Thomas Bernhard: 3 Days

Although not as widely known in the States as contemporaries like, say, Gunter Grass, throughout Europe Austrian Thomas Bernhard is widely recognized as a towering genius among postwar literary authors, whose dark, sometimes harrowing, sometimes claustrophobic and brooding novels have been compared with Beckett, Kafka and Celine. In this spare and brilliant off-the-cuff monologue, recorded over the course of three days for Ferry Radax’s 1970 filmed portrait, Bernhard touches on everything from his childhood and writing to isolation, aging, death and the human condition.Being Austrian, no, he’s not the most jovial sort (his earliest childhood memories involve passing by a butcher shop, a mortuary and a graveyard on his way to school), but he is so deeply insightful, eloquent and compelling, his extemporaneous talk makes this, like Celine’s Conversations With Professor Y, an essential and fundamental addition to his works.In the case of Thomas Bernhard: Three Days, the monologue, translated beautifully here for the first time by Laura Lindgren, is only the half of it. The book itself, also designed by Lindgren, is a singular work of art, accentuated by stills from the film and supplementary materials, and laid out in such a way as to leave it reading at times like a prose poem, at others like a collection of existentialist aphorisms. Even if you aren’t a long-time Bernhard fan, it’s the perfect volume to carry around, cracking it open randomly over the course of the day whenever you needed a confirmation. It’s dense and compact and gorgeous, less a simple illustrated companion to the film than a necessary key into a richer understanding of both the film and the author himself. Bernhard, never an easy man to please, would be proud.

Even if you think you know Thomas Bernhard from having read 'Gathering Evidence' or other biographic text, this presentation, which has never been done before, casts him in a new though not less bleak light. Black and white and a spectrum of gray hues give rise to a kind of theatrical performance. Design, typography, photography are all used to good advantage here...well wrought and powerful. FYI my new copy arrived shrink-wrapped.

Love TB