Woodcutters Book

As I sat in my chair after reading of a man sat in a chair, I thought, what an odd, darkly comic and nihilistically cold book this was. The only thing I am sure of is I haven't read anything quite like it before. I wouldn't have minded going for a drink with Mr Bernhard, but if this is his idea of a dinner party, I would decline the invitation and stay at home with a good book and some takeaway noodles. The novel takes place over only a couple of hours, but is told with large chunks of flashback thoughts, so the time scale feels far greater, and features an intolerable narrator who can't be bothered to leave the 'wing-backed chair' his derrière is comfortably planted on, during an uncomfortable dinner party held in honour of an actor performing in a production of Ibsen's The Wild Duck. The hosts, 'the Auersbergers', are a most unlikeable couple (ignorant cultural snobs), I though, as I sat in my chair, so unlikeable in fact, that I actually started to like them the more the story progressed, the novel on the whole is a scathing attack on the futile pretentiousness at the heart of Austrian bourgeoisie society. And Bernhard marvels in it's telling.

After attending the funeral of friend Joana, a suicide victim, our narrator is off to the artistic dinner party, after accepting to be a guest of the Auersbergers, after bumping into them whilst out. He hasn't been acquainted with them for many years, and despises them with deep repugnance. Still, he goes along, observing the rest of the despicable crowd from his winged chair, waiting for what seems like an eternity for the actor to arrive. He looks back over the past, and reviews his grievances against his hosts and their pretentious friends, and thinks, hard, and in such a flurry of disdain, and his account is set down in one long paragraph that starts on the book's first page and doesn't close until the narrative concludes. There are no chapters, and no breaks, it's all done in one long swoop. The nonstop stream of consciousness is demanding of the reader but fully appropriate to this satirical jeremiad, and he, the narrator is consumed by a crotchety, often vitriolic interior monologue which illuminates his own personality and his relationships with the other guests, I thought, as I sat in my chair. Apparently, many Viennese who feel worthy of greatness recognised themselves here and were upset at their depiction, it's little wonder, as there's little in the way of compassion. Bernhard pretty much pokes fun and loathes most of those in the novel.

On reading Bernhard for the first time, there will definitely be more to follow, I thought, as I sat in my chair, the stunning writing in the first section had me hooked, and even though it fell away slightly later on with an ending I am still pondering on, overall I was well impressed. After confronting a circular mass of sentences, with a repetition of building into a dizzying wall of words seemingly intended to obscure meaning and prevent progress, I slowly but surely, accepted Bernhard's narrative, and just went with it. The narrator sees in his eyes, some blame falling on the shoulders of the Auersbergers for Joana's death (someone he was very close to), but in fact, the truth be told, he, is just as guilty as all the others of using those around, below and above him to make his way to the top of society, financially, sexually, any which way really.

It felt like reading this with an annoying piece of lemon stuck in my mouth, the sour taste throughout was unprecedented. I cursed under my breath at every given opportunity for these nauseating characters, but after a while the sickness wore off, and down to the way Bernhard goes about his business, I couldn't help but fall in with them.