Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian [Hardcover]

Gitta Honegger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2001

Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989), a literary figure of international acclaim and arguably Austria's greatest post-World War II writer, became the first of his generation to expose unrelentingly his country's pathological denial of complicity in the Holocaust. Bernhard's writings and indeed his own biography reflect Austria's fraught efforts to define itself as a nation following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy and the trauma of World War II. Repeatedly he scandalised the nation with novels, plays, and public statements that exposed the convoluted ways Austrians were attempting to come to terms with their Nazi past, or defiantly avoiding doing so. This book, the first comprehensive biography of Thomas. Bernhard in English, examines his life and work and their intricate relationship to Austria's geographical, political, and cultural transformations in the twentieth century. While Bernhard was the scourge of his native culture, Gitta Honegger explains, he was also a product of that same culture. Appreciation of his controversial impact on his society is possible only through an understanding of the contradictions, the shame, and the achievements that mark Austrians' self-perception in the postwar years. Honegger shows that for Bernhard the theatre was not only a profession but also a paradigm for his life, and that performance was the primary force animating his writing and self-construction. Even after his death, Bernhard's carefully constructed biography continues to fascinate, shock, and expose the Austrian culture at large.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In his novels and frequently performed plays, Thomas Bernhard, one of Austria's most important postwar writers, employed the self-consciousness style of high modernism to deliver stinging social critique. Several of his misanthropic and satiric works investigate the links between artistic creation and cultural decline. During his lifetime, Bernhard vociferously critiqued Austria's public culture and courageously exposed the country's systematic denial of its complicity with German crimes during World War II. Although his novels and plays are indictments of a country's dishonesty, bigotry, and xenophobia, they showcase a skeptical commentator's unease with his misanthropic tendencies. In her highly readable and admiring biography, Honegger (theater, Catholic Univ.) interprets Bernhard's self-dramatization as a theatrical device that shaped all of his work. In this first English-language biography, Honegger shows that Bernhard's dramatic and histrionic public gestures undermine the very cult of authorship that he now enjoys. Although the book occasionally bogs down in details about Austria as the claustrophobic hotbed of cultural repression, Honegger successfully uncovers the larger significance of Viennese provincialism and offers an absorbing portrait of one of Europe's uniquely gifted enfants terribles. Recommended for academic libraries. Ulrich Baer, New York Univ.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Honegger's postmodernist and psychoanalytical interpretation of Bernhard's paradoxical life and obsessive art is altogether appropriate and effective. -- Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300089996
• ISBN-13: 978-0300089998
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #686,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Retraction, April 22, 2010

By 

Thomas C. Melbert - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian (Hardcover)

I wrote a bad review for this book some years ago which, upon rereading I now wish to retract. With my own increased knowledge of Bernhard and upon rereading, I find this an extremely insightful

and valuable tome. Perhaps the GERMANIC ENGLISH PUT ME OFF A BIT--but I WOULD now recommend this book as essential, especially for non-German reading readers ; Indeed a very valuable book

which I SUPERFICIALLY and hastily condemned. Apologies to the author!

16 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No justice done to Bernhard, December 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian (Hardcover)

I am a big Bernhard fan and thought this book was dreadful. IF for you literature is something to be dissected primarily through the lens of Freudianism or you have a fetish for the word 'performance' you may like this book. But as a biography, and in terms of a philosophical understanding of Bernhard, it is hopeless. There is an immense amount of pompous academic jargon which is tedious and unilluminating. The analysis of the major works is scant at best. In fact this book only really serves one purpose, and that is to place Bernhard in an Austrian tradition, very much the writer as a social creature. Admittedly it carries out this function fairly well. But on aesthetic and philosophical grounds it is a dismal performance, showing almost no insight or feeling for the Bernhard out-look. In fact the author is immensely irritating. And there is too much of an emphasis (I think for the American market) on the Nazis. Yes, this book is really horrendous and I had to speed read it as I got on because I would have been sick with the lame quality otherwise. I would hearily recommend avoiding this book. Stick to the novels and the memoirs, or learn German and read a proper analysis!

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars spicy but solid too, November 12, 2001

By 

Toni Wuersch (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian (Hardcover)

This brand new bio balances scurillous with serious, and carefully explains background. It's a good intro.

Honegger successfully locates Bernhard in his milieu, the Viennese theater and Austria as a national scandal. Tina Brown in Talk recently wrote about British "genial malice", whereby they can carp at Tony Blair *because* he made a good speech. Bernhard went further: he was more like Eminem today than anyone in the US now.

a "you can't jail me, so try to sue me!" writer.

Honegger reveals lots of new stuff, especially about Bernhard's relationships and the high regard given Bernhard by Austrian aristocracy. Her points about Bernhard's laboring successfully to be an aristocrat hit the mark.

Honegger also notes his Mallorca interviews with Justine Fleischmann. Let's hope they're translated soon.

We need to read more German writers who say writers are worse than dogs because no one trains them where to pee.

The USA with its cargo cults of celebrities and public officials is becoming more like Austria in its public celebrations every day, with interminable strife about being more crude or more subtle played out daily in the press, dishonestly of course. A book on Bernhard and the reaction to pollution that nurtured him can't be more timely.