Anyone else a Thomas Bernhard fan?

Just recently read "The Lime Works" and "Gargoyles". Gargoyles really resonated with me in a lot of ways - I would say it's one of the best books I've read in the past 5 years. Lime Works was also great.
 
I love T. Bernhard, he was able to return the size of dislocation that I seek in books. As it happens with Ligotti. My favourite Bernhard's book is Perturbation.
I'm sorry for my bad english, but i'm trying to learn it (reading some Ligotti's books in original language).
 
I am a Thomas Bernhard junkie. I've read almost everything of his ever translated into English. Victor Halfwit releases tomorrow, which is good, cause I need to get my fix!
 
I noticed this thread has been inactive for awhile, and I just wanted to share a few idle thoughts about Bernhard. Personally, I've read "The Woodcutters", "Extinction", "Concrete" and "Gargoyles", and plan on eventually going through everything Bernhard ever wrote. Like the other posters, I find Bernhard's writings exquisitely, hypnotically readable, and, so far, "Extinction" is my favorite. It's one of the most perfectly realized novels that I've come across, and the ending is simply brilliant.

( What a shame, though, that there doesn't seem to be any published Bernhard correspondence--how fascinating that would be! Or is there in fact something I've missed?......)

At any rate, one thing that struck me in "Extinction" were the frequent references to Jean Paul Richter, and to his novel "Siebenkas". This stood out for me because one of my other favorite authors, Hermann Hesse, often speaks of Jean Paul in the most glowing terms, such as "My beloved Jean Paul", etc. So that got me wondering if anyone else here has read anything by Jean Paul, and has an opinion on his style of writing? Is he at all like Robert Walser, for example? According to Hesse in his "My Belief", Jean Paul's two great masterpieces are "Siebenkas" (translated as "Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces") and "Titan." I just ordered two versions of the classic reprint series, so hopefully they are in English as indicated. Titan is only available in Vol 1 for some reason, but with a little searching, I was able to find a Vol 2.

Anyhow, at this point I'm really eager to read Jean Paul for myself. It's possible, of course, that Hesse's and Bernhard's fondness for Jean Paul won't stand up to the vagaries of Time and translation, though I'm hoping that's not the case here. I don't think that will be a problem for me, as I enjoy long sentences and archaic diction--though I suppose it might rub some readers the wrong way.

Any thoughts? If not, then I'll get back to you in a year or two when I finally get through the Jean Paul novels!
 
PS

To be precise, in "My Belief" Hermann Hesse calls "Titan" and "Flegeljahre" (I believe it's translated "The Awkward Age") Jean Paul's two masterpieces--rather than "Siebenkas". But in the same essay, he does refer to Siebenkas as "that marvelous book." Anyhow, I hope I'm not getting too far from Bernhard here, but it seems that a lot of us enjoy discovering these worthwhile, but obscure literary figures. So for what it's worth.....
 
This rare selection of blackly comedic vignettes from Bernhard is a real treat:

http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.dk/2012/02/translation-of-ereignisse-by-thomas.html

My favorite:

SEVERAL SHADOWS leap out at a homeward-bound workman. They violate him on the riverbank and leave him behind. The moment he tries to get up to set off on his way, the shadows are there again and strike him. They pull him out of his coat and drive him into the river. They push his head under the water and draw long knives through his auditory canals. They attempt to hold him under water until he asphyxiates. At another place he regains consciousness and walks further naked. Again the shadows suddenly appear and strangle him. They throw him into a pit, into a bomb crater and fill it in. He wakes up again and runs along the railway embankment. Now the shadows attack him without warning and throw him into the darkness. He escapes and begins running faster than before. But the shadows haul him in. He hears them screaming his name. They throw him between two boulders that squeeze together and crush him to a pulp. Now he wakes up and turns on the light. He discovers his wife beside him in the bed. He puts on his coat and leaves the house for a couple of hours. In the early morning he is seen riding on his bicycle to the construction site.
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The story about the professor who is driven mad from his study of butterflies (couldn't help but think of Nabokov) is also a hoot.

