What follows below is an attempt to
highlight certain aspects of this novel that I think are vital in
his oeuvre and in the reader's attempts to surmount the difficulty
of reading Bernhard. Mainly these hundred pages are a vehicle for
Bernhard's enchanting prose, his harsh pessimism and anger and his
clever, if sardonic wit.
Thomas Bernhard illustrates his friendship with Paul Wittgenstein
(nephew of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein) in a unique style,
which will be outlined below, that has rarely been applied by any
author. The novel consists of long monologues by the author
regarding his stinging views on various social topics including
award ceremonies, ‘so called’ intellects, superficial and fake
attitudes of patronisers of art, the emptiness of Austrian society
amongst other things.
The narrator highlights his attitude toward illness, both his
physical illness and his friend’s mental illness. We are made to
understand that the friend, Paul, suffered from appears to be a
Bipolar Affective Disorder.
His attack on psychiatry is outlined in one such attack as
below:
‘Of all medical practitioners,
psychiatrists are the most incompetent, having a closer affinity to
the sex killer than to their science. All my life I have
dreaded nothing so much as falling into the hands of psychiatrists,
beside whom all other doctors, disastrous though they may be, are
far less dangerous, for in our present day society psychiatrists
are a low unto themselves and enjoy total immunity…Psychiatrists
are the real demons of our age, going about their business with
impunity and constrained by neither law nor conscience’
Through compulsive reiteration, self-assured self-contradiction,
and invigorating exaggeration the narrator describes his disgust at
the state of psychiatric care in Vienna. He believes that Paul is
hospitalized to drain him of his life forces. Paul is given
electro-convulsive therapy, medications, and treatments and put in
an environment designed to sap the life out of him. When he is as
close to death as he can be, he is discharged until he gets sick
again, usually in four or five months. The symptoms that plague
Paul sound very much like manic depressive disorder - pressured
speech, volatile moods, strange movements, serious depression,
obvious mania, narcissism.
I am looking forward to reading more of Bernhard’s
works. I urge my colleagues to pick a copy and be immersed in a new
reading experience.
Vasudevan Krishnan