Bernhard

What a man is thinking all day over many days represented not as a stream of consciousness but rather as a series of eddies in that stream, eddies that (remembering that Yoel Hoffmann is a Zen Buddhist and a scholar of Asian religions) one is tempted to call koan. The koan in question range from the prosaic to the lyrical, the mundane to the fantastic. And like the actual koan that may or may not have inspired them, they allow of no simplistic interpretation, just as a human being, a grieving widower such as Bernhard, for example, allows of no facile summing up. This is a book which, because it reads more like poetry than a novel, one is eager to enter again, and certain that, when one does, it will be a different book that one encounters. Here is an example of one of the short sections of which the book is made: "(More wonderful than the wonders people sit and talk about, is the fact that they sit and talk.) Sometimes Bernhard allows himself to eat schnitzel. 'Why,' he thinks to himself, 'is there anything at all?' He cuts imaginary oranges and squeezes juice from the pieces into glasses. His head is full of obscene visions (only Gustav calls him 'Bernhard.' Everyone else says 'Mr. Stein.') He doesn't remember Paula every day. And when children sing 'The Almond Trees in Blossom' he sees, in his mind's eye, cherry trees."