Thomas Bernhard. Correction. 1975. Translation 1979 by Sophie Wilkins.

Two chapters of equal length

I can get behind the obsessive left-brained driven male genius thing, I am susceptible to it, and, like Wittgenstein’s Mistress, this book is hard to put down, not because it’s exciting or a pleasure to read, necessarily, although I did find it morbidly interesting, and, indeed, wanted to know what, if anything, would happen, or had happened, but it is hard to put down, primarily because it has two huge chapters, no page breaks, no paragraph breaks, and, in fact, very few periods, to say nothing of natural breaks between events, conclusions, or enigmas solved, because there are few events, and no terribly significant events, nothing, that is, that you would tell stories about if it happened to you, but it is nonetheless a fascinating tale, a nice edition, a good translation, a pleasing design, and I regret having accidentally sat on it, creasing its matte cover, and beginning the erosion of the printing on its spine. Such events as are relevant, revelations, significant information, are revealed in snatches, such as the manner and location of Roitheimer’s suicide, on page 60, or the significant fact of Hoeller’s having found his body on page 91, and, although it is not clear what the book is actually about, by page 108 suicide seems to be an important theme, and perhaps nature, as exemplified by the roaring Aurach gorge, and, of course, the obsessive left-brained driven male genius thing, though, I must confess, Professor’s Evenson’s offhand comment, a few weeks after our classroom discussion of this novel, that the narrator committed suicide, I must confess, took me by surprise, as I did not see how I managed to overlook that fact on first reading, or, indeed, on subsequent readings, when, in fact, I was actively looking for evidence of it, and I’m still not entirely clear on whether Roitheimer killed his sister.