Current mood:	bemused
Current music:	Laura Veirs - Black Gold Blues

Take that, Anna's writing!
So I was reading the New Yorker book review and this passage came up. 

“Correction” marked the apotheosis of this style and is perhaps Bernhard’s masterpiece. The novel’s first section consists of a hundred-plus-page monologue by an unnamed friend of the scientist Roithamer, who has come to sort out Roithamer’s papers after his suicide: thousands of slips of paper and a “bulky manuscript” titled “About Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, with special attention to the Cone.”

100+ page monologue!  THIS SOUNDS EXCITING.  Totally nonsensical plot?  ALSO EXCITING.  So I went to the library and borrowed the book.  Presented to you below are the first TWO sentences.  Just so you can share my joy. 

After a mild pulmonary infection, tended too little and too late, had suddenly turned into a severe pneumonia that took its toll of my entire body and laid me up for at least three months at the nearby Wels, which has a hospital renowned in the field of so-called internal medicine, I accepted an invitation from Hoeller, a so-called taxidermist in the Aurach valley, not for the end of October, as the doctors urged, but for early in October, as I insisted, and then went on my own so-called responsibility straight to the Aurach valley and to Hoeller's house, without even a detour to visit my parents in Stocket, straight into the so-called Hoeller garret, to begin sifting and perhaps even arranging the literary remains of my friend, who was also a friend of the taxidermist Hoeller, Roithamer, after Roithamer's suicide, I went to work sifting and sorting the papers he had willed to me, consisting of thousands of slips covered with Roithamer's handwriting plus a bulky manuscript entitled “About Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, with special attention to the Cone."  The atmosphere in Hoeller's house was still heavy, most of all with the circumstances Roithamer's suicide, and it seemed from the moment of my arrival, favorable to my plan of working on Roithamer's papers and even, as I suddenly decided, simultaneously writing on my own account my work on these papers, as I have here begun to do, aided by having been able to move straight into Hoeller's garret without any reservations on Hoeller's part, even though the house had other suitable accomadations, I immediately moved into that something that 4-by-5-meter garret, Roithamer was always so fond of, which was so ideal, especially in his last years, for his purposes, for I could stay as long as I liked, it was all the same to Hoeller, in this house built by the headstrong Hoeller, in defiance of every rule and reason of architecture, right here in the Aurach gorge, in the garret which Hoeller had designed and built as if for Roithamer's purposes, where Roithamer, after sixteen years in England with me, had spent the final years of his life almost continuously, and even prior to that he had found it convenient to spend at least his nights in the garret, especially while he was building the cone for his sister in the Kobernausser forest, all the time the cone was under construction he no longer slept at home in Altensam but always and only in Hoeller's garret it was something in every respect the ideal place for him during those years when he, Roithamer, never went straight home to Altensam from England, but instead went every time to Hoeller's garret, to fortify himself in its simplicity (Hoeller house) for the complexity ahead (cone), it would not do to go straight to Altensam from England, for each of us, working separately in his own scientific field, had been living in Cambridge all those years, he had to go straight to Hoeller's garret if he did not follow this rule which had become a cherished habit, the visit to Altensam was a disaster from the start, so he simply could not let himself go directly from England to Altensam, and everything connected to Altensam, whenever he had not made the detour via Hoeller's house, to save time, as he himself admits, it had been a mistake, so he no longer made the experiment of going to Altensam without first stopping at Hoeller's house, in those last years, he never again went home without first visiting Hoeller and Hoeller's family and Hoeller's house, without first moving into Hoeller's garret to devote himself for two or three days for such reading as he could only do in Hoeller's garret, of subject matter that was not harmful but helpful to him, books and articles he could read neither in Altensam nor in England, and to thinking and writing what he found possible to think and write neither in England nor in Altensam, here I discovered Hegel, he always said, over and over again, it was here that I really delved into Schopenhauer for the first time, here that I could read, for the first time, Gothe's Elective Affinities and the Sentimental Journey without distraction and with a clear head, it was here, in Hoeller's garret that I suddenly gained access to ideas to which my mind had been sealed for decades before I came to this garret access, he wrote, to the most essential ideas, the most important for me, the most necessary to my life, here in Hoeller's garret, he wrote, everything became possible for me, everything that became possible for me, everything that had always been impossible for me outside Hoeller's garret, such as letting myself be guided by my intellectual inclinations, and to develop my natural aptitude accordingly, and to get on with my work, everything else I had always been hindered in developing my aptitudes but in Hoeller's garret I could always develop them most consistently, here everything was congenial to my way of thinking, here I could always indulge myself in exploring all my intellectual possibilities, here in Hoeller's garret, my head, my mind, my whole constitution were suddenly relieved from all the outside world's oppression, the most incredible things were suddenly not so incredible, the most impossible (thinking!) no longer impossible.

This is clearly the worst book ever published.  Thanks go out to nihongono_nealo for helping me type this up, and putting up with my giggling on the mic as I was reading this to him.