Extinction: A Novel (Vintage International)

"Extinction" is the story of Franz-Josef Murau, a wealthy Austrian gentleman living in Rome as a private tutor in German literature. His tastes run to the esoteric and philosophical, and his relationship with his student, Gambetti, is intellectually mutual. He has just returned to Rome from the wedding of his younger sister, Caecilia, to an "obese wine cork manufacturer," held at the family estate in Austria, called Wolfsegg. At the wedding were his parents, older brother Johannes, and his other younger sister, Amelia. He receives a telegram in Rome: "Parents and Johannes killed in accident." For the first half of this 320-page book (each half being one unbroken paragraph!), he describes his life, and his narration becomes a deep reflection on his childhood and life to date. He delivers a marvelous psychological portrait of himself, as well as the family members who have just died, and his long-dead Uncle Georg, whom he remembers with great fondness. He hates his family deeply, and the feeling is mutual. He is a philosopher, they are down to earth. He is an aesthete, but they are simple folks. He is a scholar, but they are hunters and farmers, despite their fantastic wealth and their prosperous family estate. Only Uncle George understood him, artistic, free-spirited, and educated. Franz-Josef reflects passionately on his current situation, and tells us many stories of himself and his family. For the second half of the book, he describes the funeral at Wolfsegg. Lacking parents and older siblings, he is now the master of the estate. His sisters look to him for leadership. He must now decide what to do with the estate. Will he move back to Wolfsegg in Austria, a land he loves, but an estate he hates? Will he pass it to his sisters and remain in Rome, a city he cherishes more than any other? Bernhard will stun the reader with the beauty of the resolution, but will do it in his own literary fashion. During the story, we learn Franz-Josef disdains Catholicism and National Socialism (i.e., Nazism) in equal parts. His mother had been having an affair with a Catholic Archbishop in Rome, a relationship which was supposedly secret, but which all her children seem to know of. The Archbishop is a close family friend, and will certainly visit the estate for the funeral. His father had many Nazi friends, unbelievably still openly Nazi all these years after the war. He tells us of the fun times he enjoyed playing at his estate's Children's Villa, and how disappointed he was when it was shuttered. He vows to open and restore it when he is master. He tells us of the five libraries---five!---scattered about the estate, similarly shuttered up, collecting dust despite a half-dozen generations' worth of valuable books stored within. He tells us childhood stories of his parents, his brother, and his sister, all disdainful, and heaps contempt upon his brother-in-law, whose name he cannot even bring himself to utter, in generous proportions. At one point, he bathes in his father's bath, and wears some of his clothes. Is this a metaphor for his feelings? We learn that he blames his father only for being such a simple man, but hates his mother passionately, for dragging his father into the mud. We struggle with the idea that this is an unreliable narrator, and we are only hearing one side of a two-sided story, but unlike Italo Svevo's masterpiece, "Confessions of Zeno", it is clear that despite this narrator's one-sided story, there is no reason to disbelieve him. He is as critical of himself as of others, and he demonstrates the pettiness and crudeness of his family in many different ways. We trust him, not only because he is self-critical, but because despite his self-confidence, he is not a fool. We also learn some untoward truths about his family, and a few hidden secrets, which cannot be dismissed, even from the most unreliable narrator. His angst comes from a simple sentiment, expressed early on: "I can't abolish my family just because I want to." He struggles to resolve the question of extinction: Must he extinguish himself to satisfy his family? Must his family be extinguished to satisfy himself? Finally, after a rollicking narration of heartfelt emotions and deeply-help philosophies, Bernhard's narrator demonstrates how he chooses to reconcile his thoughts and feelings, his inheritance and his sisters, his legacy and his future, and all the elements demonstrated through the length of the novel braid together like a jewel. Bernhard's prose is difficult for those unfamiliar with experimental or cutting-edge literature, but actually not very difficult once one tries. Curious readers will greatly enjoy engaging their mind with this book. If they wish to sample a smaller work before digging into this one, Bernhard's "Yes" is another masterpiece of style and depth. Both are rewarding, brilliant works from a literary master.

Is there a word in German that signifies "Bernhardism" or, more to the point, "Bernhardists"? I ask because all the other reviewers seem to belong to this camp; most seem to be fluent in German and, indeed, to have more or less memorised his entire corpus of works. This book is my first exposure to this great Bernhard, and I have a few caveats for the neophyte reader of him: * Beware of him if you suffer from chronic depression * Beware of him if you absolutely love cameras and photography * Beware of him if you are Catholic and attend mass and go to confession * Beware of him if you have any sort of sentimental attachment to Austria, or anywhere in Central Europe * Beware of him if you think Nazi uniforms look "cool" * Beware of him if you think that German literature is the ne plus ultra of modern endeavours * Beware of him if you are "family-oriented" * Beware of him if you take everything seriously The last, of course, is the only credible caveat. The exaggerated spleen and diatribe on display here borders on the ridiculous so often, that it is really impossible not to laugh, all the while knowing that there exists at least a crumb of existential truth in each sentence of this extended rant. Bernhard or the narrator "Murau" or however you wish to parse it remarks herein at one point, "Without the art of exaggeration, I told him (his pupil Gambetti), we'd be condemned to an awfully tedious life, a life not worth living." And, indeed, without the dark humour the book would be pitch-black unreadable. For the sake of brevity, I'll mention the character Spadolini, as a sort of synecdoche of everything with which the narrator is absorbed and obsessed: Spadolini, that elegant, worldly Roman Nuncio who's been having it off with the narrator's mother for years. Of him, our narrator says: "Yet although everything Spadolini said about my father is wrong, I thought, it has an air of authenticity. We often hear the most arrant nonsense spoken about someone, downright lies and falsehoods, but accept it as the unadulterated truth because it is uttered by someone whose words carry conviction." It is the comforting verbiage of a Spadolini about our families, our lives, our deaths, and our ulterior motives that Bernhard, successfully it seems to me, pours venom on here. Yet, he remarks earlier that this same Spadolini is the most capital sort of fellow, who made life liveable for him in Rome, who showed him around, made introductions on his behalf, who acquired his pupil Gambetti for him. So, there is actually a deep ambiguity about the world underlying the spleen on superficial display. I would argue that it is this undertow of underlying ambiguity which makes the book such a deeply unsettling, important one to read.

