Thomas Bernhard was mentioned in Helen Garner’s work “How To End A Story”, it’s a diary about Garner and her then on-par famous writer husband’s suffering marriage. The husband in Garner’s diary is arrogant, misogynistic and annoying. He had an affair with another female and his taste in arts and literature was part of the bait. Thomas Bernhard is a guage for the husband to decide if a person has taste or not:

“The publisher remarks that V’s habit of judging people according to whether or not they’ve read Thomas Bernhard is ‘the kind of insane snobbery that Bernhard himself would despise’”. (p219 “How to End A Story”)

Indeed, Bernhard criticises the prevalence of appreciation of arts for superficial reason: to exhibit one’s superiority either in taste or class in “Old Masters: A Comedy”. And also not shy away from pointing out the uselessness of arts, and at the same time concludes as a matter-of-fact: “art is altogether nothing but a survival skill… to cope with the world and its revolting aspects”.

I also found the character’s criticism on Catholic arts (so almost all European art from old days) refreshing in literature. And enjoy the character’s lecture on how we should see the important art works as caricature so we can criticise an art rather than admire it mindlessly.

Although the character gets tired of “Winterreise”, I started to listening to the piece along with reading and enjoy it very much. The book is a guide for classical music too.

On storytelling, I like how sentences being short and sharp, and I’d love to read more Thomas Bernhard in future.