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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Thomas Bernhard

22:32 / 21.10.02

The name Thomas Bernhard serves as a passkey into the hearts of some people. He is one of those authors whose few books that I have not yet read I am saving in case of a blight in literature. Though he might be dismissed at first glance as dry, detached, emotionless, his work in fact speaks of the very profoundest feelings people can have for themselves and each other.

An excerpt from Extinction:

"In Rome I sometimes think of Wolfsegg and tell myself that I have only to go back there in order to rediscover my childhood. This has always proved to be a gross error, I thought. You’re going to see your parents, I have often told myself, the parents of your childhood, but all I’ve ever found is a gaping void. You can’t revisit your childhood, because it no longer exists, I told myself. The Children’s Villa affords the most brutal evidence that childhood is no longer possible. You have to accept this. All you see when you look back is this gaping void. Not only your childhood, but the whole of your past, is a gaping void. This is why it’s best not to look back. You have to understand that you mustn’t look back, if only for reasons of self-protection, I thought. Whenever you look back into the past, you’re looking into a gaping void. Even yesterday is a gaping void, even the moment that’s just passed."

22:48 / 02.01.03

Really? No takers? Not one?

22:57 / 18.10.04

One thing I like about Thomas Bernhard:

He is crotchety and grumpy and it's all because he truly loves music and literature, and abhors the damage done to those things, and to fine people who love them by the practitioners of filth, the butchers of words and sounds. I like Thomas Bernhard because he gets angry. He cares. I like Thomas Bernhard because he is not remotely over it.

17:04 / 02.11.04

n.d.: haha
n.d.: go read my bernhard porn
y.c.: do eeet
n.d.: nanowrimo thread
y.c.: oh ok
y.c.: hang on
y.c.: that's hawt
n.d.: haha
y.c.: the entire novel
y.c.: can take place in the fraction of a second
y.c.: before coming
n.d.: and in a series of related reminiscences
n.d.: that explain why she is coming
y.c.: exactly
n.d.: and why schopenhauer is a cow
y.c.: bahahaha
y.c.: best novella evar
y.c.: it'll be a real cocktease of a novel
n.d.: her breast, which was round and pale, like a cheese, like the excellent cheese of the village of his youth, when they had cows fed with clean water, real water you could drink, not this filth, this disgusting filth, this disease-bearing and repulsive filth which was not potable, which in fact bred disease rather than fought it, was soft in mouth
y.c.: damn that's good
n.d.: it would be better if I weren't at work
n.d.: and could go on for another half hour about the cows
y.c.: exactly
n.d.: and how they're more intelligent than modern cows
y.c.: return to them again and again
n.d.: hahaha
n.d.: yes
y.c.: haaaaaaaa
y.c.: and how viennese cows are the worst
n.d.: the modern cows who are stupid, just like people
n.d.: hahahah yes!
y.c.: come on you know you can come up with 150 more pages of this
n.d.: how the stupid, diseased viennese have allowed their cows to become stupid and diseased, so they produce stupid and diseased milk
y.c.: precisely
n.d.: and how one can only become more and more stupid, and more and more diseased, by eating this horrible cheese
n.d.: and how the viennese would like nothing better
n.d.: than to infect innocent eaters of cheese
y.c.: of course
n.d.: with their disease and stupidity
n.d.: haha
n.d.: god I love bernhard

unheimlich manoeuvre

17:31 / 02.11.04

n.d. i'm tempted. where do you reckon is a good place to start? Concrete or Extinction? amazon peer review suggests Concrete is a reworking of Notes from the Underground?

18:21 / 02.11.04

Hello, and welcome!

It's great that you're thinking of reading Bernhard! Which book you choose as your first depends on your taste. Concrete and Extinction are a little bit more dry, and there's more emphasis on his nested-recollection and stream-of-consciousness techniques. I'd recommend that you start with one of his funnier ones, like Old Masters or The Loser, in which he goes off on his classic anti-Vienna rants, and rants about art and music. On the other end of the spectrum, there's the stylistically rather more straightforward Wittgenstein's Nephew, which is a very touching account of a friendship (not on fire). I'll try to find some time tonight to type up excerpts to help you choose.

