"stinky", the trashcan. and Thomas Bernhard

My first word was "trash". No joke. When I was young my father owned a janitorial business where he would clean office buildings and banks. I guess I would often accompany him, pretending to help. Supposedly this was the reason for my first word being "trash". As I got a bit older, I continued to wake up early in the morning or even stay up late at night and help my father clean banks. My job was always to get the trash. Eventually, for numerous reasons, my father gave up the career as professional custodian and did other things. Life went on.

Currently; as I go to school, write for a newspaper, write for pleasure, and try to start a zine, I work at a pizza cafe. I work the kitchen and yes...make pizzas all day. I don't really make much money but everyone in Portland works some sort of service-industry job. The big joke is that its a city full of highly educated and intelligent(and overqualified) waiters. Nevertheless, I could work elsewhere and make more money. I use to be a vegan cook at a hip little joint downtown. They offered me a good sum of cash to return. I declined. While no one really makes a lot of money in Portland, there are other jobs I could get and be making more. Lots of them don't include a uniform or a corporation either. However, wherever I could possibly work, I wouldn't be earning a very high sum compared to many other bigger cities in the country.

Upon visiting California, i discovered that a friend of mine works for a big corporation in Orange County that is almost solely responsible for making O.C. the way it is. This corporation is pretty much the devil. Nevertheless, my friend who is currently still attending college, is making almost 70k a year. He told me that if I ever move back he could easily get me a job there. I don't think I will ever do it but it would be a lie to not find it somewhat enticing. Nevertheless, I know I could never do it. His jaw drops open when I tell him how much I make an hour. He is shocked I would even "waste my time" making so little.

My point in all of this is that the collar on my shirt is blue as blue can be. When I was 15 I went to work for Arby's and worked over 35 hours a week. (this is illegal by the way but that's another story) My entire two years living in Santa Barbara and going to school, I worked at least two jobs (at one point I worked 4!). At age 23, I have had already over 25 different jobs. While I have in the last year or two started to gear my life so that more attention is focused on school and less work, I have never really stopped working since I was 15. And while working blows almost always, for me its a necessity. I have never been supported by my parents completely nor have I ever been able to crack the code that leads to free money from the government for students. (any suggestions?) See, while I have issues with capitalism, america, and the protestant work ethic which i know is so finely ingrained in me, i also sort of feel a sense of pride(?) in all this work. It's shaped who I am and how I deal with things. Its allowed me to meet junkies, immigrants and others who exist on the fringes of society. In a lot of ways its shaped my politics and my opinions. Regardless of how much I would like to not admit it, the amount of time I have spent doing crappy, shitty, dirty jobs is very much an important part of who I am.

So one day, I found myself sitting in a cafe on campus. I was in a class that quarter that was focusing on Greek Classicism and its influence on German Thought. I was reading a play by Goethe when I hear a voice say, "mind if we sit here?". I pull down my book and there are 4 guys, all disheveled philosophy or english majors, some are in this class with me. I shrug and they sit. A second later they strike up a conversation about Nietzsche. Then Hegel and that leads somehow to Foucault. And they are going on and on and on and on about good ole bald Michel. And then...they look at me and notice i haven't been saying much. And ask me about what i think about whatever the hell they have been talking about for the last 10 minutes under the impression that I had been listening. However, the truth is I had stopped listening at the beginning. And I had started thinking about how none of these guys had probably ever cleaned a theater before, mopped kitchens, cleaned shit off of walls, done inventory or had to deal with corporate bosses who try to get you pumped for work with fuckin cheers like the ones heard at high school football game just so the store could make "quota". In fact, there is a good chance that none of these guys, as nice and intelligent as they are, have ever worked a day in there life. As big of a generalization as it maybe, i see these guys all over school and its always some fucking philosopher. There lives do not exist outside of theories. They are not the only ones. There are the ultra-hipsters who seem to be able to hang out at either a cafe or a bar everyday, all day. Or the pseudo-hippies who dance around with paint on their face and funky bikes all day and night. These people, some I hate and some i am friends with, are fundamentally different and honestly; are kind of out of it. And as much as I can kick it , talk about Foucault or ride around on my single with them, there is always this gap that seemingly can never be fully bridged.

Sure, many have it worse than me. And this isnt a "woe is me" plee nor am I saying that I am better than them. However, it has always seemed to be that looking at life, from the position I am in, that alot of those theories either make a whole hell of lot more sense, or just seem utterly bourgeoisie and completely out of touch with the dirty, concrete, blue-collar world I live in.

