Correction

Correction is a strange book, at times bewildering, but overall enthralling, in particular the dense, obsessional style, which I found addictive.An unnamed narrator arrives at a friend's house - an unusual house situated on the banks of a fast-flowing river - where another friend, Rothaimer, stayed before he committed suicide in the nearby forest. The story is basically about the unnamed narrator's attempt to fully understand what drove Rothaimer to lose his mind and take his own life. He does this by going through Rothaimer's obsessional writings.On the backcover someone describes Bernhard's writing as a "strange new beauty", and I have to agree. The prose is relentless: there are only two paragraphs! It is somewhat deranged: for the most part it's a rambling monologue concerned with the construction of a Cone in the middle of a forest. It's obsessional, with repetition being a marked feature.Overall I found Correction a challenging work that is both compelling and dizzying. The main themes of the novel are the nature of genius, the worth of creativity, and the slow-death of life. Unique.

"Actually I'm shocked by everything I've just written, what if it was all quite different, I wonder, but I will not correct now what I've written, I'll correct it all when the time for such correction has come and then I'll correct the corrections and correct again the resulting corrections andsoforth ... We're constantly correcting, and correcting ourselves, most rigorously, because we recognise at every moment that we did it all wrong (wrote it, thought it, made it all wrong), acted all wrong, how we acted all wrong, that everything to this point in time is a falsification, so we correct this falsification, and then we again correct the correction of this falsification and we correct the result of the correction of a correction andsoforth ... But the ultimate correction is one we keep delaying ..." And that ultimate correction is made at the point of death.This (semi-autobiographical?) novel raises profound issues about the meaning of existence, the interpretation of memory, the lack of certainty about our own interpretations, and - as a side issue - the importance of cherishing intellectual and social diversity in children.Whilst Bernhard made me think deeply about these issues, his response - suicide - is the ultimate cop-out. At the end of the work I was left underwhelmed by the conclusion (if, indeed, there IS a conclusion) but impressed by his method and viewpoint.I would recommend that everyone who has an interest in these issues should read this book for the originality of thought and style. But I would find it difficult to love this book and rate it five stars.

A story that stays with you - takes time to work through, but pretty singular in execution- so Roithamer.

This is the first book that I have tackled by Bernhardt, and I had heard him referred to by novelists like Max Sebald and David Foster Wallace, and the comparisons high modernist writers like Kafka.Like those mentioned, his style is challenging and at times you need a good amount of resolve to get through the especially tough parts of the book. The prose is written in very long sentences which are penetrating yet repetitive, and are from the point of view of a friend who is out in charge of executing the estate of a now deceased Roithamer - a character modeled both on the author and the fellow Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In fact, my interest in Wittgenstein's work is what guided me, like many others, to this remarkable novel. This is what pulled me through, which is not an easy task considering that the book is not split into chapters and because of this I found it easier to read it in long sittings rather than dipping in and out. If you've ever read a Max Sebald or Jose Sarramago then you will may understand where I am coming from.I have bought Woodcutters and Extinction and I very much plan to read them in the future. The book is mind warping, and this is perhaps why I will wait before I tackle another Bernhard.

I read correction until the end. I can only recommend to the most hardy and dedicated reader. The text is maddening in its repetition but draws you in by it. Be warned