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Available
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Publication
New York : Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1991.
Description
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 Losercenters 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 Loseris a brilliant meditation on success, failure, genius, and fame. From the Trade Paperback edition.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member SqueakyChu
This was my first exposure to the writing of Thomas Bernhard, and I did appraocj it with some skeptcism. I noticed from the beginning the absence of paragraphs and quotation marks. Since the book didnot seem that Long, I figured I couls tackle it if the story was interesting as I had read an excellent book written in the same style recently.
I was not disappointed. I came away fromt his novel simply saying "Wow!" I was very much taken by Bernhard's story of three friends who studied piano together at the Mozarteum in Austria. The tale is told from teh point of view of one friend, the narrator, who leanrs of the deaths of both of his classmates at approximately the same age. Glenn Gould was a piano virtuoso who died of a stroke while playing a particuarly difficult piece on the piano. Wertheimer died of suicide aftre no longer playing thepiano. The story examine what happened as pieced together by the narrator.
The story was easy to read, but very puzzling. Both the author and the narrator were Austrians. In this novel, there is nothing but disdain for Austria. Often in the narrative, the narrator would express two opposing thoughts and make both of those seem credible. Im not sure how he did this! The narrator was also able to keep repeating the smae things over and over again in such a way that whatever her expressed was fascinating.
I can see why Thomas Bernhard as an author is held in such high regard. I look forward to reading more of his works.
My copy of the book by the University of Chicago Press had an exception Afterword which discussed both the author and this work. I found that very informative and satisfying.… (more)
I was not disappointed. I came away fromt his novel simply saying "Wow!" I was very much taken by Bernhard's story of three friends who studied piano together at the Mozarteum in Austria. The tale is told from teh point of view of one friend, the narrator, who leanrs of the deaths of both of his classmates at approximately the same age. Glenn Gould was a piano virtuoso who died of a stroke while playing a particuarly difficult piece on the piano. Wertheimer died of suicide aftre no longer playing thepiano. The story examine what happened as pieced together by the narrator.
The story was easy to read, but very puzzling. Both the author and the narrator were Austrians. In this novel, there is nothing but disdain for Austria. Often in the narrative, the narrator would express two opposing thoughts and make both of those seem credible. Im not sure how he did this! The narrator was also able to keep repeating the smae things over and over again in such a way that whatever her expressed was fascinating.
I can see why Thomas Bernhard as an author is held in such high regard. I look forward to reading more of his works.
My copy of the book by the University of Chicago Press had an exception Afterword which discussed both the author and this work. I found that very informative and satisfying.… (more)
LibraryThing member antao
Story about a born piano virtuoso (imagined Glenn Gould), and two failed" pianists, who became something else in life due to that...
After reading "Woodcutters" recently I decided to tackle "The Loser" (Der Untergeher) in English (translated by Jack Dawson, with a wonderful afterword by Mark M. Anderson).
Technically it's stunning book. The one huge monologue, typical of Bernhard, is a relentless, unending exercise in self mockery and a fascinating depiction of the constantly changing positions that we take in life.
Since nothing is permanent and life is not permanent, Bernhard's narrator states the answer in a very literary way.
When reading Bernhard the phrase that pops to mind is "word massacre", that is, one starts feeling sorry for the words and the language after a while, the way he mercilessly hammers them from every perspective... it's also liberating in a way reading something like this once in a while.
His prose much like his poetry can also be a torrent of words and phrases, jumbled together to make a coherent whole. In a way his prose is also like poetry in the sense that he is experimenting with language, putting together words, and seeing if any meaning emerges from them or at least make us skeptical about language itself.
It's the first time I've read this book in a language other than German. One of the things that I didn't agree with was the english title: "The Loser". I'm not sure why the translation went this way. in German "Der Untergeher" derives from the verb "untergehen", which means "going down going to ground", which of course can mean a sort of losing, but not necessarily the connotation of failure (which is I think important to bear in mind when one thinks of the end of the book). With the word "loser" one loses this richness, the wonderful ambiguity of "going down" has been lost.
