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| Thomas Bernhard photographed in 1957 Photograph by Helmut Baar |
DRAGON
Thomas Bernhard
(1931 - 1989)
Novelist, poet, and playwright Thomas Bernhard is one of the great German-language writers of the latter half of the 20th century. His work is often described as acerbic, misanthropic, and unrelenting. Influenced by Kafka and Wittgenstein, Bernhard’s novels unfold without paragraphs in intricately patterned musical motifs. According to Michael Hofmann in the London Review of Books, “Before we talk about the quality of the opinions, or the kilotonnage of the diatribes, or the relentlessness of the assault (is anything exempt?), we ought to talk about the patterns of repetition and variation in the unspooling sentences of the unparagraphed prose. If Bernhard is anything, he is a stuck harpsichord record, knocking out its trapped and staggered shards of shrilly hammered phrases.” Bernhard’s first published works were poetry, including the collection Auf der Erde und in der Hölle (1957). Bernhard’s first novel, Frost (1963, translated by Michael Hofmann, 2006), was a collection of notes made by a medical student sent to follow and observe an elderly painter. The painter’s rants and his pessimistic understanding of the task of the artist in post-war society set the tone for many of Bernhard’s novels and plays.
According to the New Yorker’s Ruth Franklin, “All the elements of his [Bernhard’s] intensely pessimistic world view—remorseless fury at a callous universe, lack of faith in human relationships, manic pursuit of aesthetic perfection—were likely set by the hardships of his youth.” Thomas Bernhard was born to an unwed mother in a Dutch clinic; he never met his father and was possibly the child of a rape. His maternal grandparents in part raised him, in Salzburg, Austria. Bernhard’s grandfather, an obscure writer named Johannes Freumbichler, exerted considerable influence over Bernhard, who went on to model many of his most self-righteously vitriolic characters after Freumbichler. Bernhard later called his walks and discussions with Freumbichler “the only useful education I had.” Bernhard’s mother remarried when he was six, and the family moved to Germany. There, Bernhard endured bullying and schoolyard misery; in 1943, at the height of World War II, he was sent back to Salzburg to a National Socialist Home for Boys. He dropped out of school at age 15. In 1949, his hopes for a career in opera were dashed when he developed a lung infection that led to the chronic illness that plagued him for the rest of his life. He began to write in the hospital, however, and much that is known about his life comes from his five-volume autobiography Gathering Evidence (translated by David McLintock, 1985).
Bernhard published dozens of novels, plays, and collections of poetry in his lifetime. Works that have been translated into English include Gargoyles (trans. Richard and Clara Winston, 1970), The Lime Works (trans. Sophie Wilkins, 1986); Correction (trans. Sophie Wilkins, 1979), The Loser (trans. Jack Dawson, 1991), Wittgenstein’s Nephew (trans. David McLintock, 1989), Woodcutters (trans. David McLintock, 1987; also published as Cutting Timber: An Irritation, trans. Ewald Osers, 1988), Old Masters (trans. Ewald Osers, 1989), and Bernhard’s last published novel, Extinction (trans. David McLintock, 1995). A selection of Bernhard’s poetry was published as In Hora Mortis/Under the Iron of the Moon (trans. James Reidel, 2006). English translations of Bernhard’s plays include Histrionics: Three Plays (trans. Peter Jansen and Kenneth Northcott, 1990). Bernhard famously banned republication of his work, or production of any of his plays, in Austria for the 70 years following his death.
POETRY FOUNDATION
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bernhard
The Unrelenting Novels of Thomas Bernhard
Often characterized by a seething loathing of social decor, patriotism, and ego, and fed by years spent suffering from tuberculosis and a gathering madness that would eventually force him to spend two years in a sanatorium, Bernhard's work is some of...
During the 58 years of his life, the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931–1989) composed more than 60 works of fiction, theater, poetry, and nonfiction, including at least 29 books currently available in English. He is considered by many to be the greatest author in the German language since World War II. Often characterized by his seething loathing of social decor, patriotism, and ego, and fed by years spent suffering from tuberculosis and a gathering madness that would eventually force him to spend two years in a sanatorium, his work is some of the blackest, most bare-teethed realist writing available. Over the past several years, Vintage has been reissuing his novels as a series, enabling me to finally fill in the gaps in my reading of his most notable translated work.
Frost (1963)
Written in a plain, almost diary-like catalog of days, Frost follows a young doctor taking up the company of a dying and reclusive painter in order to report on him to his mentor. Even this early on in his career, Bernhard is able to use a simple narrative about the daily activity of human company as a showroom for his black philosophies, ranging from critical to insane. As they talk and walk around the town, the painter, pretty much at what you could call the end of his rope, goes on diatribes and casts his ideas on every inch of the surrounding world, creating a seemingly simple but unrelenting sprawl of criticism and shit talk. The ideas accumulate and grow in on one another until it becomes difficult to know the real from the unreal. Not one of my favorites of Bernhard’s, but compelling in how it sets up the style he will grow only more intense about with each subsequent work.
