'My Prizes, An accounting' by Thomas Bernhard

When I begin to despair of the rottenness of the world I find it helpful to self-medicate with a dose of Thomas Bernhard. There is no pretension he will not mock, no relation he will not excoriate, no balloon he will not puncture - and it is all done in sentences so beautifully wrought that the reader is left breathless. Some of the targets of his invective are the institutions of his native Austria, which he sees as ossified with Catholic and Nazi values (his will forbade the publication of his work in Austria). My Prizes, a playfully vicious account of his acceptance of nine major literary prizes, is not only a biting-of-the-hand (while demonstrating why the hand deserves to be bitten) but also a kind of self-assassination and an assault on the reverence society holds for literati. Always less than gracious, Bernhard chooses to accept the prizes for the money attached, and delivers scandalous speeches (one of which causes the culture minster to walk out on the ceremony). The only award he approves of is one from the Federal Chamber of Commerce – he accepts that one as a recognition of the great example he sets for shop-keeping apprentices. Bernhard portrays himself as overweening and feckless: he decides to use prize money to buy a farmhouse (even though he despises the countryside) but can’t be bothered looking around and buys the first rotten house he is shown. Why does reading Bernhard make me feel better? Maybe because, although he gives his attention to the unremitting uselessness of everything, his attention (and the quality of his sentences) remains unassimilated by this uselessness. Of the periods in which Bernhard did succumb to hopelessness and despair and found literature pointless, no record was produced.

(September 2014)