Correction: A Novel by Thomas Bernhard Read Free Book Online

vast fortune, the sudden windfall of which he was using for his own aims, for his research, which happened to be in natural science, and which had come to, a climax with the building of the Cone. Nothing could make him happier than to have at his disposal precisely the amount of money necessary to realize his plan of building the Cone in the Kobernausser forest, it was for this he needed those millions which came to be at his disposal after his father’s death, once he had paid off his siblings. He used his inheritance, which came to a so-called enormous figure, for his experiment, ultimately his cone-building, never before possible, because no one who might possibly have had such an idea before him, to build a cone as a human habitation, such a cone, that is, as he had planned, no one had ever had at his disposal the necessary enormous sums for executing such a plan, his conscience was clear, considering the billions being squandered daily by politicians in this world in the course of their totally useless machinations, the vast national resources being destroyed day after day by the politicians for their useless and senseless purposes, he could certainly claim no less than this: that it isn’t often, and probably only this once that the chance comes along to use such a sum, so suddenly made available, for actually constructing such an edifice as I have done, the only one of its kind in the world and in any case the only one in the so-called world of architecture, and he could say to himself: I have built the Cone, I was the first to build the Cone, no one did it before me, I alone took all the steps and subordinated my entire existence and all my other possibilities single-mindedly to designing, building, and completing the Cone. Not only did I design this Cone, he could say to himself, a thought which enabled him time and again to surmount the many setbacks, the sheer impossibilities that rose every year to obstruct his work, his research on the Cone, not only did I design the Cone, and I know that no one else in the world has to this day even designed such a cone, such a cone has never yet existed even in the form of a sketch, so enormous a cone, a cone of such monstrous size and so habitable, in so unique a natural setting as this natural setting in the midst of the Kobernausser forest; not only did I design such a cone, I’ve actually built this Cone and everyone can see that I’ve built this Cone , so Roithamer wrote. Yet he didn’t care in the least whether anyone else saw his Cone, his masterwork, especially not the socalled professionals, the professional building experts, from the so-called world of architecture, who had naturally turned up soon after the Cone was finished and even before its completion, he did not feel the need to prove to anyone that such a cone could be designed and built, specifically even in the midst of the Kobernausser forest, not to anyone but himself, that is, and he had certainly proved it to himself once the Cone was completed, for six years he’d thought of nothing else than proving to himself that such a cone could be built, built specifically in the Kobernausser forest, and in accordance with all the specifications he, Roithamer, had set down for himself in regard to this Cone, and the Cone met his conditions in every respect, it had turned out exactly in accordance with all his specifications and was completely functional, the highest accolade a building could be awarded. Before supper, which I was to take with the Hoellers, I’d been busy putting my things in order, I’d unpacked them and laid them on the table and the two chairs and the bed and I’d hung my jacket and coat in the wardrobe, the process of unpacking and sorting my few things, I’d taken along only what seemed absolutely necessary for a five- to six-day stay in the Hoeller house, I’d taken over two hours, all the time thinking about Roithamer, of how he had lived, under such constant great difficulty,