Representative Sentence: “Terminal illnesses are like exotic landscapes.”
Gargoyles (1967)
This was the first book of Bernhard’s to be translated into English, and the one that began his rise to fame. There’s a rather strange symbiotic sort of texture here: the book begins by following a doctor on his rounds in a small town, treating odd characters who are sick or confined, while exhibiting to his son, who is along for the day, all that can go wrong. After a small strange tour of homes, they end up at the castle of a prince, who essentially takes over the voice of the book with endless ranting about the minds of men: their foolishness, their delusions, their egoism, their lack of spirit or intellect, their exhaustion. Throughout the 100-page rant, a tension that could only be found in the likes of Bernhard develops, riding the weird gap between the bizarre and tedious prince and the nearly silent father and son, climaxing not with plot but with a sublimely monotonic and almost pummeled sort of feeling, again one that the future Bernhard will bend even harder onto the reader.
Representative Sentence: “Sometimes the actual existence and the pretended existence of a person merge in a way that is fatal for him.”
The Lime Works (1970)
Marking a distinct turn from the mostly socially concerned matters of Bernhard’s previous work, The Lime Works is probably the most bizarre, bordering on surreal, of all his novels. At its center is the story of a man who buys an old stone labyrinth and moves into it with his crippled wife. He intends to use this isolation to write a masterwork on human hearing, and forces his wife to take part in a series of strange experiments by way of research. But even in her captivity, the man blames his wife’s presence for his inability to complete the work, culminating in an insane mesmeric rant about the nature of creation and concentration at the end of which, taking place at the book’s beginning, he shoots his wife twice in the head. This is perhaps the most twisted of Bernhard’s maniacal creations, and the first to appear as a single unending paragraph, the format for the majority of his subsequent work.
Representative Sentence: “It was possible to have anything in your head, and in fact everybody did have everything in his head, but on paper almost nobody had anything.”
Correction (1975)
This was the first Bernhard novel I read, and it’s still my favorite. Coming off the bizarre enclosure of The Lime Works, Correction goes even deeper into the black. It’s so unrelenting that it becomes a kind of wonder of desolation, of frustration, though in a way that is so blunt and fucked it feels only more and more near. The overlying idea here is the presence of a cone, built by a man named Roithamer for his sister to live inside of in the middle of a forest. But when she enters the cone, his sister dies, and Roithamer kills himself in grief, leaving the narrator to go through Roithamer’s plans and papers for the cone’s construction and the unblinking rhetoric of the surrounding world’s corruption, darkness, and destruction, to the point that even the identity of the speaker and the suicided Roithamer begin to blur together, in a voice. It’s not necessarily the easiest introduction to Bernhard’s body, but it is certainly one of the most densely deathly books around and worth a read.
Representative Sentence: “Had the idea of building the Cone not surfaced, he would still be in England today, but his life had to turn out as it has, in fact, turned out, the idea of the Cone brought his life to a new high-point, the highest possible in fact, I now said, the six years he spent on the Cone were undoubtedly the high-point of Roithamer’s life, certainly the perfecting of the Cone was.”
Concrete (1982)
Concrete is interesting in that it is a monologue delivered by a man who meant to write another book instead. He is driven into a kind of endless paranoia by the presence of his sister, whom he knows may appear at any moment and interrupt his work. As a result, instead of focusing on music, which was the original topic of his book, the author is flooded with anxiety over being unable to ever become what he wants, to do what he wants, as he realizes this has always been the case, in all things, at the price of his entire life. It’s a refreshingly short, infuriatingly honest account of being human among humans, in constant conflict, terrified.
Representative Sentence: “All our lives we’ve been looking for something, in the end for everything imaginable, and never finding it, always wanting to achieve everything and not succeeding, or else achieving it and losing it at the selfsame moment.”
The Loser (1983)
The Loser is again unique among Bernhard’s plot structures in that it incurs a close relationship among three men: the pianist Glenn Gould and two of his former classmates. One of those classmates serves as the book’s narrator, who, witnessing Gould’s genius in school gave up his craft, after realizing he would never be as great as his classmate; the other student, recognizing the same thing, killed himself. Many speculate that Bernhard, who was himself obsessed with music as a student but forced to give it up partially as a result of his tuberculosis, based at least the spirit of the mesh of contemplation of genius, failure, and methods of handling obscurity on his own most personal struggles. Perhaps the most immediately accessible and oddly moving of Bernhard’s whole career.
Representative Sentence: “When I get up I’m revolted by myself and everything I have to do.”
