On the Mountain: Rescue Attempt, Nonsense [Paperback]

Thomas Bernhard (Author), Sophie Wilkins (Author), Russell Stockman (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1993

fiction, Austria, tr Russell Stockman

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Thomas Bernhard would be consigned to anonymity were he writing in America. His work--numbering 45 works of poetry, novels, and plays--delivers biting, bitter, unflinchingly critical commentary on the sociopolitical world of post-World War II Austria. (Bernhard died in 1989. The nation's still-pervasive Nazism, proved by the election of Kurt Waldheim, was one of his pet horrors.) On the Mountain, Bernhard's last work to be prepared for publication, is actually his earliest prose piece, never before published. It was completed in 1959.

A genre unto itself, On the Mountain can be most closely compared in form and tone with the works of Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett. Its form--one breathless, run-on sentence--reflects the dilemma of the speaker, a young man with a fatal lung disease, compelled to "get it all out" with his last breath. On the Mountain is a "process;" the young narrator, a court reporter, maniacally jots down his observations, encounters, characters, and ideas. In the course of these jottings, the power of language is revealed, a discovery that carries the writer along boldly, with no time for paragraphs or punctuation. His process becomes "synonymous with his breathing: it is his RESCUE ATTEMPT, trying to save his life, even if it is NONSENSE to keep struggling against the inevitable." And what, in a Bernhard narrative, offers the greatest perspective? Death. Death awareness drenches all Bernhard narratives, as it did his short life (he died at the age of 58).

Readers new to Bernhard's work will want to wade out into his dark and chilly sea carefully and might first acquaint themselves with his life and a chronological excursion through his work. Bernhard fans will want to own their own copy of On the Mountain for its unique place in the canon and (of equal importance) for Sophie Wilkins's energetically written, terrifically informative afterword that provides a context for the book's themes as well as its raison d'être. We read the greats of other cultures to crack a window onto the larger world, yes, but also to have reflected back those voices, forms, and styles that remain closed to our native writers.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 143 pages
• Publisher: Marlboro Press (December 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0910395764
• ISBN-13: 978-0910395762
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,036,954 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In the beginning, October 10, 2002

By 

"arlovegas" (Las Vegas, NV United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On the Mountain: Rescue Attempt, Nonsense (Paperback)

This early work captures much of the mood, but not exactly the style that will be prevalent in Bernhard's later work. Written as what can best be described as one long prose poem, the storyline is drawn in fragments of conversation, emotion, images, etc. and can be hard to follow at times. However, what's distilled here is an atmosphere of clausterphobia and approaching madness that is definitely Bernhard's forte. I found it to be incredibly lyrical and poignant, and this piece has remained my favorite even after reading several of his more mature works. Maybe because of the dog (read the book!).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On The Mountain /On The Top, December 15, 1999

By 

Selçuk Altun (Istanbul Turkey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On the Mountain: Rescue Attempt, Nonsense (Paperback)

His earliest but already matured prose/A thin(143 pages)book made up of one towering sentence/Dis- turbing plot,problematic hero but gripping tale/ challenging but satisfying masterpiece...

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It's only sporadically interesting, March 21, 2005

By 

Gooch McCracken (c/o your haunted slab of Velveeta) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On the Mountain: Rescue Attempt, Nonsense (Paperback)

FAB QUOTE #1: "There are no families anymore, only live-in arrangements, rail and postal workers credit unions, travel associations, limited philosophy partnerships, literature societies, smoked-meat societies, turnip cooperatives' societies, burlap bag associations, legal societies, weed-killing societies, societies for the praise and adoration of God: spare parts heaped on top of each other in some giant spare-part warehouse: a huge pile of sh-t for a world."

FAB QUOTE #2: "The country people have always hated the city folks, you know: the farmers had their religion, the city people their nothingness, nowadays all of that has changed: both have their nothingness: the countryside doesn't have any religion anymore: we have only a world without religion: an inevitable wasteland."

FAB QUOTE #3: "People keep looking for someone to tell them the truth, but as we know there's no such thing as truth, hence no one to tell it, not even the opposite of truth, they all transgress against God, against their concept of God, for even I have a concept of God, even though it's only a concept, says the teacher."

FAB QUOTE #4: "Summer arrives with a lot that's unbearable, I've already seen this unbearable stuff before: in the wintertime."

And here's something from Sophie Wilkins's afterword: "Kafka broke down forever the old Latin structure of the German sentence, the clauses within clauses with the verb at the end wondering what its subject was, back there (with which Mark Twain had his fun in his European travel books) and created a new sentence, sinuous as a snake chain moving on indefinitely, never needing to look back beyond the last comma."