Published for the first time unabridged, including original documents, this is the record Karl Ignaz Hennetmair made of his daily conversations and encounters with Thomas Bernhard. ------------------------------------------------------- “Thomas is not earnest or bitter; when he whinges about publishers it’s cheerful and witty. I say, ‘publishers like to have their authors on a string, like puppeteers with their puppets. Every publisher has a handful of strings, and as soon as they tug on one, an author appears. But when they pull your string it jams and nothing moves. They just don’t get it.’ Thomas says he will travel to the prize-giving via Frankfurt. There he intends to walk through his publisher’s offices saying, ‘have a good look; this is what a writer looks like [in dialect]. You know, I talk mostly in dialect there,’ he says. ‘I’m pretty brutal. When the secretary asks me to wait, I say something unintelligible. And then the door is opened, some young writer is shunted aside, and I can get straight to Unseld.’”

In 1972 the estate agent Karl Ignaz Hennetmair, a friend and neighbour of Thomas Bernhard, decided to keep a diary of the events and conversations involving Bernhard that year, creating a document of incalculable value to Thomas Bernhard fans. His enemies would have found much to enjoy too, as the manuscript sometimes shows the master in a dark light – but where are the Bernhard detractors today? Thomas Bernhard had understandable difficulties with the outside world; initially it took no notice of him, but as his reputation grew it began to beleaguer him, coming too close for comfort. Sometimes it tended to present him – a man interested solely in his literature –simply as stupid. To counteract all that, he had Hennetmair, who found him his property, his houses and woods, negotiating the deals at favourable prices, but also mediated between the writer and the outside world on an everyday level. Hennetmair dealt with everything from broken window frames to mental garbage, acting as dumping ground and recycling facility. He always kept unwanted visitors away from Bernhard, but equally received him into his own family circle. There they chatted, joked and put the world to rights. Later Hennetmair retreated to his study to write it all down in his diary, which we can now satisfy our curiosity by reading.

Thomas Bernhard – A Biography

Thomas Bernhard was all that and more, as this comprehensive biography shows. The acknowledged expert Manfred Mittermayer has drawn together Bernhard’s life and work into one great story, reaching from his ‘origin complex’ – his grandfather Johannes Freumbichler’s family – to his premature death following years of illness. Mittermayer creates a nuanced picture of Bernhard’s multi-layered public image and the various phases of his private life, placing his most significant works of prose and theatre in relation to a life story inseparably bound to post-war history. “I cannot deny that I’ve always led two existences: one which comes close to the truth, which I do have the right to describe as reality, and another which I have played out. Over time, the two together have formed the existence which keeps me alive.” Thomas Bernhard, Der Keller (The Cellar – part II of his autobiography)

For many decades, and until his death in 1989, Thomas Bernhard was the dominating personality in Austrian contemporary literature. His literature is unthinkable without his environment. It is characteristically Austrian, and belongs firmly in the ranks of world literature. He was available and he was public as none of his colleagues were, while he was also considered to be a loner and unapproachable. Everyone talked about him, and yet he was unknown. Erika and Wieland Schmied are two of the few people privileged to experience Thomas Bernhard in private, as a neighbour and friend. Their image of Thomas Bernhard is built on the memories of innumerable encounters and shared experiences, and is documented with unrivalled completeness in hundreds of photographs. The photos, characterful and unsentimental in equal measure, give an insight into Bernhard's environment, the houses and landscapes in which he lived. However, they also convey an impression of the places he wrote about. In short, the authors have created a comprehensive overview of Thomas Bernhard's cosmos, pervaded throughout by his life and work.