I’ve never read any Thomas Bernhard.* But I feel like I have, given every second author apes his style.** Those long, winding, multi-clause sentences trapped in chunky multi-page paragraphs*** where the narrator abruptly, obsessively shifts from idea to idea. It’s a style you either like or hate. I don’t think there’s an in-between.

I fucking love it.

Mark Haber’s Lesser Ruins is a terrific recent example of the form. Our Bernhardian narrator is a retired professor who has long planned to write a groundbreaking, mind-blowing essay on the father of essays, Michel de Montaigne. But even alone, his wife recently deceased, our retired professor struggles to put pen to page or even come up with a title. What follows is a novel about distractions and obsessions: about coffee, dance music, the Holocaust and, of course, Michel de Montaigne.

Lesser Ruins is exceedingly funny. Oh, it’s a dark humour that deals with dementia and death camps, but Haber’s genius is finding the humour (awkward as it is) in confronting subject matter. I’m not a fan of coffee—it gives me migraines—but the professor’s deep dive into the types of beans and flavours and how anyone who drinks instant coffee should (including his wife) be shot is hypnotic, hilarious and symbolic of a man bereft of self-awareness. There are several chuckle-worthy passages of the professor brewing espressos under his desk—George Constanza style—while teaching his class (an activity that ends in pain, tears and his eventual dismissal).

Of course, all this talk about coffee and dance music and Montaigne’s relationship with a Russian duelist and Nazi prison guards is all a means of distracting the professor not so much from writing his book about Montaigne (which clearly is a non-starter) but confronting the dark truths about his wife’s death and the estrangement from his son. 

It’s magnificent. Funny. Moving. Thoughtful. I want more Haber!

*I’ll get to him eventually.

**Only a slight exaggeration.

***Or, sometimes, a single paragraph encapsulates a single sentence.