Picking up Saint Sebastian's Abyss, I knew that it contained passages in a style highly imitative of Thomas Bernhard's, a distinctive style which I had recognized immediately on seeing an excerpt from the book, but I did not know that the book was written exclusively in that style, though perhaps to a lesser degree in its closing chapters, unless as I read, I thought, I had simply gotten used to it by then, and as I read, I thought increasingly that this stylistic fidelity came with a certain detriment to the book, which, had it appeared in a world in which Bernhard had never existed or written, or in which he had written only theater pieces, and vitriolic and yet simultaneously friendly letters to his editor, and excoriations of Austria, and Vienna, and Viennese society, but had not written his novels, his immediately recognizable ranting monologues of eccentrics returning over and over to themes and phrases and obsessions, would be something absolutely first-rate, but which could in this world, as I read, I thought, in which Bernhard had existed, and had not contented himself with theater pieces, and testy exchanges with his editor, and condemnations of Austria, and Vienna, and Viennese society, but had also written the novels on which his fame rests, at least in the English-speaking world, only be seen as a kind of Bernhard lite, as something which continually invites comparison to Bernhard but which cannot bear up under those comparisons which it brings upon itself, specifically it invites comparison to The Loser, a novel about two friends one of whom is traveling in the days surrounding the other's death, the other an Austrian who has a lung condition, friends who have left practice for theory whose encounter with a fictional or at least fictionalized artist of surpassing ability derails their lives and fractures their friendship, and this comparison is something unbearable for the novel, as I read, I thought, for the personages in the novel are flimsy, which is not to say that Bernhard trafficked in the fully fleshed out character of literary psychological realism, he didn't, his obsessive, culture-mad personages were caricatures, but this does not save Saint Sebastian's Abyss, for its personages are then caricatures of caricatures, especially the narrator, and especially Schmidt, whose comical European-æsthete snobbery is too familiar to bite, whereas Bernhard's personages are weird, and Bernhard's personages, too, dwell in a familiar world, or rather, since Bernhard's personages for the most part do not interact with any world familiar to me, they dwell in their world in a way which seems compatible with the world familiar to me, even their obsessions are reconcilable with the world familiar to me, for instance Glenn Gould, the most important piano virtuoso of the century, as the narrator of The Loser said, I thought, even though he is not accurately represented in The Loser, we can understand his being the s u b j e c t of an obsession, and the c o n t e n t of their obsession are such as we can comprehend, whereas Saint Sebastian's Abyss, the greatest painting of all time, as the narrator and Schmidt both said, I thought, is so sketchily described that their obsession is not so comprehensible, but that at least must be forgiven, because only failure could attend the author who attempted to describe plausibly a painting that the reader could understand a personage being obsessed with as the greatest of all time, but also the c o n t e n t of their obsession, the books they write, seem to be the work of cranks, and but the novel presents them as not cranks, which is another way that Bernhard's personages are and these personages are not compatible with the world familiar to me, because Bernhard's personages most likely are cranks but they are supported by family wealth which exempts them from having to be anything other than cranks, being cranks is permissible to them, and perhaps even to Schmidt, whereas the personages of Saint Sebastian's Abyss are both scholarly and popular successes, the books of the narrator have made him wealthy, and presumably the books of Schmidt have made him wealthy, and they both possess acolytes and followers, and indulgent editors at presses, and the ability to place articles with ease, they are discussed on television, are celebrities, in other words, on the strength of their scholarly writings on Saint Sebastian's Abyss, the painting, and the two other paintings by Count Hugo Beckenbauer, and no other paintings, and one result of this is that the world of the novel seems strange to me, ich kann mich in diesem Buch nicht finden, and the satirical suggestion that their obsession is, well, kind of silly and crankish lands less well, because they are making a go of it, after all, and perhaps history will strip them naked as it did Saint-Saëns, as indeed Schmidt does to the narrator, but that episode cannot prove that they were silly or crankish, because it still occurs on their own terms, whereas the books of Bernhard's cranks do not make them famous, bring them no riches and no scholarly esteem, in fact the chief attribute that attach to the works of the personages in Bernhard's novels is that they are not finished, whereas in Saint Sebastian's Abyss they are almost all finished and are plentiful, and this too makes their being obsessive cranks less consistent with the world as it is familiar to me, which is not to say that I do not think that there are no successful cranks or for that matter frauds in this world, because I do think that, but we have nothing really to judge the personages of Saint Sebastian's Abyss by, because their works are necessarily merely sketched, except perhaps their utter sincerity about art, but I see no reason to call that anything worse than unworldly, and the general suspicion that so many books on just one topic must be cranky, and certainly the narrator's book speculating about what Beckenbauer's lost paintings may have been like seems unscholarly in topic, but what of it, shall just that one book condemn him, and so the idea as expressed in a blurb that the book "flays art of its pieties of and pretensions" does not land, because the book takes place in a pretense world, unless the blurber simply means that the personage of Beckenbauer is dissolute, but what of it, Caravaggio was a murderer and not even fictional, so why would a sex-addled painter who is fictional be any worse?
(And what, for the love of god, did that other blurber see in it, or in Krasznahorkai, to connect them?)
Comments