― andrew s (andrew s), Sunday, 21 January 2007 17:06 (seventeen years ago) link
on this topic, i do have a copy of The Loser, but i haven't read it yet. one of these days!
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 21 January 2007 17:54 (seventeen years ago) link
― The Redd And The Blecch (Ken L), Tuesday, 23 January 2007 22:38 (seventeen years ago) link
― xavier (xave), Thursday, 25 January 2007 13:45 (seventeen years ago) link
well,Bernhard's influence comes from:1. Kafka2. Dostoyevski (especially "notes from the underground")3. Beckett ("The trilogy")4. Hamsun ("Hunger")5. Proust.6. Broch and Musil, in parts.7. Peter Handke8. Canetti (who is influenced by Kafka himself,closing a circle)
Sebald is influenced by Bernhard,adding:1. Borges2. Nabokov's memoir "speak,memory"3. Primo levi's Periodic trable4. Zeigfrid Lenz5. 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..
― conclusions (emekars), Wednesday, 31 January 2007 12:33 (seventeen years ago) link
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.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 28 February 2009 12:53 (fifteen years ago) link
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).
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 15 July 2010 12:56 (thirteen years ago) link
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!
― jed_, Thursday, 15 July 2010 19:34 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― wmlynch, Thursday, 15 July 2010 22:01 (thirteen years ago) link
I've got one or two you can borrow if you like, jed_
― kim jong-ill (cozen), Thursday, 15 July 2010 22:03 (thirteen years ago) link
definitely, coz, cheers.
― jed_, Friday, 16 July 2010 03:14 (thirteen years ago) link
no worries, I'll look them (? I'm sure I have two) out
― kim jong-ill (cozen), Friday, 16 July 2010 08:51 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 16 July 2010 11:33 (thirteen years ago) link
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
― kim jong-ill (cozen), Friday, 16 July 2010 16:19 (thirteen years ago) link
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)
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 16 July 2010 21:26 (thirteen years ago) link
His book, Senselessness, definitely owes a stylistic debt to Bernhard but is not a pastiche.
― wmlynch, Friday, 16 July 2010 21:45 (thirteen years ago) link
thomas bernhard?
thomas bernhard
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 16 July 2010 21:47 (thirteen years ago) link
Was just reading about Senselessness. Sounds great.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 16 July 2010 21:55 (thirteen years ago) link
more like suckhard
― buzza, Saturday, 17 July 2010 03:32 (thirteen years ago) link
i read most of Bernhard but still didnt read limeworks and woodcutters.
which of the two is better?
― Zeno, Sunday, 29 August 2010 16:07 (thirteen years ago) link
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)?
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 29 August 2010 22:04 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― Zeno, Sunday, 29 August 2010 23:09 (thirteen years ago) link
Bernhard and Shabtai shared some aspects of pessimistic philosphy notions , but they differ in style.
― Zeno, Sunday, 29 August 2010 23:21 (thirteen years ago) link
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)
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 30 August 2010 09:28 (thirteen years ago) link
Piece in the LRB
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 28 October 2010 17:43 (thirteen years ago) link
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
― seb mooczag (NickB), Tuesday, 5 January 2016 20:51 (eight years ago) link
Jelinek is still around so god knows what she can do w/that.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 5 January 2016 21:00 (eight years ago) link
"Everything in an intellectual mind is anarchy."
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 28 August 2016 21:51 (seven years ago) link
reading the abish memoir and the part where abish reads bernhard in vienna making me want some bernhard.
― scott seward, Sunday, 28 August 2016 22:28 (seven years ago) link
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.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 4 February 2019 22:34 (five years ago) link
OK, this is hilarious.
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Tuesday, 5 February 2019 00:25 (five years ago) link
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.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 5 February 2019 08:53 (five years ago) link
Just started Yes, my first Bernhard.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 17 February 2020 19:06 (four years ago) link
I read that a couple of weeks ago! Not my first, and not his best, but still very good.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Monday, 17 February 2020 21:17 (four years ago) link
Picked up Woodcutters.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 19 February 2020 16:35 (four years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSHmANet3Ag
― Cocteau Twinks (jed_), Tuesday, 9 February 2021 16:14 (three years ago) link
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
― John Wesley Glasscock (Hadrian VIII), Tuesday, 9 February 2021 17:42 (three years ago) link
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
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 10 February 2021 12:23 (three years ago) link
Walking is his among his best for me, just astonishing.
― groovemaaan, Monday, 10 May 2021 12:48 (three years ago) link
That isn't very much mentioned. I might just get it
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 10 May 2021 12:53 (three years ago) link
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/
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 12 January 2024 21:54 (four months ago) link
She’s amazing.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 12 January 2024 22:54 (four months ago) link