Old Masters: A Comedy

Thomas Bernhard's *Old Masters* has been called his "most enjoyable novel" by the *New York Review of Books*. It's a wild satire that takes place almost entirely in front of Tintoretto's *White-Bearded Man*, on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, as two typically Viennese pedants (serving as alter egos for Bernhard himself) irreverently, even contemptuously take down high culture, society, state-supported artists, Heidegger, and much more. It's a book built on thought and conversation rather than action or visuals. Yet somehow celebrated Austrian cartoonist Nicholas Mahler has brought it to life in graphic form-and it's brilliant. This volume presents Mahler's typically minimalist cartoons alongside new translations of selected passages from the novel. The result is a version of *Old Masters* that is strikingly new, yet still true to Bernhard's bleak vision, and to the novel's outrageous proposition that the perfect work of art is truly unbearable to even think about-let alone behold.