Woodcutters - Thomas Bernhard

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 Woodcutters
was relentlessly bleak and comically nihilistic. His prose is
torrential and his style 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.
Woodcutters
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 anticipate the arrival of the star actor, and the
commencement of dinner, the narrator of Woodcutters dismantles
the hollow pretentiousness at the heart of the Austrian bourgeoisie.
The effect is devastating; the horror only redeemed by the humour.