Five Books
by Thomas Bernhard

I was asked recently where to begin with Thomas Bernhard, which book I preferred most. This is a tough question. I’ve never understood the idea of having a favourite (of anything) and wouldn’t want to second guess what somebody else might like. It’s easy to throw out a title, of course, but I would be picking at random. I’d recommend just going for whatever is available, or cheapest, at the time of looking. This, at least, was my way into Bernhard’s work.

When I wrote The Sick List back in 2017, I was gathering and reading Bernhard’s books in this manner. It accompanied and helped shape the book I was writing, which is an experiment in style, an attempt to disrupt the modes of writing (and styles of thinking) that characterise academic writing and university life.

There are many aspects of academia that trouble me, but two spring to mind right now. Firstly, its caution. I understand why intellectual caution is productive and necessary, but as a permanent condition for thinking in the academy it’s also pretty unbearable. Secondly, how academia lauds its own critical mission. I have often witnessed how reluctant the academy can be to turn that critical mission back on itself and take a cold hard look at its own practices and ideals. There are plenty of papers that bemoan aspects of the academy, of course, but none of these really rail against it, and consider the whole edifice to be irredeemable, which it might in fact be. Even gentler, more targeted criticisms are often experienced as unbearable, unfortunate remarks, if they are taken from the safe zone of the academic journal paper and put to use in the context of a committee meeting, for instance.

Working with Thomas Bernhard, not just the content of his work but the style of it, helped me to break into a different register, in this case the form of the monologue. This mode of writing works through repetition, return and extension, self-adjustment, and self-contradiction. Bernhard’s monologues are not consumed by their negativity, but fly with it, quite lightly at times. They are also self-undermining, because the spectacle of the remorselessly negative critic is at the same time an exhibition of the worst traits of that critic. Bernhard’s complainers do not come off well in his books, and seem to know that too (there are occasions of self-criticism in amongst all the attacks). These monologues also remain open, I think, although I’m aware this may sound counter-intuitive. Their refusal of paragraph breaks (and the above mentioned cycles, repetitions, adjustments, and contradictions) ensures that no sentence becomes the clincher, a minor conclusion within the text. Instead, we encounter a wilful, often playful expenditure of arguments.

Extinction (1986)

Thomas Bernhard’s last novel, Extinction, is presented across two enormous slabs of writing. It is possessed by a character, Franz-Josef Murau, who dreams of writing a book called Extinction that would annihilate what he describes. The absurd predicament facing the reader, is that what Franz-Josef describes only appears because a book called Extinction has already been written by Thomas Bernhard.

My version of the book runs to over 300 tightly packed pages during which Franz-Josef mulls over and rails against a whole range of things that irritate him about his family, his native Austria, and the state of the world more generally. Many of his claims might strike (at least some) readers as ill-advised, poorly targeted, lamentably self-satisfied and conceited (Franz-Josef is an aristocrat, after all). His claims are certainly exaggerated, or so they seem, though Franz-Josef discusses that too, turning to the problem of exaggeration a couple of times in the book.

Franz-Josef considers exaggeration an art form in itself, and the only way out of his mental misery. He considers himself “the greatest artist [he knows] in the field of exaggeration”, describing the art of exaggeration as “the art of tiding oneself over existence, of making one’s existence endurable, even possible.” The older he gets, the more he resorts to exaggeration in order to survive what he suffers. His argument then expands to the claim that exaggeration is the only legitimate art, really, and that anyone who does not exaggerate is artistically impoverished:

“The painter who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor painter, the musician who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor musician, and the writer who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor writer.”

This might sound like a recommendation, a prescription. But it is nothing of the sort. Bernhard presents no models to live by, because this statement, one assumes, is an exaggeration in itself. It is an exaggeration to claim that the writer who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor writer, for instance. And then, Bernhard complicates things further:

“With some, of course, the art of exaggeration consists in understating everything, in which case we have to say that they exaggerate understatement, that exaggerated understatement is their particular version of the art of exaggeration.”

We are told in the next line again that, “Exaggeration is the secret of great art … and of great philosophy.” But this statement is completely undermined by its context. It is either an exaggeration, in which case it can be ignored (or at least treated differently), or it is an exaggerated understatement, in which case it is an incitement, but to what?

This is just one example of how Bernhard’s writing permits itself thought-experiments that are never straight arguments. As a mode of criticism, Bernhard’s monologue differs markedly from academic criticism, where the author of an academic argument must stand by what they have written, where they must account for it, and account for themselves as its author. There might be good, strong ethical reasons for doing all that. But as the underpinning framework of academic enquiry, this strikes me still as a monumental restraint on what can be thought and written from the perspective of the academy.

I will turn, very briefly, to four remaining books that influenced me, the first three of which I write about in The Sick List.

