Safely Hidden Behind the Lines of the Thomas Bernhard Camp

My Prizes: An Accounting by Thomas Bernhard

Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Knopf (November 23, 2010)

(NY Times review of same)

Thomas Bernhard, the swiftly rising and respected Austrian writer now dead since 1989, expressed throughout his life his many critical views about human nature, politics, his own Austrian government, literary awards, and memberships in their high societies. His complaints, for the most part, were aimed at non-scholars and people in undeserved lofty positions of authority. He wrote often of crime, self-destruction, isolation, abandonment, and more often than not, suicide. He had contempt for most respected institutions and Catholicism. He, himself, was often criticized for "dirtying his own nest".

In his short memoir, My Prizes: An Accounting, Bernhard recounts the many prizes he received. Ironically, in most occurrences, the prizes were not about Bernhard the writer, and each telling of a tale is monstrously funny for those of us who subscribe to the views that Bernhard expresses. For quite a few years I have enjoyed reading the works of Thomas Bernhard for the simple reason of complicity in both his ideas and actions. He says and does what I wish myself and others would do more of. It is refreshing for me to read of his attacks on those who need attacking. The airing of his so-called "dirty laundry" helps to keep the stench we smell so deeply from cascading over the ever-present slow boil we hear and read of on a daily basis. Every story about each award and applicable acceptance speech chosen to be included in the back of the book, offers up a mighty roar from the ever-eager Bernhard peanut gallery of which I am fully present and accounted for.

I think it should be obvious to the reader, if there is indeed one reader of me still left out there, that this book would not have made the significant impression on me had I not already have read his blistering autobiography, Gathering Evidence, as well as the countless novels and books of short stories consumed voraciously by myself through the last several years. In Gathering Evidence much is written that sheds the necessary light on Bernhard's life and how he managed what for most of us would have been the almost unspeakable and grossly unmanageable. At every turn there is a crisis or catastrophe to surmount. Especially in regards to this man's health. He was deathly sick for the majority of his life and finally succumbed to his disease. It is because he faced his death almost on a daily basis that I think he had the courage to do and say so as he did. Most of us are trying to stay afloat these days in our own shitty job, that is if we are even fortunate to have a shitty job in the first place. Our college graduates are faced with such severe loan debt that it is strangling the very essence of these people that higher learning was coaxing to get out. Our country is too busy "nation building" instead of focusing on our own injustices and inadequacies and the fiscal debt that could bring this mighty nation down.

One particular thing I have noticed in all of Bernhard's writing and complaints is he never offers a solution or an explanation. That must drive the offended ones crazy. To these victims of Thomas Bernhard perhaps being attacked would seem unfair, I suppose, for in the game of life we are always told that if we must complain we must also offer a solution, or a better idea. This brings to mind a couple of things. How is it that some few of us have this casual gift for knowing what good taste is, what good literature is, style, and form, and simple neighborliness? There is nothing in a Bernhard monologue I do not "get". Why is that? How could others just not see what he is getting at? I, like Bernhard, am forever confounded at the ignorance and discourteous and disingenuous behavior of many of our fellow citizens.

I began reading this rather thin book as soon as it arrived in my mailbox. I made myself slow down, to not read more than one story about a prize at any one sitting. It was all I could do to not read more than one entry each morning and then follow up with one at night. In no time I was busy searching the web for more of Thomas Bernhard, for when in the mood for hate, there is no one better for a thorough washing over and eventual cleansing of it. And I do not mean "hate" in the generic form, but in a more sophisticated way, a more scholarly way, a more thoughtful way of putting it. We are haters, we readers and followers of Bernhard, and it is a badge of honor to admit it. And yet there are more of you out there still to be introduced to the writings of Thomas Bernhard. That does not mean we haters do not love. We do, and to the highest degree because of our good cleansing. Reading Bernhard feels similar to relief when we finally say it, even though Bernhard said it first. It is a rollicking good time to hear him go on in long monologues about these stupid bastards and their high and ridiculous rankings. He spares almost no one in his ranting and raving. He is often criticized as being too vitriolic, acidic, and even mean-spirited. But I cheer him on, clapping.

I believe, now looking back at my own becoming as a poet, looking back at my own emergence and transfiguration, that I too had something to say and I finally let my body speak it. The following poem was written probably a dozen years ago, but I think it is fitting and appropriate to include here.

Stranger to Himself


We go into
this dread
screaming

cafes!
con leche !
in a city

where nobody is kidding.
All night

the great clocks stir.
And our puddings
resist.

And then Christ appears—
unanimous!
But our crowd is stout.

And still standing.
Clapping
in the February

rain.


I relate to Thomas Bernhard mostly because I have always thought many of the same things while growing up. I never felt a part of my church, my town, my work, or my family. I thought politicians and leaders were crooks and puppets for whoever was really in power. I was an outsider just as my grandfather, a Finn, was an outsider in this country, a country that had a past president, little George Bush, that my grandfather did not have to suffer through. A president who called our country America and insisted we all go shopping right after 9/11, or pleading to us one time or another to even go surf the internets.

Growing up I heard about all the taunting and teasing of my grandfather, a good man who came from Finland and worked hard in the gypsum mines of Alabaster, Michigan. He could never speak the perfect english, his words a broken mess of syllables and frustration, and for that they teased him viciously for they did not understand him. But Charlie had a good heart, and was a craftsman unequaled by most others and even by my own efforts for twenty years to make as good a final product by my hands as he did. He walked tall, and drank hard whiskey on Saturdays. And he was fair with me. But he could not speak the language of the absurd as I do. And I take it upon myself now to hear his praise. Even though it comes from his grave in Alabaster.

Woodshed


Charlie left them
back where they lay
bleeding
back by the wooden block,

where one careless chop
had taken them both off,
badly.

I remember
he would stuff Grandma’s
old hose inside the toes of
all his shoes. Hinge around
the farm,
unfortunately.

He died, but we saved his laces.
Tied them to our waists.
Hung from a slide until
somebody saved us.