Author | Thomas Bernhard |
---|---|
Original title | Das Kalkwerk |
Translator | Sophie Wilkins |
Cover artist | Kurt A. Vargo |
Country | Austria |
Language | German |
Genre | novel |
Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf, a Borzoi Book |
Publication date | 1973 |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Pages | 241 pp |
ISBN | 978-0-394-47926-2 (and 9780226043975 University of Chicago Press Phoenix Fiction edition 1986) |
OCLC | 677316 |
833/.9/14 | |
LC Class | PZ4.B5248 Li PT2662.E7 |
The Lime Works is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, first published in German in 1970. It is a complex surrealist work, where the creativity and resourcefulness of a destructive personality is marshalled against itself in a nightmarish narration.
The story opens with a description of a woman’s brains scattered across the floor of an abandoned lime works, and a half-frozen man crouching on the ground nearby, covered in manure. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
From this first grotesque scene, Bernhard begins his story, a compelling tale of two people insidiously bound to each other, told through a hypnotic wave of voices – the people of the small Austrian town nearby (Sicking), [6] the officials, the salesmen, the chimney sweeps, the local gossips, the couple themselves. The man, Konrad, is consumed with his work – a book that is to be both visionary and definitive, the ultimate treatise on the subject of hearing. His wife, a cripple, is the victim of his obsessive experiments: he whispers one phrase in her ear, over and over, hundreds of times, demanding from her impossible degrees of aural discrimination. She has no way of knowing, or no strength to tell herself, whether he is a deluded madman or a genius. For three decades, he has been waiting for the ideal moment, the perfect constellation of circumstances, to arise, so that he may begin writing down his conclusions.
But he never begins, and he is now an old man. We watch as he compulsively invites his own ruin. We feel him creep from one moment to the next, terrified of failure. Suppose he started writing and then caught a cold? Suppose he finished and his tome was judged worthless? Or his wife destroyed it? Even amidst the total isolation of the lime works, where they live, he is continually distracted. He hallucinates about prowlers. He hoards bits of food for dreaded visitors. And she torments him. He must feed her, read to her, bring her cider from the deep cellar (one glass at the time), maintain her voluminous correspondence with servants he has long ago forgotten, try on a mitten she has been knitting and unravelling for years, tend the earaches she develops from constant experiments... until the monotony and heartlessness of their life together shatters in a bloodbath.
The many voices narrating the novel appear within brackets (and Laska’s is the local tavern):
"...Konrad’s wife, whose maiden name was Zryd, a woman almost totally crippled by decades of taking the wrong medication, and who had consequently spent half her lifetime hunched over in her custom-built French invalid chair, but who is now, as Wieser puts it, out of her misery, was taught by Konrad how to use a Mannlicher carbine, a weapon the otherwise defenseless woman kept out of sight but always within reach, with the safety off, behind her chair, and it was with this gun that Konrad killed her on the night of December 24–25, with two shots in the back of her head (Fro); two shots in the temple (Wieser); abruptly (Fro) putting an end to their marital hell (Wieser). Konrad had always been quick to fire at anything within range of the house, they say at Laska’s, and as everyone knows he did shoot the woodcutter and game keeper Koller who was passing by on his way home from work one evening about four and a half years ago; quite soon after Konrad had moved in, carrying his knapsack and a hoe, and catching it in the left shoulder because Konrad mistook him for a burglar; for which shooting Konrad was in due course sentenced to nine and a half months at hard labor. The incident brought to light about fifteen previous convictions of Konrad’s, mostly for libel and aggravated assault, they say at Laska’s. Konrad served his time in the Wels district prison, where he is being held again right now..."--T. Bernhard, The Lime Works, p. 4.
V. is a satirical postmodern novel and the debut novel of Thomas Pynchon, published on March 18, 1963. It describes the exploits of a discharged U.S. Navy sailor named Benny Profane, his reconnection in New York with a group of pseudo-bohemian artists and hangers-on known as the Whole Sick Crew, and the quest of an aging traveler named Herbert Stencil to identify and locate the mysterious entity he knows only as "V." It was nominated for a National Book Award.