Gargoyles (1970)

Gargoyles, is one of Bernhard’s earliest novels, and possibly one of the darkest. It begins by following the daily rounds of a doctor and his son through a mountainous countryside, during which they encounter various grotesque figures, including a young teacher on the verge of death. This teacher is wasting away to nothing, drawing surreal pen portraits of the world he sees, a world that is intent on self-destruction. The portraits are unreal in their horror, but truer in their perception than any other. The novel transitions about halfway through to the dark internal workings of the insomniac Prince Saurau, who can also perceive the horror of the world creaking at his feet.

The Lime Works (1973)

The Lime Works is a claustrophobic masterpiece in which Konrad and his disabled wife, Zryd, imprison themselves in a lime works, near the Austrian town of Sicking. Konrad has them live there so that he can have the space, and peace, to begin writing his great work, his masterpiece, The Sense of Hearing. Konrad submits his wife to his obsession with hearing, attempting to teach his wife to hear tiny variations in a phrase he mutters at her ear, each day, until she collapses with exhaustion. His lesson, which is also his experiment, ultimately fails, and eventually he ends it with a bullet. This, indeed, is where the novel begins. Konrad is one of Bernhard’s great procrastinators and probably the worst of them all.

Correction (1975)

Correction also explores a relationship between an educator and their pupil, or disciple, a person who can also be their friend or partner. In this case, it engages with the ongoing influence of the now-deceased Roithamer on the narrator, who thinks like Roithamer, and suffers still from Roithamer’s “thought-prison”. Roithamer inflicts violence on others too, most notably his sister. He designs and executes the construction of a cone, at the centre of a forest, that will be the perfect representation of his sister, a construction that will also necessarily kill her. Roithamer is possessed by his work, by his great intellectual project, and corrects his work and his thought incessantly until he discovers that his existence is the last error to be remedied.

My Prizes: An Accounting (2009, Notting Hill Editions)

I don’t write about this little collection in The Sick List, but it’s a nice one to end with. Bernhard was celebrated within the culture he attacked, and received numerous awards. In this collection, Bernhard recounts each ceremony, despising the whole awards process, of course, but is unable (or unwilling) to turn them down. He’ll take the money, even if he finds the whole fanfare degrading and repulsive. The basic need to give and receive prizes is the mark of a culture that is already ruined.

Bernhard was not immune to the satisfactions of a good (or at least intense) reception, but when “the general storm of coverage was over” – and the adrenaline subsided – he was left feeling “utterly undone, as if I’d fallen into a pit of terrible despair.” The worst of it, perhaps, is how it had consumed him, driven him, but left him feeling at last empty. “I thought I would choke on the error of believing that literature was my hope,” he writes. Bernhard refuses consolation, to others, to himself, when so many are out looking for it.

 

Ansgar Allen, Feb 2021

I was asked recently where to begin with Thomas Bernhard, which book I preferred most. This is a tough question. I’ve never understood the idea of having a favourite (of anything) and wouldn’t want to second guess what somebody else might like. It’s easy to throw out a title, of course, but I would be picking at random. I’d recommend just going for whatever is available, or cheapest, at the time of looking. This, at least, was my way into Bernhard’s work.

When I wrote The Sick List back in 2017, I was gathering and reading Bernhard’s books in this manner. It accompanied and helped shape the book I was writing, which is an experiment in style, an attempt to disrupt the modes of writing (and styles of thinking) that characterise academic writing and university life.

There are many aspects of academia that trouble me, but two spring to mind right now. Firstly, its caution. I understand why intellectual caution is productive and necessary, but as a permanent condition for thinking in the academy it’s also pretty unbearable. Secondly, how academia lauds its own critical mission. I have often witnessed how reluctant the academy can be to turn that critical mission back on itself and take a cold hard look at its own practices and ideals. There are plenty of papers that bemoan aspects of the academy, of course, but none of these really rail against it, and consider the whole edifice to be irredeemable, which it might in fact be. Even gentler, more targeted criticisms are often experienced as unbearable, unfortunate remarks, if they are taken from the safe zone of the academic journal paper and put to use in the context of a committee meeting, for instance.

Working with Thomas Bernhard, not just the content of his work but the style of it, helped me to break into a different register, in this case the form of the monologue. This mode of writing works through repetition, return and extension, self-adjustment, and self-contradiction. Bernhard’s monologues are not consumed by their negativity, but fly with it, quite lightly at times. They are also self-undermining, because the spectacle of the remorselessly negative critic is at the same time an exhibition of the worst traits of that critic. Bernhard’s complainers do not come off well in his books, and seem to know that too (there are occasions of self-criticism in amongst all the attacks). These monologues also remain open, I think, although I’m aware this may sound counter-intuitive. Their refusal of paragraph breaks (and the above mentioned cycles, repetitions, adjustments, and contradictions) ensures that no sentence becomes the clincher, a minor conclusion within the text. Instead, we encounter a wilful, often playful expenditure of arguments.

Extinction (1986)

Thomas Bernhard’s last novel, Extinction, is presented across two enormous slabs of writing. It is possessed by a character, Franz-Josef Murau, who dreams of writing a book called Extinction that would annihilate what he describes. The absurd predicament facing the reader, is that what Franz-Josef describes only appears because a book called Extinction has already been written by Thomas Bernhard.

