Poor Quartets
Goethe Dies, a collection of short pieces initially published in German periodicals in the early 1980s, goes some way to frame its author’s relationship with the negative romance of a running order. Although pegged in a period pushed along by the booming influence of mass media, Thomas Bernhard’s insistence seems be constantly on looking backwards. For Bernhard, retrospection and nostalgia are tools to play with history — to upset the performance of culture’s chronology.
Dominic Jaeckle reviews Goethe Dies by Thomas Bernhard.