Thomas Bernhard

Tell me about him. I grabbed Wittgenstein's Nephew at the library today, but I'm not sure if that is the best place to start.

From the little I've read about him, he seems like the sort of writer I love. Like Bolaño's By Night in Chile, Wittgenstein's Nephew is written without paragraph breaks.

I've never heard of him. No paragraph breaks sounds good though. I'm gonna do a little research...

WG Sebald writes without paragraph breaks too.

He was an Austrian writer who organized his will such that after he died, none of his books may be printed or plays performed in Austria, which is pretty striking.

Horacio Castellanos Moya used him in the title of one of his novels: El asco, Thomas Bernhard en El Salvador.

Here's a review of one of his novels: http://quarterlyconversation.com/thomas-bernhard-correction

"Thomas Bernhard’s Correction, first published in English translation in 1979, is a remarkable novel, formally innovative and richly demanding in content. Bernhard’s writing is frequently grouped with Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, and his affinities with those two preeminent European modernists are on display here. But Bernhard’s approach has its own concerns as well as an arguably darker edge. The characters and situations in Correction are comical and sometimes absurd, but they are also grounded in a recognizable historical reality and geography. As a result there is a surprising weight and closeness to the existential ground his characters ultimately tread upon. When Bernhard’s satire bends into horror as the novel progresses, there is little allegorical distance for the reader to retreat into. The culminating tragedy feels both personal and claustrophobic."

Anyone compared to Kafka and Beckett has to have something going for him. Undoubtedly worthy of investigation...

Bernhard on literary prizes: "a prize is invariably only awarded by incompetent people who want to piss on your head and who do copiously piss on your head if you accept their prize."

Good on ol' Tom!

Cliff, I've read 'Concrete' (which LT doesn't seem to have in its database of titles) 3 or 4 times, and it's one of my favorites. Haven't read any other Bernhard for the same reason I haven't read any other Woolf after To the Lighthouse--I'm afraid to get disappointed.

I am from Austria, yet still I love Thomas Bernhard, who is I think the most important Austrian author of the second half of the 20th century. For anyone wondering what to read by him, I'd suggest Alte Meister (Old Masters), which is delightfully funny at times, yet full of the typical Bernhardian rambling and redundant suadas against Austrian society.

Thanks for the tips, lads, he's on my list.

But, Christ, please don't compare him to Woolf, whom I consider a dreadful, dreadful writer.

That's a funny comic strip--forwarded it to my two sons.

11> You might not like Woolf, but it's ridiculous to call her a dreadful writer. I thought To the Lighthouse was a fantastic book.

11:
Yeah, not to derail the thread or anything, but would you mind providing a quick rundown of what about Woolf's writing you think is dreadful, Cliff? I'm not looking to get into a debate; I'm just curious.

Meandering, unfocussed, pretentious prose; affected, contrived dialogue. None of the characters, nothing in the themes or writing speaks to me, my aesthetic. General comments but they sum up my experiences with Woolf.

This is Woolf describing World War 1 in To the Lighthouse: "A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were blown up in France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous."

To say that she doesn't speak to you or your aesthetic is fair, but to call her prose meandering and unfocused is not.

To each his/her own. But I know I'm not the only one who takes a dim view of Ms. Woolf's prose.

Just finished Frost not too long ago, and can't put my finger on why I didn't find it all that thrilling-- especially since it seems like the sort of novel I'd normally love.

Cliff isn't the only one. I read Orlando a couple of years ago and hated it.

I found Orlando spacier than all get out, but more palatable than the glacial plots of To the Lighthouse or Mrs. Dalloway.

I guess I still have the attention span of a short-tailed shrew. If I have to read Woolf, I might as well read somethng that sounds like it was written under the influence of the ol' bubonic chronic, the ol' Indo, the ol' sticky-icky, aw you get my point.

"bubonic chronic"?

That was my morning chuckle. Thanks, Dawg, I needed that...

If anyone's a Bernhard aficionado, I'd like to know where to go after 'Concrete.'