Extinction

Franz-Josef Murau, the ``reserve heir'' to Wolfsegg manor, savages his native Austria in this caustic fictional memoir distinguished by the late Bernhard's (The Loser) hallmark unparagraphed invective and italicized loathing. In the novel's first half, the self-exiled Murau, upon hearing of the deaths of his parents and elder brother in a car crash, reminisces obsessively about the stifling Wolfsegg and his philistine family. Rearranging a few unflattering photographs of them on his desk like Tarot cards, he unflaggingly and outrageously attacks his heritage, from his relatives' crass tastes and his miserable childhood to his father's Nazi ties and his mother's affair with a papal nuncio. Just as Murau's denunciation of Austria for its Nazism and Catholicism peaks in shrillness, however, his corrosive characterizations contract to caricature. Once Murau is back in Wolfsegg for the narrative's livelier second half, his deceitful, hysterical character comes into its horrid own and betrays his role in extinguishing his better nature. For all Bernhard's virtuosity at perverse exaggeration, this novel is, as Murau's poet friend says of her own discarded work, less ``art'' than ``an astonishing performance.'' (Aug.)