For years I have lived in this state of self-condemnation, self-abnegation and self-mockery, in which ultimately I always have to take refuge in order to save myself.I find it a bit ironic that I’ve been having such a difficult time beginning this review, a review for a book narrated by an aging man who has watched ten years flick by as he has attempted to write the first sentence for his own book. Thomas Bernhard’s Concrete is a darkly comical, spiraling plunge into the mind and soul of it’s narrator as he gripes and groans about his lot in life. He manages to create blockades for himself everywhere he turns, always perceiving the world around him as threat to him and as stifling his creative genius. In a sublime balance between grumpy and gorgeous, Bernhard exquisitely details a tortured mind as it projects it’s own self-dissatisfactions outward, latching on to every corner of society possible to avert any horrific inward gaze, while constructing a portrait of confined genius and giving voice to the dismay felt by those who hold the arts in high esteem. I’d always cared extremely little for public opinion because I was obsessed with my own opinion and hence had no time at all for the public’s.Berhard brings such a richness of voice and character that nearly screams off the page in all the narrator’s self-righteous fury. Rudolph is aging and bitter at everything and everyone around him, viewing anything aside from the purest of intellectual pursuits to be vapid trifles. These trifles, he fears, are the objects that the general public finds the most interest in, and he rages against a society that is progressively becoming oversaturated with philistines masquerading under a guise of artistic merit. The scene today is dominated by baseness and stupidity, and by the charlatanry which makes common cause with them. My Vienna has been totally ruined by tasteless, money-grubbing politicians and become unrecognizable.While he often seems like a mind that is being shorn from it’s hinge, it would be wrong to dismiss him as an utter madman (as he suspects all his acquaintances have); Bernhard manages to give birth to an eloquent voice that resides in the ambiguous region where madness and genius overlap, bestowing Rudolph with a cunning insight and a silver tongue of vast literary magnitude. I’ve always been fond of insufferable narrators, the type of people that I accept would probably be unbearable as a friend or to encounter in person, but I can’t help but loving their bitter, volatile personalities on paper. Perhaps that is one of the many gifts of literature; through books like this we come to understand the character and why they present a thorn of a personality and in turn learn tolerance and acceptance of others. Rudolph seemed reminiscent of many of my other favorite insufferable narrators, especially the one found in Hamsun’s Hunger.Rudolph’s vitriolic rants help him avoid writing the music study he has been intending to write for ten years. These rants are not only mere digressions, but often digressions of digressions to the point where it seems there is little to no forward motion to the novel. However, it is through these circuitous ravings that Bernhard is able to reveal the insight into his narrator piece by piece while still bestowing an infectious desire to press on in the reader. This book is extremely hard to put down. Rudolph gripes about everything around him, from his sister, his house, publishing, society, and spitting acidic condemnations of his current residence in Peiskam as well as his former residence in Vienna. Only a few people have the strength to turn their backs on Vienna soon enough, before it is too late; they remain stuck to this dangerous and poisonous city until, finally, they become tired and let themselves by crushed to death by it, as by a glistening snake. And how many geniuses have been crushed to death in this city? They simply can’t be counted.Rudolph finds faults everywhere he casts his gaze, and finds them unbearable and suffocating. Each annoyance in the world builds to stifle his self-professed creative genius, a genius his is unable to reveal to the world due to, what he believes to be, strangling stupidity and sheer blindness towards what is