…The beasts in the barn are his sacred objects, the body of his father, which has been decaying in the graveyard soil for more than twenty years, is his Blessed Sacrament…
The Serf (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture and Thought. Translation Series) by Josef Winkler, Michael Mitchell; Paperback, 306 pages; Published September 1st 1996 by “Ariadne Pr” (first published January 1st 1987); Original title: The Serf (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture and Thought. Translation Series); ISBN: 1572410248 (ISBN13: 9781572410244); Edition language: English
A disclaimer should be offered here in case anyone reading this review might think I personally have an agenda supporting the homosexual community or even the sexual trappings of the awful members of the flamboyant and disgustingly demonstrative heterosexual community. In general my wish is that all personal and graphic sexual escapades be left to the privacy of one’s own bedroom or dining tabletop. But here I sit with fresh cum on my face, it dripping off my chin, and coating my teeth and tongue after devouring this book. It wasn’t what I had planned on after sitting down to what I wished would be an enjoyable read, and I am surprised I actually found a way to wade my mind and body through this dirty mess. You cannot escape the liquid violations inflicted on you as you read this extravagant measure of a soiling unequaled by any other novel I have ever read throughout my seventy years and counting. I might try below to explain myself a bit for those still interested.
The audacity, always, of the speaker’s father, The Tiller of the Soil, sitting on his milking stool in the calving barn with his gold monstrance fitted to his head, tied under his chin with the dried umbilical cords of two mares, and the hosts imprinted with his own father’s face and placed in the catcher awaiting his holy prayer and communion. The violence of the old man, his hateful and jealous nature, all the hard work and injustices wrought on The Tiller of the Soil, with his no-good sons and a daughter given to her anti-depressants. The oldest son, the speaker, and one who is more interested in his own words and writings than hard farm labor, who imagines all sorts of disgusting affairs in the commerce of his sex concerning both his mouth and organ, and then his murderous tendencies. As if this son is caught inside a disease that has no cure, trapped in a home of hateful, unhappy people, and flagellating himself almost constantly with his throbbing sex organ and hungered wish to taste the semen and flesh of young teenage boys. And the onslaught is unending. There is no relief ever from the invasion of these bloody thoughts. The barnyard tastes of dusty straw and dried-out hay, manure-stained and dripping from the droppings made by execution of the farmer’s trade. The stalls smeared with entrails and sour milk, ejaculations, and the piss sprayed from hanging corpses swinging from the rafters above the heads of saddened onlookers. There is no peace but through death in this tale. And even the graves are desecrated and blasphemed to death. It flat wears a reader out, but still one presses on to find its end no matter the consequences to one’s own soul and rising-dreadful personality. It is where fate takes hold its deathly grip and in due time shall leave no prisoners. But not before the undying gait of a very long and arduous journey through the life of the speaker and all his acquaintances. His own family holds no higher ground than any other throughout this tale of misery. There are no raging tears. Only a perpetual violence meant to assuage this ungodly pressure, the evil deluge of all sorts of liquids, ass-filled and coming from almost every orifice known of man or beast. The hope for some eventual emergence of grace is all that keeps a reader like me from going insane. It is a very hard world these people live in, and one they must escape from, but still they find it difficult to not exist, though this dying is the driving force behind their inclinations. Suicide and murder their only way out of this pitiful and exhausting existence. This is not a book for the faint-of-heart. The language exquisite in its absurd demonstrations. There is no bragging over its size on the page but instead a revealing, a full-frontal exposure, a harsh fountain of flying sperm hitting us in the face constantly. There is no towel absorbent enough for this flooding horizontal rain. Only a pleading and almost desperate search for the final period that might signify its end.
In the mornings and evenings, while he is working in the cowbarn, the Tiller of the Soil, who is eighty years old, wears a gold monstrance on his bald head, which he fastens underneath his bristly chin with two dried mare’s umbilical cords. In the lunula of the monstrance is a consecrated wafer, which doesn’t have the body of Christ impressed on it as a watermark, but the head of his own father. The beasts in the barn are his sacred objects, the body of his father, which has been decaying in the graveyard soil for more than twenty years, is his Blessed Sacrament. Each time he finishes his work in the cowbarn, he lifts the monstrance off his head, takes the host out of the lunula, holds it up with both hands, saying, before he places his father’s body on his tongue and eats it up, "O lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof: but speak the word only, and my soul shall be healed."
Further Update: After reading my review first published on tumblr my nice wife asked me what the book was about and I told her I wasn't sure except to absurdly and graphically present suicidal farm life in small-town Austria and fiercely attack specifically Catholicism and homophobes. She then said, "then why didn't you say so?"
Thank you @The Rewind for the restack. I was hoping for a comment. Pretty brutal read.