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A review by madfil
Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard
5.0
(25 January, 2024)
Holy moly is this ever good! It feels right somehow: a old coot bitching about the world and the people, I love it! Meaningless awards, idiotic cronies whose sole use is kissing and licking some fool's ass, crappy days wasted simply because they are crappy. Pseudo-Thomas hates his reality but he is aware, like most people are not, that he is defined by it. He keeps repeating the most inane stuff, almost as a way to anchor himself to his world, it is profoundly sad to witness. He is also defined by the people he knows yet never by who knows him. At no point (almost?) does he see himself through someone else's eyes, denoting a keen self-awareness that is all too rare.
Enter Paul Wittgenstein, the titular nephew, a singular person and madman who might understand how things truly are. Funny, no? Blindly follow rules laid down by drones, one is sane, think things through and unveil the emptiness of everyday life, one is mad. Paul has the courage to live as he wants and he affects others - and himself - by how he thinks, talks, acts and lives. In the end, Paul is a victim of himself.
The scary part? Fictional (and real?) Thomas Bernhard struggles to find meaning to life, there is an implicit acceptance of the emptiness of it all but it's too reluctant, too half-hearted to give him any peace. If one wants proof he finds life unendurable, one may find it in the fact he is often thinking of the next thing to do, seldom on what he is presently doing (a disease few today see as a problem, by the way). He might be a bad Absurdist or he might simply hate ordinary, everyday stupidity.
Might he follow his friend Paul?
Holy moly is this ever good! It feels right somehow: a old coot bitching about the world and the people, I love it! Meaningless awards, idiotic cronies whose sole use is kissing and licking some fool's ass, crappy days wasted simply because they are crappy. Pseudo-Thomas hates his reality but he is aware, like most people are not, that he is defined by it. He keeps repeating the most inane stuff, almost as a way to anchor himself to his world, it is profoundly sad to witness. He is also defined by the people he knows yet never by who knows him. At no point (almost?) does he see himself through someone else's eyes, denoting a keen self-awareness that is all too rare.
Enter Paul Wittgenstein, the titular nephew, a singular person and madman who might understand how things truly are. Funny, no? Blindly follow rules laid down by drones, one is sane, think things through and unveil the emptiness of everyday life, one is mad. Paul has the courage to live as he wants and he affects others - and himself - by how he thinks, talks, acts and lives. In the end, Paul is a victim of himself.
The scary part? Fictional (and real?) Thomas Bernhard struggles to find meaning to life, there is an implicit acceptance of the emptiness of it all but it's too reluctant, too half-hearted to give him any peace. If one wants proof he finds life unendurable, one may find it in the fact he is often thinking of the next thing to do, seldom on what he is presently doing (a disease few today see as a problem, by the way). He might be a bad Absurdist or he might simply hate ordinary, everyday stupidity.
Might he follow his friend Paul?