The Story Archive

Concrete

Thomas Bernhard · 1982 CE · Novel · German · Contemporary

Rudolf, a musicologist wintering alone in a damp house at Peiskam, has spent ten years failing to write the first sentence of his study of Mendelssohn Bartholdy: his sister's visits make it impossible, and so does her leaving. Ill and dosed with prednisolone, he flies to Palma for the light, where a story he was told on an earlier stay comes back to him. The comic and the unendurable are held at one pitch throughout.

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Attributes

Genre
Psychological
Theme
Art & CreationObsessionIsolation & AlienationDeath & Mortality
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
CreatorAnti-HeroShadow
Plot structure
ConfessionMeditationFrame Narrative
Symbol / motif
The Book / ManuscriptMusicThe Island
Conflict
vs Selfvs Person
Mode / tone
ModernistIronicElegiac
Culture / tradition
German

Closest analogues