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Thursday 21 April 2011

'Extinction' by Thomas Bernhard

FOR THOSE WHO READ BOOKS IN HARDBACK, PAPERBACK OR KINDLE

I was given the nudge about Thomas Bernhard and read 'Extinction' (Auslöschung, 1986), translated by David McLintock (1995), over three hundred pages without a paragraph break - a marvellous rant which lead me to re-read 'By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept' by Elizabeth Smart, a masterpiece of poetic prose, described at the time of publication in The Spectator as ...'a cry of ecstasy, which without changing volume or pitch, becomes a cry of agony!... Wow!

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