Customer Reviews

The Lime Works (Phoenix Fiction)

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4 star:		(3)
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The book itself is like the lime works in which the reader finds him/herself lost, the walls constructed of bits of hearsay and rumor collected and disseminated by various neighbors and acquaintances of the strange old man currently living in the lime works with his invalid wife of whom he takes cursory care and on whom he conducts strange experiments (of the auditory type) because he is gathering information for the book he is writing, the book he has been writing for quite some time, well, actually the book that he has been preparing to write for years but which he has not actually started because he is afraid that he might get it wrong and he knows that it must be a brilliant work -- for his research is of the most brilliant nature -- and he is simply driving himself mad with it, though he seems not to notice anything unusual except for his exceptionally keen sense of hearing and the most amazing thing about the book, not the book in the book, but the actual book by Thomas Bernhard, is that it is about writing the book that the reader is reading and it is difficult to put the book down even for a moment, not just because the book is intriguing and complex and disturbing, but also because the book is composed (to resemble the workings of a madman's mind) of several hundred pages of run-on sentences

Or so Konrad, the focus of 'The Lime Works', is supposed to have said, in reference to the results one gets at the moment anyone attempts to place on paper any thought, no matter how portentous (or monstrous, according to Konrad, supposedly). This is as good an example as any of Konrad's worldview, at least as it is reported to the reader by the faceless narrator as he transcribes the gossip and rumor flying around the small town of Sinking after Konrad has murdered his crippled, wheelchair-bound wife. (No spoilers here - the murder is reported on the second page). Slowly, bit by bit, from second, third, and even fourth-hand sources, a picture of the murderer emerges - of his frustrated attempts at writing the definitive textbook on hearing, of his "marital hell", to his bizarre life inside the defunct lime works, all described by what Konrad supposedly said to one or the other of several different townspeople.

Surprisingly, the novelty of Bernhard's style doesn't wear thin, despite the fact that he uses the words "Konrad is supposed to have said" or some variation over and over - presumable to reinforce the underlying ambiguity of not only Konrad's assertions, but also of the actual conditions of his and his wife's existence in the lime works itself. In the end, nothing but the murder is for certain, not Konrad's ruthlessness, as some would have it, or his doting attention to his crippled wife's needs, as other might say. But Bernhard's massive prose assault, consisting mainly of one paragraph that lasts over two hundred pages, approaches the only sort of deconstruction a society can realistically perform on one of its members - which it often does, whether it has any business doing so or not.

Ha! and what a character Konrad is supposed to be! Carrying around inside his head for decades his opus on the sense of hearing, he has been waiting for the precise moment, the exactly right moment, to set it all down at once, which he is certain (supposedly) that he can do, if he is ever able to get started, to get the first few sentences down on paper, certain that the rest will nearly write itself, once he turns his head over and empties out the contents. Thus, his fascination with the isolated lime works, a place he remembers from childhood and seizes on as the exact place to write his book. And yet, even when conditions are perfect and there appears to be nothing remaining in his way of setting down his book at one stroke, there is still - always - something to prevent it.

Along the way, the reader is treated to Konrad's rather dim view of humanity and life in general, reaching such absurdly dismal dimensions that I laughed out loud in several spots at the sheer magnitude of his conclusions. I somehow doubt laughter was what Bernhard was going for, but Konrad himself rails against the "...despicable vulgarity of all those who insisted upon confusing the writer's person with his work", so perhaps it's best I don't assume too much about the author - even if the quoted passage implies a paradox I'll have to revisit another time.

In the end, it isn't that Konrad's assumptions about humanity are so grossly wrong (to my mind they are mostly outlandish by degree, not by kind), it's that each and every one of his festering statements, as well as the life in which he has imprisoned himself, are not only rooted in but blown all out of proportion by the same cause that prevents him from writing his book. Bernhard has brilliantly peeled back layer after layer to expose this final destructive entity, which Konrad himself has nourished over the decades, and which is revealed in the final pages. To reveal it here would be a spoiler indeed.

Literary critics with fine pedigree and advanced degrees continue to debate Thomas Bernhard. Was he great? What was he saying? He's so different that debate continues on what his legacy should be.

This is my second novel by him and I am enjoying him more page by page. Bernhard's unique style is fast paced, with frequent alliterations, repetitions and constant constant wordplay that can either bore or entertain. Admittedly there's a bit of both here and keeping one's attention is a challenge.

This story is the very peculiar tale of a man; Konrad, who has just shot (either 2 times or 4 times) and killed his wife. They've lived in the Lime Works in a small Austrian village for 5 years while Konrad conducts audio experiments and research for his very important book that he will write someday.

