Saint Sebastian's Abyss (2022) by Mark Haber

 Book Review

Saint Sebastian's Abyss (2022)

by Mark Haber

   I'm not sure how I missed Saint Sebastian's Abyss when it was published last year, but likely the explanation comes down to 2022 being a lost year for me reading because of the lingering effects of COVID AND because the New York Times book review didn't mention the obvious, glaring influence of the writing of Thomas Bernhard over every aspect of this book.  If the reviewer had done so I would have immediately ran out (or gone online)  and bought a copy.  As it happened, I didn't know about Saint Sebastian's Abyss until last month when I ran one of my periodic Google searches on Thomas Bernhard and reviewed the returns.   Haber was mentioned in a June 27th Los Angeles Times feature about the influence of Bernhard on contemporary fiction- another article I missed because I was travelling that week and because I literally don't know anyone else who reads the LA Times and knows about Thomas Bernhard.

 

  In fact, as I sit here writing this, I've still never met another human being- in person or on-line, who has even heard of Bernhard, let alone read him.  I only heard about him/read him through the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die project- where I rank Bernhard and Sebald as my top two literary discoveries from that period.  As I periodically mention here, despite being an attorney with a partner who works in the culture industries and many friends who qualify as intellectuals or culture professionals or both, my reading life is conducted in isolation. 

  I think about Bernhard frequently, in the sense that I think about writing a piece of fiction- a short story, of course.   What I think about is the need to write a short story that another person would want to read, vs just writing something "I have to write" which is a line you often hear from writers and people writing about fiction.  Baloney, is what I say.  Of course, every author is drawing upon their own experience but the idea that a given work of fiction simply emerges into the world and then attracts readers of its own accord is patently absurd.  

    At the very least a first-time writer of fiction needs to find someone who wants to publish it, and if they can't do that they need to find their own readers without the benefit of a sponsoring publisher.  Anyway- the question I ask myself is that if you were to ride a story/novella/novel that blatantly imitated an author like Thomas Bernhard- would it bother people?  The answer is no- probably because not enough people know about Bernhard to incite conversation- Los Angeles Times articles aside. 

  As the LA Times said last year, Saint Sebastian's Abyss is about as close to straight-forward homage to Thomas Bernhard as you can get- and  I loved every second.  This is very much the sort of fiction I would want to write if I wrote fiction (I don't and have no plans to) and it's nice to see that Haber found a publisher (who subsequently hired him to work as their marketing supervisor).