Mini-Reviews: A House for Mr Biswas, & Wittgenstein’s Nephew

A House for Mr Biswas [1961] by V. S. Naipaul – ★★★★

Set in colonial Trinidad, A House for Mr Biswas is a novel about a man who always finds himself on the fringes of society and affection, desperately trying to gain independence in life and own his own house, which stands for acceptance and unconditional love in the story. However, Mohun Biswas is disadvantaged from the start. For one thing, he was born under an unlucky star. When he was only a small child, his sneeze was already deemed to bring misfortune, and, on the advice of a local sage, he was also kept away from water “in case something happens”. And, something did happen. Later, Mohun learnt how to be a shop sign painter, and also worked as a rum-bottler, shopkeeper and a sub-overseer at a plantation, before finally settling into the profession of a journalist in Port of Spain. All he ever wanted in life was “to paddle his own canoe”, but, first, he lived under the thumb of his own poor family, and then under the direction of his wife’s sprawling dynasty – the Tulsis. This book by V. S. Naipaul is probably an allegory of living in a colonized country, in this instance, a country under the British rule, and touches on many themes, including familial power dynamics, freedom vs. responsibility, and desire vs. duty.

I thought this “life journey” tale shared some of the structure and prominent themes with Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure, including the relentless and largely unsuccessful pursuit of belonging and a nobler purpose in life. Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul was clearly a gifted story-teller who could concoct vivid scenes, but I still found this tale of his too straightforward and predictable for my taste, and also thought that the main character became progressively dislikeable.

Wittgenstein’s Nephew [1982/86] by Thomas Bernhard – ★★★1/2

This is Bernhard’s autobiographical novel telling of him being in a hospital in Vienna for a lung condition and recalling his friendship with Paul, the nephew of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Paul ended up in the same hospital, suffering from some sort of a mental illness, and before his hospital internment, he was simply a man from a rich family, in love with motor racing, sailing and music, being “the most passionate operagoer Vienna has ever had.” Bernhard looks back on his life and that of Paul, musing on the nature of art, creativity, life and death.

The novel explores fewer themes than other novels by Bernhard I have read so far (Woodcutters, The Lime Works, Concrete, Correction). Among the author’s usual digressions and repetitions, we can just about discern a touching tribute to this very sympathetic (at least initially) man Paul and Bernhard’s idiosyncratic friendship with him. Bernhard’s extremity and absurdity are also present, but I thought this very short book was more of a very personal “whim” of a novel, rather than a truly thought-through, deep story about eccentricity, artistic genius and alienation, themes that were always of much interest to Bernhard. Thus, I mostly enjoyed some black humour and the “illness” philosophy dotted by the author here and there: [there is] “the hypocrisy practiced by the healthy toward the sick”/”The sick do not understand the healthy and the healthy do not understand the sick”, etc.