I was having a conversation one time with some friends of mine and the significant other of one my buddies interrupted our conversation with the intent of ending it. We were talking about pornography, what are the boundaries which porn is defined, and the possibility of healthy elements of pornography. The conversation was actually quit amusing. Nevertheless, she piped up and said,

"i am not really concerned with such subjects. I am more interested and focus my time on more important issues like the existence of god."

(btw, she was a philosophy major...)

This comment is a perfect example of what i am trying to express; that there is a fundamental difference is the way you see the world and live your life coming from my side. And its so hard to deal, talk, discuss anything with people on the other end.

I must digress, that I am not trying to come off like if you have never mopped a floor then you're an asshole. I am merely saying that things are different, its frustrating and in my experience in talking about philosophical theories I always try to bring it back to my blue collar life. Man's struggle to find meaning and understanding to his finite existence can not be found or wholly understood in a classroom or sitting on a couch drinking bottle of wine while eating brie. Man's struggle is trying to find meaning and understanding to his existence as he mops up vomit in a bathroom.

That being said, there is trashcan outside of my work that we have christened "Stinky". He exist on one of the most major shopping streets in Southeast Portland. Needless to say, on the weekend, Stinky tends to overflow. It is our job to take him out. Since I usually open on Saturdays and Sundays, I am left with the task now and again to take out Stinky before I leave. This usually consists of picking up the numerous drink cups and wrinkled up tissues overflowing out of Stinky as old, cold coffee or some other substance spills all over your shoes or runs down your arm. Remember also that this all takes place on a busy Saturday, as mothers, fathers, cute girls and boys walk by consistently. So there I am, taking Stinky out with my bare hands, there is a dirty diaper on top and its sunny. Flies are swarming around and a hole has ripped in the trashbag. So i am easily putting it all into another bag. And for whatever reason, this job doesnt bother me nor make me sick. Rather, it's sort of humbling and at the same time fills me with this pride as stupid as it may be. People are making faces, avoiding me within a 5 foot radius. Cars are driving by, little kids are sticking there tongues out. But...i dont care...somebody has to do it. Somebody needs to allow enough space for you to properly dispose of your 32 oz frappucino cup. That person is me.

I am currently reading "To the lighthouse" and there is a point where Mr. Ramsey is contemplating something philosophical when he thinks of the average layman and there is a line where he realizes that, " the liftmen in the Tube is an eternal necessity". It kind of makes Mr. Ramsey sick at first because he is ambitious and want to make it someday to R but he is stuck at Q. Nevertheless, within the page he comes to terms with this idea. And is fine with what he is and has done. i like that. And while I dont want to be just the liftman in the Tube..I am alright being him for awhile. So remember the liftman while holed up reading books of philosophical theory. Its not that I am not interested in such theoretical subjects, ideas and philosophies...i've dabbled and continue to dabble in alot of it...i find it interesting and helpful on essays and in conversation and sometimes it is even inspiring. Sometimes though, its hard to know how to utilize and understand such theories while cleaning up an un-taped dirty diaper that falls out of Stinky one Saturday... experience that and then maybe then I will pay attention and talk about Foucault with you...

+such trifle things i talk of. I should be wrapped up in more important subjects like the existence of god....+

And now a perfect finish: excerpts from an interview with the late writer Thomas Bernhard(you will see the why this fits nicely):

Does the fate of your books interest you?

No, not really.What about translations for example?I'm hardly interested in my own fate, and certainly not in that of my books.

Your characters and you yourself often say they don't care about anything, which sounds like total entropy, universal indifference of everyone towards everything.

Not at all, you want to do something good, you take pleasure in what you do, like a pianist, he has to start somewhere too, he tries three notes, then he masters twenty, and eventually he knows them all, and then he spends the rest of his life perfecting them. And that's his great pleasure, that's what he lives for. And what some do with notes, I do with words. Simple as that. I'm not really interested in anything else. Because getting to know the world happens anyway, by living in it, as soon as you walk out the door you're confronted with the world directly. With the whole world. With up and down, back and front, ugliness and beauty, perfectly normal. There's no need to want this. It happens of its own accord. And if you never leave the house, the process is the same.

There is nothing but striving for perfection. You want to get better and better...

There is no need to strive for anything in the world, because you get pushed towards it in any case. Striving has always been nonsense. The German word "Streber" (striver – meaning swot or brown-noser) means something awful. And striving is just as awful. The world has a pull that drags you whether you like it or not, there's no need to strive. When you strive, you become a "Streber". You know what that means. It's hard to translate into another region.Well, I know what it is.You know what it means, but I don't think people in France know what a "Streber" is. I don't think they have them.

But this quest for perfection does play a role in your books.