Woodcutters (1984)
Intentionally or not, Woodcutters is probably Benhard’s funniest book, if we can define funny as being a total social dick. Basically, the narrator goes to a party he doesn’t want to thrown by people he doesn’t like and sits in a wingchair waiting to eat dinner while thinking hateful things about the others at the party. He mentally pisses on them for acting tasteful when they have no taste, acting cultured when they worship shit, and begging for social praise by throwing a party for a pompous actor who shows up several hours late—all of this on the day of a funeral for one of their old friends, a woman who had just committed suicide. Bernhard’s monologue of hate continues to build the scene into a social spectacle of egoism and flaunting and pretension until the guest of honor finally arrives. The novel is particularly odd in how it draws you into the social spectacle while simultaneously making you hate the speaker and the spoken of. In short, it engrosses you in the weird ways people try to go about being people in one another’s eyes.
Representative Sentence: “At Kilb he made himself look vulgar and ridiculous by screaming This food’s abominable, in the same way, it now occurred to me, as he’s made himself look vulgar and ridiculous hundreds and thousands of times in my presence.”
Extinction (1986)
Bernhard’s last and longest novel might in the end be my favorite of all, if for wholly different reasons than Correction. Much of Bernhard’s work during his final years fixated on the social hells of ridiculous social climbers and shitty artists, and this is the most intensely critical of those people, to the point where it rather directly acknowledges that there’s no one who isn’t fucked. Written as an autobiographical account of the son of a wealthy family who has just received word his parents and brother have been killed in a car accident, he somewhat reluctantly returns home to oversee the mass funeral. What follows is a massive and unflagging criticism of every element of the town where he grew up, from his family’s shoddy treatment of employees, to a massive library held in disdain, and, most significantly, his parents’ Nazi ties. There’s something hypnotic about Bernhard’s monolithic-paragraph style, and the flood of formal language he uses to pull apart the character of anything he sees, including the narrator himself. Subtle in its implications, and not so subtle in its disdain, Extinction is about as pointed an antisocial firestorm as could be imagined.
Representative Sentence: “My sisters had gleefully recited to me the names of all who had announced that they would attend the funeral, and the list was headed by the Gaulteiters, the SS officers, and the members of the Blood Order.”
Primary Materials
Gargoyles, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1970.
"The Joiner" (a story), translated by David Horrocks, in Parallel Text: German Short Stories 2, Penguin Books Ltd, London, 1976.
Correction, translated by Sophie Wilkins, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1979.
Gathering Evidence, translated by David McLintock, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1985.
Wittgenstein’s Nephew, translated by Ewald Osers, Quartet Books Ltd., London, 1986.
The Lime Works, translated by Sophie Wilkins, University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Cutting Timber, translated by Ewald Osers, Quartet Books Ltd, London, 1988.
Woodcutters, translated by David McLintock, University of Chicago Press, 1989. (another translation of the above book)
Woodcutters, translated by David McLintock, University of Chicago Press, 1989. (another translation of the above book)
Concrete, translated by Trans. David McLintock, Quartet Books Ltd, London, 1989.
Old Masters, translated by Ewald Osers, Quartet Books Ltd, London, 1989.
Histrionics: Three Plays, translated by Peter Jansen and Kenneth Nothcott, University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Histrionics: Three Plays, translated by Peter Jansen and Kenneth Nothcott, University of Chicago Press, 1990.
The Cheap-Eaters, translated by Ewald Osers, Quartet Books Ltd., London, 1990.
The Loser, translated by Jack Dawson, Quartet Books Ltd., London, 1992.
Yes, translated by Ewald Osers, Quartet Books Ltd., London
1992.
1992.
On the Mountain, translated by Russell Stockman, Quartet Books Ltd, London, 1993.
Extinction, translated by David McLintock, Quartet Books Ltd., London, 1995.
The Voice Imitator, translated by Kenneth Northcott, University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Heldenplatz, a play, translated by Gita Honnegger and published in Conjunctions:33, Fall 1999.
Three Novellas: Amras, Playing Watten, Walking, translated by Peter Janse, Kenneth Northcott, and Brian Evenson, University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Three Novellas: Amras, Playing Watten, Walking, translated by Peter Janse, Kenneth Northcott, and Brian Evenson, University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Secondary Materials
Books on Thomas Bernhard
Calandra, Denis. New German dramatists: a study of Peter Handke, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Heiner Müller, Thomas Brasch, Thomas Bernhard and Botho Strauss. London: Macmillan, 1983.
Dowden, Stephen D., Understanding Thomas Bernhard, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872497593/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872497593/
Hens, Gregor, Thomas Bernhards Trilogie der Künste. Der Untergeher, Holzfällen, Alte Meister. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1999.
A short summary on the publisher’s site:
http://www.boydell.co.uk/3496.HTM
A short summary on the publisher’s site:
http://www.boydell.co.uk/3496.HTM
Honegger, Gitta Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian, New Haven: Yale UP, 2001.