Pan Michael, if you're hankering for some Bernhard correspondence, some of his letters, speeches, and public statements have been translated and posted by the blogger above. They're all a gas. If you can read German, Suhrkamp published the collected correspondence between Bernhard and his main publisher not too long ago, totaling about 500 letters.
 
Waffiesnaq said:
[...] if you're hankering for some Bernhard correspondence, some of his letters, speeches, and public statements have been translated and posted by the blogger above. They're all a gas.
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Thanks, Waffiesnaq. That site is a great find! It's worth posting a link to this long, provocative, hilarious interview: The Philosophical Worldview Artist: A Translation of "Ich könnte auf dem Papier jemand umbringen" (Thomas Bernhard interviewed in Der Spiegel on June 23, 1980)

And this for all posts with the "Thomas Bernhard" label: The Philosophical Worldview Artist: Thomas Bernhard
 
Thank you for the links and such, I'll surely put them to good use. I've recently become enamored with Bernhard's writing, luckily through availability at my library. "Gathering Evidence" may be my favorite thing of his right now, it being a collection of previously published autobiographical pieces. His humor, in things like "My Prizes", is refreshing.
 
9781941110232.jpg


On Earth and in Hell: Early Poems
Paperback - 256 pages, 10 NOV 2015, 19Euro

The first English translation of the earliest poetry of brilliant and disruptive Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, widely considered one of the most innovative and original authors of the twentieth century and often associated with fellow mavericks Beckett, Kafka and Dostoevsky. A master of language, whose body of work was described in a "New York Times" book review as "the most significant literary achievement since World War II," Bernhard's "On Earth and in Hell" offers a distilled perspective on the essence of his artistry and his theme of death as the only reality. A remarkable achievement by highly-respected translator Peter Waugh.
 
Also search for upcoming release dates for Minetti and Walking.

(Is there thread for upcoming books here? I'm always posting this stuff randomly on some chaotic threads that no one reads or I'm flooding book recommendations which is not really good place for posting this kind of stuff. Honestly, nowadays, coming soon-threads are everything I read on forums)
 
I recently read the novella "Amras" by Bernhard. For those who think that Bernhard writes the same book over and over again (I used to think so and couldn't find much wrong with him doing that) it's quite a surprised. It's about suicide and madness and two brothers living in a tower after their parents have committed suicide (a suicide which should have been the brothers' suicide as well, having been forced into it by their parents and wanting it, they were discovered before dying).

The style is less repetitive, more febrile and hallucinatory than usual with more than a hint of the narrator being even more disturbed than the usual Bernhard narrator. Highly recommended - it's been collected in English in Three Novellas.
 
I hadn't read any Bernhard in years, but I have been reading quite a bit of his work recently. Very enjoyable. He always struck me as making a lot of sense. I like this quote from Ligotti on his work.

"From book to book, Bernhard harps on a particular set of hatreds, including the malign stupidity of doctors, the malign stupidity of the Catholic Church, the malign stupidity of the Austrian government, the malign stupidity of the Austrian people as stand-ins for people everywhere, and the malign stupidity of life itself. "
 
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I'm currently reading Arno Schmidt's trilogy with the English-translated title Nobodaddy's Children. (The coinage "Nobodaddy," taken from William Blake, is also in the original German title.) Schmidt's misanthropy, contempt for the Nazis, contempt for religion, high regard for promethean intellectual and artistic striving, and utterly savage wit (often very funny, even in translation) remind me a lot of Bernhard, although his prose style is more like James Joyce's. I sense that I'm about to go on a Schmidt bender, at least with his early works. His later works, even more Joyceanly experimental, were originally published as folio-sized facsimiles of his original typescripts. These have been translated, but are truly massive texts (apparently you need a sturdy bookstand to read them). Bottom's Dream, to be published in English translation next month, is nearly 1500 folio-sized pages of dense, linguistically-innovative, multi-column text; and apparently much of the story, to the extent there is one, has to do with the problems of translating Edgar Allan Poe into German! I'm not sure when or if I'll find time for that. But, anyway, Nobodaddy's Children -- recommended. Although the Joyce-like prose is not as immediately accessible as Bernhard's, I acclimated to it quickly, and it isn't as hard to read as it first appears to be. I could do without Schmidt's Lolita-type erotic obsession, but we can't have everything.

