Wittgenstein's Nephew: A Novel [Paperback]

Bernhard's narrator is a close friend with Paul Wittgenstein, nephew of the famous philosopher. Paul, while as brilliant and analytical as his prestigious nephew, is unfortunately quite insane and completely misanthropic. Bernhard takes pains to highlight the fact that Paul, despite his pronounced writers' block and inability to produce anything (except a few scattered memoirs, which are apparently destroyed before his death), is as much of a giant as his nephew. The absurdity of life surrounds the two friends, as they are both incarcerated for more-or-less terminal illnesses, the narrator's being physical, Paul's being mental. We watch the sad deterioration of this once outgoing genius to a raving maniac, unable to pass a homeless man without giving away his life savings. The narrator describes his nearly inescapable feelings of hopelessness as his troubled friend Paul responds to everything with a disturbing:
"Grotesque, grotesque."

The narrator hates nature, and here we are reminded of Huysmans. His descriptions of the 'walks' he is recommended to take ("I was never a walker") arouse in him nothing but the most repulsed feelings. Bernhard's writing sometimes reminds one of Schopenhauer's essays; once he or his character voices an emotion or thought on human existence, they feel the need to repeat it five thousand times in five thousand different ways. In Schopenhauer, this is merely annoying. In Bernhard, it is funny.

The ending is the saddest part of the novel. The narrator, out of a "sickening instinct of life preservation," avoids his friend. He appears psychotic and talks of nothing but death. Paul, hated by his family (along with his nephew, the two are the familial outcasts), decides to play a "prank" which does not go over well. The last line by the narrator is crushing: "I have not visited his grave to this day."

The book holds to no fixed plot, but is a series of discursive episodes about the author and his friend engaged in various episodes: meeting in a hospital, attending the opera, visiting a once-cosmopolitan friend now living in the remote rural lands of Austria, frequenting the same literary clubs and cafes, and many similar tales.

Every vignette is a jewel, and they are plenty, but few are about Paul directly, or reveal Thomas's feelings explicitly. Each time Bernhard begins talking directly about Paul, or his inner feelings, he diverts attention quickly to another story. His heart is so obviously broken he cannot bear to talk about his friend, but only their good times together. Still, it is abundantly clear from his story-telling, Thomas loves Paul like a brother, truly a "best friend."

Paul was a brilliant man, like his famous uncle Ludwig, the philosopher, and musically talented, like another Paul Wittgenstein (Ludwig's brother, the pianist) but also emotionally unstable, and financially irresponsible. After a late-life divorce, in his usual ill health, Bernhard describes Paul crying, in his dark and empty apartment, in rough condition despite its prime city location, but tells us he left Paul alone in his misery, to go sit in the park. Thomas cannot face his emotions at all. He cannot express himself this way, and to this day it eats him up inside. As an author, and a man of erudition and education, he does his best to express himself in the only way he understands, which is through intellectual discourse.

During their friendship, Paul asked Thomas to speak at his funeral of an optimistically projected "two hundred friends." "Wittgenstein's Nephew" is essentially that eulogy, delivered with loving tenderness, and heartaching apology. It is not melodramatic, it is always in intellectual control, but it communicates its tragedy effectively clearly nonetheless. It begins unremarkably, and seems to wander thereafter without much direction, but by the end it has proven itself compelling and interesting. We are delighted to read the personal tale of two best friends, yet also sympathetic toward Thomas's need to unburden his soul. It is undoubtedly one of Bernhard's superior works, like "Yes" before it (1978), and "Extinction" afterward (1986).

Just like Borges and Natsume, Thomas Bernhard was a taste that I acquired due to Glenn Gould mania. Still in Holland Cornelis Hofman, then head of the Glenn Gould Society, offered Bernhard's Untergeher, the Loser, to the fans of the "oracle of Toronto". Hooked on Bernhard from page one, I next read alte Meister and Holzfallen, old masters and woodcutters, resp.

Thomas Bernhard was a person who often came close to the level of misanthropy. Yet, this writer followed in a line of the likes of Shopenhauer, Strindberg and Celine, who led the readers into the darkest recesses of the tunnel never to forget the pay off by the light at their metaphorical ends. Bernhard will always be defined for me by one short moment in a rare television interview. Bored by the interviewer he walked over to his record player and started a recording of Bach's 2nd Brandenburg Concerto. After the music had played for a while he asked his interviewing victim "Do you know what is happening here?" The victim remained mute, invoking a look from Bernhard that was a mixture of disbelief and disgust to the nth degree. After some more music, while shaking his head answered himself with "everything".

Wittgenstein's Nephew is an archetypical Bernhard novella, both in content and style. The book contains a detailed analysis of the relationship between the writer and his best (and only true friend) Paul Wittgenstein, nephew of the famed philosopher. The first part of the book focuses on Paul and the friendship, while Bernhard uses these ingredients in the final part of the book as a "mirror" for self reflection/analysis. The book begins when both Bernhard and Paul are treated, for cancer and depression resp., at separate but close institutions. At the climax of this part, the writer who was so much looking forward to meeting Paul, finally meets what is left of his friend, and is devastated. Next, Bernhard looks back at the history of their friendship and pays special attention to the support Paul gave him on the occasion of receiving two literary prices and the premiere of one of his plays. In the end, Thomas, gives a brutally honest description of him avoiding Paul around the end of the latter's life and not attending the funeral of the very person who was so important for Bernhard to overcome a longtime suicidal depression. In the act, Bernhard leaves a wide array of casualties: the charlatans of the medical profession, the Austrian press/government/writers/actors and last but not least himself.

The prose is of the vintage Bernhard style that is easily identifiable after the very first sentence. Especially at the start, there is the favorite technique of providing a statement that is cut to the "philosophical bone" to later become the vehicle of a spiral thought of "evolution". Later on the style becomes more linear, without losing any of its poignancy.
While I read the original version, get it at the German Amazon site, I did compare it with this translated version. I would give the translator a 7 on a scale of 10. David McLintock has chosen textual accuracy over a translation that puts more emphasis on delivering the same type of "punch" as the original. You could say he prefers the letter to the spirit of the law. While the resulting translation is precise and careful, it is definitely "Bernhard Lite". Thinking in musical terms, you get Weber instead of the original Wagner.

As a novice to Bernhard reading this review, you may wonder whether the late Thomas would really be your cup of tea. All his anger, gloom, doom and hatred. Yet, Bernhard's dark vitriolic virtuosity gives the short intermittent moments of happiness a striking serene beauty, not unlike like the little flower in Picasso's Guernica.

It has been said that Gaddis' Recognitions is a more mature version of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Extending this metaphor, this as many of Bernhard's books represents a version of Holden, who while severely doubting the sense of the act, still hasn't given up on catching all together.