That's the attraction of any art. That's all art is, getting better and better at playing your chosen instrument. That's the pleasure of it, and no one can take that pleasure away from you or talk you out of it. If someone is a great pianist then you can clear out the room where he's sitting with the piano, fill it with dust, and then start throwing buckets of water at him, but he'll stay put and keep on playing. Even if the house falls down around him, he'll carry on playing. And with writing it's the same thing.

So it has something to do with failure then?

What has to do with failure?The quest for perfection.Everything fails in the end, everything ends in the graveyard. There's nothing you can do about it. Death claims them all and that's the end of it. Most people give in to death at 17 or 18. The young people of today are running into the arms of death at age 12, and they're dead at 14. Then there are solitary fighters who struggle on until 80 or 90, then they die too, but at least they had a longer life. And because life is pleasant and fun, their fun lasts longer. Those who die early have less fun, and you can feel sorry for them. Because they haven't really got to know life, because life also means a long life, with all of its awfulness.

What kind of intellectual aims do you...

These are all questions that can't be answered because no one asks themselves that sort of thing. People don't have aims. Young people, up to 23, they still fall for that. A person who has lived five decades has no aims, because there's no goal.

You're always presented as a kind of loner in the mountains, the man from the farm...What can you do. You get a name, you're called "Thomas Bernhard", and it stays that way for the rest of your life. And if at some point you go for a walk in the woods, and someone takes a photo of you, then for the next eighty years you're always walking in the woods. There's nothing you can do about it....and suddenly here you are in an urban context like this Viennese coffeehouse.

Urbanity is a quality you have to possess from within. It has nothing to do with the exterior. No. Nothing but stupid notions. But humanity has only ever existed in stupid notions, there's no helping it. There's no cure for stupidity. That's a fact.

Many of your readers, including so-called highbrow critics, have repeatedly subjected your books to negative readings.

I really couldn't give a damn how people read my work...

When people ring you up and say they'd commit suicide with you?

People hardly ever ring up anymore, thank God.

But would you go the other way and call yourself a humorous writer?

What's all this supposed to mean? People are everything. Each individual is more or less everything. Sometimes he laughs and sometimes he doesn't. People say it's all tragic, which is stupid too, because I...

Alongside your writing, does your work also involve reflecting on writing itself, as in the case of Doderer or Thomas Mann?

No, that's not necessary. If you're a master of your trade then you have no need for reflection. When you go out onto the street, everything works for you, you don't need to do anything, you just have to keep your eyes and ears open and walk. You don't need to think anymore, not if you're independent or if you make yourself independent. If you're uptight and stupid or if you're striving for something, then nothing will ever come of it. If you live in life, then you've no need to make any special effort, it all comes to you of its own accord, and it will leave its mark on what you do. It's not something you can learn. You can learn to sing, if you have a good voice. That's the one condition. Someone who's naturally hoarse will hardly become an opera singer. It's the same everywhere. You can't play piano without a piano. Or if all you have is a violin and you want to play piano on it, that won't work either. And if you don't want to play violin, then you'll just have to play nothing at all.

But when you describe yourself as a destroyer of stories, then in a certain way that is a theoretical statement.

I said that once did I, well, people say a lot of things in fifty years of life. The amount of stupid things people say over the decades, myself included. If people were always held to the things they say. Of course, if a reporter is sitting in a restaurant somewhere and he hears you say the beef's no good, then he'll always claim you're someone who doesn't like beef, for the rest of your life. Meanwhile, maybe you ate nothing but beef from then on.

A publisher once...

What is that; a publisher? I can put the question to you: What is a publisher (Verleger)? A bedside rug (Bettvorleger), there's no doubt what that is. But a publisher, without the bed, that's harder to answer. Someone who misplaces (verlegen) things, a muddled person, who misplaces things and can't find them anymore. That's the definition of a publisher, someone who misplaces things. A publisher, he misplaces things and manuscripts which he accepts and then he can't find them anymore. Either because he no longer likes them or because he's muddled, either way they're gone. Misplaced. For all eternity. All the publishers I know are like that. None of them is so great as not to be the kind who misplaces things. Who publishes something and then it's either ruined or impossible to find.

Does breathing play a role in your texts, in the sense of breathing rhythm?

I happen to be a musical person, and writing prose always has to do with musicality.

like with a singer...

