My Prizes: An Accounting

The Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) is known as an enfant terrible, but what he really is, as evidenced by this collection of essays on the literary awards bestowed on him, is blindingly sincere. The acidity of his wit is tempered by complete ingenuousness. The money connected with prizes was always welcome, but the ceremonies and speeches gave occasion for some uncomfortable truths. "Writers' chitchat in the hotel lobbies of provincial Germany is the most distateful thing imaginable. The stink however is even stinkier when it's being subsidized by the state." Bernhard stood, defiantly, outside the whole writerly racket, which is reason enough to investigate his other books.