Bernhard's prose style = Bach fugue...?"… (more)
After reading "Woodcutters" recently I decided to tackle "The Loser" (Der Untergeher) in English (translated by Jack Dawson, with a wonderful afterword by Mark M. Anderson).
Technically it's stunning book. The one huge monologue, typical of Bernhard, is a relentless, unending exercise in self mockery and a fascinating depiction of the constantly changing positions that we take in life.
Since nothing is permanent and life is not permanent, Bernhard's narrator states the answer in a very literary way.
When reading Bernhard the phrase that pops to mind is "word massacre", that is, one starts feeling sorry for the words and the language after a while, the way he mercilessly hammers them from every perspective... it's also liberating in a way reading something like this once in a while.
His prose much like his poetry can also be a torrent of words and phrases, jumbled together to make a coherent whole. In a way his prose is also like poetry in the sense that he is experimenting with language, putting together words, and seeing if any meaning emerges from them or at least make us skeptical about language itself.
It's the first time I've read this book in a language other than German. One of the things that I didn't agree with was the english title: "The Loser". I'm not sure why the translation went this way. in German "Der Untergeher" derives from the verb "untergehen", which means "going down going to ground", which of course can mean a sort of losing, but not necessarily the connotation of failure (which is I think important to bear in mind when one thinks of the end of the book). With the word "loser" one loses this richness, the wonderful ambiguity of "going down" has been lost.
Bernhard's prose style = Bach fugue...?"… (more)
LibraryThing member samatoha
Besides the pessimism,repetition,stunning style and technique of playing virtuosicly on a single note,and the fact that it's hard to stop reading,Bernhard,like Kafka,uses humour and offers a way to live a relatively satisfying life in the modern world.
but thats behind the lines.
On the obvious surface,it deals with the alienation of the the art,the artist,and humans in general.
with clear autobiographic touch, thats Bernhard at it's best.… (more)
but thats behind the lines.
On the obvious surface,it deals with the alienation of the the art,the artist,and humans in general.
with clear autobiographic touch, thats Bernhard at it's best.… (more)
LibraryThing member nuwanda
"The Loser" is a book in one breathless paragraph about the devastating consequences of meeting a genius - coming to a contact with perfection.
Those unfamiliar with Bernhard's peculiar style should be warned that the book doesn't follow a number of conventions that many people would take for granted and at times it can feel as if Bernhard is deliberately writing badly. However, it all makes perfect sense actually and gives the story a very distinctive, almost feverish immediacy.
It really isn't an optimistic or uplifting tale, but it IS deeply compassionate and sensitive view of a human condition, the kind that will linger with you for a long time after you've finished the book.… (more)
Those unfamiliar with Bernhard's peculiar style should be warned that the book doesn't follow a number of conventions that many people would take for granted and at times it can feel as if Bernhard is deliberately writing badly. However, it all makes perfect sense actually and gives the story a very distinctive, almost feverish immediacy.
It really isn't an optimistic or uplifting tale, but it IS deeply compassionate and sensitive view of a human condition, the kind that will linger with you for a long time after you've finished the book.… (more)
LibraryThing member JimmyChanga
Bernhard is a great writer. If he keeps this up, he'll be one of my favorite writers. He really has an individual style, and reading reviews on here and elsewhere comparing him to salinger, beckett, joyce, kafka, dostoyevsky etc. All are lacking and completely puzzling comparisons to me. His obsessions are completely different from those great writers and his style is completely different. I laughed hard at this book. So far I've read Wittgenstein's Nephew and this. I liked WN more. I thought this book contained the same genius as WN, but it got itself entangled in the business of a plot towards the end. I wasn't interested in that. I loved how WN was all in his head, just as the first 3/4 of this book is all in his head. That is brilliant to me, to be able to do what he does with his head. WN also felt a little closer/more personal, it really moved me at points, whereas this book lacked some of those emotional highs even though it assumed a personal tone. But this book also felt more stylistically idiosyncratic, which is a good thing. This could perhaps be because of translators though. I'm looking forward to more Bernhard!… (more)
LibraryThing member thorold
The language is gloriously witty and inventive: Bernhard does things with it that I wouldn't have thought were possible in German. Absolutely stunning technique. Prose narrative can't really be polyphonic in the musical sense, because no-one can read more than one line of text at once, but Bernhard still somehow manages to simulate the effect of polyphony in our minds by his use of endlessly varied repetitions, creating an interplay between meaning and rhythm. And he keeps the idea of polyphony firmly in our mind by talking about Bach and Glenn Gould all the time.
