Woodcutters
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Thomas Bernhard, one of the most distinct, celebrated, and perverse of 20th century writers, took his own life in 1989. Perhaps the greatest Austrian writer of the 20th century, Bernhard's vision in novels like Cutting Timber was relentlessly bleak and comically nihilistic. His prose is torrential and his stlye unmistakable. Bernhard is the missing link between Kafka, Beckett, Michel Houellebecq and Lars von Trier; without Bernhard the literature of alienation and self-contempt would be bereft of its great practitioner.
Cutting Timber:An Irritation is widely recognised as his masterpiece. Over the course of a few hours, following a performance of Ibsen's The Wild Duck, we are in the company of the Auersbergers, and our narrator, who never once leaves the relative comfort of his 'wing-backed chair' where he sips at a glass of champagne. As they anticpate the arrival of the star actor, and the commencement of dinner, the narrator of Cutting Timber dismantles the hollow pretentiousness at the heart of the Austrian bourgeoisie. The effect is devastating; the horror only redeemed by the humour.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Remaining in his present London digs would have been a blessing compared to wintering in his native Vienna, complains the narrator of the latest book by the celebrated Austrian novelist (Gathering Evidence). The narrator, a writer, runs into the Auersbergers on the street just after they learn of the suicide of their friend Joana, and the oppressive couple he has managed to avoid for over 20 years talks him into attending their "artistic dinner party'' to honor an actor starring in the Burgtheater's production of Ibsen's The Wild Duck. And so the narrator plants himself unhappily in a wing chair, spurning conversation as the actor tarries past midnight. He reviews his grievances against his hosts and their pretentious friends, and thinks. He thinks so hard, and in such a flurry, that his account is set down in one long paragraph that starts on the book's first page and doesn't close until the narrative concludes. The nonstop stream of consciousness is demanding of the reader but fully appropriate to this satirical jeremiad. The narrator's crotchety, often vitriolic interior monologue illuminates his own personality and his relationships with the other guests and with Joana, who has played a part in the lives of everyone at the party. Compelled by the force of his memories, the narrator's thoughts progress toward a significant ephiphany, as he realizes that ``I cursed these people, yet could not help loving them.''