Konzett, Matthias, (ed and introd), A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002.
The introduction on line:
http://www.boydell.co.uk/pdfs/chwtb.pdf
A short summary on the publisher’s site:
http://www.boydell.co.uk/3956.HTM
The introduction on line:
http://www.boydell.co.uk/pdfs/chwtb.pdf
A short summary on the publisher’s site:
http://www.boydell.co.uk/3956.HTM
--------- The Rhetoric of National Dissent in Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and Elfriede Jelinek, Rochester, N : Camden House, 2000.
A short summary on the publisher’s site:
http://www.boydell.co.uk/3248.HTM
Short summary here:
http://www.boydell.co.uk/4018.HTM
A short summary on the publisher’s site:
http://www.boydell.co.uk/3248.HTM
Short summary here:
http://www.boydell.co.uk/4018.HTM
Markolin, Caroline; Hartweg, Petra (tr); Skwara, Erich Wolfgang (afterword), Thomas Bernhard and His Grandfather Johannes Freumbichler: 'Our Grandfathers are Our Teachers', Riverside, CA: Ariadne, 1993.
Info at Amazon.
Info at Amazon.
Martin, Charles W., The Nihilism of Thomas Bernhard: The Portrayal of Existential and Social Problems in His Prose Works, Amsterdam & Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 1995. 277 pp.
Special Thomas Bernhard Issue, Modern Austrian Literature, 1988; 21(3-4)
http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~jvansant/specialissues.pdf
http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~jvansant/specialissues.pdf
Special Section on Thomas Bernhard, Pequod: A Journal of Contemporary Literature and Literary Criticism, 1992; 33: 52-133
Essay and Chapters of Books
Anderson, Mark, “Notes on Thomas Bernhard,” Raritan: A Quarterly Review. New Brunswick, NJ. 1987 Summer; 7(1): 81-96.
Franklin, Ruth, "The Art of Extinction: The bleak laughter of Thomas Bernhard." 2006, The New Yorker, December 26.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/25/061225crbo_books?currentPage=all
Anderson, Mark M., “Fragments of a Deluge: The Theater of Thomas Bernhard's Prose,” Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 119-35.
Anonymous, [Thomas Bernhard] Book Forum: The Review for Art, Fiction, and Culture. 2001 Fall; 8(3): 17-23.
Barry, Thomas F., “On Paralysis and Transcendence in Thomas Bernhard,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1988; 21(3-4): 187-200.
Barthofer, Alfre,” The Plays of Thomas Bernhard: A Report,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1978; 11(1): 21-48.
Bostick, Alan D., “Thomas Bernhard: An Appreciation on the Occasion of His Death,” The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1990 Spring; 10(1): 289-294.
Bozzi, Paola, “Homeland, Death, and Otherness in Thomas Bernhard's Early Lyrical Works,”in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 71-87.
Brokoph Mauch, Gudrun, “Thomas Bernhard,” in Daviau, Donald G. (ed.). Major Figures of Contemporary Austrian Literature. New York : Peter Lang, 1987, p. 89-115.
Burgin, Richard, “Notes on Concrete: Of Dostoevsky and Dogs,” Pequod: A Journal of Contemporary Literature and Literary Criticism. 1992; 34: 174-79.
Carpenter, Charles A., “The Plays of Bernhard, Bauer, and Handke: A Checklist of Major Critical Studies,” Modern Drama. 1981 Jan.; 23(4): 484-491.
Cousineau, Thomas J., "Thomas Bernhard," Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XXI, No. 2, 2001, pp. 41-70.
Craft, Robert, “The Comedian of Horror,” The New York Review of Books. 1990 Sept 27; 37(14): 40-48.
Craig, D.A., “The Novels of Thomas Bernhard: A Report.” German Life and Letters. 1972; 25: 343-53.
D'Adamo, Thomas, “A Reader's Guide,” Book Forum: The Review for Art, Fiction, and Culture. 2001 Fall; 8(3): 20-23.
Daviau,-Donald-G, “The Reception of Thomas Bernhard in the United States,” Modern Austrian Literature (MAL). Riverside, CA. 1988; 21(3-4): 243-276.
Dierick, Augustinus P., “Thomas Bernhard’s Austria: neurosis, symbol or expedient?” Modern Austrian Literature 1979, 1, p. 73-93.
Dierick, Augustinus P., „Die verrückte Magdalena. An early short story by Thomas Bernhard, German Life and Letters 1981, p. 267-271.
Doherty, Monika, “Discourse Theory and the Translation of Clefts between English and German,” A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer, in Kenesei,-Istvan (ed.,preface, and introd.); Harnish, Robert M. (ed., preface, and introd.); Gervain, Judit (assistant, ed.). Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Benjamins, 2001, 273-92.