About the substance I'm not so sure. It would be tempting to dismiss it as 240 pages of pure pique — as someone else sums it up below: "If I can't be best I won't play". I don't think that's quite fair. There's a bit more than envy going on: although Wertheimer, the Untergeher, is ostensibly at the centre of the narrative, what the narrator appears to be trying to do is to sort out the meaning of his own relationships with both Wertheimer and "Glenn Gould". Now that Glenn is dead, he has lost his excuse for not pursuing music; without Wertheimer, he no longer has a baseline value to show that he himself is not a failure. The implication seems to be that we only define ourselves as human beings by measuring ourselves against other people.… (more)
About the substance I'm not so sure. It would be tempting to dismiss it as 240 pages of pure pique — as someone else sums it up below: "If I can't be best I won't play". I don't think that's quite fair. There's a bit more than envy going on: although Wertheimer, the Untergeher, is ostensibly at the centre of the narrative, what the narrator appears to be trying to do is to sort out the meaning of his own relationships with both Wertheimer and "Glenn Gould". Now that Glenn is dead, he has lost his excuse for not pursuing music; without Wertheimer, he no longer has a baseline value to show that he himself is not a failure. The implication seems to be that we only define ourselves as human beings by measuring ourselves against other people.… (more)
LibraryThing member daniilkharmsarms
There is something about Bernhard's prose that compels me to read it. He is often compared to Beckett, but i find i am repelled by his literary tool kit. Bernhard, on the other hand, though difficult at times, i find highly readable and enjoyable (a page-turner even!). There is a sense of humour at work also, which is important to my fiction reading habits (the stain of Gogol perhaps?). Among his works, The Loser attracted me directly because i took up piano in my youth, but failed to continue beyond a certain point of study. maybe an inner Glenn? A special literary mind, for sure. i should really reread this!… (more)
LibraryThing member yhaduong
From the first page, Bernhard plunges head first into the story of two pianists who meet Glenn Gould and their subsequent decisions to give up the piano in the face of brilliance. The first third is pure mad cap hilarity, written in one long paragraph the novel races along until you no longer know whether you already knew something or it was just revealed to you.… (more)
LibraryThing member heatherhoarder
You'll know if you like Bernhard within the first paragraph, but of course, he's famous for his one paragraph book with run on sentences and no chapters. His personal life shines through this fictitious recollection of a friendship with Glenn Gould. The characters drawn out thoughts revolve around motivation, dedication, and those things that interfere with them. Bernhard's novel brings out the question of why we do things we are passionate about and those things that keep us from doing them. He takes on the difficult matter of how do you live within your passion and keep it alive.… (more)
LibraryThing member stillatim
I finally got sick of people I like and respect, on goodreads and elsewhere, telling me I have to read Bernhard. So now I have, and they were probably right.
Bernhard reminds me of Rilke: I disagree with him/his characters entirely about more or less everything. This kind of mid-century existentialism* never struck me as particularly interesting or true (i.e., we're going to die, so why bother? Well, we might as well bother, since we're alive). I understand that some people kill themselves, but I think Spinoza (I'm possibly making this up/misremembering) was right to say that suicide is a logical impossibility: 'suicide' is caused by factors outside one's self. In the case of existentialist suicide, it's caused by silly ideas.
The other reason Bernhard reminds me of Rilke is that he says all these silly things with utter brilliance. I can't quite believe anyone so artistically talented could be so foolish or so glum. I expected this to be heavy going, what with the pointless 'I refuse to use paragraphs' business (there are obvious paragraph and even chapter breaks in the book; refusing to show them in the text is just pretension) and his general reputation. But no. This thing was wildly entertaining.
