Book I: “Old Masters”
I discovered the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) just as usual, by chance (I was having a look in a bookshop, and his book was there on a bookshelf); eager to read but with no preconceived idea. Just from the beginning his style so particular, so repetitive and sort of hypnotic (he almost never uses full-stop) caught me; it is so really difficult to get used to it. Reading Bernhard half-heartedly paying no attention to the text can be quite maddening. He easily creates a bunch of memorable characters such as the Prince Saurau (Gargoyles) or the painter Strauch (Frost), we will be referring to them in some other entries. On the other hand, all references to Art or more particularly to painting are a constant in his books. The…