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 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 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 The Loser written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-11-10 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Bernhard was one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. His formal innovation ranks with Beckett and Kafka, his outrageously cantankerous voice recalls Dostoevsky, but his gift for lacerating, lyrical, provocative prose is incomparably his own.One of Bernhard's most acclaimed novels, The Loser centers on a fictional relationship between piano virtuoso Glenn Gould and two of his fellow students who feel compelled to renounce their musical ambitions in the face of Gould's incomparable genius. One commits suicide, while the other-- the obsessive, witty, and self-mocking narrator-- has retreated into obscurity. Written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, The Loser is a brilliant meditation on success, failure, genius, and fame.

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 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 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 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 Wittgenstein Jr written by Lars Iyer and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The writer Hari Kunzru says “made me feel better about the Apocalypse than I have in ages” is back—with a hilarious coming-of-age love story The unruly undergraduates at Cambridge have a nickname for their new lecturer: Wittgenstein Jr. He’s a melancholic, tormented genius who seems determined to make them grasp the very essence of philosophical thought. But Peters—a working-class student surprised to find himself among the elite—soon discovers that there’s no place for logic in a Cambridge overrun by posh boys and picnicking tourists, as England’s greatest university is collapsing under market pressures. Such a place calls for a derangement of the senses, best achieved by lethal homemade cocktails consumed on Cambridge rooftops, where Peters joins his fellows as they attempt to forget about the void awaiting them after graduation, challenge one another to think so hard they die, and dream about impressing Wittgenstein Jr with one single, noble thought. And as they scramble to discover what, indeed, they have to gain from the experience, they realize that their teacher is struggling to survive. For Peters, it leads to a surprising turn—and for all of them, a challenge to see how the life of the mind can play out in harsh but hopeful reality. Combining his trademark wit and sharp brilliance, Wittgenstein Jr is Lars Iyer’s most assured and ambitious novel yet—as impressive, inventive and entertaining as it is extraordinarily stirring.

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 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 The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein written by Hans D. Sluga and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-10-28 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume address central themes in Wittgenstein's writings on the philosophy of mind, language, logic, and mathematics.

Download or read book Love written by Maayan Eitan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incendiary tale of sex work from a young literary provocateur Love is a fever dream of a novel about a young sex worker whose life blurs the boundaries between violence and intimacy, objectification and real love. Startlingly vulnerable and lyrically deft, Maayan Eitan’s debut follows Libby as she goes about her work in a nameless Israeli city, riding in cars, seeing clients, meeting and befriending other sex workers and pimps. In prose as crystalline as it is unflinching, Eitan brings us into the mind of her fierce protagonist, as Libby spins a series of fictions to tell herself, and others, in order to negotiate her life under the gaze of men. After long nights of slipping in and out of the beds of strangers, in a shocking moment of violence, she seizes control of her narrative and then labors to construct a life that resembles normalcy. But as she pursues love, it continually eludes her. She discovers that her past nights in cheap hotel rooms eerily resemble the more conventional life she’s trying to forge. A literary sensation in Israel, Maayan Eitan’s debut set off a firestorm about the relationship between truth and fiction, and the experiences of women under the power of men. Compact and gemlike, this is a contemporary allegory of a young woman on the verge.

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 Concrete written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 145 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 MICHAEL HOFMANN'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 KnausgaardInstead of the book he is meant to write, Rudolph, a Viennese musicologist, produces this dark and grotesquely funny account of small woes writ large, of profound horrors detailed and rehearsed to the point of distraction. We learn of Rudolph's sister, whose help he invites then reviles; his 'really marvellous' house which he hates; the suspicious illness he carefully nurses; his ten-year-long attempt to write the perfect opening sentence; and his escape to the island of Majorca, which turns out to be the site of someone else's very real horror story, and ultimately brings him no release from himself.Concrete is Thomas Bernhard at his very finest: a bleakly hilarious insight into procrastination and failure that scratches the murky depths of our souls.

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