And a Little More..

One thing I don’t think I made clear about Correction: although the narrator and Roithamer attempt “little by little to comprehend,” the “why” of Roithamer’s suicide is never really in question. Unlike many books, which seek to make sense of a suicide, to find reasons, etc, Bernhard doesn’t make the suicide a mystery. Suicide is the final ‘correction,’ and thus doesn’t really need to be explained. It’s Roithamer’s life, particularly his childhood at Altensam, that is impossible to make sense of; a clear understanding is always just out of reach. For instance, Roithamer’s distaste for Altensam isn’t as easy as it seems:

He, Roithamer, had never had to get away from Altensam, he had, in fact, struggled all his life only to draw closer to Altensam, to make himself understood where it had always been impossible, a crazy dream, where it always would be impossible for him to be understood [....]

This relationship to one’s home, to one’s childhood, resonated so strongly with me. The simultaneous repulsion and attraction, the inability to come to terms with it, to define it – I think this was more compelling for me than an explanation of Roithamer’s suicide would have been. In Correction, it is the period between birth and death that is the most infathomable.

Also, Stefanie noted below that she wasn’t sure whether or not I liked the book. So I’d like to clear that up:

YES!