Installed behind his desk with notebook, ashtray, whiskey, and "several typewriters of various calibers, " Werner Kofler embarks on a tour not through space but through literature, and through his abortive attempts at producing a work he can call his own. "Art must destroy reality, " he trumpets, yet, in the spirit of his "beloved Beckett, " each failed attempt at the writing desk only drives the effort endlessly, angrily on. The first English translation of a central figure in Austrian fiction, At the Writing Desk is a battle cry against every cultural and literary status quo.