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Review
“Here is a novelist with uncommon talents of a sort possessed by Kafka, Musil, and Beckett.” —Saturday Review“Extraordinary . . . a virtuoso verbal performance.” —Book World"The feeling grows that Thomas Bernhard is the most original, concentrated novelist writing in German. His connections...with the great constellation of Kafka, Musil, and Broch become ever clearer." —George Steiner, The Times Literary Supplement
Product Description
The playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard was one of the most widely translated and admired writers of his generation, winner of the three most coveted literary prizes in Germany. Gargoyles, one of his earliest novels, is a singular, surreal study of the nature of humanity.One morning a doctor and his son set out on daily rounds through the grim mountainous Austrian countryside. They observe the colorful characters they encounter -- from an innkeeper whose wife has been murdered to a crippled musical prodigy kept in a cage -- coping with physical misery, madness, and the brutality of the austere landscape. The parade of human grotesques culminates in a hundred-page monologue by an eccentric, paranoid prince, a relentlessly flowing cascade of words that is classic Bernhard.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting and yet infuriating, difficult and somehow addictive...,
By C. Robert Broerse "Buchlieber - Canada" (Niagara Region) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Gargoyles: A Novel (Paperback)
There are books we read not because we really want to read them but because they demand to be read. Gargoyles is such a book. It is no way pleasurable, there is almost something close to reader-masochism going on here.If you've read (slugged through, I should say) The Castle by Franz Kafka and though you're not quite sure how you managed to get through it and question your reasons for being so persistent and need something similar (I don't know why...), you're in luck. Bernhard has written a work with the same grotesque feel, the same sense of absurdity and tragedy. The story is rather basic and no doubt the other reviews you've read have given you a clear indication of the basic story. Let us just say this book is a dark mood that sweeps over you. There is a Gothic intensity to the narrative and though Bernhard is not one to elaborate on scene and character, it is the starkness of his prose that helps paint the morbid landscape and sculpt the features of his actors. The section dealing with The Prince is perhaps the most intense and if you're in for the long haul, be prepared for the most disturbing monologue in Austrian literature. Yes, it is a difficult text but the rhythms in the Prince speech reminded me of music. Though the topics of his monologue range from dreams, to madness, to his dissolving family, aphorisms abound and for fans of Nietzsche or Schopenhauer, the darkness and pessimism has a certain comedy to it. My favourite scenes involved the appointment with the musician, Krainer and his sister. Bernhard's description of the deformed man may remind some readers of the original Nosferatu of early twentieth century German cinema. One thing I would caution readers is that this book does have a maddening effect on one's consciousness. Any sane individual planning on remaining sane throughout the novel should take sanity breaks and put the book down before delving back into the mired deep. This book really isn't for everyone.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courageous Madness,
By The Passionate Ornithologist (Alameda, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gargoyles (Paperback)
"In reading, one tries to ignore oneself." So says The Prince, whose monologue dominates this book. My advice I to give to a prospective reader of Bernhard's masterful first novel would be just this: ignore yourself, don't let yourself be distracted as you plunge headlong into this book. I agree with the other reviewer, that this novel starts off like "Winesburg, Ohio" (albeit a strange, violent one) with its glimpses into the "grotesqueries" of its small town inhabitants. But eventually this novel is totally consumed by one of the characters (The Prince) who takes off on a startling, often narcotic, diatribe against society, metaphysics, family, the mind, the body... almost anything one could think of. ...But these are all literary hinges, and thus discountable when it gets down to the bone of things.There are a few hints that the Prince is modelled on various aspects of Bernhard's character, namely, the obsession with reading newspapers and the contempt he had for Austria. It's almost as though Bernhard used the character of the Prince to say what he couldn't say, which isn't so startling in itself (most writers do this)--but it's the manner in which he does it, as well as the subject matter twisted through the rabid mind of the Prince, that sets it apart. "I am a barometer that is no longer functioning."
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
I'm almost finished...,
By The Passionate Ornithologist (Alameda, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gargoyles (Paperback)
...I have about 12 more pages to go until I reach the end of this novel. So far it's been incredible. At this present moment it is a delicious struggle. Stay tuned...it may gain a star.
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