Thomas Bernhard Concrete

As opposed to the book he's meant to write, Rudolph, a Viennese musicologist, produces this tale of procrastination, failure, and despair, a dark and grotesquely funny story of small woes writ large and serious horrors detail by detail and rehearsed to the point of distraction.

"Certain publications—few—assert literary value immediately, profoundly. This new book by the globally praised not widely known Austrian copywriter is regarded as those—a book of mystical dark beauty . . . . [It] is daunting; one desires to read it once again, straight away, to re-experience its intricate innovations, not to ever release this masterful work."—John Rechy, L . A . Occasions

"Rudolph isn't obstructed by some malfunctions to some extent of his being—his being is a knot. And as Bernhard's narrative profits, we begin to register the proportions of their crisis, its self-consuming circularity . . . . In which rage of the intensity is directed outward, we quite often discover sociopath; in which inward, the suicide. Where it breaks out laterally, onto the page, we often discover a most unsettling artistic sight."—Sven Birkerts,