This collection of four stories by the writer George Steiner called one of the m
asters of European fiction is, as longtime fans of Thomas Bernhard would expect,
bleakly comic and inspiringly rancorous. The subject of his stories vary: in on
e, Goethe summons Wittgenstein to discuss the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus";
Montaigne: A Story (in 22 Installments) tells of a young man sealing himself in
a tower to read; Reunion, meanwhile, satirizes that very impulse to escape; and
the final story rounds out the collection by making Bernhard himself a victim, p
ersecuted by his greatest enemy his very homeland of Austria. Underpinning all t
hese variously comic, tragic, and bitingly satirical excursions is Bernhard s ab
iding interest in, and deep knowledge of, the philosophy of doubt.