truly brilliant. ‘I can’t expect simple people to take me seriously anymore,’ he writes, detailing his excuses for his self-removal from society. However, no matter how hard he tries to remove himself from anything distressing, he is always able to find a new matter that is such a heavy burden to him that he cannot begin writing. Also, much like Dostoevsky’s narrator from Notes From Underground, he believes he is deathly ill. The world around him is so dissatisfactory and vile that it has planted a terminal illness in him, one that can be used at any moment to forego any progression in his work or life. ‘< i>I don’t know which came first—my illness or my sudden distaste for society.’ Rudolph must inevitable come to terms that it is his jealousy that leads to his spiteful nature, jealousy of his sister’s prosperity, jealousy that society can thrive without him, and jealousy that others can fake their happiness through the world. Not long after he rages against Vienna, Rudolph writes ‘Today I envy my sister only one thing: that she can live in Vienna. That’s what constantly rouses me to anger against Vienna – envy.’ It is easy to hate something that we envy, something we cannot obtain, something that makes us feel inferior. We all do it. It is so easy to hate a popular musician when we feel we have our own musical talents, or to hate an author that becomes a best seller when we appreciate what we feel is better, more worthwhile literature. William H. Gass mentions in an interview how bitter he was towards the literary world at a young age, seeing what he considered mediocre writers making the best sellers while hearing the thump of his rejected manuscripts being returned to his front doorstep. Rudolph cannot begin his great work, so he finds excuses in everything else to sidestep any personal responsibilities. He projects his distaste towards himself onto the world at large, and while it is highly comic, it is truly tragic.After leaving his home to vacation in peace and in hopes of beginning his book, Rudolph is flooded with memories of a poor woman who faced true hardships of life. It creates an illuminating juxtaposition: Rudolph who fears the outside world is crushing him instead of recognizing his own self-defeating perceptions and actions, and Anna who is trying to make an honest, self-motivating go of it in the world and is constantly thwarted on all sides by outside forces. Initially, Rudolph views her as a muse to make himself feel better, ‘The fact is that we immediately use someone who is still more unfortunate than we are in order to get ourselves back on our feet,’ her cruel fate sends him plummeting into throes of anxiety and fear that it is uncertain if he will ever be able to begin the book he has traveled so far to start work upon. While Rudolph is a voice for all our inner discontent with what we find around us, he is a cautionary tale, or perhaps even a metaphorical yellow canary, that we must alter our self-defeating behaviors, claim responsibilities for our actions and shortcomings, and take charge of our lives if we ever wish to do anything great. We cannot waste our years and youth away wishing for ideal conditions, we must cut our own path through the dense foliage of reality to capture the treasure of our goals. We cannot blame others for our own failings, and the world would move much more smoothly if we could all accept who we are, learn to love ourselves even for our faults, and not project it outward into the cosmos. Bernhard displays a masterful skill over his prose and through his creation of such a cantankerous, yet charming, narrator. While this book spins itself in circle of self-defeat, it is one that will have you flipping pages, fully engrossed, entertained and desiring to know what venomous line Rudolph will spit next. This is the sort of book that really charms me, and reading it with such an enlightened and intelligent goodreads friend such as Garima (please read her incredible review found here) made this all the more of an incredible book. Bitter and beautiful, Bernhard is a master that should find his way into your bookshelf and heart.5/5‘There ought to be only happy people—all the necessary conditions are present—but there are only unhappy people.’
