bewildered

"Hesitant and bewildered students were his specialty. They posed a special problem to the institution, since these students were no longer sure what they were doing there and were no longer secure in their habits. They milled about and wondered quite openly what this place was for."

~~ from The Sick List by Ansgar Allen

one-leg sittings

"So I read [Thomas Bernhard's] Extinction very slowly indeed, and did most of that reading in the toilet cubicle at work. Most thinking and much else at work must be done in toilet cubicles. Toilet cubicles are about the only place where thinking can happen, I thought, where the association between thinking and [elimination] seemed entirely appropriate to my deplorable state of mind. It was unbearable to read a book like Extinction slowly. Only so much time can be spent in a toilet cubicle before one leg goes dead, followed by the other. It is easy to spot these toilet cubicle thinkers, I thought. They walk around with one dead leg from too much sitting on the pot. They think for the amount of time it takes for one leg to go dead, I thought, but not the other. Being habitual toilet cubicle thinkers, they leave the cubicle before the second leg goes dead so that they have one leg to hobble with. Becoming an experienced cubicle thinker myself, I only read Extinction in one-leg sittings."

~~ from The Sick List by Ansgar Allen

honest teacher

"An honest teacher would bring about the extinction of the entire teaching profession. An honest teacher would obliterate every illusion, practice, and malpractice that keeps this edifice of teaching in place, I thought."

~~ from The Sick List by Ansgar Allen

Extinction, V

This morning I finished reading Extinction. It's an amazing work of literature that everyone should read, assign to students, give as gifts, and read again once finished. In fact, I would reread the book right away were there not so many piles and shelves of other books staring at me wherever I go.

Extinction by Thomas Bernhard, IV

"Then it suddenly occurred to me how odd it was that I should be teaching Gambetti German literature, of all things--German, Austrian, and Swiss literature, the literature of German-speaking Europe, to use the usual clumsy formulations--despite the fact that I find this literature impossible to love and have always rated it below Russian, French, and even Italian literature. I wondered whether it was right to teach something I did not love, simply because I thought I was better qualified to speak about it than another literature. Even in its highest flights, I told Gambetti, German literature is no match for Russian, French, or Spanish literature, which I love, or Italian literature for that matter. German is essentially an ugly language, which not only grinds all thought into the ground, as I've already said, but actually falsifies everything with its ponderousness. It's quite incapable of expressing a simple truth as such. By its very nature it falsifies everything. It's a crude language, devoid of musicality, and if it weren't my mother tongue I wouldn't speak it, I told Gambetti. How precisely French expresses everything!"

~~ from Extinction by Thomas Bernhard

Extinction by Thomas Bernhard, III

"The tragedy of the would-be writer is that he continually resorts to anything that will prevent him from writing."

~~ from Extinction by Thomas Bernhard

Extinction by Thomas Bernhard, II

"Unlike my brother, I had no respect for authority. Very early on, Uncle Georg had told me the truth about teachers: that they were moral cowards who took out on their pupils all the frustrations they could not take out on their wives. When I was very young Uncle Georg impressed upon me that among the educated classes teachers were the basest and most dangerous people, on a par with judges, who were the lowest form of human life. Teachers and judges, he said, are the meanest slaves of the state--remember that. He was right, as I have discovered not just hundreds but thousands of times. No teacher and no judge can be trusted as far as you can throw him. Without scruple or compunction they daily destroy many of the existences that are thrown upon their mercy, being motivated by base caprice and a desire to avenge themselves for their miserable, twisted lives--and they are actually paid for doing so. The supposed objectivity of teachers and judges is a piece of shabby mendacity, Uncle Georg said--and he was right. Talking to a teacher we soon discover that he is a destructive individual with whom no one and nothing is safe, and the same is true when we talk to a judge."

~~ from Extinction by Thomas Bernhard

Extinction by Thomas Bernhard

"I have often observed that people who throughout their lives have been judged repulsive and distasteful are spoken of after their death as though they had never been repulsive and distasteful. This has always struck me as tasteless and embarrassing. When someone dies, his death does not make him a different person, a better character: it does not make him a genius if he was an idiot, or a saint if he was a monster. . . After the death of somebody who throughout his life was a dreadful person, a thoroughly low character, how can I suddenly maintain that he was not a dreadful person, not a low character, but a good person? We daily witness such tastelessness when someone has died."

~~ from Extinction by Thomas Bernhard