SOURCE: “How German Is It? Thomas Bernhard at the Guthrie,” in Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1981, pp. 7–25.

In the following essay, Honegger chronicles the 1981 Minneapolis production of Eve of Retirement.

… I’m returning from the edge of forgetfulness.

Walter Abish

The day I arrived in Minneapolis, Guthrie Managing Director Don Schoenbaum gave an Open House Party. It was a beautiful midsummer afternoon. A live band evoked what I assumed a beautiful-people affair in the heyday of Glenn Miller must have looked like as Guthrie dignitaries, including many familiar New York theatre faces, mingled with the local corporate aristocracy, headed by Mr. and Mrs. Pillsbury, on the back lawn of a stately, well, not mansion, but in any case, impressive, home. Meeting all those New York actors, among them some friends, gave me the feeling that I had just arrived from the mainland, on a visit to a very...