Bernhard ironizes all the existentialism, recognizing that its silliness is the only thing sillier than the silliness of life itself. The characters (a term used loosely, maybe 'ideas' is a better one) here are the victims of ridiculous expectations, and when they can't meet those expectations, they retreat into their own intellects. Maybe Wertheimer and the narrator will never be the world's greatest pianist (excuse me, 'piano artist') and in that sense will always be losers. But they *know* that they're losers, so it's okay.
No. They're losers inasmuch as they retreat to their intellects, with the narrator claiming to be better than Wertheimer and Wertheimer, presumably, also claiming to be better than the narrator. They're losers, not because they failed to be better piano artists than 'Glenn Gould'**, but because they think, Highlander style, that there can only be one. Leave the house occasionally, meet some other people. It'll be okay.
*: not actual existentialism, but novelistic existentialism, the kind of thing that Artists do/say because they can't be bothered actually thinking about the world. "Why spend time reading about, say, the decay of post-war governmental structures, like, man is sick and evil and we'll just die anyway?"
**: I actually don't get the Glenn Gould thing. I think he was right to focus on Bach and before, and the twentieth century, but I never get the urge to listen to his Goldbergs. Oh well.… (more)
Bernhard reminds me of Rilke: I disagree with him/his characters entirely about more or less everything. This kind of mid-century existentialism* never struck me as particularly interesting or true (i.e., we're going to die, so why bother? Well, we might as well bother, since we're alive). I understand that some people kill themselves, but I think Spinoza (I'm possibly making this up/misremembering) was right to say that suicide is a logical impossibility: 'suicide' is caused by factors outside one's self. In the case of existentialist suicide, it's caused by silly ideas.
The other reason Bernhard reminds me of Rilke is that he says all these silly things with utter brilliance. I can't quite believe anyone so artistically talented could be so foolish or so glum. I expected this to be heavy going, what with the pointless 'I refuse to use paragraphs' business (there are obvious paragraph and even chapter breaks in the book; refusing to show them in the text is just pretension) and his general reputation. But no. This thing was wildly entertaining.
Bernhard ironizes all the existentialism, recognizing that its silliness is the only thing sillier than the silliness of life itself. The characters (a term used loosely, maybe 'ideas' is a better one) here are the victims of ridiculous expectations, and when they can't meet those expectations, they retreat into their own intellects. Maybe Wertheimer and the narrator will never be the world's greatest pianist (excuse me, 'piano artist') and in that sense will always be losers. But they *know* that they're losers, so it's okay.
No. They're losers inasmuch as they retreat to their intellects, with the narrator claiming to be better than Wertheimer and Wertheimer, presumably, also claiming to be better than the narrator. They're losers, not because they failed to be better piano artists than 'Glenn Gould'**, but because they think, Highlander style, that there can only be one. Leave the house occasionally, meet some other people. It'll be okay.
*: not actual existentialism, but novelistic existentialism, the kind of thing that Artists do/say because they can't be bothered actually thinking about the world. "Why spend time reading about, say, the decay of post-war governmental structures, like, man is sick and evil and we'll just die anyway?"
**: I actually don't get the Glenn Gould thing. I think he was right to focus on Bach and before, and the twentieth century, but I never get the urge to listen to his Goldbergs. Oh well.… (more)
LibraryThing member HearTheWindSing
A single paragraph. One breathless monologue. Genius. Failure. Perfection. Obsession. Friendship. Death.
The Genius, the Philosopher, the Loser.
The musical genius of Glenn Gould, the pinnacle of art, is what serves as the reference defining all three of their lives. Werthemier - the titular Loser - finds himself woefully dwarfed by the perfection of Gould as a piano artist. The frustration of recognizing his worthlessness and knowing that he will never be able to reach the top leads him to give up his piano career. And this failure haunts him for the rest of his life. In his bitter obsession, he gradually advances on a path of self-destruction. The manner in which he commits suicide comes as a last-ditch effort to do something on his own terms, a desperate act of rebel against his life of failure.
