Wittgenstein's Novels

Book excerpt: In this book Martin Klebes investigates the impact of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical work on four contemporary German and French novelists. Literary references both to Wittgenstein as a person, as well as to his work, are much more pervasive than to other equally well-known 20th-century philosophers, and this study seeks to explain why, and to what end. Individual chapters are devoted to an analysis of the role of writing in Wittgenstein's writings, as well as to the literary work of Thomas Bernhard, W.G. Sebald, Jacques Roubaud, and Ernst-Wilhelm Handler. Klebes' readings are situated in an interdisciplinary space between philosophical analysis and literary criticism, and as such also incorporate reflections on conceptual questions in aesthetics, architectural history, philosophy of science, and photography.