L'Objecteur d'esprit Bernhard:
Une transformation
by Pierre Wolfcarius
(in French)
  Thomas Bernhard has chosen the most difficult artistic course of all: first, to make music with concepts; second, to write a "comical-philosophical" work: to use concepts only, to force them to laugh at themselves, then systematically to destroy them; through such a process of destruction, to free the rhythmic energy they contain.  The goal is always to signify NOTHING, and Bernhard reaches it by fair means or foul; for instance:

Tautologies
Witze, oxymorons: saying one thing and its opposite at the same time
Palinodes: saying the opposite later
Overstatements
Humour
Auto-referentiality of the text

Like nature, he produces through destruction, he destroys through production; outer goal:  to write a comical and intelligent condemnation of intelligence; inner goal:  to move forward; to advance always further, to the extreme of what will prove possible for him; and there, to find it was all a bait. But no matter:  his nature now compels him to get going again; the pendulum swings in the opposite direction; but this alternation is always in vain : all is absurd, and art above all, which is an expression of that absurdity; but in this new absurdity at least, Bernhard feels at ease
 
-- Pierre Wolfcarius
 
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