Author: Alexander WaughPublisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0747596735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Book Description
The true story of a one-handed pianist and the fall of his aristocratic family.
The House of Wittgenstein
Author: Alexander WaughPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408842025
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Book Description
'The story in this book is so gripping and fascinating that it is remarkable that it has never been told in this way before' Simon Heffer, Literary Review 'Masterly ... His writing is brisk, confident and colourful ... a pleasure to read' Sunday Telegraph The true story of a one-handed pianist and the fall of his aristocratic family The Wittgenstein family was one of the richest, most talented and most eccentric in European history. The domineering paternal influence of Karl Wittgenstein left his eight children fraught by inner antagonisms and nervous tension. Three of his sons committed suicide; Paul, the fourth, became a world-famous concert pianist (using only his left hand), while Ludwig, the youngest, is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. In this dramatic historical and psychological epic, Alexander Waugh traces the triumphs and vicissitudes of a family held together by a fanatical love of music yet torn apart by money, madness, conflicts of loyalty and the cataclysmic upheaval of two world wars.
The House of Wittgenstein
Author: Alexander WaughPublisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307278727
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
The House of Wittgenstein is the grand saga of a brilliant and tragic Viennese family whose members included a famous philosopher and the world's greatest one-handed classical pianist. The Wittgenstein family was one of the wealthiest, most talented, and most eccentric in European history, held together by a fanatical love of music yet torn apart by money, madness, conflicts of loyalty, and the upheaval of two world wars. Of the eight children, three committed suicide; Paul lost an arm in the war and yet stubbornly pursued a musical career; and Ludwig, the odd youngest son, is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Alexander Waugh, author of the acclaimed memoir Fathers and Sons and himself the offspring of a famous and eccentric family, tells their baroque tale with a novelistic richness to rival Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks.
Wittgenstein's House
Author: Nana LastPublisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823228800
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
"The book advances the radical proposition that the field in which architecture and philosophy operate includes linguistic and spatial practices. It develops innovative forms of interdisciplinary analyses to demonstrate that the philosophical positions put forth by Wittgenstein's two main works are literally unthinkable outside of their respective conceptions of space: the view from above in the early work and the view from within constructed by the later work."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Bernhard LeitnerMysticism and Architecture
Author: Roger PadenPublisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739115626
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
Mysticism and Architecture: Wittgenstein and the Palais Stonborough is a multi-disciplinary study of the Viennese palais that the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein helped design and build for his sister shortly after he abandoned philosophy for more practical activities and during the period that supposedly separates his 'early' from his 'late' philosophy. Weaving together discussions of a number of social, political, and cultural developments that helped to give fin-de-si_cle Vienna its character -- including the late modernization of Austrian society, industry, and economy; the construction of Vienna's Ringstrasse; the slow decay of the Hapsburg monarchy; and the failure of Austrian liberalism; as well as Tolstoy's religiously-based ethical views; Adolf Loos's critique of architectural ornament; Karl Kraus's analysis of Vienna's decadence; Kierkegaard's and Nestroy's views on the importance of indirect communication; Otto Weininger's theory of the nature and duty of genius; Camillo Sitte and Otto Wagner's dispute over good urban form; Schopenhauer's aesthetic theories and his 'Eastern' philosophy of life; and Russell and Frege's philosophical and logical theories -- the book presents a philosophical biography of Wittgenstein reminiscent of, but substantially different from, Janik and Toulmin's Wittgenstein's Vienna. This philosophical biography underpins a new interpretation of the house which argues that the house belongs to neither architectural Modernism, nor Postmodernism, but is instead caught between those two movements. This analysis of the house, in turn, grounds a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophical works that emphasizes their mystical nature and practical purpose. Finally, this interpretation shows the unity of these works while simultaneously suggesting an underlying flaw; namely, that they arise from two fundamentally-opposed worldviews present in Vienna during Wittgenstein's youth, 'aesthetic modernism' and 'critical modernism.'
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Author: David MarksonPublisher: Jonathan Cape
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson or anyone else has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well that she is the only person left on earth.
Wittgenstein's Nephew
Author: Thomas BernhardPublisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400077567
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 114
Book Description
It is 1967. In separate wings of a Viennese hospital, two men lie bedridden. The narrator, named Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their once-casual friendship quickens, these two eccentric men begin to discover in each other a possible antidote to their feelings of hopelessness and mortality—a spiritual symmetry forged by their shared passion for music, strange sense of humor, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and great fear in the face of death. Part memoir, part fiction, Wittgenstein’s Nephew is both a meditation on the artist’s struggle to maintain a solid foothold in a world gone incomprehensibly askew, and a stunning—if not haunting—eulogy to a real-life friendship.
Wittgenstein Jr
Author: Lars IyerPublisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612193773
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
The writer Hari Kunzru says “made me feel better about the Apocalypse than I have in ages” is back—with a hilarious coming-of-age love story The unruly undergraduates at Cambridge have a nickname for their new lecturer: Wittgenstein Jr. He’s a melancholic, tormented genius who seems determined to make them grasp the very essence of philosophical thought. But Peters—a working-class student surprised to find himself among the elite—soon discovers that there’s no place for logic in a Cambridge overrun by posh boys and picnicking tourists, as England’s greatest university is collapsing under market pressures. Such a place calls for a derangement of the senses, best achieved by lethal homemade cocktails consumed on Cambridge rooftops, where Peters joins his fellows as they attempt to forget about the void awaiting them after graduation, challenge one another to think so hard they die, and dream about impressing Wittgenstein Jr with one single, noble thought. And as they scramble to discover what, indeed, they have to gain from the experience, they realize that their teacher is struggling to survive. For Peters, it leads to a surprising turn—and for all of them, a challenge to see how the life of the mind can play out in harsh but hopeful reality. Combining his trademark wit and sharp brilliance, Wittgenstein Jr is Lars Iyer’s most assured and ambitious novel yet—as impressive, inventive and entertaining as it is extraordinarily stirring.
Fathers and Sons
Author: Alexander WaughPublisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307484696
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 498
Book Description
If there is a literary gene, then the Waugh family most certainly has it—and it clearly seems to be passed down from father to son. The first of the literary Waughs was Arthur, who, when he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry at Oxford in 1888, broke with the family tradition of medicine. He went on to become a distinguished publisher and an immensely influential book columnist. He fathered two sons, Alec and Evelyn, both of whom were to become novelists of note (and whom Arthur, somewhat uneasily, would himself publish); both of whom were to rebel in their own ways against his bedrock Victorianism; and one of whom, Evelyn, was to write a series of immortal novels that will be prized as long as elegance and lethal wit are admired. Evelyn begat, among seven others, Auberon Waugh, who would carry on in the family tradition of literary skill and eccentricity, becoming one of England’s most incorrigibly cantankerous and provocative newspaper columnists, loved and loathed in equal measure. And Auberon begat Alexander, yet another writer in the family, to whom it has fallen to tell this extraordinary tale of four generations of scribbling male Waughs. The result of his labors is Fathers and Sons, one of the most unusual works of biographical memoir ever written. In this remarkable history of father-son relationships in his family, Alexander Waugh exposes the fraught dynamics of love and strife that has produced a succession of successful authors. Based on the recollections of his father and on a mine of hitherto unseen documents relating to his grandfather, Evelyn, the book skillfully traces the threads that have linked father to son across a century of war, conflict, turmoil and change. It is at once very, very funny, fearlessly candid and exceptionally moving—a supremely entertaining book that will speak to all fathers and sons, as well as the women who love them.
