Thomas Bernhard: 3 Days - (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In 1970, sitting on a park bench, Thomas Bernhard delivered a powerful monologue over the course of a three-day shoot for Three Days, filmmaker Ferry Radax's artful portrait of the great Austrian writer. Published here in English for the first time and accompanied by stills from Radax's film, Bernhard's candid, penetrating reflections on his life and his work can now be savored in book form. The author of many prize-winning novels, stories, plays, and a five-volume autobiography, Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) is internationally acclaimed as a writer in the pantheon of world literature classics. His works have been widely translated." --

Book Synopsis

Over the course of three days in 1970, June 5, 6, and 7, simply sitting on a white bench in a Hamburg park, Thomas Bernhard delivered a powerful monologue for Three Days (Drei Tage), filmmaker Ferry Radax's commanding film portrait of the great Austrian writer. Radax interwove the monologue with a variety of metaphorically resonant visual techniques--blacking out the screen to total darkness, suggestive of the closing of the observing eye; cuts to scenes of cameramen, lighting and recording equipment; extreme camera distance and extreme closeup. Bernhard had not yet written his autobiographical work Gathering Evidence, published originally in five separate volumes between 1975 and 1982, and his childhood remembrances were a revelation. This publication of Bernhard's monologue and stills from Radax's artful film allows this unique portrait of Bernhard to be savored in book form.

Review Quotes

"Great book design is always a combination of several things. Taste, cleverness, an ability to graphically augment content... But this goes beyond all of that. Perhaps beyond design altogether. This collaboration between Laura Lindgren (translator and designer), Ferry Radax (Bernhard's film biographer), and Thomas Bernhard (one of the great writers of the 20th century) has produced a unique work of art. Bernhard had a pathological suspicion about words and language--about writing, maybe about consciousness, itself-- He wrote in such a way as to undermine the process of writing. The writer with an underlying hatred of writing, as if each word was a stain on the page. I must confess to an awe of Bernhard. Awe and admiration. This dadaesque book, 3 Days, brings Bernhard to life. It may be the quintessential Bernhard volume. I love it, and it has already become one of my favorite books." --Errol Morris, filmmaker and author of Believing Is Seeing

"If the novelist and playwright Thomas Bernhard had not lived, Samuel Beckett or Werner Herzog would have created him as an existential antihero. Like them, he expressed a view of life that was rigorously bleak and exactingly nihilist, yet in its way terribly humane, because it offered no false hopes or misleading promises, the ultimate inhumanities. As he says here, 'In darkness everything becomes clear.' Filmmaker Ferry Radax came up with precisely the right minimalist process for interviewing him, which Laura Lindgren has translated (in every sense) to the pages of this meticulously beautiful book." --John Strausbaugh, author of City of Sedition and The Village

"Beautiful--and strikingly spare--few books exert such fascination so quickly!"--Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies

"Thomas Bernhard: 3 Days works so well as (photo-)album book that there are times one forgets that it is a film-record... Thomas Bernhard: 3 Days isn't so much a print-reproduction of the film as a complement to it (with Vogt's Afterword providing some useful supplementary information), and a beautiful and very appealing work all on its own." --M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review

"Blast Books has just issued a terrific little book that documents the film: Thomas Bernhard: 3 Days... a gold mine of pithy quotes and insights."--Vertigo

About the Author

Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) is internationally acclaimed as a writer in the pantheon of world literature classics. His widely translated works include poetry, drama, novels, and an extensive memoir. He won many of the topmost prestigious literary prizes of Europe, including the Austrian State Prize, and is regarded as Austria's greatest post-World War II writer. His works include Frost, The Loser, Concrete, The Lime Works, and his memoir, Gathering Evidence.

Ferry Radax is an Austrian filmmaker known especially for short experimental films, documentaries, and portrayals of poets and artists, including Thomas Bernhard, Konrad Bayer, and Friedensreich Hundertwasser. He lives in Hollenburg, Lower Austria.

Georg Vogt is a lecturer at the Institute for Theater, Film, and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. He lives in Vienna, Austria.