Thomas Bernhard?

As a public service here is one of the stories from The Imitator in its entirety.

Hotel Waldhaus

We had no luck with the weather the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even spoiled Neitzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church at Sils , we still hated them.

His novel The Loser is also well worth looking out.

plus,read Sebald as well (Austerlitz,the immagrants) he is very much influenced by Bernahrd,but not as negative as Bernahrd is, with much more influence from Borges,Kafka,Nabokov.

The length can be quite important because his novels (in my experience) resist your attempts to acquire them as a taste (although in my case they lost, badly).

It can be a bit like the "sucking stones" passage in Molloy, although not *all* the novels deliver that kind of comic payoff for your efforts.

So if starting out, perhaps a shorter one would be better.
Of the shorter ones, Old Masters is very funny, and is one of a trilogy about theatre (Woodcutters), music (The Loser), and painting (OM itself).

Sebald is super, too. One of the instructive difference might be in the digressions, or lack of them. Sebald's novels don't foreground the particular gravitational schemes that they follow as they digress from A to B etc, but eventually appear to "go" somewhere; Bernhard novels are perhaps about an *inability* to truly *digress*.

on this topic, i do have a copy of The Loser, but i haven't read it yet. one of these days!

well,Bernhard's influence comes from:
1. Kafka
2. Dostoyevski (especially "notes from the underground")
3. Beckett ("The trilogy")
4. Hamsun ("Hunger")
5. Proust.
6. Broch and Musil, in parts.
7. Peter Handke
8. Canetti (who is influenced by Kafka himself,closing a circle)

Sebald is influenced by Bernhard,adding:
1. Borges
2. Nabokov's memoir "speak,memory"
3. Primo levi's Periodic trable
4. Zeigfrid Lenz
5. Claude simon.

also,writers who are similiar in a way in style and content:
Saul below,Melcolm Lowry,Julio cortazar,Italo svevo,Bruno schultz.

feel free to add..

Go for Correction straightaway -- I think you'd know you'd like it within 20 pages or so.

Love this. Definitely not like Simon, Sebald, Cortazar (wtf?), he places people and things in a way Kafka doesn't, the humour in madness is of a different grain to Beckett's. Maybe she shares certain concerns with Broch and that complete and utter negation, where a needle in a haystack-like search is needed to find illumination...but really, its a particular voice.

Old Masters was exceptional (well done Penguin for publishing), Cutting Timber had some high emotional moments.

Got Extinction. Won't start that for a while but was just thinking its over 300 pages, and whether Bernhard really works on a specific length, 150-250 pages at most, or whether the cranky comedy will carry you along (and he is one of the funniest writers, that's unexpected when you read about him).

i've been thinking about reading this guy because i read Gaddis's "Agapē Agape" last week. The narrator of the book is floundering and halfway furious because Bernhard wrote the book he was going to write ("Concrete", i think) before he got round to it.

It’s my opening page, he’s plagiarized my work right here in front of me before I’ve ever written it!

I just finished Gargoyles yesterday. It felt like a work that helped him ease into his monologue style as the second half is a 100-page monologue, but the first half involves several different characters. This, I think, makes it a fairly decent place to start with his novels. The Voice Imitator was interesting but felt radically different from his airless longer books.

I loved Correction and the Loser. Man, it's hard to believe I started this thread 3.5 years ago. To Sebald's influences upthread needs to be added: Robert Walser.

Here's a Bernhard interview from 86.

I've got one or two you can borrow if you like, jed_

definitely, coz, cheers.

no worries, I'll look them (? I'm sure I have two) out

Thanks for the link to that interview -- and how really very much like his fiction. And very funny, like his fiction (high points were the bits going up to the 'Oh please!' as a response to a question about his poetry, and the attack on Thomas Mann).

I thought he'd put on more of a mask.

yeah I've got 'correction' and 'the loser' - think I might actually have a third now around here somewhere - anyway will drop them into you

One other thing about that interview - at one point Bernhard is asked:

Your style is so distinctive that it has prompted numerous pastiches and parodies...

Does anyone know of an author who has done a pastiche?

By coincidence I was just reading about Horacio Castellanos Moya: he has published a book called El asco, Thomas Bernhard en El Salvador (untranslated, wiki says it is a tribute to Bernhard)

His book, Senselessness, definitely owes a stylistic debt to Bernhard but is not a pastiche.

thomas bernhard?

thomas bernhard

Was just reading about Senselessness. Sounds great.

more like suckhard

i read most of Bernhard but still didnt read limeworks and woodcutters.

which of the two is better?

Woodcutters is a beautiful (good stuff on Woolf and the theatre) but I've not read Limeworks.

Zeno have you read Yaakov Shabtai (I've filled out an ILL for Past Continuous)?

yes, Past Continuous is one of my favourite novels. and it's an Israeli classic.
Shabtai was a talented, unique writer. too bad so many mediocre imitators followed him.

Bernhard and Shabtai shared some aspects of pessimistic philosphy notions , but they differ in style.

They both wrote in a paragraphless style, right? (although from the little I have read that is broken up a bit in the English version)

Piece in the LRB

this news story is straight out of bernhard:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/05/man-drowns-himself-austrian-lake-concrete-block-wife-head-inside

Jelinek is still around so god knows what she can do w/that.

"Everything in an intellectual mind is anarchy."

reading the abish memoir and the part where abish reads bernhard in vienna making me want some bernhard.

This is an indepedent translation of a book published a few years ago by his estate agent (and Bernhard's friend for about a decade), an account of many conversations with Bernhard.

http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2019/02/preface-at-certain-point-in-his-long.html

Only have the 1st part so far (covering Jan '72) but its often really fucking funny in places.

OK, this is hilarious.

We’ve often spoken about his death before. He’s changed his mind three times about where he wants to be buried. First it was Vienna, then Ohlsdorf, and now it’s Neukirchen bei Altmünster. During such conversations Thomas has repeatedly stressed that suicide, which is certainly the way that other people think he’s most likely to die, is something he’ll never commit no matter what. He isn’t about to do the world such a favor. Now he didn’t contradict me. He said that in the event of such a serious accident resulting in the loss of a leg, it would all be over for him, literally and completely over, because walking for hours on end is something he’s quite simply got to do. Thomas rolls up the two pairs of trousers so that he can take them with him to use in washing up and DIY work later on.

Just started Yes, my first Bernhard.

I read that a couple of weeks ago! Not my first, and not his best, but still very good.

Picked up Woodcutters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSHmANet3Ag

Fantastic. I had never seen or heard him before.

I've always imagined per Woodcutters that this guy remains permanently seated, alarmed to see him get up and walk around halfway into this

The person who did the subs for that has translated a lot of Bernhard stuff in his blog and is now having this one published next month:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cheap-Eaters-Thomas-Bernhard/dp/1943679134

Walking is his among his best for me, just astonishing.

That isn't very much mentioned. I might just get it

I want to try Jen Craig this year, here is a short interview where she talks about Bernhard a bit.

https://shortaustralianstories.com.au/q-a-with-jen-craig/

She’s amazing.