A review of Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian, by Gitta Honegger. In the third volume of his inimitable autobiography he writes: “All my life I have been a trouble-maker, and I shall go on ...

For all its occasional shrillness and repetitiousness, and its denunciations of ""society,'' ``community'' and ``education'' in terms of passionate generality, this unparagraphed outpouring of ...

For the sympathetic Anglophone charged with reviewing newly translated texts by the Austrian playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard, the task is a paradoxically onerous one. Put aside the near ...

The name Thomas Bernhard appears in the jacket copy and pre-publication reviews of three novels out this summer, and it’s not a coincidence. “Within the Bernhardian universe,” one jacket opines; ...

Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 24, No. 3/4, Special Issue: Form and Style in Contemporary Austrian Literature (1991), pp. 73-83 (11 pages) The use of contrapuntal narration in Der Untergeher ...

As we watch Mario Vargas Llosa step up to accept his Nobel gold from King Carl Gustaf in this season of literary awards, and a handful of fortunate National Book Award winners pocket their $10,000 ...

So much, in literature as in life, proves to be a matter of pleasing people. In some sense, all creative writing courses are precisely about imparting the tricks of pleasure: show, don't tell; choose ...

His work was powered by bile and dread, but the Austrian novelist found laughter in the dark. By Chris Power I first encountered Thomas Bernhard in a university Waterstones in 1997, when I picked up a ...

Rereading Thomas Bernhard’s Extinction (1986) was a prospect I contemplated with some trepidation. Not because of the risk that, in the 20-plus years since I last read it, the book might fall short of ...

“Love moves me to speak,” Beatrice tells Dante as she leads him through Paradise. Loathing moved the late Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard to write. He wrote with unfailing vitriolic scorn and run-on ...

The first time I encountered a book by Thomas Bernhard, the Austrian novelist and playwright, was in 1994. I was in Vienna. I was 20, staying in the apartment of a family friend named Susie. I was in ...