The narrator - the philosopher - is similarly humiliated in his musical aspirations. Unlike Werthemier, he does manage to push the frustration to the back of his mind. But he never does come out of Gould's shadow. He never finds a new direction to his life and spends years writing an rewriting and essay on Gould.
Through this internal monologue, in a distraught and obsessive manner, the narrator attempts to come to terms with the deaths of both Gould and Werthemier. His whole life can only be defined in terms of the relationship of this trio and he realizes that their deaths automatically render his life void of any meaning. In the process, he also appears to decisively arrive at the conclusion that Werthemier's fate was sealed the moment Gould tagged him as the Loser. Clocks having been set in motion then, Werthemier's suicide was inevitable. And thus the narrator unburdens himself in knowing that there is nothing he could have done to avoid the suicide. We often find the narrator pointing out similar characteristics between himself and Gould (self-delusion?), which clearly set Werthemier apart from the two. While he admits to portraying Werthemier unfavorably, this portrayal also provides him with a way to assure himself that he was not headed down the same path as Werthemier. It really was Werthemier's own personality that he fell victim to.
The relationship that the three share begs the question - what if their paths hadn't crossed with Gould? Perhaps they would have still led a life of being nothing, Gould simply being the excuse they found. However, their lives are so heavily clouded by that of Gould, that it seems impossible to even begin to imagine Gould's absence. This relationship was rooted in their common idea and understanding of music, and it forged a lifelong bond between the three. The intellect of the two, the loser and the philosopher, was also responsible for their failure. Because it takes some acumen to even recognize a genius and be aware of one's own abilities and deficiencies. On the other hand, I cannot factor their wealth out of the equation either. These are two people who do not have to worry about earning a living and thus have the privilege to spend their lives fixated on just one idea. Had that not been the case, sooner or later, the basic necessities of life would have pulled their attention away and forced them to do something with their lives and perhaps lead a life of being good enough, but not the best.
The novel ends with an interesting afterword that throws some light on Bernhard's life and his writing. His later novels, including The Loser, contain characters which carry an image of the author in themselves. In the present case, Gould is meant to be doppelganger for Bernhard. Bernhard having studied music, his writing has been informed by music as well. The afterword compares his writing to Gould's music:
"Here it is Bach's Goldberg variations, played by Glenn Gould, that provides as it were the basso continuo for Bernhard's own deliberately droning repetitions and variations. With the monologistic, uninterrupted flow of its sentences, the novel conjures up the image of a singer fighting to sustain his breath to the end of an impossibly long, embellished aria."
Another well-known aspect of Bernhard's personality was his hatred for his country Austria. Not only did he face multiple controversies while alive, he delivered a parting blow in death as well:
"Whatever I have written, whether published by me during my lifetime or as part of my literary papers still existing after my death, shall not be performed, printed or even recited for the duration of legal copyright within the borders of Austria, however this state identifies itself." This parting slap in the face of his native country thus came not only as a surprise; it came from the hand of a dead man, whose laughter rang out from the grave.
… (more)
LibraryThing member blanderson
Stylistically inventive; manic; neurotic; I found myself identifying with The Loser, killing himself because his life was great but not quite good enough, the seriousness of a man who cannot separate desire from experience, though all the novel's readers certainly want to identify with Gould, the original manic genius who rolls thru life like a gasoline fire (though he is objectified into an ideal in this novel, and rarely appears in a scene---he is the mark that affects the narrator and The Loser, the Christ-like artistic genius among a sea of Dilettantes).
The narrator was a neurotic twat, quite frankly, which is quite obviously the point of the novel---to sermonize the lives of his two closest (and deceased) friends while never escaping the shadow of his own selfishness. Their success, their suffering, is always related to himself, and about halfway thru the novel, once he vacantly describes the funeral of his closest living friend, we realize that the narrator, more than anyone else, is the novel's true Loser.
For the bad parts: Nothing happens. At all. Nothing, whatsoever. A lot of waxing philosophical, and about 2/3rds of the novel is presented as a neurotic retelling of the same few events---mainly the effect of Gould's mastery of the Goldberg Deviations on the two young virtuosos. Of course, Gould is impeccable---Piano Radicalism and all that jazz---which causes the other two self-absorbed characters
I'm giving it 3/5 because the prose was unique, the story weighty, and because Bernhard tackles some very complex philosophical questions concerning art, genius, self-worth, self-absorption and, above all, the place of one's vision of self against the crushing realities of life.
The negatives are many: basically no story, an a TON of repetition for such a short novel. I feel like any editor would have further condensed the novel due to this constant harping on the same scenes (sure, it's a stylistic aspect of the narrator's neuroses, but come on...)if not for Bernhard's reputation and obvious philosophical genius.
Overall a good book but lacking in gravitas and, above all, emotion. The characters seem more like symbols than bleeding, shitting humans, which always makes a novel fall a little flat in my eyes.… (more)
The narrator was a neurotic twat, quite frankly, which is quite obviously the point of the novel---to sermonize the lives of his two closest (and deceased) friends while never escaping the shadow of his own selfishness. Their success, their suffering, is always related to himself, and about halfway thru the novel, once he vacantly describes the funeral of his closest living friend, we realize that the narrator, more than anyone else, is the novel's true Loser.
For the bad parts: Nothing happens. At all. Nothing, whatsoever. A lot of waxing philosophical, and about 2/3rds of the novel is presented as a neurotic retelling of the same few events---mainly the effect of Gould's mastery of the Goldberg Deviations on the two young virtuosos. Of course, Gould is impeccable---Piano Radicalism and all that jazz---which causes the other two self-absorbed characters
I'm giving it 3/5 because the prose was unique, the story weighty, and because Bernhard tackles some very complex philosophical questions concerning art, genius, self-worth, self-absorption and, above all, the place of one's vision of self against the crushing realities of life.
The negatives are many: basically no story, an a TON of repetition for such a short novel. I feel like any editor would have further condensed the novel due to this constant harping on the same scenes (sure, it's a stylistic aspect of the narrator's neuroses, but come on...)if not for Bernhard's reputation and obvious philosophical genius.
Overall a good book but lacking in gravitas and, above all, emotion. The characters seem more like symbols than bleeding, shitting humans, which always makes a novel fall a little flat in my eyes.… (more)
LibraryThing member Mary_Overton
"From the first moment ours was a SPIRITUAL friendship. The majority of even the most famous piano players haven't a clue about their art, [Glenn Gould] said. But it's like that in all the arts, I said, just like that in painting, in literature, I said, even philosophers are ignorant of philosophy. Most artists are ignorant of their art. They have a dilettante's notion of art, remain stuck all their lives in dilettantism, even the most famous artists in the world. We understood each other immediately, we were, I have to say it, attracted from the first moment by our differences, which actually were completely opposite in our of course identical CONCEPTION OF ART." loc 129
"But already I doubted whether this work was truly worth something and was thinking of destroying it upon my return, everything we write down, if we leave it for a while and start reading it from the beginning, naturally becomes unbearable and we won't rest until we've destroyed it again, I thought. Next week I'll be in Madrid again and the first thing I'll do is destroy my GLENN ESSAY in order to start a new one, I thought, an even more intense, even more authentic one, I thought. For we always think we are authentic and in truth are not, we think we're intense and in truth are not. But of course this insight has always resulted in none of my works ever being published, I thought, not a single one in the twenty-eight years I've been writing, just the work about Glenn has kept me busy for nine years, I thought. How good it is that none of these imperfect, incomplete works has ever appeared, I thought, had I published them, which would have posed no difficulty whatsoever, today I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I AVOIDED this punishment BY DESTROYING THEM, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word DESTROYING. Several times I said it to myself out loud. ARRIVAL IN MADRID, IMMEDIATELY DESTROY MY GLENN ESSAY, I thought, I must get rid of it as quickly as possible to make room for a new one. Now I know HOW to set about this work, I never knew how, I always began too soon, I thought, like an amateur. All our lives we run away from amateurishness and it always catches up with us, I thought, we want nothing with greater passion than to escape our lifelong amateurishness and it always catches up with us." loc 836… (more)
