Books

The Lime-Works, by Thomas Bernhard. I found it to be a disturbing and accurate (Imo) look at someone dealing with obsession and isolation. A man devotes himself entirely to writing a book on the "sense of hearing". He bankrupts himself buying an old lime-works (the only suitable location for writing his book), drags his ill wife there, who he then puts through a series of auditory tests he's devised, all for his book. His book never comes to fruition because the correct or propitious conditions never arise, because he's constantly distracted, because he can't properly organize his thoughts, because his neighbors are too distracting, because his wife is constantly second-guessing him and impeding his "work", etc. The more he withdraws for silence and focus in order to complete what he believes to be his "life's work", the more attuned he becomes with the voice in his head that is obsessively preventing him from doing so. He snaps and kills his wife after she remarks on his sanity, exposing him as a madman who ruined both of their lives over his preoccupation and obsession with a book that was never going to be written.