http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/7938337...It is almost impossible to write a critical review of a book I read almost twenty years ago and now am attempting to read again after having been philosophically and physically altered so dramatically from the person I was way back then. In 1996 I was a first-year student of the infamous fiction-writing teacher Gordon Lish and it was he who had informed me of the great work of Thomas Bernhard. I did not keep a journal from that period so I am hard-pressed to remember my first Bernhard introduction, but I would hazard a guess it was Wittgenstein's Nephew. This book, Concrete, most likely followed in relatively good speed as I am wont to devour, in great measure, anything I discover myself extremely interested in. Bernhard was, and still is for me, one of these delicacies. For several years now I have claimed Concrete as my favorite of all the Bernhard novels. That is not true for me today. Recently I read again the brilliant short novel Yes and found that to be a better read for me than Concrete. One may also add Extinction, Frost, and quite possibly even Woodcutters to that growing list of novels I find to be far superior to my first-acquired Bernhard favorite. … When we really know the world, we see it is just a world full of errors.The main character in Concrete was himself a musicologist and is now a procrastinator to the extreme. He does not it seems continue to compile detailed notes in which to refer to when he finally sits down to compose his master work. He tells us this proposal is based on his favorite composer Mendelssohn Bartholdy, a study he has been planning on writing for going on ten years. The more the name Mendelssohn Bartholdy is mentioned the more it begins to have its poetical qualities. Its specific repetitions reminds me of an almost David Letterman intensity. Fact is, Rudolf the narrator, has written nothing but notes that he casually mentions near the end of this book that proved, I guess, to provide the substance of the novel Concrete I am holding in my hands. Daily, without fail, Rudolf prepares his materials precisely on his desk enabling him in his effort for the sitting down to it, the beginning of his work, but then something always keeps him from composing that first sentence. He knows if he could just write it he would be well on his way. His reasons for not forming that first sentence on the page are in fact numerable (and mounting), and humorous enough if a fellow writer with the same difficulty just so happens to be reading this. I do not have the same problem Thomas Bernhard so adequately portrays in this novel. "Writer's block" is a condition I do not prescribe to, nor do I believe in. A writer writes, she revises and edits, and often destroys the work that seemed at first to have had so much promise. I think that when I was first introduced to this book I harbored enough of my own difficulties on the page to collect some solace in a character with the same problems as I. But the more I worked and perfected my craft the less trouble I had with beginnings as I new that this was the best place to start. Often the first words get pushed to somewhere near the middle, or even to the end, and sometimes nowhere at all. But in order to have something to revise one must have something in which to work with. In many cases almost anything will do, though it helps to be severe in one's editing.I still love Concrete but I have lost the same affinity for it I had so many years ago. As I mentioned at the top of the page there are just so many other Bernhards to read and enjoy that this novel for me no longer stands as the very best of all of them. Extreme anxiety, neuroticism, incessant O.C.D, intolerance, suicide, insanity, and procrastination are at times quite entertaining and funny when looked at through the eyes of Thomas Bernhard, but I have learned through the years that I need more than these large doses of these rather unseemly human conditions in order to keep me satisfied. I like a bit more story in my favorite Bernhards. I generally storm through the very best of his work, but I found this novel on second read to be lacking in the generous spirit I have discovered in reading certain others. But please, do not confuse this review as something negative. Thomas Bernhard is in my book simply the best. There is no other who could possibly replace him.
What do You think about Concrete (1986)?
I’m going to say that I am an observer of myself, which is stupid, since I am my own observer anyway: I’ve actually been observing myself for years, if not for decades; my life now consists only of self-observation and self-contemplation, which naturally leads to self-condemnation, self-rejection and self-mockery, in which ultimately I always have to take refuge in order to save myself. I knew it would happen. I knew that whatever little I missed on my first outing with Bernhard would no longer remain obscure this second time around. I knew that sooner than later, I would happily include another writer in ‘one of my favorites’ list and that writer would secure another devout fan. Here I am and Here He is. Take a bow, Mr. Bernhard. I’m delighted for both of us. The fact that this review you’re reading right now is finalized after several failed attempts at formulating something that can vaguely express my views about this book can marginally be used to signify one of the highlights of Concrete. Our narrator, Rudolph, wants to write a book about Mendelssohn Bartholdy but can’t even begin to write its first sentence. He has been planning to write it for ten