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Review
The Austrian writer, Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989), has created controversy in his homeland. Right-wingers protested his last play, Heldenplatz (1988), its English translator relates, by depositing “horse manure in front of the theater” on opening night. Earlier, a Minister of Culture and Education had implied Bernhard was mad. Though he is invoked with admiration by the unnamed narrator in William Gaddis’s Agapë Agape (2002), his writings are insufficiently known to English readers. Three Novellas is not a major work, unlike Concrete and Wittgenstein’s Nephew, but it does present an early version of the complex world Bernhard devised for his aesthetic purposes. Each novella is economical and slight in plot. Each shows two main features: his development of the narrator who captures the speech of others within his own, and the compulsions, usually political and social, which force characters to question everything. When answers are arrived at, the temporarily self-aware characters regard them as provisional, and demands of themselves further scrutiny. Any answer expresses in disguise that person’s ulterior wishes and hopes, as if Narcissus was continually forgetting whom he regarded in the pool.
“Amras” (1964) features two brothers, separated from their parents, who are recluses on the property of their uncle. They indulge in morbid self-examination, and are attuned especially to each other’s thoughts. However, the preciousness of the language and the inbred nature of the narrators’ perceptions are relayed with little stylistic distinction. The narrator of “Playing Watten” (1969) is a disgraced doctor who is writing a report to a scholar on his thoughts from a particular day. Most deal with why he will never play cards again with a familiar group of men. A visitor identified as “the truck driver” acts as society’s stand-in, and endlessly interrogates the self-proclaimed outcast on his decision. Frustrated with himself for making the truck driver leave him alone, the doctor almost wails, “A person like the truck driver gradually reduces a person like me to despair...” Unable to practice medicine, withdrawing from human contact, the narrator in his hut waits for death. “But all thoughts can be used for the total destruction of our own life, just as they can be used for the destruction of every life.” This novella is a good depiction of the cramped life of the intellectual who denies empathic connections with others, and who self-indulgently ascribes the possibility of his own death and the impersonal slaughter of millions equal weight.
In “Walking” (1971) Bernhard most fruitfully works on philosophical concepts which intrigue him, while refining his style. Two men talk about a mutual friend confined to a mental institution. Oehler, the narrator’s friend, speaks most about madness, children, how horrible Austria is, and also about holes in trousers. His appraisal of life is strict and rigorous:
“If we do not constantly exist against, but only constantly with the facts, says Oehler, we shall go under in the shortest possible space of time. The fact is that our existence is an unbearable and horrible existence, if we exist with this fact, says Oehler, and not against this fact, then we shall go under in the most wretched and in the most usual manner, there should therefore be nothing more important to us than existing constantly, even if in, but also at the same time against the fact of an unbearable and horrible existence.”
Oehler’s words are rendered by the narrator, along with quotations from their absent friend, from the doctor treating him, and from a tailor. Repetition of utterances and agonizingly defined ideas build a narrative maze where air is removed and horizons lost. For some readers, Bernhard’s reported speech technique may not overcome an inculcated preference for conventional representations of dialogue. Having characters dwell obsessively on fine points might seem nothing short of maddening, in which case reading Bernhard will be like death by pushpin. But for those who can bear the hypnotic sentences and who will engage the grim mind behind them, Three Novellas, particularly “Walking”, will be refreshing, and a stimulus to thinking about other ways to conceive of fiction.
Jeff Bursey (Books in Canada)
-- Books in Canada
“Amras” (1964) features two brothers, separated from their parents, who are recluses on the property of their uncle. They indulge in morbid self-examination, and are attuned especially to each other’s thoughts. However, the preciousness of the language and the inbred nature of the narrators’ perceptions are relayed with little stylistic distinction. The narrator of “Playing Watten” (1969) is a disgraced doctor who is writing a report to a scholar on his thoughts from a particular day. Most deal with why he will never play cards again with a familiar group of men. A visitor identified as “the truck driver” acts as society’s stand-in, and endlessly interrogates the self-proclaimed outcast on his decision. Frustrated with himself for making the truck driver leave him alone, the doctor almost wails, “A person like the truck driver gradually reduces a person like me to despair...” Unable to practice medicine, withdrawing from human contact, the narrator in his hut waits for death. “But all thoughts can be used for the total destruction of our own life, just as they can be used for the destruction of every life.” This novella is a good depiction of the cramped life of the intellectual who denies empathic connections with others, and who self-indulgently ascribes the possibility of his own death and the impersonal slaughter of millions equal weight.
In “Walking” (1971) Bernhard most fruitfully works on philosophical concepts which intrigue him, while refining his style. Two men talk about a mutual friend confined to a mental institution. Oehler, the narrator’s friend, speaks most about madness, children, how horrible Austria is, and also about holes in trousers. His appraisal of life is strict and rigorous:
“If we do not constantly exist against, but only constantly with the facts, says Oehler, we shall go under in the shortest possible space of time. The fact is that our existence is an unbearable and horrible existence, if we exist with this fact, says Oehler, and not against this fact, then we shall go under in the most wretched and in the most usual manner, there should therefore be nothing more important to us than existing constantly, even if in, but also at the same time against the fact of an unbearable and horrible existence.”
Oehler’s words are rendered by the narrator, along with quotations from their absent friend, from the doctor treating him, and from a tailor. Repetition of utterances and agonizingly defined ideas build a narrative maze where air is removed and horizons lost. For some readers, Bernhard’s reported speech technique may not overcome an inculcated preference for conventional representations of dialogue. Having characters dwell obsessively on fine points might seem nothing short of maddening, in which case reading Bernhard will be like death by pushpin. But for those who can bear the hypnotic sentences and who will engage the grim mind behind them, Three Novellas, particularly “Walking”, will be refreshing, and a stimulus to thinking about other ways to conceive of fiction.
Jeff Bursey (Books in Canada)
-- Books in Canada
Book Description
Thomas Bernhard is "one of the masters of contemporary European fiction" (George Steiner); "one of the century's most gifted writers" (New York Newsday); "a virtuoso of rancor and rage" (Bookforum). And although he is favorably compared with Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and Robert Musil, Thomas Bernhard still remains relatively unknown in America.
Uninitiated readers should consider Three Novellas a passport to the absurd, dark, and uncommonly comic world of Bernhard. Two of the three novellas here have never before been published in English, and all of them show an early preoccupation with the themes-illness and madness, isolation, tragic friendships-that would obsess Bernhard throughout his career. Amras, one of his earliest works, tells the story of two brothers, one epileptic, who have survived a family suicide pact and are now living in a ruined tower, struggling with madness, trying either to come fully back to life or finally to die. In Playing Watten, the narrator, a doctor who lost his practice due to morphine abuse, describes a visit paid him by a truck driver who wanted the doctor to return to his habit of playing a game of cards (watten) every Wednesday—a habit that the doctor had interrupted when one of the players killed himself. The last novella, Walking, records the conversations of the narrator and his friend Oehler while they walk, discussing anything that comes to mind but always circling back to their mutual friend Karrer, who has gone irrevocably mad. Perhaps the most overtly philosophical work in Bernhard's highly philosophical oeuvre, Walking provides a penetrating meditation on the impossibility of truly thinking.
Three Novellas offers a superb introduction to the fiction of perhaps the greatest unsung hero of twentieth-century literature. Rarely have the words suffocating, intense, and obsessive been meant so positively.
Uninitiated readers should consider Three Novellas a passport to the absurd, dark, and uncommonly comic world of Bernhard. Two of the three novellas here have never before been published in English, and all of them show an early preoccupation with the themes-illness and madness, isolation, tragic friendships-that would obsess Bernhard throughout his career. Amras, one of his earliest works, tells the story of two brothers, one epileptic, who have survived a family suicide pact and are now living in a ruined tower, struggling with madness, trying either to come fully back to life or finally to die. In Playing Watten, the narrator, a doctor who lost his practice due to morphine abuse, describes a visit paid him by a truck driver who wanted the doctor to return to his habit of playing a game of cards (watten) every Wednesday—a habit that the doctor had interrupted when one of the players killed himself. The last novella, Walking, records the conversations of the narrator and his friend Oehler while they walk, discussing anything that comes to mind but always circling back to their mutual friend Karrer, who has gone irrevocably mad. Perhaps the most overtly philosophical work in Bernhard's highly philosophical oeuvre, Walking provides a penetrating meditation on the impossibility of truly thinking.
