Wittgenstein’s Nephew. A Friendship     by Thomas Bernhard, Translated by E Osers Original title: Wittgenstein’s Neffe Original language: German Published by University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 1990 Format: Paperback, 100 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.36 x 7.99 x 5.31 ISBN: 0226043924 List Price: $10.00, £6.36 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £5.72 Buy online from Amazon.com for $8.00 Published by Vintage Pub. Date: 1992 List Price: £5.99 Not available for ordering Published by Univ. Chicago Press Pub. Date: 1990 Format: Paperback List Price: £7.95 Not available for ordering

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Wittgenstein’s Nephew reads like one of Bernhard’s novels, yet it is an autobiographical piece. Unlike in the novels, the point-of-view is not that of an invented character but of Bernhard himself, which keeps the usual unpleasantness of Bernhard’s protagonists at bay and the reader gets to hear Bernhard’s voice directly, which is a great pleasure.

The book starts with Bernhard and his friend Paul Wittgenstein in hospital. It is a twin institution, housing tubercular cases in one part, and mental patients in the other. Bernhard is there with lung problems, whilst Paul is there for his mind. The fact that they are both there at the same time provides a starting point for a reflection on their friendship.

Bernhard develops the idea that both he and Wittgenstein got to their respective destination through the parallel course of their lives. As he sees it, they have both been brought down to earth by a chronic overestimation of themselves as well as the world.

At the end of the book, though, the parallel falls away as Paul dies of his condition while Bernhard lives on. With the degeneration of his friend’s health, Bernhard elaborates his thoughts on illness — how those who are well can never really do justice to the ill, how the well are afraid of the ill because they remind them of their own mortality, and how those convalescing from life-threatening illnesses are not wholeheartedly welcomed back into the community of the living.

As in his work Extinction, in Wittgenstein’s Nephew there is the theme of running away from a wealthy but oppressive and uncultured family. This escape is facilitated by the example of an older member of the family, here Wittgenstein’s uncle, the philosopher Ludwig.

The book is a homage to his friend and his extraordinary existence. As a member of the rich Wittgenstein family, Paul had lived in grand style for the first half of his life. In the second half, he spent or gave away most of his inheritance and had to depend on his relatives, in what was a rather undignified situation. Whenever his extravagant gestures got too expensive or too embarrassing, he was turned over to the mental hospital by the aggrieved relatives. Two and a half years before his death he undertook to write his autobiography, but actually managed only ten to fifteen pages of it, a great pity according to Bernhard. He reasons that Ludwig, Paul’s famous uncle, was known to be at least as mad as Paul, but concentrated on his philosophy, while Paul put most of his expressive power into his madness, instead of writing down his vision of the world...

The book becomes painful when Bernhard recounts how he avoided the old and frail Paul, for fear of being confronted by a friend so clearly marked by death, and he is not quite sure if he does it to spare himself or his friend.

«Two hundred friends shall be at my funeral, and you must make a speech at my grave», Paul Wittgenstein had told his friend. In fact Bernhard didn’t go, but has made up for it here in this beautiful and very likeable book.

‘...for let us not deceive ourselves, the heads which are most often accessible to us are uninteresting, we do not profit from them much more than if we were in the company of overgrown potatoes eking out a miserable but alas not at all pitiable existence on top of complaining bodies in more or less tasteless clothes.’ p30