Well, breathing isn't easy. Some people breathe from the stomach, some from the lungs. Singers breathe only with their stomachs because otherwise they wouldn't be able to sing. You just have to transfer breathing from the stomach to the brain. It's the same process. You have many little lungs in there, probably a few million. For the time being. Until they collapse. Because bubbles burst, and lungs collapse. There are those who still have lungs at 90. And there are those who have none left by the time they're 12, who just stand around like idiots. Most people are like that, 98 percent, maybe even one percent more. Every time you speak to someone, you're talking to an idiot, but charming. And because you're not a spoilsport, you carry on talking to people, going out for meals with them, being kind and nice. And basically they're stupid, because they don't make an effort. What you don't use wastes away and dies off. Since people use just their mouths but not their brains, they get very well-developed palates and jaws, but there's nothing left in their brains. That's the way it usually is.

You started out writing poetry.

Oh please!

What does that mean to you today?

Nothing whatsoever, I don't think about it at all. You don't think back over every step you've ever taken, do you? You'd have to set billions, hundreds of billions of thoughts in motion. Like with walking and running. You can't be constantly retracing where you've been in your mind, or you'll never get anywhere interesting.

You deliberately keep your distance from other living writers.

No, not deliberately at all. It comes naturally. Where there's no interest, there can be no inclination.

Sometimes you hurl abuse at them too, like Canetti or Handke for example.

I don't hurl abuse at anyone at all. That's nonsense. Almost all writers are opportunists. Either they affiliate themselves with the right or with the left, joining ranks here or there, and so on, and that's how they make a living. And that's unpleasant, why shouldn't that be said. One works with his illness and his death and wins prizes, and the other runs round in the name of peace and is basically a nasty stupid fellow, so what's the big deal?

From a non-Austrian perspective, this comes as a surprise-in France, you are often named in the same breath as Handke...

Well, that breath will change. A new breath with come. But habits like that last for decades. They're impossible to eradicate. If you open a newspaper today, almost all you read about is Thomas Mann. He's been dead thirty years now, and again and again, endlessly, it's unbearable. Even though he was a petty-bourgeois writer, ghastly, uninspired, who only wrote for a petty-bourgeois readership. That could only interest the petty-bourgeois, the kind of milieu he describes, it's uninspired and stupid, some fiddle-playing professor who travels somewhere, or a family in Lübeck, how lovely, but it's nothing more than someone like Wilhelm Raabe. What rubbish Thomas Mann churned out about political matters, really. He was totally uptight and a typical German petty-bourgeois. With a greedy wife.

For me, that's the typical German writer combination. Always a woman in the background, be it Mann or Zuckmayer, always making sure these characters get to sit next to the head of state, at every idiotic opening of a sculpture exhibition or a bridge. Is that where writers belong? These are the people who always make deals with the state and those in power, who end up sitting at their elbows. The typical German-language writer. If long hair is in fashion, then he has long hair, if it's short hair, then his is short too. If the left is in government, he runs to the left, if it's the right, he runs that way, always the same. They've never had any character. Only those who died young, mostly. If they died at 18 or 24, well, at that age it's not so hard to maintain some character, that only gets hard later. You get weak. Under 25, when no one needs more than an old pair of trousers, when you go barefoot and content yourself with a gulp of wine and some water, it's not so difficult to have character. But afterwards. Then they all had none. At 40 they were all absorbed into political parties, totally paralysed. The coffee they drink in the morning is paid for by the state. And the bed they sleep in, and the holidays they go on, all paid for by the state. Nothing of their own any more.

Your style is so distinctive that it has prompted numerous pastiches and parodies...

If they can earn money that way and pay for a summer holiday, three days at a decent inn, unfortunately they mostly only go to places with Michelin stars, where they have to pay 2,000 Schillings for a meal, I wouldn't begrudge anyone that if they enjoy themselves.

But how does something new like this come into being in the old material of language? Are there traditions that one refers to, even if that means going against them?

There are always traditions, conscious and unconscious. From reading and being alive since childhood, all that comes of its own accord. And because you're constantly throwing out what you don't like or what's bad from the beginning, you're left with what you want. Whether it's stupid or not is another question. Whether or not it's the right path, no one knows, every individual has their own path, and for that person every path is the right one. And now there are four and a half billion people, I think, and four and a half billion right paths. The misfortune of human beings is that they don't want to take the path, their own, they always want to take a different one. Striving and struggling towards something other than what they themselves are. Everyone is a great personality, whether they paint or sweep streets or write or... people always want something different. That's the misfortune of the world.

You sometimes give the impression of biting the hand that feeds, for example when you describe Heidegger as a "weak-minded pre-Alpine thinker" and...

He didn't feed me. Why should he have fed me? But he's an impossible character, he has neither rhythm nor anything else. He lived off a few writers, he cannibalised them, to the last, what would he have been without them?

I was thinking of the word "Lichtung" (clearing).