That we all learn almost immediately. From there Bernhard uses Konrad's voice as recounted by an insurance salesman from his discussions with two estate agents from their discussions with Konrad to unravel exactly what's been going on at that house and in Konrad's life. (nothing like an accurate third person account!). Perhaps he's mad. He is certainly obsessed and he may just be a bit trigger happy. But one doesn't read Bernhard for a plot and characters. I think you read it for the way he gets into the mind of his characters allowing their madness to get under your skin while you are mesmerized by his language and rhythm.

But yes there is a story here and a very interesting one. Konrad did kill his wife. But why is both a direct question of love or hate and a more profound question of what finally makes a man reflect on his life and when confronted with it how does he handle it? Konrad's story unravels page by page and gets better and better until the end which worked for me.

I found it original, moving and profoundly disturbing.

This is truly typical Bernhard (in a good way). It is the story of how Konrad, a strange old man occupies himself with his invalid wife in a lime works where he plans, exceedingly plans, to write a book of science. The narrative is told at a double remove so as to diminish the veracity of its content, and to spiral the narrative into a spatial stand-still, in which the protagonists are caught up, and enveloped in their own private hell. I particularly enjoyed the incessant dialectic between reading Kropotkin and Novalis to the poor wife-Bernhard's attunement to the ways in which ideas become animate (and destructive) forces in our lives is decisively genuine. There are of course innumerable repetitions in this book, but like all of Bernhard's best books, the resolution is achieved through the accretion of stratified intensities. The resolution is never closed off, nor is there any release, and no redemption.

... of a perverse sort, by recommending The Lime Works as a suspenseful murder mystery. Hey, of all the novels of Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, it comes closest to having a "plot"! Herr Konrad, a once wealthy but now impecunious eccentric who lives in a mysterious former lime factory in a dark forest in the most remote and hag-ridden corner of his country, murders his wheelchair-bound wife in the first pages of the novel. Everyone in the region is flabbergasted, titillated, consumed with curiosity about Konrad's motives and intentions; the murder is the sole subject of conversation in every tavern, and Konrad's 'friends' can talk of nothing else. The nameless narrator, apparently a traveling insurance salesman, gathers their reminiscences of Konrad's odd behavior, along with contrary and contradictory bits of gossip, into a seamless narrative of psychological torment ....

... but that would be utmost cruelty to readers who might expect to enjoy Bernhard on the same terms as Raymond Chandler or Frank Tallis. Thomas Bernhard is NOT about "fun". There is never a hint of suspense in The Lime Works, and its "seamless narrative" is a meandering run-on monologue -- almost a single sentence sprawling page after page -- by the insurance agent, whose interest in Konrad is unexplained and perhaps inexplicable. In fact, the narrator is a 'man without qualities', a faceless cypher who reports verbatim but in random order all the hearsay and speculations he's gleaned from those who knew Konrad, often detailing words that Konrad 'was supposed to have said' to an equally faceless cypher named Wieser. In fact, the only 'voice' in The Lime Works is the voice of Konrad, overheard third- or even fourth-hand.

Reading any novel by Thomas Bernhard is rather like viewing a pointillist painting one point at a time, dot after dot after dot. Bernhard's style is relentlessly, hypnotically repetitive and disorderly. The hardest thing about reading Bernhard is to get started, to get engaged. Once you've crossed that hump, however, it's nearly impossible to stop reading, first because there are no stopping points and second because a stark obsession with the plight of humanity will compel you to continue. There is no hope to be had in Thomas Bernhard; his works portray only the grimmest anomie, the collapse of the individual amid the mechanical emptiness of modern life. Let's be blunt: Bernhard is almost certainly the most depressing writer of the 20th Century. Konrad is as antipathetic a character as any in literature, stricken with obsessive-compulsive and paranoid delusions yet not to be pitied, even less to be 'admired' as a survivor. It's a horrifying experience to realize any shared humanity with Konrad, any trait of one's own mental makeup that approximates his. Lord help me, you'll cry, is my life as futile and self-thwarted as his? As Konrad was supposed to have told Wieser, the insurance agent said, most people never manage to utilize the uniquely favorable moments in life, so that whatever appears in life, in the world, is always a ruined thing, a ridiculous thing, which means that everything in this world ridiculous and ruined. Words were made to demean thought.

So why on earth would anybody want to read such a depressing tale? Insight, of course. But I really can't answer that. You'll have to find out for yourself.

Do yourself a favor and read a little Bernhard if you haven't already. It's really, really great stuff, and this one is one of my favorites.

Bernhard is a master. It is a shame that his works are not more popular in the United States.