I cherish what Thomas Bernhard does, but in my view it is...

I cherish what Thomas Bernhard does, but in my view it isn���t literature.

Ah yes, Thomas Bernhard, the room-clearer of Austrian literature.  ���His suggestive power consists in his ability to exploit and assemble prejudices.  It affects me like an article from Der Spiegel.  I often think he is our best Spiegel correspondent in Austria.  Because the things he writes don���t tackle problems of narrative or form at all, they seem to me to be having an almost detrimental effect on art.  I found his last few books to be almost criminal in their shoddiness.  Apart from his suggestive power, which of course is unique to him and always extremely effective, there was nothing there.  But in his new book, Extinction, I am suddenly seeing the rudiments of description, of enthusiastic description of locales and spaces, which for me is of course the most important thing in literature.  Otherwise it is of course difficult not think of this drama about the lord of a castle as [Ludwig Ganghofer���s 1895 novel] Castle Hubertus, only with a negative spin.  But I was cheered and relieved by those descriptions of the orangery or of the kitchen, because I was able to enjoy a feeling of parity.  Of course I wish I could approve of him; I have indeed revered him for 25 years as a kind of secular Austrian saint.

Handke on Bernhard, from an article in 1986 (letter 501 here)