Edit: Probably should have put this in the Recent Reading thread rather than the Bernhard thread, but Schmidt is in some ways a lot like Bernhard, and I think Bernhard readers would like Schmidt too, so that's why I put it here.
 
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Recently published.

https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Bernhard-3-Days/dp/0922233462/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481872209&sr=1-2


"Great book design is always a combination of several things. Taste, cleverness, an ability to graphically augment content… But this goes beyond all of that. Perhaps beyond design altogether. This collaboration between Laura Lindgren (translator and designer), Ferry Radax (Bernhard’s film biographer), and Thomas Bernhard (one of the great writers of the 20th century) has produced a unique work of art. Bernhard had a pathological suspicion about words and language––about writing, maybe about consciousness, itself–– He wrote in such a way as to undermine the process of writing. The writer with an underlying hatred of writing, as if each word was a stain on the page. I must confess to an awe of Bernhard. Awe and admiration. This dadaesque book, 3 Days, brings Bernhard to life. It may be the quintessential Bernhard volume. I love it, and it has already become one of my favorite books." —Errol Morris, filmmaker and author of Believing Is Seeing
 
bendk said:
Recently published.
Thomas Bernhard: 3 Days: Thomas Bernhard, Ferry Radax, Laura Lindgren, Georg Vogt: 9780922233465: Amazon.com: Books
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This exceeded my expectations. As advertised, it is a small book of stills from the film interspersed with text (in English translation) of Bernhard's improvised monologue. Because of the varied way the text is printed, it's hard to quickly estimate word-count, but I'd guess that Bernhard's monologue is roughly 3,000 words. According to the afterword, Bernhard was initially uninterested in the proposed film, and then nearly backed out during the first day of filming, but ended up being quite pleased with the result.

The stills from the film consist mostly of many similar photos of Bernhard sitting on a white bench in a park. This is somehow more compelling than you might think it would be. I'm reminded that Bernhard had a background in theater. Though mostly impassive, he knew how to project a presence when he was on camera.

That said, the stills from the film don't interest me much. How many pictures of Bernhard do I need? It is the text of the monologue that exceeded my expectations. Bernhard speaks about solitude, the pleasure of melancholia, his harsh childhood, his writing, and his thoughts on various authors. And there are some more abstract, existentialist flights of rhetoric that I can't characterize simply.

A few snippets that aren't necessarily representative but that interested me particularly:

Two useful lessons, of course: solitude, isolation, detachment on the one hand; on the other, perpetual mistrust -- from the solitude, isolation, and detachment.

Even as a child...
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To make oneself understood is impossible; it cannot be done.
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Then again, of course I am hardly a cheery author, no storyteller; I basically detest stories.

I am a story destroyer, I am the typical story destroyer.

In my work, at the first sign of a story taking form, or if I catch sight of even a trace of story, rising somewhere in the distance behind a mound of prose, I shoot it down.
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I prefer being alone.

Essentially it is an ideal condition.

My house is also actually a vast prison.

Which I like very much -- the walls the barest possibility. It is bare and brisk. This has a very good effect on my work. The books, whatever I write, are as is the place I live.
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Apart from Valéry the French never interested me at all... Valéry's Monsieur Teste -- is a book so thoroughly thumbed, I have to buy it again and again; it is always pored over, frayed, in tatters...
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This is daily life, from which you must distance yourself. You have got to leave it all, not close the door behind you but slam it shut and walk away.
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For the curious, here is the film itself (it's worth a look even if, like me, you don't know German):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysUDUgRq5Kk
 
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