Woodcutters (Phoenix Fiction) - Softcover

Bernhard, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226043967 ISBN 13: 9780226043968

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1989

Synopsis

This controversial portrayal of Viennese artistic circles begins as the writer-narrator arrives at an 'artistic dinner' given by a composer and his society wife—a couple that the writer once admired and has come to loathe. The guest of honor, an actor from the Burgtheater, is late. As the other guests wait impatiently, they are seen through the critical eye of the narrator, who begins a silent but frenzied, sometimes maniacal, and often ambivalent tirade against these former friends, most of whom were brought together by the woman whom they had buried that day. Reflections on Joana's life and suicide are mixed with these denunciations until the famous actor arrives, bringing a culmination to the evening for which the narrator had not even thought to hope.

"Mr. Bernhard's portrait of a society in dissolution has a Scandinavian darkness reminiscent of Ibsen and Strindberg, but it is filtered through a minimalist prose. . . . Woodcutters offers an unusually intense, engrossing literary experience."—Mark Anderson, New York Times Book Review

"Musical, dramatic and set in Vienna, Woodcutters. . . .resembles a Strauss operetta with a libretto by Beckett."—Joseph Costes, Chicago Tribune

"Thomas Bernhard, the great pessimist-rhapsodist of German literature . . . never compromises, never makes peace with life. . . . Only in the pure, fierce isolation of his art can he get justice."—Michael Feingold, Village Voice

"In typical Bernhardian fashion the narrator is moved by hatred and affection for a society that he believes destroys the very artistic genius it purports to glorify. A superb translation."—Library Journal

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Bernhard (1931–89) grew up in Salzburg and Vienna, where he studied music. In 1957 he began a second career as a playwright, poet, and novelist. He went on to win many of the most prestigious literary prizes of Europe, including the Austrian State Prize, the Bremen and Brüchner prizes, and Le Prix Séguier.

Reviews

The narrator of this story, which is told in a demanding, nonstop stream of consciousness, is a writer who finds himself roped into a dinner party thrown by people he has avoided for 20 years. Spurning conversation, he reviews his grievances against his hosts and their pretentious guests in what PW termed "a satirical jeremiad."
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226043967
• ISBN 13: 9780226043968
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 188