Download or read book Wittgenstein s Nephew written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LRB BOOKSHOP'S AUTHOR OF THE MONTH ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019WITH A NEW AFTERWORD BY BEN LERNER, AUTHOR OF THE TOPEKA SCHOOL'If you haven't read Bernhard, you will not know of the most radical advance in fiction since Joyce ... My advice: dive in.' Lucy Ellmann'I absolutely love Bernhard: he is one of the darkest and funniest writers ... A must read for everybody.' Karl Ove KnausgaardIt is 1967. Two men lie bedridden in separate wings of a Viennese hospital. The narrator, Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their friendship quickens, these two eccentric men discover in each other an antidote to their feelings of despair on the unexpected strength of what they share - a spiritual symmetry forged by their love of music, black humour, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and fear of mortality. A restless blend of fiction and memoir, Wittgenstein's Nephew is not only a haunting meditation on the artist's struggle to maintain a foothold on reality, but an impassioned eulogy to a real-life friendship - newly illuminated by Ben Lerner's afterword.
Download or read book Wittgenstein s Nephew written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) has been hailed by Gabriel Josipovici as 'Austria's finest postwar writer' and by George Steiner as 'one of the masters of contemporary European fiction.' Faber Finds is proud to reissue a selection of four of Bernhard's finest novels. Wittgenstein's Nephew (1982) opens in 1967 as two men lie bedridden in separate wings of a Viennese hospital. The narrator, Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their once-casual friendship quickens, these eccentric men begin to see in each other a possible antidote to their feelings of hopelessness and mortality, on the unexpected strength of what they hold in common. 'Furious, obsessive, scathing, absolutely hilarious and oddly beautiful.' Claire Messud, Salon 'A memento mori that approaches genius.' Richard Locke, Wall Street Journal
Download or read book Wittgenstein s Nephew written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Wittgenstein s Nephew written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-01-16 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Correction written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-01-23 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scientist Roithamer has dedicated the last six years of his life to “the Cone,” an edifice of mathematically exact construction that he has erected in the center of his family’s estate in honor of his beloved sister. Not long after its completion, he takes his own life. As an unnamed friend pieces together—literally, from thousands of slips of papers and one troubling manuscript—the puzzle of Rotheimer’s breakdown, what emerges is the story of a genius ceaselessly compelled to correct and refine his perceptions until the only logical conclusion is the negation of his own soul. Considered by many critics to be Thomas Bernhard’s masterpiece, Correction is a cunningly crafted and unforgettable meditation on the tension between the desire for perfection and the knowledge that it is unattainable.
Download or read book Wittgenstein s Ladder written by Marjorie Perloff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Perloff] has brilliantly adapted Wittgenstein’s conception of meaning and use to an analysis of contemporary language poetry.” —Linda Voris, Boston Review Marjorie Perloff, among our foremost critics of twentieth-century poetry, argues that Ludwig Wittgenstein provided writers with a radical new aesthetic, a key to recognizing the inescapable strangeness of ordinary language. Taking seriously Wittgenstein’s remark that “philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry,” Perloff begins by discussing Wittgenstein the “poet.” What we learn is that the poetics of everyday life is anything but banal. “This book has the lucidity and the intelligence we have come to expect from Marjorie Perloff.” —Linda Munk, American Literature “Wittgenstein’s Ladder offers significant insights into the current state of poetry, literature, and literary study. Perloff emphasizes the vitality of reading and thinking about poetry, and the absolute necessity of pushing against the boundaries that define and limit our worlds.” —David Clippinger, Chicago Review “Majorie Perloff has done more to illuminate our understanding of twentieth century poetic language than perhaps any other critic . . . Entertaining, witty, and above all highly original.” —Willard Bohn, SubStance
Download or read book Woodcutters written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-01-23 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiercely observed, often hilarious, and “reminiscent of Ibsen and Strindberg” (The New York Times Book Review), this exquisitely controversial novel was initially banned in its author’s homeland. A searing portrayal of Vienna’s bourgeoisie, it begins with the arrival of an unnamed writer at an ‘artistic dinner’ hosted by a composer and his society wife—a couple he once admired and has come to loathe. The guest of honor, a distinguished actor from the Burgtheater, is late. As the other guests wait impatiently, they are seen through the critical eye of the writer, who narrates a silent but frenzied tirade against these former friends, most of whom have been brought together by Joana, a woman they buried earlier that day. Reflections on Joana’s life and suicide are mixed with these denunciations until the famous actor arrives, bringing an explosive end to the evening that even the writer could not have seen coming.