years but his senses are blocked by the dreadful writer’s block. A block which is not only a culmination of his circumstances, his ill health, or his family problems but is primarily the result of Rudolph’s personality. His life is full of worldly comforts and yet it is supremely empty. The closest person he can turn to in his hour of need is his elder sister whom he simply detests but she’s the only one who has the ability to keep his life together. Sometimes we need someone, sometimes no one, and sometimes we need someone and no one.Although it represents a typical example of ‘can’t live with you or without you’, the way Bernhard has depicted the said relationship is enough to prove his virtuosity as a writer. Then of course, there’s Rudolph himself. His cynicism towards everything and everybody, his unconventional philosophical discourses, his procrastinations, his anxieties, his interior monologue and his endless meanderings in a book so short is a perfect recipe for claustrophobia for its readers but this is where Bernhard emerges as a winner. He’s an excellent juggler of various themes where initially he concentrates on one thing and before we know it, he’s onto another while simultaneously maintaining the effect of first one and by the end; we witness a masterful show on display. He also manages to indulge in digressions without hampering his performance. Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable caco-phany. The word cacophony was incidentally a favourite of my maternal grandfather’s. And the phrase he hated more than any other was thought process. Another of his favourite words was character. During these reflections it suddenly struck me for the first time how extraordinarily comfortable my armchair is. His unapologetic humor which usually takes birth out of his unrelenting commentary on the hypocrisy of human race, his hatred towards his native country and his impeccable observations about his surroundings, makes this book a perfect reading companion. But Concrete is a lot more than derisiveness and the laughs it bring about. It’s an interesting and addictive contemplation about all the unfortunate things that exist in this world and an honest admission that they do exist. That everyone has their share of good and bad lucks is something we can know when we allow ourselves to step out of the boundaries of our customized lives made out of fantasies and nightmares where we declare victims and survivors based on our wishful thinking and the weak criteria like: what we have and what we don’t; what we can do and what we can’t; what we look for and what we find and in the process reducing our lives to a mere game of hide n seek without giving much thought that there is an alternate reality waiting for us to get recognized. May be that reality is waiting for you in the form of this book. Read it and Relish it. P.S. Do visit Here for Sven’s Brilliant review.
—Garima
Rudolf, the rav-ing luftmensch,Wrote a very whiny prose.And if you ever read it . . .Okay okay, don't be dumb. This book deserves better. This book spoke to me. In fact, this book was me on many levels. How very sad. For me. Rudolf's ravings were feverishly musical and hilarious and, by the end, devastating. Rudolf is a luftmensch, to use a term from Bernhard's mother tongue. His pursuits are decidedly abstract. You get the feeling he's avoiding something. "Luftmensch" means an kind of artsy, high-minded idler, someone whose feet aren't on solid ground, but it literally translates to "a man of the air." In this book there is air and there is concrete: two opposing elements. I won't spoil it if you haven't read it, but Rudolf, after a whole book in the air, concusses against some pretty hard concrete and you begin to understand what he's been avoiding. Here's irony for you—at the center of this loud, prattling book there is a profound silence. There's a refusal to let certain concrete facts into the brain and to speak them. And so Rudolf colonizes his brain instead with these rantings and ravings, to take up all the room, all the resources, that might otherwise encourage the truth to take root. From the book's end I gleaned the message that we have two choices when faced with our cosmic situation: it's either the cemetery or the insane asylum. The asylum is the option that allows us to keep moving and so we all go mad in our own little (and not so little) ways. Rave on, Rudolf! Rave on!Camus, who asked this same question very seriously—Why not just commit suicide?—said this about Kafka:If the nature of art is to bind the general to the particular, ephemeral eternity of a drop of water to the play of its lights, it is even truer to judge the greatness of the absurd writer by the distance he is able to introduce between these two worlds. [Kafka's] secret consists in being able to find the exact point where they meet in their greatest disproportion.Air and concrete. Raving and silence. By Camus's criteria Concrete is a giant success. For me it was also, simultaneously, an exquisite ache and pleasure.
—Nathanimal
Dei-lhe 4* porque deixou-me, literalmente, agoniada no final. Talvez mereça 5*, há que reconhecer em T. Bernhard a genialidade da escrita; em cento e poucas páginas de narrativa tensa, sem interrupções, traçou todo o absurdo de uma vida aprisionada no medo, no pessimismo e na contradição. No início até que lhe encontrei alguma piada, mas aos poucos a ansiedade tomou conta de mim perante a dimensão do desequilíbrio da personagem do seu pessimismo e indecisão.Um livro que nos envolve assim tem que ser mesmo muito bom. Tão bom, tão bom que é péssimo.
—Carmo Santos
