Goethe Dies

This collection of four stories is, as long-time fans of Thomas Bernhard would expect, bleakly comic and inspiringly rancorous. The subject of his stories vary: in one, Goethe summons Wittgenstein to discuss the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; ‘Montaigne: A Story in Twenty-Two Instalments’ tells of a young man sealing himself in a tower to read; ‘Reunion’, meanwhile, satirises that very impulse to escape; and the final story rounds out the collection by making Bernhard himself a victim, persecuted by his greatest enemy – his very homeland of Austria. Underpinning all these variously comic, tragic and bitingly satirical excursions is Bernhard’s abiding interest in, and deep knowledge of, the philosophy of doubt.