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Title: Gargoyles (Phoenix Fiction) by Thomas Bernhard ISBN: 0-226-04399-1 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1986 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Courageous Madness
Comment: "In reading, one tries to ignore oneself." So says The Prince, whose monologue dominates this book. My advice I to give to a prospective reader of Bernhard's masterful first novel would be just this: ignore yourself, don't let yourself be distracted as you plunge headlong into this book. I agree with the other reviewer, that this novel starts off like "Winesburg, Ohio" (albeit a strange, violent one) with its glimpses into the "grotesqueries" of its small town inhabitants. But eventually this novel is totally consumed by one of the characters (The Prince) who takes off on a startling, often narcotic, diatribe against society, metaphysics, family, the mind, the body... almost anything one could think of. ...But these are all literary hinges, and thus discountable when it gets down to the bone of things.
There are a few hints that the Prince is modelled on various aspects of Bernhard's character, namely, the obsession with reading newspapers and the contempt he had for Austria. It's almost as though Bernhard used the character of the Prince to say what he couldn't say, which isn't so startling in itself (most writers do this)--but it's the manner in which he does it, as well as the subject matter twisted through the rabid mind of the Prince, that sets it apart.
"I am a barometer that is no longer functioning."
Rating: 4
Summary: I'm almost finished...
Comment: ...I have about 12 more pages to go until I reach the end of this novel. So far it's been incredible. At this present moment it is a delicious struggle.
Stay tuned...it may gain a star.
Rating: 5
Summary: Seems The Most Accessible, Until...
Comment: This is Thomas Bernhard's first novel, and at first it seems to be a rambling collection of grotesques in the manner of WINESBURG, OHIO. But then, after the insane industrialist and the boy in the cage, we reach the realm of the prince, and the novel takes off into the territory Bernhard explores in his later books -- that is, breathless, disjointed, almost-incoherent blocks of text. Note that I'm not suggesting this is a bad thing. Here it's wonderful. And although the prince's rant is quite exhausting, it's exhausting in a good way (I had to put the book down a few times during Molly's soliloquoy too, but that doesn't mean it's bad, just perhaps a bit demanding). An obvious choice for any Bernhard fan, and just possibly a good trick to play on someone, who will believe they're reading a naturalistic novel, until....
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Title: Extinction: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction Series) by Thomas Bernhard, David McLintock ISBN: 0226043835 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Lime Works (Phoenix Fiction) by Thomas Bernhard ISBN: 0226043975 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1986 List Price(USD): $21.50 |
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Title: The Voice Imitator by Thomas Bernhard ISBN: 0226044025 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Old Masters: A Comedy (Phoenix Fiction) by Thomas Bernhard, Ewald Osers ISBN: 0226043916 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Woodcutters (Phoenix Fiction) by Thomas Bernhard ISBN: 0226043967 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1989 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
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