Reed Altemus >Who is Thomas Bernhard, if you don't mind me asking? Thomas Bernard was an Austrian writer who died in 1989. His dozen or so novels (I have read all but 2 and a half that I know have been translated into English) are usually concerned with a male intellectual faced with a spiritual/existential crisis. The books typically cover suicide, insanity, frustration, guilt, anger, remorse, strong anti-Austrian/anti-German/anti-Catholic sentiments. The novel "Gargoyles" is about a writer who has been stuck on the first sentence of his book for seven years, unable to complete it. "Correction" (so extreme in its portrayal of insanity I was unable to complete it) is about a man who is sorting thru the writings of a friend who just killed himself. "Extinction" is about a man who must deal with the deaths of his estranged parents who were Nazi sympathizers and supporters during the War. Bernhard's rather unique writing style is a somewhat maddening stream-of-consciousness rant that fixates on certain words and phrases, constantly repeating and! modifying them, as musical phrases in a fugue evolve. His sentences can go on for pages, and often each book is a single unrelenting paragraph. He won many awards in Austria, but was hated by many for his anti-Austrian rants. According to the introduction of one of his novels, he had a play of his staged at the national theater in Vienna, where all of the high society people go. In the middle of the performance, he played a recording of a Nazi demonstration that was held right outside the theater in the 1930's and apparently attended by same high society people who were in the audience of the play. The introduction to the novel suggested that the audience members were outraged at being confronted with this scene from their past, and the next day the newspapers were filled with wishes that Bernhard leave Austria if he dislikes it. He was a fascinating, insightful, devious, perplexing writer. His writing is sometimes compared with Robert Musil. There is an interesting feature on him at http://www.spikemagazine.com/0299bernhard.htm -Josh Ronsen http://www.nd.org/jronsen --== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==-- Before you buy.