Firestarter is a science fiction-horror thriller novel by Stephen King, first published in September 1980. It tells the story of a young girl, Charlie McGee with the ability of pyrokinesis, whose destructive force a ruthless government agency tries to harness for their own purposes. In July and August 1980, two excerpts from the novel were published in Omni. In 1981, Firestarter was nominated as Best Novel for the British Fantasy Award, Locus Poll Award, and Balrog Award. In 1984, it was adapted into a film. A miniseries follow-up to the film, Firestarter: Rekindled, was released in 2002 on the Sci-Fi Channel and a remake from Blumhouse Productions was released on 13 May 2022. The book is dedicated to author Shirley Jackson: "In Memory of Shirley Jackson, who never needed to raise her voice."
Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian novelist, playwright, poet and polemicist who is considered one of the most important German-language authors of the postwar era. He explored themes of death, isolation, obsession and illness in controversial literature that was pessimistic about the human condition and highly critical of post-war Austrian and European culture. He developed a distinctive prose style often featuring multiple perspectives on characters and events, idiosyncratic vocabulary and punctuation, and long monologues by protagonists on the verge of insanity.
Henrietta "Jetty" Treffz was best known as the first wife of Johann Strauss II and a well-known mezzo-soprano appearing in England in 1849 to great acclaim.
Austrian literature is mostly written in German, and is closely connected with German literature.
Karl Otto Clemens Wittgenstein was a German-born Austrian steel tycoon. A friend of Andrew Carnegie, with whom he was often compared, at the end of the 19th century he controlled an effective monopoly on steel and iron resources within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and had by the 1890s acquired one of the largest fortunes in the world. He was also the father of concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and of philanthropist Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein.
"A Child in the Dark, and a Foreign Father" is a short story by Australian writer and poet, Henry Lawson. The story, often considered to be partially autobiographical, considers the rather bleak relationship between a man and his family.
The Painted Veil is a 1925 novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham. The title is a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1824 sonnet, which begins "Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life".
DieGezeitenwelt is the name of a series of German fantasy novels. They are set on a planet named World of Tides that is hit by large fragments of a comet with dramatic consequences: The coasts are hit by gigantic tsunamis, earthquakes alter the landscape, a global climate change ensues - and mysterious magic awakes, that lets monsters appear and dreams become reality.
Old Masters: A Comedy is a novel by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, first published in 1985. It tells of the life and opinions of Reger, a 'musical philosopher', through the voice of his acquaintance Atzbacher, a 'private academic'.
Wittgenstein’s Nephew is an autobiographical work by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in 1982. It is a recollection of the author's friendship with Paul Wittgenstein, the nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein and a member of the wealthy Viennese Wittgenstein family. Paul suffers from an unnamed mental illness for which he is repeatedly hospitalized, paralleling Bernhard's own struggle with a chronic lung disease.
Frost is the first novel by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in German in 1963. An English translation by Michael Hofmann was published in 2006.
Correction is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in German in 1975, and first published in English translation in 1979 by Alfred A. Knopf.
Woodcutters is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in German in 1984. A roman à clef, its subject is the theatre and it forms the second part of a trilogy, between The Loser (1983) and Old Masters (1985) which deal with music and painting respectively. Its publication created an uproar in Austria, where it became a bestseller before a defamation lawsuit by the composer Gerhard Lampersberg resulted in a court order to pulp the remaining copies; Lampersberg, a former friend of Bernhard's and the model for the character Auersberger, subsequently dropped the suit.
Gargoyles is one of Thomas Bernhard’s earliest novels, which made the author known both nationally and internationally. Originally published in German in 1967, it’s a kaleidoscopic work, considered by critics his most disquieting and nihilistic. The German title, Verstörung, translates as something like Confusion or Derangement, but the American publisher chose Gargoyles, perhaps in order to render the array of human freaks the novel depicts to its very end. In fact, this is a singular, surreal study of the nature of humanity.
Extinction is the last of Thomas Bernhard’s novels. It was originally published in German in 1986.
On the Mountain is Thomas Bernhard’s first prose work, which he completed in 1959, yet the last of his works to be published, in 1989, the year of his death.
Yes is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in German in 1978 and translated into English by Ewald Osers in 1992.
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Ferry Radax was an Austrian film maker born in Vienna, Austria.