My Prizes: An Accounting

Meine Preise [My Prizes], by Thomas Bernhard

A gathering of brilliant and viciously funny recollections from one of the twentieth century’s most famous literary enfants terribles.

Written in 1980 but published here for the first time, these texts tell the story of the various farces that developed around the literary prizes Thomas Bernhard received in his lifetime. Whether it was the Bremen Literature Prize, the Grillparzer Prize, or the Austrian State Prize, his participation in the acceptance ceremony—always less than gracious, it must be said—resulted in scandal (only at the awarding of the prize from Austria’s Federal Chamber of Commerce did Bernhard feel at home: he received that one, he said, in recognition of the great example he set for shopkeeping apprentices). And the remuneration connected with the prizes presented him with opportunities for adventure—of the new-house and luxury-car variety.

Here is a portrait of the writer as a prizewinner: laconic, sardonic, and shaking his head with biting amusement at the world and at himself. A revelatory work of dazzling comedy, the pinnacle of Bernhardian art.

If I could, I would write a love ode to this short collection. It is a series of personal remembrances of prizes which Thomas Bernhard collected over the years for his plays and novels. Prizes which, he reminds us again and again, he would be loathe to accept were it not for the prize money attached. Nevertheless, I can only be thankful he did deign to attend, because without it, I would not have been able to read the marvelous My Prizes.

Bernhard is acerbic, rude, and sarcastic, but also endearingly susceptible to supposed insults about his commitment to Austria, his adopted homeland, with which he has a complicated love-hate relationship. During his acceptance of the Austrian State Prize for Literature (which he prefaces by relating his extreme embarrassment to have won, given that it is only the Small State Prize, which is usually given out to young new up-and-comers, not older established writers, and that he only "came to terms with the prize" because of the twenty-five thousand schillings attached to it) the minister, perhaps unwisely, upsets him by calling him a foreigner born in Holland, though living amongst the Austrians for some time. However factually accurate it may have been, the provocation it offers Bernhard is amply repaid as he gives what has to be one of the rudest acceptance speeches in history. Bernhard describes it thusly:

[T]he theme was a philosophical one, profound even, I felt, and I had uttered the word State several times. I thought, it's a very calm text, one I can use here to get myself up out of the dirt without causing a ruckus because almost no one will understand it, all about death and its conquering power and the absurdity of all things human, about man's incapacity and man's mortality and the nullity of all states.

At this point in My Prizes, the reader knows to take Bernhard's description of his actions as calm and reasonable with a grain of salt. Luckily and hilariously, the actual speech given is reprinted in the back of the book. To be sure, Bernhard's speech does mention the State a couple of times, and it does talk about death and man's incapacity and the nullity of government. It also says:

Our era is feebleminded, the demonic in us a perpetual national prison in which the elements of stupidity and thoughtlessness have become a daily need
....

We're Austrian, we're apathetic, our lives evince the basest disinterest in life, in the workings of nature we represent the future as megalomania.

We have nothing to report except that we are pitiful, brought down by all the imaginative powers of an amalgam of philosophical, economic, and machine-driven monotony.

Before ending with:

In my name and in the name of those here who have also been selected by this jury, I thank you.

If only the state minister had stuck around to hear that last part! Graciousness itself, amirite? After causing a near-riot and clearing the auditorium, Bernhard is completely satisfied, as it means the next prize committee thinks twice about hosting a ceremony and instead just asks him to pick up the check at his convenience, which is probably best for all the parties concerned.

Bernhard writes with panache, and often the prizes and ceremonies are merely an aside to whatever more random topic Bernhard wants to discuss - buying and returning a suit:

Whoever buys the suit I have just returned, I thought, has no idea that it's been with me at the awarding of the Grillparzer Prize of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna. It was an absurd thought, and at this absurd thought I took heart. I spent a most enjoyable day with my aunt and we kept laughing over the people at Sir Anthony, who had let me exchange my suit without objections, even though I had worn it to the awarding of the Grillparzer Prize in the Academy of Sciences. That they were so obliging is something about the people in Sir Anthony in the Kohlmarkt that I shall never forget.

getting a luxury car (which he insists on buying right now, from the showroom, even though he has no idea how to drive it out of the store), his time staying in the Lung Disease Hospital attached to the Steinhof Insane Asylum (which "had seven rooms of either two or three patients, all of which patients died during the time I was there, with the exception of a theology student and me. I have to mention this because it is quite simply essential for what follows." N.B.: It isn't.), or getting ambushed by an acquaintance who will not. stop. talking ("Whenever I'm reminded of Saiko, who, as I mentioned, was the author of The Man in the Reeds, the first thing I think of is his lecture about never buying shoes before four in the afternoon and I have retained something of that lecture even today, and his four-hour lecture on what a novel is comes in second.").

My Prizes is vastly entertaining, and it's written with a sly knowledge of the author's own ridiculous behavior. Bernhard is fully realized within the pages, and he displays his foibles and eccentricities with sublime indifference of your good opinion. The reader is quickly charmed by his sardonic outlook on life and the vast machine that is prize- giving.

Bernhard is a character, and I wish only that he had been more recognized during life, that we might have more accounts of his unparalleled talent for accepting prizes.