Lisa's Reviews > Concrete

Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) has no less than six entries in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006 edition), and now that I’ve read Concrete (1982) I am certainly going to read the others: Correction, Extinction, Old Masters , Wittgenstein’s Nephew and Yes. From what I read of his profile at Wikipedia the author is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era but was Austria’s Bad Boy, continually writing novels and plays that were hyper-critical of Austria and its sacred cows. But the picture I have of this author from a guest post by Andrej Nicoladis at Winston’s Dad is entirely different:

Bernhard writes about society in collapse: society rotten with dishonesty, corruption and deep-rooted lies. … The narrator of the story is caught up in a fundamental battle with that society … [but eventually realises that] his conflict with society is an externalization of an inner conflict: that his true enemy with whom he must fight to the death, is in fact his own existence.

1001 Books tells me that Concrete is ‘perhaps Bernhard’s most accessible novel and his best example of self-parody.’ It is the tale of Rudolf, a Viennese musicologist who is supposed to be writing his masterwork, a book about Mendelssohn. He’s been planning it for ten years, and if this account of his procrastinations is anything to go by, it will be double that amount of time before he so much as takes the lid off his pen…

Naturally this misanthrope has to have someone to blame for his failure, preferably a woman, and indeed he has three. First of all there is his ‘monstrous’ sister, who, attempting to make him face up to the fact that he ought to get a grip on himself, is (he says) annihilating him, his work, and his ambitions. Then there is his cleaning lady, who (he says) requires his constant supervision in order to prevent the house from becoming a quagmire of filth. And finally there is the hapless Anna in Majorca, who has destroyed his peace of mind with her tragic widowhood so that he can’t write any more.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/07/03/co...