My version of the book runs to over 300 tightly packed pages during which Franz-Josef mulls over and rails against a whole range of things that irritate him about his family, his native Austria, and the state of the world more generally. Many of his claims might strike (at least some) readers as ill-advised, poorly targeted, lamentably self-satisfied and conceited (Franz-Josef is an aristocrat, after all). His claims are certainly exaggerated, or so they seem, though Franz-Josef discusses that too, turning to the problem of exaggeration a couple of times in the book.

Franz-Josef considers exaggeration an art form in itself, and the only way out of his mental misery. He considers himself “the greatest artist [he knows] in the field of exaggeration”, describing the art of exaggeration as “the art of tiding oneself over existence, of making one’s existence endurable, even possible.” The older he gets, the more he resorts to exaggeration in order to survive what he suffers. His argument then expands to the claim that exaggeration is the only legitimate art, really, and that anyone who does not exaggerate is artistically impoverished:

“The painter who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor painter, the musician who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor musician, and the writer who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor writer.”

This might sound like a recommendation, a prescription. But it is nothing of the sort. Bernhard presents no models to live by, because this statement, one assumes, is an exaggeration in itself. It is an exaggeration to claim that the writer who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor writer, for instance. And then, Bernhard complicates things further:

“With some, of course, the art of exaggeration consists in understating everything, in which case we have to say that they exaggerate understatement, that exaggerated understatement is their particular version of the art of exaggeration.”

We are told in the next line again that, “Exaggeration is the secret of great art … and of great philosophy.” But this statement is completely undermined by its context. It is either an exaggeration, in which case it can be ignored (or at least treated differently), or it is an exaggerated understatement, in which case it is an incitement, but to what?

This is just one example of how Bernhard’s writing permits itself thought-experiments that are never straight arguments. As a mode of criticism, Bernhard’s monologue differs markedly from academic criticism, where the author of an academic argument must stand by what they have written, where they must account for it, and account for themselves as its author. There might be good, strong ethical reasons for doing all that. But as the underpinning framework of academic enquiry, this strikes me still as a monumental restraint on what can be thought and written from the perspective of the academy.

I will turn, very briefly, to four remaining books that influenced me, the first three of which I write about in The Sick List.

Gargoyles (1970)

Gargoyles, is one of Bernhard’s earliest novels, and possibly one of the darkest. It begins by following the daily rounds of a doctor and his son through a mountainous countryside, during which they encounter various grotesque figures, including a young teacher on the verge of death. This teacher is wasting away to nothing, drawing surreal pen portraits of the world he sees, a world that is intent on self-destruction. The portraits are unreal in their horror, but truer in their perception than any other. The novel transitions about halfway through to the dark internal workings of the insomniac Prince Saurau, who can also perceive the horror of the world creaking at his feet.

The Lime Works (1973)

The Lime Works is a claustrophobic masterpiece in which Konrad and his disabled wife, Zryd, imprison themselves in a lime works, near the Austrian town of Sicking. Konrad has them live there so that he can have the space, and peace, to begin writing his great work, his masterpiece, The Sense of Hearing. Konrad submits his wife to his obsession with hearing, attempting to teach his wife to hear tiny variations in a phrase he mutters at her ear, each day, until she collapses with exhaustion. His lesson, which is also his experiment, ultimately fails, and eventually he ends it with a bullet. This, indeed, is where the novel begins. Konrad is one of Bernhard’s great procrastinators and probably the worst of them all.

Correction (1975)

Correction also explores a relationship between an educator and their pupil, or disciple, a person who can also be their friend or partner. In this case, it engages with the ongoing influence of the now-deceased Roithamer on the narrator, who thinks like Roithamer, and suffers still from Roithamer’s “thought-prison”. Roithamer inflicts violence on others too, most notably his sister. He designs and executes the construction of a cone, at the centre of a forest, that will be the perfect representation of his sister, a construction that will also necessarily kill her. Roithamer is possessed by his work, by his great intellectual project, and corrects his work and his thought incessantly until he discovers that his existence is the last error to be remedied.

My Prizes: An Accounting (2009, Notting Hill Editions)

I don’t write about this little collection in The Sick List, but it’s a nice one to end with. Bernhard was celebrated within the culture he attacked, and received numerous awards. In this collection, Bernhard recounts each ceremony, despising the whole awards process, of course, but is unable (or unwilling) to turn them down. He’ll take the money, even if he finds the whole fanfare degrading and repulsive. The basic need to give and receive prizes is the mark of a culture that is already ruined.

Bernhard was not immune to the satisfactions of a good (or at least intense) reception, but when “the general storm of coverage was over” – and the adrenaline subsided – he was left feeling “utterly undone, as if I’d fallen into a pit of terrible despair.” The worst of it, perhaps, is how it had consumed him, driven him, but left him feeling at last empty. “I thought I would choke on the error of believing that literature was my hope,” he writes. Bernhard refuses consolation, to others, to himself, when so many are out looking for it.

 

Ansgar Allen, Feb 2021