Woodcutters
This controversial portrayal of Viennese artistic circles begins as the writer-narrator arrives at an 'artistic dinner' given by a composer and his society wife--a couple that the writer once admired and has come to loathe. The guest of honor, an actor from the Burgtheater, is late. As the other guests wait impatiently, they are seen through the critical eye of the narrator, who begins a silent but frenzied, sometimes maniacal, and often ambivalent tirade against these former friends, most of whom were brought together by the woman whom they had buried that day. Reflections on Joana's life and suicide are mixed with these denunciations until the famous actor arrives, bringing a culmination to the evening for which the narrator had not even thought to hope. "Mr. Bernhard's portrait of a society in dissolution has a Scandinavian darkness reminiscent of Ibsen and Strindberg, but it is filtered through a minimalist prose.... Woodcuttersoffers an unusually intense, engrossing literary experience."--Mark Anderson, New York Times Book Review "Musical, dramatic and set in Vienna, Woodcutters....resembles a Strauss operetta with a libretto by Beckett."--Joseph Costes, Chicago Tribune "Thomas Bernhard, the great pessimist-rhapsodist of German literature... never compromises, never makes peace with life....
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What Hacker News says
- Bernhard is fantastic. Woodcutters might be a gentler introduction to his style. It's shorter, funnier, and less oppressive than Correction, which is his magnum opus. Apparently he was at least somewhat as unhinged in real life as in his writing. He was notorious for insulting the Austrian intelligentsia and either refusing literary awards or showing up at the ceremony just to rant and insult the audience, which he wrote about in a memoir titled My Prizes. He was a big influence on W.G. Sebald, another great German language writer (my personal favorite) who makes an appearance in McCarthy's library.
- You'll love Correction if you have a taste for experimental literature. I've have all of Bernhard's novels. They are (mostly) uninterrupted walls of text. They can also be quite depressing. You'll likely either love them or hate them. Correction is probably the most exemplary instance of his style and experimentation, and maybe his best novel, but Concrete and Extinction fall into this category as well. Wittgenstein's Nephew, Frost, and Woodcutters are more approachable if you want to ease into it. Starting with Correction might be a bit off-putting and intense depending on how often you read more experimental/stylistic literature.
He also wrote poetry.
- My best reads this year:
Non-fiction:
- The Power Broker by Robert Caro
Fantasy:
- The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
Sci-fi:
- Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio
- A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr
- Ra by qntm
- Jean le Flambeur series by Hannu Rajaniemi
- Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (didn’t like the subsequent books of the series so much)
Other novels:
- Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard
