The Loser

Zusatztext “A complex and unsettling novel . . . about genius and obsession . . . mirroring the thought process of a compulsive mind.” — The New York Times Book Review “Bernhard writes like a sacred monster. . . . He is a remarkable literary performer: a man who goes to extremes in ways that vivify our sense of human possibilities! however destructive.” — The Wall Street Journal “Bernhard is one of the masters of contemporary European fiction . . . After Kafka’s and Canetti’s! his sensibility is one of the most acute! the most capable of exemplary images and gestures! in modern literature.” — George Steiner Informationen zum Autor Thomas Bernhard Klappentext Thomas Bernhard was one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. His formal innovation ranks with Beckett and Kafka, his outrageously cantankerous voice recalls Dostoevsky, but his gift for lacerating, lyrical, provocative prose is incomparably his own.One of Bernhard's most acclaimed novels, The Loser centers on a fictional relationship between piano virtuoso Glenn Gould and two of his fellow students who feel compelled to renounce their musical ambitions in the face of Gould's incomparable genius. One commits suicide, while the other-- the obsessive, witty, and self-mocking narrator-- has retreated into obscurity. Written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, The Loser is a brilliant meditation on success, failure, genius, and fame.Suicide calculated well in advance, I thought, no spontaneous act of desperation.Even Glenn Gould, our friend and the most im-- portant piano virtuoso of the century, only made it to the age of fifty-one, I thought to myself as I entered the inn.Now of course he didn't kill himself like Wertheimer, but died, as they say, a natural death.Four and a half months in New York and always the Goldberg Variations and the Art of the Fugue, four and a half months of Klavierexerzitien, as Glenn Gould always said only in German, I thought.Exactly twenty-eight years ago we had lived in Leopoldskron and studied with Horowitz and we (at least Wertheimer and I, but of course not Glenn Gould) learned more from Horowitz during a completely rain-drenched summer than during eight previous years at the Mozarteum and the Vienna Academy. Horowitz rendered all our professors null and void. But these dreadful teachers had been necessary to understand Horowitz. For two and a half months it rained without stopping and we locked ourselves in our rooms in Leopoldskron and worked day and night, insomnia (Glenn Gould's) had become a necessary state for us, during the night we worked through what Horowitz had taught us the day before. We ate almost nothing and the whole time never had the backaches we habitually suffered from with our former teachers; with Horowitz the backaches disappeared because we were studying so intensely they couldn't appear. Once our course with Horowitz was over it was clear that Glenn was already a better piano player than Horowitz himself, and from that moment on Glenn was the most important piano virtuoso in the world for me, no matter how many piano players I heard from that moment on, none of them played like Glenn, even Rubinstein, whom I've always loved, wasn't better. Wertheimer and I were equally good, even Wertheimer always said, Glenn is the best, even if we didn't yet dare to say that he was the best player of the century. When Glenn went back to Canada we had actually lost our Canadian friend, we didn't think we'd ever see him again, he was so possessed by his art that we had to assume he couldn't continue in that state for very long and would soon die. But two years after we'd studied together under Horowitz Glenn came to the Salzburg Festival to play the Goldberg Variations, which two years previously he had practiced with us day and night at the Mozarteum and had rehearsed again and again. After the concert the papers wrote that no pianist h...

Report

A complex and unsettling novel . . . about genius and obsession . . . mirroring the thought process of a compulsive mind. The New York Times Book Review Bernhard writes like a sacred monster. . . . He is a remarkable literary performer: a man who goes to extremes in ways that vivify our sense of human possibilities, however destructive. The Wall Street Journal Bernhard is one of the masters of contemporary European fiction . . . After Kafka s and Canetti s, his sensibility is one of the most acute, the most capable of exemplary images and gestures, in modern literature. George Steiner

Product details

• Authors: Thomas Bernhard, Jack/ Dawson Dawson
• Assisted by: Jack Dawson (Translation)
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 17.10.2006
• EAN: 9781400077540
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-7754-0
• No. of pages: 208
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 205 mm x 15 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Fiction > Narrative literature > Contemporary literature (from 1945)