Old Masters: A Comedy (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Thomas Bernhard

On any page of Stifter that you care to pick there is so much kitsch that several generations of poetry-hungry nuns and nurses can be satiated with it,

Quote on Stifter

And in actual fact Bruckner too is nothing but sentimental and kitschy, nothing but stupid, monumental orchestrated sickly ear-wax.

Quote on Bruckner

Suddenly you realize what emptiness is when you stand there amidst thousands and thousands of books and writings which have left you totally alone, which suddenly mean nothing to you except that terrible emptiness, Reger said. When you have lost your closest human being everything seems empty to you,

The effect of loss