That word existed before Heidegger, 300 and 500 years before. He was nothing, a philistine, gross, nothing new. He's a perfect example of someone who unscrupulously eats all the fruit other people have jarred and who gorges himself, thank God, which makes him sick and he bursts. Gets stomach ache.

When critics accuse you of proto-fascist tendencies...

Fascist, I don't like that, the word, but I've been called everything. The things I've been called. Communist or fascist, anarchist, everything.

What, in your view, is a conversation?

I don't usually have them. To me people who want to have a conversation are suspect, because that raises particular expectations they're unable to satisfy. Simple people are very good to talk with. When talking is supposed to become conversation, that's when things get gruesome! That fine expression "everything under the sun." It all gets thrown in together and then one person stirs this way, the other stirs that, and an unbearable stinking turd comes out the bottom. No matter who it is. There are collected conversations, hundreds of them, books full. Entire publishing houses live off them. Like something coming out of an anus, and then it gets squashed in between book covers. This wasn't a conversation either.

Yes, of course not.

It's always: "you've been listening to a conversation" and so on, and at that moment, everyone who heard it has already forgotten it. Because it was nothing. There's the famous "Nocturnes" series. They sit there for an hour and a half, there's a philosopher and a pseudo-philosopher, or mostly both pseudo-philosophers, one wearing a polo neck sweater and the other a tie, doesn't really matter because everything is contrived and stupid, and they just talk constantly and talk and talk. If you look in the Süddeutsche Zeitung at the amount of interviews they've published over the past three decades, no one gives a damn about a single word of all these conversations and books. It's all just for the workers at the paper factory, so they have something to do, which might make some sense. Because they have a terrible life anyway and lose all their limbs, at 50 most of them have lost a leg or five fingers. Paper machines are cruel. At least it has some meaning, the family can get something extra. I live next to two paper factories, so I know how it is. In ten years you'll see how stupid it all was. But it all helps you get ahead, gives you something to live from, and life involves doing a load of nonsense. Life consists of one long succession of nonsense, a little bit of sense, but mostly nonsense. No matter who. Be it great, supposedly great people, all the usual names, me included, Cioran, aphorists. All pathetic and leads to nothing but the end. You can sit at home, put your books on the shelf, and when you look at them, you think: "Sad". But you still keep churning it out, like you get into the habit of drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, or tea. Tea is smarter, because you work less. The same applies to writing. You become addicted. Writing is a drug, too.

Has illness been a driving force behind your writing?

Yes, perhaps, possibly. Since it's been there with me throughout my life. And as you can see, some people are always critically ill but they go on living for ever. For all these people it's always been beneficial. An illness is always a form of capital. Every illness you survive is a great story, because there's no way anyone can steal your thunder with something similar. Only you shouldn't count on it, because one time it'll go wrong. Although it doesn't matter, because you're no longer around to notice. It's money in the bank.

You say you like talking to simple people.

It's always a pleasure.

And do you find such simple people in Vienna?

I've got simple people at home at the moment. That's most agreeable, even if they do make a mess. Their minds haven't been ruined by education.

But you have to pay them to come to your house.

I don't need to pay my simple people. I have hundreds of them where I live in the country and wherever I travel. They're not always easy to stomach either. You need both. It's important to master as much as possible. You have to be here and be there. If you only frequent one section of society it's stupid. You end up stunted. You need to take in and cast off as much as possible all the time. Most people make the mistake of remaining within a single caste and class, only mixing with butchers because they're butchers, or only with bricklayers because they're bricklayers, or with labourers because they're labourers, or counts because they're counts, or kings...

Or writers because they're writers?

Well, I'm my own, so I've no need anyway. No one can teach me or tell me anything, so I've no need to go to anyone. Because people in general are false and twisted, I go elsewhere. I don't need any writer. Sitting down with someone where there's nothing but envy and resentment from the outset, I've no interest in that, so I don't deal with writers.

Thank you...

What? Everyone lives until they die. And a great deal happens in between. But for most people it's of no interest. Mostly only for the person living it. The truth is that each person, even if he is interested in others, is interested only in himself. It's all about indirect benefits. It's the same everywhere, whatever it is, children's villages, the Sahel, hunger in Nicaragua. Mister Ortega puts on just as much of a self-serving theatre act as Mister Reagan, whichever way you look at it. People only do things they think will help them get ahead and keep going. Even if you become a nun or a monk, that's all you have in mind, you have no choice. In fact, if you want to be a monk and serve, that will make you especially ghastly and misanthropic. That's the way it is, I believe. With faith. As it were.

(not that i agree with everything he is saying but still...so rad...and seemingly fitting)