Remember that strange fragment from Kafka: 'A cage went in search of a bird'. A cage - empty - looks for what might fill it. And now I think of Bernhard, after reading his early novellas: a style looks for its subject matter; a way of writing for a content to fill it.
Didn't his style precede his rage and his despair? Wasn't the Austria of his Extinction only an attempt to find a topic commensurable with the demands of his style? Fortunate for him he had the Nazis to write about! Fortunate the dead weight of offical culture!
Bernhard's style finds its subject matter; a cage finds its bird. But now imagine a cage that still aches in its absence - that searches without finding an appropriate content. A cage bereft, a style wholly grotesque, wholly gratuitous.
But now imagine a style that seeks to lose the content it finds, to burn it up: style that lives madly on the fuel of content. The cage has become a bird and content a cage, and writing doubles Joyce's chaosmos that burns in all things.