"Konrad felt his decision and his ruthless determination had been the correct decision and the correct ruthlessness."
It is impossible to argue with a sentence like that. But if you wanted to argue with it, you would have to read The Lime Works, a novel by Thomas Bernhard. It is easy to acquire this novel, if you do not already own it. You simply log in to the online retailer that I like to call 'Amazon', type in 'The Lime Works' and 'Thomas Bernhard', and there you are, it is tantalisingly available, within your grasp, if you have but a few pounds, and an account, you just click away and before you know it some poor soul in a vast warehouse in the depths of Wales (Wales!) is rushing around trying to find this stupid book by some idiotic dead writer he's never heard of, cursing the moron who's ordered it because life is a lot easier when everybody orders normal books like The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat or Jump! by Jilly Cooper, titles which command the eye and compel the arm, titles which don't take forever to find, books which make working in a vast warehouse somewhere in Wales (the country of choice for the online retailer known as 'Amazon') a tolerable, even occasionally well-remunerated fate, but instead no, life can't be simple, can it, no, someone decides to argue with an unassailable sentence in an obscure (or is it?) novel by Bernhard and all hell breaks loose, or, at least, someone goes and finds the book in the vast warehouse and then, lo, it is despatched, it is on its way, you ache with anticipation and then yes, The Lime Works arrives, you tear open the cardboard envelope, you dance a jig, a bit like the kind of jigs they dance in the Welsh valleys when the rugby team wins, or when literary curios are located, against all odds, in warehouses, and then, having settled yourself, you start reading, you are gripped, for Bernhard's prose is like nothing you've ever encountered before, and you know, in the depths of your soul, that your decision to buy the book was the correct decision, your ruthless determination in putting some poor underpaid warehouse-dwelling soul to a task of Sisyphean proportions the correct decision too, not to say the correct ruthlessness, for there is ruthlessness in today's world, a lot of it, and it exists even when it comes to literary fiction and buying books, in fact perhaps this area of life is where we see unmitigated ruthlessness, or perhaps the correct ruthlessness, the most ruthless ruthlessness, as if anyone cares, the best thing to do is, in fact, not to argue with Bernhard but just enjoy his writing, even if the concept of a deranged elderly man moving into a recently liquidated lime works and murdering his disabled wife might not - at first, second or any blush - promise much.
It is, though, very good. Meanwhile here's a pic of some lime works.
