SOURCE: “The Plays of Thomas Bernhard—A Report,” in Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1978, pp. 21–48.

In the following essay, Barthofer explores possible influences on Bernhard’s dramatic style and provides an overview of his early plays, contending that they do not “fit easily into commonly accepted categories of literary classification.”

Thomas Bernhard is at the moment not only one of the most prolific and versatile but also one of the most successful young writers in the field of German drama. His plays have been performed in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Essen, Zürich, Basel, at the Salzburg Festivals, and even in as conservative a place as the Burgtheater in Vienna. He won the Büchner-Prize, the Austrian Staatspreis, the Wildgans-Prize, the Literaturpreis der Freien und Hansestadt Bremen, and most of his plays have been shown on television in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. All in all Thomas Bernhard is...