Old Masters: A Comedy (Phoenix Fiction)
Description
In this exuberantly satirical novel, the tutor Atzbacher has been summoned by his friend Reger to meet him in a Viennese museum. While Reger gazes at a Tintoretto portrait, Atzbacher—who fears Reger's plans to kill himself—gives us a portrait of the musicologist: his wisdom, his devotion to his wife, and his love-hate relationship with
art. With characteristically acerbic wit, Bernhard exposes the pretensions and aspirations of humanity in a novel at once pessimistic and strangely exhilarating.
"Bernhard's . . . most enjoyable novel."—Robert Craft, New York Review of Books.
"Bernhard is one of the masters of contemporary European fiction."—George Steiner
Praise for Old Masters: A Comedy (Phoenix Fiction)
“Thomas Bernhard might be the perfect novelist for our moment . . . . Old Masters is Bernhard at his most tender, and at his most incisive.”
— Ed Winstead