Thomas Bernhard Overview

The back jackets of much of Thomas Bernhard's English-language translations are burdened by such qualifications as "near genius" or "second only to Kafka and Beckett."  This, of course, is no small praise: there is no shame in being second to Kafka or Beckett; there is no shame in being a "near genius."  For those familiar with Bernhard's work, however, such circumspectly effusive accolades seem downright cruel: this is a writer much of whose work deals in painful proximities, most often a proximity to greatness or horror, and occasionally the two, operating almost symbiotically.  To brand the new influx of English translations of his work with remarks that place him firmly in the territory that the protagonists of such works as The Loser, Wittgenstein's Nephew, and Gargoyles live in seems a belittling of some sort, and one that only further advances the alignment many – not without reason – are want to make between the tortures within his texts and the presumable tortures of his life.  Bernhard now seems to stand, in the English literary academy, as literature's greatest almost brilliant writer.