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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reading Bernhard is like drinking espresso. Bitter and fast, I felt time flying by while reading these pages, but that's because Bernhard lives on the page. His thoughts rush through, a constant repetition that circles and circles and circles and devours everything in its' path.
Ending kinda cheesy here. I love The Loser because it was such a great look at total defeat in the face of genius. And I love Glenn Gould. So this books skewering of Viennese Bourgeois values doesn't hit as hard to me, but still a wonderful book.
Ending kinda cheesy here. I love The Loser because it was such a great look at total defeat in the face of genius. And I love Glenn Gould. So this books skewering of Viennese Bourgeois values doesn't hit as hard to me, but still a wonderful book.
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Obwohl ich Bernhards Schreibstil eigentlich mag und finde, dass die sich immer und immer wieder wiederholenden Gedanken das urwienerische Hadern mit sich selbst und vor allem mit allen anderen wunderbar widerspiegeln, konnte bzw. wollte ich mich nicht dazu zwingen, das Buch auszulesen (deshalb nur 3 Sterne). Das liegt aber nicht unbedingt am Buch selbst, sondern eher an diesem Gefühl, das es vermittelt; diese tiefe Abneigung, dieser typische Wiener Zustand, den man selbst nicht einnehmen möchte und erschrickt, wenn man doch Züge davon an sich selbst bemerkt.
Austrians are masters of boiling discontent, of stewing wrath and fomenting fury. No other people compare. For evidence, I give you both the films of that famed Austrian, Michael Haneke, and this deliriously delicious diatribe by Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard.
We have all thought, self-isolating in a corner of a room during a party or other gathering, contemptuous things of those within eyesight. At least on occasion. At these times we've bemoaned our attendance among those we so harshly judge, we've thought ourselves better than them — whether for reasons of self-preservation and our own insecurity or because we really just are that put-off by others. We normally wouldn't attend such events knowing in advance that we'd feel this way, at least, not unless we were open with ourselves as to how much pleasure we derive from our own judgments, our own dark inner thoughts.
And there is pleasure, immense pleasure, to derive from Thomas Bernhard's "Woodcutters" — from the way his protagonist brutally cuts the other guests at the "artistic dinner" he's attending down to size, even if only in his own mind. He's a gloriously cynical character, but we love him because his inner monologue is laced with so much dark wit, so much savage eloquence.
You want him at your dinner party, if only because the glowering looks he sends around the room from his corner perch are sure to make the other guests swoon. In the film that unspooled in my mind as I read, he was played by that great Austrian thespian Christoph Waltz, who does oozing contempt like a natural because, being Austrian, he is a natural.
Written in one unbroken paragraph, "Woodcutters" is a smoldering pageturner — tantric in its language, even in translation, and the emotion it invokes in you.
A feast of invective you'll be glad you supped on.
We have all thought, self-isolating in a corner of a room during a party or other gathering, contemptuous things of those within eyesight. At least on occasion. At these times we've bemoaned our attendance among those we so harshly judge, we've thought ourselves better than them — whether for reasons of self-preservation and our own insecurity or because we really just are that put-off by others. We normally wouldn't attend such events knowing in advance that we'd feel this way, at least, not unless we were open with ourselves as to how much pleasure we derive from our own judgments, our own dark inner thoughts.
And there is pleasure, immense pleasure, to derive from Thomas Bernhard's "Woodcutters" — from the way his protagonist brutally cuts the other guests at the "artistic dinner" he's attending down to size, even if only in his own mind. He's a gloriously cynical character, but we love him because his inner monologue is laced with so much dark wit, so much savage eloquence.
You want him at your dinner party, if only because the glowering looks he sends around the room from his corner perch are sure to make the other guests swoon. In the film that unspooled in my mind as I read, he was played by that great Austrian thespian Christoph Waltz, who does oozing contempt like a natural because, being Austrian, he is a natural.
Written in one unbroken paragraph, "Woodcutters" is a smoldering pageturner — tantric in its language, even in translation, and the emotion it invokes in you.
A feast of invective you'll be glad you supped on.
The experience of reading this book is one of sitting in a wing chair looking out towards a sea of hatred, watching the waves roll, plash, and foam on the sand, closer and closer each passing minute with the coming tide, and you look transfixed at the foam fading into the wet sand, and you feel a mounting anxiety and want to leave, but cannot because every wave brings with it a pattern of foam or a plashing sound that makes you burst out laughing.
funny
reflective
medium-paced
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide