The plot? No! Buy. Trust. Read.
The author? Well, now, there's plenty to discuss about Bernhard himself to wet your whistle! So get out that shrill sounding instrument of declaration (?) and read on.
We shall begin with perhaps Bernhard's greatest moment. A speech he gave, described brilliantly in his book My Prizes: An Accounting. If you find yourself obsessed with the beautiful rythmic cadence and musicality of his words, consider a great biography entitled The Making Of An Austrian.
In the coming days you will learn more. As of now, you're all catfish in a lake. They love two things: cheese and blood. He was too much of a true artist to laugh their way through this in a "cheesy" manner. Instead, he preached! He drew and shed blood while taking it all in stride. He and his companion (see: lover 37 years his senior) quickly escaped. Like Chuck Berry: he always got the cash then turned on then all. Righteously so.
He won numerous awards. Big, small, he was an honest hustler: he took the prizes, generally a nice chunk of change, remembered to tell the awarding entity of his disdain for their award and of their ignorance of art, then proceeded to hastily retreat home victorious. His finest moment was perhaps this speech, given when he was awarded the stupidly given Austrian National Book Award in 1967.
Georg Bauer translated this for me. It's beautiful, ugly, crude, refined. It's genius. Truly brilliant; I can only hope that someone, anyone, of Bernhard's "esteem" find the legacy he so rightly is due.
It's said that, when this speech was given in Vienna to a crowd of primarily dignitaries, ministers of this and that, and that obnoxious strata of the social elite (who clearly never read his work), while giving this speech he was booed by most all there. Glass doors into the lobby were slammed and shattered at the hands of government official and the rest. He continued, regarding it all as one would giving a speech to fools. Because he was. But he did it while well dressed, never skipped a beat, then called it a job well done.
Here it is. Enjoy?
"Esteemed Mr. Minister, esteemed assembly, There is nothing to praise, nothing to condemn, nothing to accuse, but a great many things are ludicrous; and everything is ludicrous when one thinks about death. One goes through life impressed, unimpressed, through the scene, everything is exchangeable, in a prop state with better or worse education: what fallacy! One recognizes: a clueless populace, a beautiful country – these are dead or diligently reckless fathers, people with simpleness and perfidy with the poverty of their needs … It is all highly philosophical and unbearable history. The ages are idiotic, the demonic within us a continuous fatherlandish dungeon where elements of stupidity and ruthlessness become daily excretion. The state is a structure which is continually condemned to infamy and imbecility. Life is hopelessness which philosophies lean on, where everything must eventually become insane. We are Austrians, we are apathetic; we are life as common disinterest in life, we are megalomania as future in the process of nature. We have nothing to report, except that we are pathetic, that through our imagination we have lapsed into philosophical-economical-mechanical monotony. Means to an end of downfall, creatures of agony, if everything explains itself to us, we understand nothing. We inhabit a trauma, we are afraid, we have a right to be afraid, we already see, though still indistinct in the background: the giants of fear. What we think is afterthought, what we feel is chaotic, what we are, is unclear. We need not be ashamed, but we are nothing, either, and we deserve nothing but chaos. On behalf of myself and on behalf of all other laureates, I express my gratitude to all who are present."
The picture of him included was taken several years later in the home he bought with THIS prize money. I'm impressed!
More to come. Where are YOU in reading the book?
Let's discuss it now. Because The Moviegoer is our next book. Order now'