Download or read book My Prizes written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gathering of brilliant and viciously funny recollections from one of the twentieth century’s most famous literary enfants terribles. Written in 1980 but published here for the first time, these texts tell the story of the various farces that developed around the literary prizes Thomas Bernhard received in his lifetime. Whether it was the Bremen Literature Prize, the Grillparzer Prize, or the Austrian State Prize, his participation in the acceptance ceremony—always less than gracious, it must be said—resulted in scandal (only at the awarding of the prize from Austria’s Federal Chamber of Commerce did Bernhard feel at home: he received that one, he said, in recognition of the great example he set for shopkeeping apprentices). And the remuneration connected with the prizes presented him with opportunities for adventure—of the new-house and luxury-car variety. Here is a portrait of the writer as a prizewinner: laconic, sardonic, and shaking his head with biting amusement at the world and at himself. A revelatory work of dazzling comedy, the pinnacle of Bernhardian art.
Download or read book Wittgenstein s Mistress written by David Markson and published by Jonathan Cape. This book was released on 1989 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson or anyone else has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well that she is the only person left on earth.
Download or read book Wittgenstein written by O. K. Bouwsma and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Remarkable how well Bouwsma understood Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems and how intelligently he was able to recount Wittgenstein's discussions. The bits about sensation are especially good. And the asides about the other philosophers--e.g. Dewey, Russell, Anscombe--are, while not frivolous, gossipy and titillating." --Riley Wallihan, Western Oregon University
Download or read book Old Masters written by Thomas Bernhard and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exuberantly satirical novel, the tutor Atzbacher has been summoned by his friend Reger to meet him in a Viennese museum. While Reger gazes at a Tintoretto portrait, Atzbacher—who fears Reger's plans to kill himself—gives us a portrait of the musicologist: his wisdom, his devotion to his wife, and his love-hate relationship with art. With characteristically acerbic wit, Bernhard exposes the pretensions and aspirations of humanity in a novel at once pessimistic and strangely exhilarating. "Bernhard's . . . most enjoyable novel."—Robert Craft, New York Review of Books. "Bernhard is one of the masters of contemporary European fiction."—George Steiner
Download or read book Happy Death written by Albert Camus and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-08-08 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author lays the foundation for The Stranger, telling the story of an Algerian clerk who kills a man in cold blood. In A Happy Death, written when Albert Camus was in his early twenties and retrieved from his private papers following his death in 1960, revealed himself to an extent that he never would in his later fiction. For if A Happy Death is the study of a rule-bound being shattering the fetters of his existence, it is also a remarkably candid portrait of its author as a young man. As the novel follows the protagonist, Patrice Mersault, to his victim's house -- and then, fleeing, in a journey that takes him through stages of exile, hedonism, privation, and death -it gives us a glimpse into the imagination of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. For here is the young Camus himself, in love with the sea and sun, enraptured by women yet disdainful of romantic love, and already formulating the philosophy of action and moral responsibility that would make him central to the thought of our time. Translated from the French by Richard Howard
Download or read book The Loser written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LRB BOOKSHOP'S AUTHOR OF THE MONTH ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 'If you haven't read Bernhard, you will not know of the most radical advance in fiction since Joyce ... My advice: dive in.' Lucy Ellmann 'I absolutely love Bernhard: he is one of the darkest and funniest writers ... A must read for everybody.' Karl Ove Knausgaard Mid-century Austria. Three aspiring concert pianists - Wertheimer, Glenn Gould, and the narrator - have dedicated their lives to achieving the status of a virtuoso. But one day, two of them overhear Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations, and his incomparable genius instantly destroys them both. They are forced to abandon their musical ambitions: Wertheimer, over a tortured process of disintegration that sees him becoming obsessed with both writing and his own sister, with whom he has a quasi-incestuous relationship culminating in death; and the narrator, instantly, retreating into obscurity to write a book that he periodically destroys and restarts. Written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, Thomas Bernhard's dazzling meditation on failure, genius, and fame is a radical new reading experience: musical, paralysing, raging, and inimitable.