A few other things to make your trip more enjoyable: Bernhard talks a lot about music, you might want to get hold of some of stuff he writes about. I'll be happy to send you loads of Gould (if you don't have it already) if you wind up reading The Loser, I don't have too much else besides Bach on CD. Similarly, I have found I got more pleasure out of his novels by researching the artists and ideas he talks about, and I will be happy to share what I've found.

23:48 / 03.11.04

Are you really interested in the White-Bearded Man? I asked the Englishman and received, as a kind of delayed response, a short nod of his English head. My question had been nonsensical and I instantly regretted having put it; I thought, Reger said, I have just asked one of the stupidest questions that could be asked, and I decided to say no more and wait in comlete silence for the Englishman to get up and leave. But the Englishman had no intention of getting up and leaving, on the contrary he took out of his jacket pocket a thicker book, bound in black leather and read something in it; he alternately read his book and looked up at the White-Bearded Man, while I noticed that he used Aqua brava, a toilet water that I find by no means unplesant. If that Englishman uses Aqua brava, I though, he has good taste. People who ise Aqua brava all have good taste, and Englishman, moreover an Englishman from Wales, who uses Aqua brava is therefore not unlikeable to me, I thought, Reger said.

23:51 / 03.11.04

Bernhard's really tough to excerpt. The bit above doesn't sound like much, but in the context of the book, it's hilarious.

20:33 / 26.11.04

hey, nd!

are there translations of TBs poetry in english too?
if you know of any (or if you happen to read TB in german and know the poems in the original), what do you think of them?

how do you feel about the understandability of his plays (because i think they are VERY austrian, to a point that they must seem HORRIBLY STRANGE even to the german or swiss audience)? esp. "heldenplatz"?

to inchocolate: concrete seems to me his most - hrrrm - funny novel.
fine to adjust.

15:11 / 30.11.04

I'm looking at your excerpts and reviews online, and while it looks interesting, and reads like the readable parts of Beckett's novels, I worry that because of my utter unfamiliarity with "classical" music and composers I'll be at a loss at some of these books, particularly Old Masters and the Loser. What say you?

21:23 / 02.12.04

Hi madhatter! No, I haven't read any of his poetry or plays, though I do have one of his plays in translation (not sure which one, as it was a gift I am leaving unopened as a surprise to myself). I only wish I could read his work in the original language. It is in fact part of the deal under which I acquired a true first of Holzfallen: I have to learn to read it.

David "Papi" Ortiz, no, I don't think a lack of familiarity with the artistic references will dull your pleasure in reading his books. For example, I do not think one need have read Schiller to appreciate Bernhard's comment that:

"I too had those teachers with their perverse recorder playing and their perverse guitar strumming, who forced me to learn a sixteen-stanza Schiller poem by heart, which I always felt to be one of the most terrible punishments."

In point of fact, reading that sentence, alone, practically obviates the need ever to read any Schiller at all.

06:30 / 20.04.05

Thomas Bernhard himself describes Amras as his peak, his most genuine piece of literature. The short novel follows two brothers, Walter and the narrator K, in the most intimate way. After a terrible tragdey launched by their parents, namely the attempt to bring the family to a collective suicide, the parents die and the brothers uncle brings them to Amras, a tower, to shield them from the cruel world.

We follow their reflections on themselves, the destructive side of humans, the nature of sickness, tragedy, and the destruction of a family. Basically it describes how the two brothers (mostly K.) tries to break away from their heritage, doom, and the terrible sickness that rides the family, and finally brings its downfall. Anyone familiar with it? Thoughts?

23:05 / 21.04.05

Put in a request for 'Three Novellas', of which 'Amras' is the first, with my bookseller today. Back with thoughts, soon.

23:02 / 17.05.05

In case you care, I still haven't gotten a copy of the book. Still trying, though.

00:03 / 22.06.05

Ok, halfway through Amras. Not sure what to say about it, yet. It certainly hasn't seized my imagination (seized in the sense of grasped, not like a seized engine, or a seized Hollandaise). Am holding off on forming an opinion until I've read it through, as Walter's just died and things are changing quite a bit. Will say it reminds me quite a bit of Robert Walser.