This, in part what makes me return to Thomas Bernhard: the ability to risk literature itself in the creation of literature. It is writing that shows that failure, not success, is what goes beyond. The narrator of The Loser suggests that what Wertheimer was unable to grasp which could have saved him from suicide was that:

Every person is a unique and autonomous person and actually, considered independently, the greatest artwork of all time

Literature and art are the only things capable of revealing such a thing to us, but, in doing so they must reject that very statement by creating something other: a shadow, a veil, something dead. The impulse toward art leads toward despair and failure because it denies the recognition of life by seeking to go beyond it. This is why any such work must always be uncertain, stumbling, collapsing, risking its own destruction; because it is the only way to even attempt to get closer toward that very thing from which writing moves away: life. The double shadow of writing cast by Bernhard’s work shows up literature as a frail and fragile thing, a thin pretence. It will not save you. And yet, despite this, indeed because of this, it just might.

from Daniel Fraser's 'A Double Shadow: Re-Reading Thomas Bernhard'