A seemingly inexhaustible monologue by a man on the edge of sanity, Extinction takes place over a few crucial days in the narrator’s life after he learns his father, mother and brother have died in an accident. Like most narrators in Bernhard's novels, Murau, is brilliant, witty, obsessive, and filled with outrage at the mundanity of the “petit bourgeois” and the insufferable hypocrisy inherent in all Austrian institutions, including the Catholic church. Central to Murau’s outrage is the knowledge that his prominent land-owning family had been Nazi sympathizers and that Austria had basically papered over the history of that time. Bernard keeps luring the reader down the various passageways of Murau's endlessly conflicted mind leads him and us through, even though we sense (incorrectly) there is no escaping the maze we find ourselves in. A great novel by a major writer, but The Loser would be a better place to start if you are reading Bernhard for the first time.

Very strange guy mr. Bernhard, persevere to read, he likes to repeat himself. The title is wel chosen in many ways

Franz-Josef Murau is a wealthy intellectual living in Rome as a tutor of high German literature and philosophy. He has also abandoned his home in Austria-a country estate named Wolfsegg, until he is pulled back into the throes of the Austrian aristocracy when his parents and brother are killed in a car accident and the estate is bequeathed to him. What follows is a mordantly brilliant monologue excoriating the decadence of the Austrian rich in grand Bernhard style, which is to say ruthlessly and deliberately. This extraordinary novel represents the culmination of a signature voice, well-honed and developed over the course of a brilliant lifetime. In Extinction, Bernhard creates a world of militant philistinism with the thick residue of National Socialism, only to overturn and extinguish the world through the act of its recollection. The work is the work of extinction-the extinction of the bloody past, and the sense that its truth must be overdetermined in the interpretive mind. While I am less excited about Bernhard's explicit announcements about his program, this is still a very rich and nuanced aesthetic achievement.

Please do not let yourself be put off by the dark seriousness implied by the combination of a title like "Extinction", a German-language writer and themes that touch on the meaning of life, family, the Holocaust.....This is an enormously readable and most of all fun and funny book. Of course it is also deep and crazy and the fun is on the surface. But if you are the kind of reader who finds most novels unfulfilling, i.e., "why should I read about things that never happened to people who never existed?" -- try this one. It's got an (un)reliable narrator who delivers an unforgettable 250 page soliloquy to rank with Shakespeare's characters and Proust's. Imagine sitting at a cafe with Nietzsche one night in Turin or Basel and listening to him for 6 hours.... It's W. G. Sebald amped up several notches in passion and weirdness and sincerity.

I read this years ago and now give it as a gift to as many people as possible that I feel would enjoy taking it on. Bernhard's voice is strong, powerful, and insightful. Like his book "The Loser" it has one of the great closings of any book I've read in recent years. Bernhard is an absolute Master of prose and uniquely captures his own personal "attitude" which truly is unlike any other. His anger is laced with dark humor, his insights confound while leading you on to read and experience more and more. I can't recommend his best books any more highly and this is one of them.

Eh I can see how some people could dig this but it really didn't sit with me. I told a pal I was into Central European/German lit but had steered clear of TB and she directed me to this. While I often enjoy that long-monologue style of novel, the main character was not engaging. Plain as that. Note I am not saying I didn't like the book because I didn't like or relate to the character, but that his manifestation was boring.

A very interesting novel. The writer is a classic unreliable narrator, which after a few pages it difficult for the reader to believe him. So one has to approach everything he writes with a grain of salt. Well written and absorbing.

Leitura incrível. Narrativa de tirar o fôlego embora não seja fácil à primeira vista. Mas tem passagens que ficam na memória.

A steamroller of invective ostensibly highly critical of Austrians in general. But as the narrator's rants go on (and on), a more subtle picture is built up - the main character is himself an Austrian, and his criticisms therefore have an element of self-laceration, while the family estate, which can be seen to represent the country, employs not only huntsmen (Nazi types) but also gardeners (nurturers), with whom he empathises. The text rambles (in a good sense) as it takes its path through the character's thoughts, following his, sometimes contradictory, arguments. Beautifully written, very readable, a wonderful book.

Amazing for its content and syle but I could have enjuyed some periodizing. castle in Autstria is very fine but You refuse to deliver about the monastery in Parma. Peter Andrsson

This is a curiously satisfying read. Franz Josef. Born rich. Unwanted child. Intellectual and artistic in a family of philistines. Suddenly called back from his home in Rome to the family estate in Austria in the wake of a tragic accident. Two sections. Two paragraphs. A lot to think about. I won’t bang on about the details, as other reviewers here have covered this.