Harper’s Magazine is my favorite magazine, although sometimes I forget to read it – especially the section “readings” is worth reading.
The August issue of Harper’s features an interview with the late Thomas Bernhard.
Werner Wögerbauer is asking the questions: “Thomas Bernhard: So, I’ll keep reading the paper – you don’t mind do you? Wögerbauer: Well, no, by all means.
Bernhard: You’ll have to ask something, and then you’ll get an answer.
Wögerbauer: Does the fate of your books interest you? Bernhard: No, not really. I’m hardly interested in my own fate and certainly not in that of my books.
Wögerbauer: Your characters and you yourself often say they don’t care about anything.
Bernhard: No not at all, you want to do something good, you take pleasure in what you do. Like a pianist – he has to start somewhere, too. He tries three notes, then he masters twenty, eventually he knows them all, and then he spends the rest of his life perfecting them. And what some do with notes, I do with words. Simply as that. I’m not really interested in anything else.”