Download Correction (Phoenix Fiction) djvu

I have really liked, in their own right, the 3 volumes already translated of "My Struggle" by Karl Ove Knausgaard. One more reason for being grateful is that Knausgaard has made me to read "Correction".
One characteristics of Anglo-American literature, today, is that it is "well-written", to the point of being "boring". This book is not "well written": the sentences are too long, there are a lot of repetitions and whatever there is of a story is progressing at a snails pace... But this is what makes the unique beauty of Bernhard's style.
What I found most interesting in the story is that, in the last quarter of the novel, we start to understand that Roithammer, in spite of his pretense at intellectual clarify and purity, is maybe (probably?) completely crazy. His cone, based on a supposedly detailed study of the character of his sister, is a massive failure, and this scientist has become so obsessive that he is unable to concentrate more than a few minutes and to do any real work. The narrator himself is not much better, as we see at the end of the first part.
The way all this is slowly revealed is intimately linked to Bernhard's extraordinary style: this is what make the literary value of his novel.

This begins rather well with mesmerizing, rhythmic waves of prose that seems a perfected realization of Gertude Stein's theories of what writing should be. But after a hundred or so pages, mesmerizing becomes monotonous and then finally annoying and boring. Why all the "so Roithamer" repetitions? And why does the narrator keep telling us that certain words in manuscript are underlined? Why not just italicize those words and be done? (Some are italicized, so there's no consistency at all). The author might have had something worth reading if he had cut it by about a third, but in true Germanic fashion, he had to run it pedantically into the ground.

Slow first half of the book but the second half is amazing. So don't give up on the book.Takes awhile to get used to reading with no paragraph indentations--so page after page with straight margins! Very German in tone and appreciation of a life of the mind and isolation to achieve the highest levels of creativity.

This book read as a prose; it's not something one encounters everyday. It was required as part of my curriculum, but I actually liked it because it was full of entropy and really broke away from standard literature mechanics.

Or so Konrad, the focus of 'The Lime Works', is supposed to have said, in reference to the results one gets at the moment anyone attempts to place on paper any thought, no matter how portentous (or monstrous, according to Konrad, supposedly). This is as good an example as any of Konrad's worldview, at least as it is reported to the reader by the faceless narrator as he transcribes the gossip and rumor flying around the small town of Sinking after Konrad has murdered his crippled, wheelchair-bound wife. (No spoilers here - the murder is reported on the second page). Slowly, bit by bit, from second, third, and even fourth-hand sources, a picture of the murderer emerges - of his frustrated attempts at writing the definitive textbook on hearing, of his "marital hell", to his bizarre life inside the defunct lime works, all described by what Konrad supposedly said to one or the other of several different townspeople.

Surprisingly, the novelty of Bernhard's style doesn't wear thin, despite the fact that he uses the words "Konrad is supposed to have said" or some variation over and over - presumable to reinforce the underlying ambiguity of not only Konrad's assertions, but also of the actual conditions of his and his wife's existence in the lime works itself. In the end, nothing but the murder is for certain, not Konrad's ruthlessness, as some would have it, or his doting attention to his crippled wife's needs, as other might say. But Bernhard's massive prose assault, consisting mainly of one paragraph that lasts over two hundred pages, approaches the only sort of deconstruction a society can realistically perform on one of its members - which it often does, whether it has any business doing so or not.

Ha! and what a character Konrad is supposed to be! Carrying around inside his head for decades his opus on the sense of hearing, he has been waiting for the precise moment, the exactly right moment, to set it all down at once, which he is certain (supposedly) that he can do, if he is ever able to get started, to get the first few sentences down on paper, certain that the rest will nearly write itself, once he turns his head over and empties out the contents. Thus, his fascination with the isolated lime works, a place he remembers from childhood and seizes on as the exact place to write his book. And yet, even when conditions are perfect and there appears to be nothing remaining in his way of setting down his book at one stroke, there is still - always - something to prevent it.

Along the way, the reader is treated to Konrad's rather dim view of humanity and life in general, reaching such absurdly dismal dimensions that I laughed out loud in several spots at the sheer magnitude of his conclusions. I somehow doubt laughter was what Bernhard was going for, but Konrad himself rails against the "...despicable vulgarity of all those who insisted upon confusing the writer's person with his work", so perhaps it's best I don't assume too much about the author - even if the quoted passage implies a paradox I'll have to revisit another time.

In the end, it isn't that Konrad's assumptions about humanity are so grossly wrong (to my mind they are mostly outlandish by degree, not by kind), it's that each and every one of his festering statements, as well as the life in which he has imprisoned himself, are not only rooted in but blown all out of proportion by the same cause that prevents him from writing his book. Bernhard has brilliantly peeled back layer after layer to expose this final destructive entity, which Konrad himself has nourished over the decades, and which is revealed in the final pages. To reveal it here would be a spoiler indeed.

I'm so glad I happened to find out about this writer, who I suppose is becoming better known in the United States. This novel is a very successful presentation of a mind. It's clear why people compare it to Beckett, though Bernhard is darker and more disturbing.

If you like this book by Bernhard, you might also be interested in "Jacob von Gunten" by Robert Walser.

Jakob von Gunten (New York Review Books)