The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact paperback from Spurl Editions came just as I had given up hope of ever discussing what I believed had long fascinated me about…
Today's date means it is thirty years since Thomas Bernhard died. Twenty years ago I wrote a short introduction to his work for Spike Magazine to mark ten years since his death. In those days, Bernhard was more or less u…
The saints were uneducated. Why, then, do they write so well? Is it only inspiration? They have style whenever they describe God. It's easy to write from divine whispers, with one's ear glued to his mouth. Their works h…
What draws me back to Thomas Bernhard's novels is the wish to appreciate again how each is set in motion. The Loser begins like this. Even Glenn Gould, our friend and the most important piano virtuoso of the century, only …
My most recent post, The authorisation to invent , criticises the dominant mode of fiction as practised in English, with the main complaint being that fiction inhabits the minds of its characters, telling us what they feel and th…
More Thomas Bernhard (content deleted now). Thanks be given to Douglas Robertson for completing this Liebe zur Sache. Thomas Bernhard. Yes, I know. Forgive me for returning to this writer like a dog to somebody else's vomi…
Going back to a beloved novel after many years can be a disconcerting experience. Often you wonder what you saw the first time around to prompt such nostalgia and loving reverence. Much of the detail is unfamiliar, alien even. Un…
After days of inert wondering why Thomas Bernhard's My Prizes felt like more than " a weakish book " and thereby, according to the dictates of professional reception, valuable only for throwing the so-called greatn…
“It is not every day one is sent a masterpiece to review”, wrote Gabriel Josipovici in reviewing WG Sebald's The Emigrants ; “(I suppose one is lucky if it happens more than once or twice in a lifetime)”. I started writ…