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gave up entirely. He committed suicide, leaving philosophical
notes rather than a complete work. Gould is
also dead, but naturally; of a lung disease (in reality, he
died of a stroke).
This leaves the narrator alone. He tries to write a
monograph About Glenn Gould but instead writes what
we’re reading. It is pointed out in the Afterword to the
English edition that the three main characters can be
summarised as a triple-separation of Bernhard himself:
he is at once Gould the virtuoso artiste, Wertheimer the
suicide, a self-styled failure gone under; and the unnamed
narrator. In real life, Bernhard was a virtuoso, of
course, and perhaps also a suicide. The last state, being
unnamed is therefore appropriate. His living self mediates
between the extremes of Gould and Wertheimer
– inhumanity and death – both perhaps preferable. The
unnamed one is unable to go under in art or suicide,
forced to remain, like everyone else, in the usual human
situation. Unless, that is, you count his default project,
The Loser, as a virtuoso work of art – which I do. In
which case, the unnamed one goes on, elsewhere, not
in this book, unto death.
But perhaps not quite alone. Before death, Bernhard
BUY Thomas Bernhard books online from and
achieved full expression because he wrote out of
failure to go under. He understood the dangers of art
for humanity, and showed respect for the limits of the
imagination. Ironically (again), in accepting the limits,
he transcended them: partly through the invention of a
literary conceit, partly out of lyrical power, partly out
of biographical necessity. Such a form of transcendence
is why fiction can be more than just information
or distraction. It can be where the true self emerges;
one’s self with others. Saul Bellow, the American novelist,
who shares Bernhard’s waterfall eloquence and
complexity, has spoken of the experience of getting it
right, and with Bernhardian relish:
“[transcendence is] just a handle. It’s not the real
thing. The real thing is an unquenchable need that never
stops gnawing at you. And … you feel that you’re being
transcendent in that lousy sense when you are fully
expressive. That’s when it happens to you. Then you’re
satisfied that you’ve done the right thing. Otherwise no.
Otherwise you fall back on explanations and definitions
and boring discourse. You might as well be a social
scientist and write that sort of stuff.” �
081
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