Dowden, Stephen D., “A Testament Betrayed: Bernhard and His Legacy,” in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 51-67.
Dowden, Steve, “Thomas Bernhard's Austria,” Partisan Review. 1994 Fall; 61(4): 624-27
Eben, Michael C., “Thomas Bernhard's Frost: Early Indications of an Austrian Demise,” Neophilologus. 1985 Oct.; 69(4): 590-603.
Edwards, Thomas S. "Fools and Charlatans: Translating Thomas Bernhard." Translation Review No. 30/31, 1989. pp. 61-65.
Eisner, Nicholas, “Theatertheater/Theaterspiele: The Plays of Thomas Bernhard,” Modern Drama. 1987 Mar.; 30(1): 104-114.
Esslin, Martin, “Beckett and Bernhard: A Comparison,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1985; 18(2): 67-78.
Esslin, Martin, “A Drama of Disease and Derision: The Plays of Thomas Bernhard,” Modern Drama. 1981 Jan.; 23(4): 367-384.
Federico, Joseph A., “Millenarianism, Legitimation, and the National Socialist Universe in Thomas Bernhard's Vor dem Ruhestand,” The Germanic Review. 1984 Fall; 59(4): 142-148.
Fetz, Gerald A., “The Works of Thomas Bernhard: 'Austrian Literature'?,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1984; 17(3-4): 171-192.
----------, “Kafka and Bernhard: Reflections on Affinity and Influence,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1988; 21(3-4): 217-241.
----------, “Thomas Bernhard and the 'Modern Novel',” in Bullivant, Keith (ed.). The Modern German Novel. Leamington: Berg, 1987, p. 89-108.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/25/061225crbo_books?currentPage=all
Frederico, Joseph, “Heimat, Death, and the Other in Thomas Bernhard's Frost and Verstörung,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1996; 29(3-4): 223-42.
Gelus, Marjorie, „The Advantage of Death: Thomas Bernhard's Attaché an der franzosischen Botschaft und An der Baumgrenze,“ Modern Austrian Literature. 1988; 21(3-4): 69-88.
Godwin Jones, Robert, “The Terrible Idyll: Thomas Bernhard's Das Kalkwerk,” Germanic Notes. 1982; 13(1): 8-10.
Gorner, Rudiger,” The Broken Window Handle: Thomas Bernhard's Notion of Weltbezug,” in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 89-103.
Gorner, Rudiger, “The Excitement of Boredom: Thomas Bernhard,” in Sebald, W. G. (ed., pref., introd.). A Radical Stage: Theatre in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. Oxford : Berg, 1988, p. 161-173.
Griesemer, John, “An Actor Reads Bernhard,” Pequod: A Journal of Contemporary Literature and Literary Criticism. 1992; 33: 113-23.
Gross, Robert F.,Jr, “'The Greatest Uncertainty': The Perils of Performance in Thomas Bernhard's Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige,” Modern Drama. 1981 Jan.; 23(4), 385-392.
Gruber, William E., "Sights unseen: withholding information in the plays of Thomas Bernhard." Goliath, Gale Group, Cengage Learning, published on line March 22, 2002.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-1562580_ITM
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-1562580_ITM
Hoesterey, Ingeborg, “Visual Art as Narrative Structure: Thomas Bernhard's Alte Meister,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1988; 21(3-4): 117-122.
Hoffmeister, Donna L., “Post-Modern Theater: A Contradiction in Terms? Handke, Strauss, Bernhard and the Contemporary Scene,” Monatshefte für Deutscheunterricht, Deutsche Sprache undLiteratur. 1987 Winter; 79(4): 424-438.
Honegger, Gitta, “Acoustic Masks: Strategies of Language in the Theater of Canetti, Bernhard, and Handke,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1985; 18(2): 57-66.
--------------, “Wittgenstein's Children: The Writings of Thomas Bernhard,” Yale School of Drama. 1983 Winter; 15(1): 58-63.
---------------, “Language Speaks. Anglo-Bernhard: Thomas Bernhard in Translation,” p. 169-85 in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 169-85.
---------------, “The Stranger Inside the Word: From Thomas Bernhard's Plays to the Anatomical Theater of Elfriede Jelinek,” in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 137-48.
----------------, “Bernhard Minetti as Bernhard's Minetti,” Yale School of Drama 2000; 30(1): 49-87.
----------------, “Fools on the Hill: Thomas Bernhard's Mise-en-Scene,” Performing Arts Journal. 1997 Sept; 19(3(57)): 34-48.
---------------, “Thomas Bernhard,” Partisan Review.1991 Summer; 58(3): 493-505.
Hornung, Alfred, “Reading One/Self: Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, John Barth, Alain Robbe-Grillet; Sel. Papers Presented at Workshop on Postmodernism at XIth Internat. Compar. Lit. Cong., Paris, 20-24 Aug. 1985,
in Calinescu, Matei (ed.); Fokkema, Douwe (ed.). Exploring Postmodernism. Amsterdam : Benjamins, 1987, p. 175-198.
