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Rating: 
Summary: An excellent introduction to Bernhard
Review: The version I read was in three parts and each part was like a whole so there was a fair bit of repetition. If that wasn't the case the book would get 5 stars as the man is clearly an inspired writer with an almost perfectly free intellect (much to the horror of Germans, Austrians, organised religions and the medical profession amongst others). Like JG Ballard he opens one's mind up to ideas that one would never have dared to dream of. Best of all, despite it all (his life was quite depressing due to growing up in Nazi Germany and contracting TB) he's very funny. Makes you feel that with humour you're safe from everything.
Rating:
Summary: We don't choose life, but we can choose how to live...
Review: Thomas Bernhard is a wonderfully engaging author, although at first glance, a depressive. He is (or was - he died in 1989) Austrian, and this unusual autobiography is written in one long go - there are no chapters or even paragraphs! It is hard going at first, until you suddenly click into Bernhard's point of view, which is a grim, often tragic take, and some readers might consider his remarks on life, death, marriage, education (especially in Austria!) to be offensive. But since he is a master of irony, his life's sad and terrible situations do become very funny. At the age of 18, he was hospitalised with pneumonia, and since the doctors thought he was going to die, he was put in a ward amongst the old and chronically ill, what he called the 'death' ward. Upon his recovery, he wasn't moved to another ward - the doctors, he said, seemed affronted that he hadn't 'gone under' as expected! On the daily round, he recounts how they grew progressively ruder, as his health improved. To Bernhard, doctors are marginally more criminal than teachers, but the greatest crime is that of parents who thoughtlessly "bring new human beings into the world," and then try to bring them up, in even more thoughtless ways. He went to a Catholic boarding-school until 1938,the year of the Anschluss, when of course it became a National Socialist school overnight - the great thing he writes is that there was no discernible difference - the brutally cruel school routine went on just the same, except there were different uniforms, beliefs, songs & decor!! Later, trapped in a sanatorium with TB, he discovers books, and they "became my best and most intimate friends," thus the act of reading became a decisive factor in his life, for he saw that literature could be applied to life, "as a form of higher mathematics." (not entirely sure that makes sense out of context - he's immensely quotable, but in chunks rather than odd lines). It's a very good translation, but as already said, it's not an easy read - apparently, in Austrian German, it reads as a marvellously-poetic prose; even so, for English readers, it's well worth persevering with the life-story of this saturnine character. I found a second-hand copy of this book, which is out of print, and was so impressed I've bought two more (new, from Amazon!)by Bernhard, "Wittgenstein's Nephew" and "The Voice Imitators."
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