Narrative Style
Literary critics often compare Bernhard’s writing with Franz Kafka’s or that of Samuel Beckett. But Bernhard’s style has its own peculiarities, a profoundly innovative form, and a much darker edge. Whilst the characters and situations in Correction are as comical and sometimes as absurd as those of the above two modernists, they are also based on historical reality and a precise geography. As a result, there is a surprising weight and closeness to the existential ground his characters ultimately tread upon. When Bernhard’s satire bends into horror as the novel progresses, there is little allegorical distance for the reader to retreat into. The culminating tragedy feels both personal and claustrophobic.
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Famous quotes containing the words narrative and/or style:
“To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)