---------------, “Fantasies of the Autobiographical Self: Thomas Bernhard, Raymond Federman, Samuel Beckett,” Journal of Beckett Studies. (1989); 11-12: 91-107.
Ibsch, Elrud, “From Hypothesis to Korrektur: Refutation as a Component of Postmodern Discourse,” Papers presented at Workshop on Postmodernism, Sept. 21-231984, Univ. of Utrecht, in Fokkema, Douwe Wessel (ed.); Bertens, Hans Willem (ed.). Approaching Postmodernism. Amsterdam : Benjamins, 1986, p. 119-133.
----------------, “The Refutation of Truth Claims,” in Bertens, Hans (ed., foreword, and notes); Fokkema, Douwe (ed., foreword, and notes); Valdes, Mario J. (preface). International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice. Amsterdam, Netherlands : Benjamins, 1997, p. 265-72.
Indiana, Gary, “Thomas Bernhard,” Book Forum: The Review for Art, Fiction, and Culture. 2001 Fall; 8(3): 17-18.
Jeutter, Ralf, “Polarity and Breathing-Aspects of Thomas Bernhard's Plays,” in Finlay, Frank (ed.); Jeutter, Ralf (ed.). Centre Stage: Contemporary Drama in Austria. Amsterdam, Netherlands : Rodopi, 1999, p. 181-92.
Jopling, Michael, “'Es gibt ja nur Gescheitertes': Bernhard as Company for Beckett,” Journal of European Studies. 1997 Mar; 27(1 (105)): 49-71.
Joyce, Steven J., “The Denial of Alterity: Malaise and Polyphony in Thomas Bernard's Heldenplatz,” in Bialas, Zbigniew (ed.); Krajka, Wieslaw (ed.). East-Central European Traumas and a Millennial Condition. Boulder: East European Monographs, 1999, p. 59-86.
Joyce, Steven, “Kismet and Continuities: Post-modernism and Thomas Bernhard's Der Theatermacher,” Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik. Lexington, KY. 1991; 24(1): 24-37.
Kersten, Lee, „Austrian Film and Seeing/Hearing Voices in Bernhard/Radax Der Italiener,“ Interdisziplinare Konferenz uber Geschichte, Kultur und Gesellschaft Osterreichs im 20. Jahrhundert, Germanistisches Institut, Monash Universitat 16-18 Mai, 1980, in Bodi, Leslie (ed.); Thomson, Philip (ed.). Das Problem Osterreich: Arbeitspapiere. Clayton, Australia : Monash Univ., 1982, p. 105-110.
Lepschy, Christoph, “Bernhard Reads Kleist, II: A Text as Murderer,” in Debatin, Bernhard (ed. and introd.); Jackson, Timothy R. (ed. and introd.); Steuer, Daniel (ed. and introd.). Metaphor and Rational Discourse. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997, p. 251-57.
--------------, “Bernhard Reads Kleist, I: A Marionette Theatre as a Writing Machine,” in Debatin, Bernhard (ed. and introd.); Jackson, Timothy R. (ed. and introd.); Steuer, Daniel (ed. and introd.). Metaphor and Rational Discourse. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997, p. 13-24.
Leventhal, RobertS., “The Rhetoric of Anarcho-Nihilistic Murder: Thomas Bernhard's Das Kalkwerk,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1988; 21(3-4): 19-38.
Long, Jonathan, "Thomas Bernhard's Die Macht der Gewohnhei" in Hutchinson, Peter (ed.), Landmarks in German Comedy , 2006 Lang, pp. 211-226
--------------, "Narration and Repetition in the Late Novels of Thomas Bernhard" in Fetz, Gerald (ed.), Thomas Bernhard: Retrospective Essays , 2003, Ariadne Press.
--------------,“Ungleichzeitigkeiten: Class Relationships in Bernhard's Fiction,” in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 187-208.
--------------, "Resisting Bernhard: Women and Violence in Das Kalkwerk, Ja and Auslöschun." 2001, Seminar 37, pp. 33-52
--------------, “Veracity, Mendacity, Absurdity: Form and Its Function in Thomas Bernhard's Der Stimmenimitator,” Forum for Modern Language Studies. 1996 Oct; 32(4): 343-53.
--------------, “Veracity, Mendacity, Absurdity: Form and Its Function in Thomas Bernhard's Der Stimmenimitator,” Forum for Modern Language Studies. 1996 Oct; 32(4): 343-53.
Lopate, Phillip, “On Not Reading Thomas Bernhard, Pequod: A Journal of Contemporary Literature and Literary Criticism. 1992; 33: 72-83.
Lorenz, Dagmar, “The Established Outsider: Thomas Bernhard,” in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 29-50.