Download or read book Yes written by Thomas Bernhard and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992-11 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The narrator, a scientist working on antibodies and suffering from emotional and mental illness, meets a Persian woman, the companion of a Swiss engineer, at an office in rural Austria. For the scientist, his endless talks with the strange Asian woman mean release from his condition, but for the Persian woman, as her own circumstances deteriorate, there is only one answer. "Thomas Bernhard was one of the few major writers of the second half of this century."—Gabriel Josipovici, Independent "With his death, European letters lost one of its most perceptive, uncompromising voices since the war."—Spectator Widely acclaimed as a novelist, playwright, and poet, Thomas Bernhard (1931-89) won many of the most prestigious literary prizes of Europe, including the Austrian State Prize, the Bremen and Brüchner prizes, and Le Prix Séguier.
Download or read book Gathering Evidence written by Thomas Bernhard and published by New York : Knopf. This book was released on 1986 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Broom of the System written by David Foster Wallace and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition For the seventieth anniversary of Penguin Classics, the Penguin Orange Collection celebrates the heritage of Penguin’s iconic book design with twelve influential American literary classics representing the breadth and diversity of the Penguin Classics library. These collectible editions are dressed in the iconic orange and white tri-band cover design, first created in 1935, while french flaps, high-quality paper, and striking cover illustrations provide the cutting-edge design treatment that is the signature of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions today. The Broom of the System The “dazzling, exhilarating” (San Francisco Chronicle) debut novel from one of the most groundbreaking writers of his generation, The Broom of the System is an outlandishly funny and fiercely intelligent exploration of the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.
Download or read book Three Novellas written by Thomas Bernhard and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-06-23 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Bernhard is "one of the masters of contemporary European fiction" (George Steiner); "one of the century's most gifted writers" (New York Newsday); "a virtuoso of rancor and rage" (Bookforum). And although he is favorably compared with Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and Robert Musil, Thomas Bernhard still remains relatively unknown in America. Uninitiated readers should consider Three Novellas a passport to the absurd, dark, and uncommonly comic world of Bernhard. Two of the three novellas here have never before been published in English, and all of them show an early preoccupation with the themes-illness and madness, isolation, tragic friendships-that would obsess Bernhard throughout his career. Amras, one of his earliest works, tells the story of two brothers, one epileptic, who have survived a family suicide pact and are now living in a ruined tower, struggling with madness, trying either to come fully back to life or finally to die. In Playing Watten, the narrator, a doctor who lost his practice due to morphine abuse, describes a visit paid him by a truck driver who wanted the doctor to return to his habit of playing a game of cards (watten) every Wednesday—a habit that the doctor had interrupted when one of the players killed himself. The last novella, Walking, records the conversations of the narrator and his friend Oehler while they walk, discussing anything that comes to mind but always circling back to their mutual friend Karrer, who has gone irrevocably mad. Perhaps the most overtly philosophical work in Bernhard's highly philosophical oeuvre, Walking provides a penetrating meditation on the impossibility of truly thinking. Three Novellas offers a superb introduction to the fiction of perhaps the greatest unsung hero of twentieth-century literature. Rarely have the words suffocating, intense, and obsessive been meant so positively.
