After a friend (failed artist, of course) commits suicide, our narrator is reunited with some former friends he hasn't met in 20-30 years at what passes for a wake, but is really just yet another opportunity for a gang of aging authors, musicians, critics and actors to hang out, talk about their own genius and talk shit about each other. And he sits there, grieving, in a corner, chewing over one long internal stream-of-consciousness monologue of Captain Haddockisms aimed at the others (perfidious society onanists! crafty, state-sponsored gloryhounds! arch-catholic art abusers!) as he goes over their history together and tries to deal with the fact that they're all growing old and pointless, all their promises given up for comfort and routine, all the ideals they had as the first post-war generation solidified into self-congratulatory nothings, and he's no different.

I expected this to be funny, and it is. I expected it to be cathartic, and it is. I hadn't expected it to be actually quite moving, but it is. Not my last Bernhard.