McLintock, David Robert, “Tense and Narrative Perspective in Two Works of Thomas Bernhard,” Oxford German Studies. 1980; 11: 1-26.
Malkin, Jeanette R.,”Pulling the Pants Off History: Politics and Postmodernism in Thomas Bernhard's Eve of Retirement,” Theatre Journal. 1995 Mar; 47(1): 105-19.
-------------, “Thomas Bernhard, Jews, Heldenplatz,” in Schumacher, Claude (ed. and introd.). Staging the Holocaust: The Shoah in Drama and Performance. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP, 1998, p. 281-97.
Martin, Charles W., “The Nihilism of Thomas Bernhard: The Portrayal of Existential and Social Problems in His Prose Works,” Amsterdam : Rodopi, 1995. 277 pp.
Mavrikakis, Catherine, “To End the Glorification of Suffering,” Bucknell Review: A Scholarly Journal of Letters, Arts and Sciences. 1998; 42(2): 124-35.
Mehigan, Tim, „Violent Orders in Robert Musil's 'Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften' and Thomas Bernhard's 'Kalkwerk',“ in Huppauf, Bernd (ed. and introd.). War, Violence, and the Modern Condition. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997, p. 300-16.
Meyerhofer, Nicholas J., “The Laughing Sisyphus: Reflections on Bernhard as (Self)-Dramatist in Light of His Der Theatermacher,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1988; 21(3-4): 107-115.
Motola, Gabriel, “Thomas Bernhard's Austria,” Pequod: A Journal of Contemporary Literature and Literary Criticism. 1992; 33: 54-62.
Mura, David, “Waiting for the End: Bernhard's Concrete,” Pequod: A Journal of Contemporary Literature and Literary Criticism.1992; 33: 100-12.
Murphy, Bruce, “The Shadow of Life: Negation, Nihilism, and Insanity in Thomas Bernhard's Correction,” in Fischlin, Daniel (ed.). Negation, Critical Theory, and Postmodern Textuality. Dordrecht : Kluwer Acad., 1994, p. 157-71.
Murphy, Bruce, “Madness and the Ideal, Pequod: A Journal of Contemporary Literature and Literary Criticism. 1992; 33: 92-99.
Naqvi, Fatima, " The Man of Taste Reconceived: Mastering Aesthetics in Thomas Bernhard's Alte Meister." Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Lituratur und Kultur, Vol. 96, No. 2, Summer 2004.
O'Neill, Patrick, “Endgame Variations: Narrative and Noise in Thomas Bernhard's Das Kalkwerk,” in Gaede, Friedrich (ed.); O' Neill, Patrick (ed.); Scheck, Ulrich (ed.). Hinter dem schwarzen Vorhang: Die Katastrophe und die epische Tradition. Tübingen: Francke, 1994, p. 231-41.
Olson, Michael, P., “Playing It Safe: Historicizing Thomas Bernhard's Jews,”Modern Austrian Literature. 1994; 27(3-4): 37-49.
-------------, “Misogynist Exposed? The Sister's Role in Thomas Bernhard's Beton and Der Untergeher,” New German Review: A Journal of Germanic Studies. 1987; 3: 30-40.
--------------, “Thomas Bernhard, Glenn Gould, and the Art of Fugue: Contrapuntal Variations in Der Untergeher, Modern Austrian Literature. 1991; 24(3-4): 73-83.
Plow, Geoffrey, “The Affliction of Prose: Thomas Bernhard's Critique of Self-Expression in Korrektur, Ja and Der Stimmenimitator,” German Life and Letters. 1991 Jan; 44(2): 133-42.
Price, David W., "Thoughts of Destruction and Annihilation in Thomas Bernhard." The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 102, No. 2, April 2003.
Reinelt, Janelle, “Performing Justice for the Future of Our Time,” European Studies: A Journal of European Culture, History, and Politics. 2001; 17: 37-51.
Reiter, Andrea, “Austrophobia as It Is: Charles Sealsfield, Thomas Bernhard and the Art of Exaggeration,” in Robertson, Ritchie (ed.); Timms, Edward (ed.). Gender and Politics in Austrian Fiction. Edinburgh : Edinburgh UP, 1996, p. 166-77.
--------------, “Thomas Bernhard's 'Musical Prose',” in Williams, Arthur (ed.); Parkes, Stuart (ed.); Smith, Roland (ed.). Literature on the Threshold: The German Novel in the 1980s. New York : Berg, 1990. 358 pp. p. 187-207.
Riemer, Willy, “Thomas Bernhard's Der Untergeher: Newtonian Realities and Deterministic Chaos,” in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 209-22.
Schmidt-Dengler, Wendelin, “Thomas Bernhard's Poetics of Comedy,” in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 105-15.