Three Novellas offers a superb introduction to the fiction of perhaps the greatest unsung hero of twentieth-century literature. Rarely have the words suffocating, intense, and obsessive been meant so positively.
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First Sentence
After our parents' suicide, we were shut up for two and a half months in the tower, the landmark of our suburb of Amras, accessible only by traversing the large apple orchard, years ago still a property of our father's, which leads up in a southerly direction to the primary rocks. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
After our parents' suicide, we were shut up for two and a half months in the tower, the landmark of our suburb of Amras, accessible only by traversing the large apple orchard, years ago still a property of our father's, which leads up in a southerly direction to the primary rocks. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Playing Watten" Is a Hidden Gem, July 22 2008
By W. Wilson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Three Novellas (Hardcover)
In this review I'd like to focus on _Playing Watten,_ my favorite of the three novellas._Watten_ is only about 50 pages long, and like other works by Bernhard may appear easy to read at times, but the narration is dense and "musical," demanding that the reader pause to "listen" to the turns of phrase that Bernhard uses to express a single idea.
This technique of "restating" is not, as some reviewers might suggest, simple repetition of a sentence or a phrase leading to unintentional tediousness. More likely, it represents Bernhard's belief that there is more than one way to write a sentence. As two musical passages may sound alike, upon closer listening they are different. These nuances in sentence structure are explored by Bernhard at the peak of his skill.
Structurally, _Watten_ is right there with the classic Bernhard novels, written in first-person stream of consciousness and no paragraph breaks. (The only break occurs at the start of the second section, "The Traveler.")
From the outset, it is clear that the narrator is relating his impressions to another person (another Bernhardian technique of relating a narrative through some conveyance, rather than simply using the first person to "tell").
The narrator is a doctor who has donated a large sum of money to a charity. Again, as in many of his other works, Bernhard quickly dismisses the notion that his narrators have a pressing need for income. Thus, they are able to ignore the distractions of the working world. True, they may intend to write journals, medical papers, reviews, etc., but along the way they're detoured into writing deeply revealing narratives about themselves.
Now, some brief notes about the content...
We never learn the name of the doctor. He sends one-and-a-half-million schillings (one wonders how much this would have been in $US at the time of writing, in 1971!) to a fellow named "F. Undt," a social reformer who not only researches and publishes but who also is restoring a castle to house newly freed prisoners, so that they can begin new lives without their pasts haunting them.
And Undt agrees to cash the check on one strange condition - that the doctor write down all of his thoughts (impressions) that occurred during the day before the day the doctor received the letter of receipt of the money from Undt. The doctor is then asked to mail these thoughts in a letter to Undt, presumably for Undt's research.
The doctor, an admirer of Undt's writings, agrees to this, and the long letter comprises most of _Watten._
As the doctor begins about his task, it's hard for readers not to think that Bernhard might have been influenced by Camus's _The Myth of Sisyphus,_ wherein Camus writes:
"Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest - whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer [the questions of suicide]."
The doctor begins his written narrative to Undt by asking himself, upon awakening in his "hut," "Why am I still alive?"
Before the doctor can sink into too deep an existential despair, however, he is visited by someone known only as "the truck driver." The truck driver asks the doctor the same question over and over, "Why won't you come and play Watten, doctor?" (Note that the truck driver never poses the question in quite the same way to the doctor. Camus's _Myth of Sisyphus_ is again evoked - two people seemingly condemned to repeat the same action eternally; i.e., the truck driver asks; the doctor replies.)
As I read this, I thought of this cast of only two characters as reminiscent of Samuel Beckett's method.
I'll leave off what watten (the game) is, as it's explained in the Introduction, and the rest of the story at this point.
I will say only that Bernhard's narrator once again goes on a tirade against seemingly everything. However, the harangue does have many darkly comical moments. For example, the doctor requests from Undt a list of what Undt would consider his greatest published works, and listed among them are "Decrepitude I, Decrepitude II, and Decrepitude III; essay - Body and Chaos. ..."
There is also a wonderful passage about shoe buckles as they relate to the doctor's larger belief that nothing is made well any more.
So, if you have read Bernhard's relatively better selling and more widely read novels, such as _Concrete, Correction, Old Masters, et al.,_ you should consider this hardcover volume of three of Bernhard's novellas, if only for _Playing Watten._
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