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her humiliation in the inherited features of her boy. No
amount of virtuoso storytelling and opinionating could
prevent the author from being thrown toward the bitter
facts of his birth, and its consequences, much as we
wonder, whilst vomiting, what we had eaten to cause it.
Bernhard’s early life was also blighted by the Nazi
era. He saw at first hand the terror of Allied bombing
raids on Salzburg. Barely a teenager, death closed in
from all sides. And after the war, when he tried to make
his way in the world as a trained singer, he was struck
down with tuberculosis after working in freezing conditions
in a grocery store. In hospital, with his lungs full
of breathtaking sputum, he was given the Last Rites.
Miraculously, he survived when all around were dying.
Honegger says he wrote the memoir as a record of his
victory over that death and the attempts at metaphorical
suffocation by his upbringing in particular, and Austrian
society in general. Victory was the result of a decision
to become himself, to live despite all that suffocated
him, even though it was futile. I say “futile” because
all that suffocated him also provided the oxygen. It
is no coincidence that, despite the oppressive details,
there is a sense of freedom pulsing out of the pages
of Gathering Evidence. Later, the existential energy
of Bernhard’s neurasthenic narrators will also emerge
from this outrageous, paradoxical act of will.
Perhaps it because Bernhard provides the most useful
guide to his life that Honegger does not attempt to
BUY Thomas Bernhard books online from and
take us through the minutiae of his daily existence. Yet
while the analysis is very interesting, one longs for that
minutiae. Recently, a BBC Radio 3 documentary on
Bernhard revealed that his record collection consisted
almost entirely of the 19th-century Romantic repertoire.
One might have assumed this great Modernist
would have preferred Schönberg and Webern, Bach
and Haydn over Schubert and Brahms. Apparently not.
(Curiously, this is similar to Beckett). I don’t recall
Honegger mentioning anything like this. Nor does she
mention the novel Bernhard had sketched out before
his death. She prefers to skim over the surface, taking
what is necessary for her themed coverage. When it
comes to Bernhard’s sexuality, for example, there is an
exhausting bout of Freudian analysis arising from his
father’s absence and his mother’s maltreatment. It is
unconvincing only because it is so persuasive. Actually
the same is true of the opinions expressed by Bernhard’s
narrators. Perhaps Honegger is having a laugh as our
brows sweat over the complexities of Oedipal anxiety?
I would like to think so. In the rest of the book, Freud
gets barely a mention. It is very odd.
It is also vague. We don’t get a definitive answer as
to whether Bernhard was hetero-, bi- or homosexual.
Honegger says he “came between couples”, which
suggests one conclusion, but what she means is that
both sexes were drawn into an ambiguous relationship
with the writer. It’s a living example of Bernhard’s
084
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