Next May was looking Bernhard-Good already as Penguin Classics is reissuing his great late novel Old Masters. And, to keep to the theme of new books from genuinely great Austrian authors never to win the Nobel Prize, in February FSG is publishing Peter Handke's Don Juan: His Own Version in Krishna Winston's translation: "a book about storytelling and its ability to burst the ordinary boundaries of time and space." Do you think they is going for the Audrey Naffeneggernogger market?
UPDATE: Thanks to Gwilym Williams who provides news of the exhibition Thomas Bernhard and the theatre opening next month in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna where, of course, Old Masters is set. The exhibition features:
Numerous documents from the estate of Thomas Bernhard, as well as composition drawings and stage photographs, help to illustrate one of the most exceptional careers in the history of Austrian literature and theatre – one that alternated between spectacular triumphs and headline-grabbing scandals.
This is wonderful news. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy. And also a translation of Old Masters on the way. I really need that. So roll on May!
ReplyDeleteps - My precious Suhrkamp copy of Alte Meister is signed "Wien 11.12.08 für Gwilym Williams" by Bernahrd's brother Peter Fabian so I have to be a bit careful with it.
http://www.khm.at/en/kunsthistorisches-museum/
ReplyDeleteshould bring you to page/s of info re forthcoming Bernhard Exhibition commencing on 5th November. I hope the White Bearded Man painting featured in Bernhard's novel Alte Meister is back at the khm. He's been away a long time. More than a year I think.
Just for accuracy's sake: The Bernhard exhibition will be held in the Theatermuseum, which is a KHM affiliate but actually in another building a few blocks away.
ReplyDelete"Like something coming out of an anus, and then it gets squashed in between book covers."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.signandsight.com/features/1090.html
Read it, and realise just how well the very introduction to the thing demonstrates Berhard's point, or gives the reason for his bored disgust:
"In a major interview given a few years before his death, the irascible Austrian author Thomas Bernhard talks about the musicality of language, the eroticism of old men, the corruption of German writers, the twistedness of mankind, the similarities between Christianity and Nazism, the incurability of stupidity and what it means to be branded "Thomas Bernhard" for life."
Well, this is obviously the typical crap you find. I've read that sentence - that syntax - literally billions of times before. Who hasn't? And don't be fooled by "talks about" either. It's nonsense: replace it with "mentions". Or "mentions briefly"!
God, you do feel that whole literary culture thing is entirely a sham, sometmes.
(Apologies if it's been posted on here before.)
Oops, I only see now that it's "from the archives", and 2006. Still, this is wisdom:
ReplyDelete"Life consists of one long succession of nonsense, a little bit of sense, but mostly nonsense."
Yes, it's a well-known interview but it's always a pleasure to re-read. There are more at www.thomasbernhard.org if you didn't know already.
ReplyDeleteHave now posted some first impressions of the Bernard Exhibition at the KHM, which opened yesterday, on my blog.
ReplyDeleteTime was pressing. Now expanded the post on PiR.
ReplyDelete