[.ca] Extinction un effondrement (ISBN 2070720500)

reflections:
Extinction is undoubtly one of the most powerfull litrature creation in the last 20 years. Bernhard takes his readers to a journy in his main charcter's (we don't know his name) obssesive mind or better say a journy in our own mind. Bernhard forces us to think, to contemplate our life and values, and the sharp mirror that he puts infront of us makes it a very hard task to do. This precious creation has a relevant political insight. When you see the current political scene in Bernhard's homeland, Austria, you can just admire his brave look on his country's malaises a country which refuses to stand and face it's Nazi past. Jurg Heider success in the last National election colors Bernhard work in a very realistic color.

Extinction:
It doesn't get any better than this, writes A reader, having just reached the close of Extinction after making the book last for weeks, wishing to prolong the pleasure of occupying Bernhard's mind, despite the fact that Bernhard himself would likely decry such a location as any source of *pleasure*. But I am not entirely content with the ending, writes A reader, to amazon.com, which I should have bought at the IPO, because the ending seems to me an uncharacteristic gesture of generosity, an act of overwhelming faith from a character who already seemed human enough and did not need this gesture to elevate him in my eyes. I find Murau to be Bernhard's most compelling persona because we see his complexities and contradictions in sublime detail and actually *live inside his mind* and witness layer upon layer of his thought, at once responding to his external surroundings and reflecting on his responses and all the while seemingly digressing in inimitable Bernhard fashion. And so I do not need his grand and altruistic gesture at the end, and in fact am unconvinced that the Murau that I have lived inside for the entire book would have been capable of making such a gesture in an unironic way -- one faith is as problematic as another, I would imagine that the analytical Murau would say, and I would have much preferred to see a fully random act of charity if there needed to be one at all. Can the ending be interpreted as a mere *affront*, a strong extinction of Wolfsegg's fascist past, without necessarily embracing its inheritors? I don't think so, and I simply cannot reconcile the seemingly uplifting ending with the sentiment that "the only advice I can offer to any thinking person is to kill himself *before the millenium*," although I suppose that the parenthetical in the last sentence of the novel does offer a possibility of relief. Despite any concerns that I may have about the ending, amazon.com, I would still recommend this book as one of Bernhard's *roundest*, although I'm not quite certain whether it will linger in my mind as did Concrete, Yes, Old Masters and The Lime Works, four of his books that made an impact on me that I doubt Extinction, while still *a good read*, will come to rival, writes A reader, already thinking about reentering The Lime Works as Extinction starts to fade.

Elegantly Disturbing:
This was his latest novel to appear in English. It is masterfully constructed,elegantly disturbing and satisfyingly challenging.

Bernhard's Extinction:
In Extinction Bernhard creates his most indulgent, and most inscrutable work since On the Mountain - the likes of which only he can muscle into great literature. These two works can very much be seen as the brackets around all of his work, the beginning and the end. Extinction is the pile driving of Correction and Gargoyles, the lyricism of Old Masters and The Loser, and the sustained climax of Yes. I may even choose one of those novels as his most important work, or my personal favorite - Extinction will never be remembered as an example of Bernhard's work - it's artistry might just be too profound to be very useful. Bernhard's last novel flows very much like the last movement of a dark symphony - it borrows phrases, and alludes to even his first published words, but it is very clearly the end. To one who has read the complete works of Bernhard and who has seen time and again his genius use devices and set motion upon everything from the merits of artistic expressions and intents, to in other works, the fabric of cognition and existence, to the very fabric of the words on the page - the very reason for the work Extinction becomes unclear. It is not like any of Bernhard's other works. Page after page it challenges the reader to give up. Its almost as if Bernhard left this work as a special gift for only those who could really interpret and appreciate his art. Sticking with Extinction while Bernhard is shooing you and the collective literary world away is the greatest artistic experience one can undertake - because in the end, when you are sure you are the only one on the planet who has stuck with him to the last, he leaves you with one of his greatest surprise gifts. One which will float by silently and smash you in the face at the same time. It is all - only how its done. Over drinks, my friend the author, Rick Whitaker once said, 'Bernhard is the only author who ever succeeded in removing himself from everything.' Or at least he should have.

A joyous read and a great work:
There is great joy to be had from this wonderful book. Its first joy is its prose - sparkling in its clarity, musical, effortless - which carries one along on a journey through the thoughts and feelings of Viennese 48 year old Franz-Joseph Murau. Intellectual resident of Rome, alienated by choice from his Austrian family, friend to Archbishop Spadolini(who is also his mother's lover!), he receives a telegram that his father, mother and brother have died in a car accident making him at one stroke inheritor of the family's wealthy estate. He is now MASTER OF WOLFSEGG. The first half of the novel THE TELEGRAM concerns his recollections of childhood and relationships and events that shaped his life. Example: " At first we always tell ourselves that our parents naturally love us, but suddenly we realise that, equally naturally, they hate us for some reason - that is to say, we appear to them as I appeared to mine, as a child that didn't conform with their notion of what a child should be, a child that had gone wrong. They had not reckoned with my eyes which probably saw everything I was not meant to see when I opened them. First, I looked in DISBELIEF, as they say, when I stared at them, and finally, one day I SAW THROUGH THEM, and they never forgave me, could NOT forgive me.(p 76)" The second half of the novel THE WILL concerns his attendance at the estate where he oversees the funeral and greets and reflects upon the range of visitors paying their respects. Example: "In ROME I often lay on my bed, unable to stop thinking of how our nation was guilty of thousands, tens of thousands, of such heinous crimes, yet remained silent about them. The fact that it keeps quiet about these thousands and tens of thousands of crimes is the greatest crime of all, I told my sisters. It's this silence that's so sinister, I said. It's that nation's silence that's so terrible, even more terrible than the crimes themselves.(p 231)" This bare outline of the two parts cannot prepare you, dear reader, for the experiences of this novel. It is as if one becomes privy as another Viennese Mr Freud did, to the real secrets of the heart of an individual, an individual nevertheless, shaped by the world in which he was born but determined to realise some truths about that world. WE are privy then to the feelings, equivocations, doubts, fears, guilt and searching. It is a revalatory experience, scaldingly honest, which provides one man's analysis of 20th Century Austrian culture, including National Socialism, the class system, religion, architecture, cuisine et al. Sometimes mocking, sometimes self excoriating, sometimes savagely funny, we travel with Mr Murau through his thoughts and feelings at this turning point in his history. In the end, Mr Murau makes a stunning act of redemption which concludes his statement and rounds off this wonderful work of literature on a joyous note. Please accompany, or perhaps follow,this novel with a large dose of HAYDN. Most modern novels pale into the ordinary compared to this work.