literary award givers, madness, the Viennese bourgeois, the stifling quality of county life on intellectual development and a general dislike of nature (a definite Huysmans trait) in what becomes a very furious, energetic, comical, at times quite moving and sad, haunting and above all most engaging account of two incorrigible and thereby strangely loveable iconoclasts of Austrian society.
Bernhard’s literary techniques should also be acknowledged here as it forms a large if not pivotal role in apparently all of his works and may be argued to be at the core of his greatness. Like his musical hero Schopenhauer, Bernhard uses the theme of repetition by restating what at first appears to be fairly simple social statements but upon closer inspection may be interpreted as being somewhat more profound, into rhythmical rants that ultimately lead his protagonist(s) into a catharsis of sorts. In fact, it is asserted I believe not only by observers but by Bernhard himself, that this cathartic process of using the narrator’s voice to distance oneself from the main protagonist, in this case Paul Wittgenstein, was a form of coping mechanism he utilised in order to endure the obvious pain in witnessing the ultimate demise of his much beloved friend but also as a way to deal to some extent with his own perceived suffering at society’s hands. Bernhard’s love of language and wordplay extends not only to his deliberate attempts to restate the same ideas in different ways but also at times in a contradictory manner that I find altogether refreshingly unsettling. In spite of this repetitive process, Bernhard appears to have the uncanny ability to draw the reader further and further into his world and switch topics seamlessly, that as a result have the cumulative effect of making this book a genuinely interesting page turner and at just over 100 pages, easily digestible in a single sitting. I shall elaborate a little further on Bernhard’s literary methods when I begin posting my 2010 reviews later in the week but suffice to say I really enjoyed this multi-layered novel and highly recommend it. I’ve given it a tentative rating of only 9 stars but I won’t be surprised if it were to receive a higher rating again following my planned investigation into Bernhard’s other novels, as Wittgenstein’s Nephew is the kind of book that probably requires, indeed demands, a reread, that I suspect may well throw up further literary insights into a writer who was clearly an individual of significant intellect and literary ability.
I’m now reading Bruno Schulz’s collection of short stories entitled The Street Of Crocodiles and enjoying them quite a bit, not least for their curiously transmogrifying nature that I shall elaborate upon further once I have completed this book.