Sharp, Francis Michael, “Thomas Bernhard: Literary Cyrogenics or Art on Ice,” Modern Austrian Literature. 1988; 21(3-4): 201-215.
-------------, “Literature as Self-Reflection: Thomas Bernhard and Peter Handke,” World Literature Today: A Literary Quarterly of the University of Oklahoma. 1981 Autumn; 55(4): 603-607.
Shlaes, Amity, “Thomas Bernhard and the German Literary Scene,” The New Criterion. New York, NY. 1987 Jan.; 5(5): 26-32.
Stephens, Michael, “Homage to Thomas Bernhard,” Pequod: A Journal of Contemporary Literature and Literary Criticism. 1992; 33: 84-91.
Streeruwitz, Marlene; Konzett, Matthias (translator), “My Latest Encounter with Bernhard,” in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 223-27
Streeruwitz, Marlene; Konzett, Michael (translator), “Perverted Attitudes of Mourning in the Wake of Thomas Bernhard's Death,” in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 23-27.
Theisen, Bianca, “Comitragedies: Thomas Bernhard's Marionette Theater,” MLN. 1996 Apr; 111(3): 533-59.
Thorpe, Kathleen, “Reading the Photographs in Thoams Bernhard's Novel Ausloschung ,“ Modern Austrian Literature. 1988; 21(3-4): 39-50.
Thorpe, Kathleen, “The Autobiographical Works of Thomas Bernhard,” Acta Germanica: Jahrbuch des Germanistenverbandes im Südlichen Afrika. 1980; 13: 189-200.
Venuti, Lawrence, “Bernhard on Stage: Politics and Performance in Der Prasident, Pequod: A Journal of Contemporary Literature and Literary Criticism. 1992; 33: 124-33.
Webb, Karl E., “First Sentences, Autobiography, and Self-Irony: Thomas Bernhard's Beton,” in Dvorak, Paul F. (ed. and introd.). Modern Austrian Prose: Interpretations and Insights. Riverside: Ariadne, 2001, p. 218-46
Webber, Andrew, “Costume Drama: Performance and Identity in Bernhard's Works,” in Konzett, Matthias (ed. and introd.). A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002, p. 149-65.
Wright, Elizabeth, “Transmission in Psychoanalysis and Literature: Whose Text Is It Anyway?” in Rimmon-Kenan,-Shlomith (ed.). Discourse in Psychoanalysis and Literature. New York : Methuen, 1988, p. 89-103.
Wolfschutz, Han, “Thomas Bernhard: The Mask of Death,” in Best, Alan; Wolfschutz, Han. Modern Austrian Writing: Literature and Society after 1945. London; Totowa,: Wolff; Barnes & Noble, p. 214-35.
Wulf, Catharina, “Desire for the Other: Obsession as Failure/Failure as Obsession. Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and Bernhard's Minetti,” Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd' hui: An Annual Bilingual Review/Revue Annuelle Bilingue. 1993; 2: 87-94
Dissertations
Anastasopoulus, Dimitrios J., Asymptotic Novel: The Language of Fiction and Its Limits, 2001. Freudenburg, Rachel Anne, Fictions of Friendship in Twentieth-Century German Literature: Mann's 'Doktor Faustus,' Grass's 'Katz und Maus,' Bernhard's 'Der Untergeher' and 'Wittgensteins Neffe,' and Wolf's 'Nachdenken uber Christa T. 1996.
Hierl, Ernst Sebastian, The End of the Road: Nihilism, Pleasure in the Text, Postmodernism, and Tradition in Thomas Bernhard and John Barth. 1998.
Moseley, Karen-Appaline, Schizophrenia and Creative Archetypes as Shown in Works by Thomas Bernhard. 1982.
Starkman, Ruth, A Beautiful Theory and Unaesthetic States: Fascism and the Theater of Thomas Bernhard. 1992.
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Reviews
Abish, Walter, “Embraced by Death;” New York Times Book Review 16 February 1986.
Benfey, Christopher, "The Heart in Winter." NY Times, October 22, 2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/books/review/Benfey.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/books/review/Benfey.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Eder, Richard, "Gathering Evidence: A Memoir," International Herald Tribune7 March 1986.
Kirkpatrick, Matthew, "Three Novellas by Thomas Bernhard." Bookslut, August 2003.
http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2003_08_000363.php
http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2003_08_000363.php
Klug, Christian, review article Modern Austrian Literature. 1988; 21(3-4): 281-289.
Steiner, George, "Asking for Apocalypse," Times Literary Supplement 29 February 1980.
Temple, Gudrun, "German Fiction: Two Real Voices Among All the Notebooks," Times Literary Supplement 4 February 1971.
Vivis, Anthony, “Laments for Humanity, Times Literary Supplement 11 June 1976 (Ein Fest für Boris, Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige, Die Macht der Gewohnheit, Jagdgesellschaft).