"But already I doubted whether this work was truly worth something and was thinking of destroying it upon my return, everything we write down, if we leave it for a while and start reading it from the beginning, naturally becomes unbearable and we won't rest until we've destroyed it again, I thought. Next week I'll be in Madrid again and the first thing I'll do is destroy my GLENN ESSAY in order to start a new one, I thought, an even more intense, even more authentic one, I thought. For we always think we are authentic and in truth are not, we think we're intense and in truth are not. But of course this insight has always resulted in none of my works ever being published, I thought, not a single one in the twenty-eight years I've been writing, just the work about Glenn has kept me busy for nine years, I thought. How good it is that none of these imperfect, incomplete works has ever appeared, I thought, had I published them, which would have posed no difficulty whatsoever, today I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I AVOIDED this punishment BY DESTROYING THEM, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word DESTROYING. Several times I said it to myself out loud. ARRIVAL IN MADRID, IMMEDIATELY DESTROY MY GLENN ESSAY, I thought, I must get rid of it as quickly as possible to make room for a new one. Now I know HOW to set about this work, I never knew how, I always began too soon, I thought, like an amateur. All our lives we run away from amateurishness and it always catches up with us, I thought, we want nothing with greater passion than to escape our lifelong amateurishness and it always catches up with us." loc 836… (more)
LibraryThing member towo
To be honest, I read the first page, skipped ahead a few, and then put it away again. This book is a SINGLE paragraph, and all love towards long sentences and segments aside, there's a _sense_ to paragraphs. Deliberately choosing to muddle my brain by leaving out an essential feature of written works longer than a couple of sentences counts as an utmost negligence towards the reader. Thus I do not feel obliged to read.… (more)
LibraryThing member samfsmith
I usually give a questionable book at least a hundred pages before I give up on it. Not this book – I stopped reading at about page 25. It’s a long soliloquy; it’s one claim to fame seems to be that it is written in one long paragraph. Not strictly true – there are four paragraphs. I can sum up what I think it is about in one sentence – “If I can’t win, I won’t play.” It’s not about music, as you might think. It’s about giving up when you can’t be the best. I read far enough to learn that the narrator did not pursue a musical career because he loved music, but to spite his family. He abandoned his career because he could not play as good as Glenn Gould. There seems to be no plot, no setting, and very little characterization. It’s just the narrator rambling on and on in incoherent sentences. Perhaps that is a problem with the translation. The first thing in this edition is an apology from the translator.
I don’t have much sympathy with the narrator, of course. I am an amateur musician and writer. Should I give up playing the piano because I am not Glenn Gould? Should I give up writing because I can’t get published? I know one thing – I gave up on reading this book.… (more)
I don’t have much sympathy with the narrator, of course. I am an amateur musician and writer. Should I give up playing the piano because I am not Glenn Gould? Should I give up writing because I can’t get published? I know one thing – I gave up on reading this book.… (more)
LibraryThing member Catherine_GV
It was good. The ending was AWESOME :D! One of the kind I love that stirs your emotions!Etc..:)! I read it for school.
LibraryThing member stravinsky
I was going to comment on the similarity of the incessant prose to that of Bach's compositions, but the afterword already covered that, I thought.
LibraryThing member JimElkins
Why Fiction and Music May Not Mix
I'd like to pose this review as a question. Why is there so little talk about music in "The Loser"?
This is a book about Glenn Gould (named, and with mainly true things said about him), Horowitz (same), a character named Wertheimer (who has echoes of Paul Wittgenstein, the pianist and friend of Bernhard's), and the narrator, also a pianist. The entire novel is consumed with music, and yet there is very little here that's specific about music: a couple of individual pieces are named, and there are stray mentions of Schoenberg, Webern, Handel, and some others. There is exactly one passage on an individual piece of music, when Wertheimer overhears Gould playing the second half of the Aria in the Goldberg Variations.
It's known that Bernhard knew a great deal about music (one of his favrites was Josef Matthias Hauer: you can judge your own knowledge of modernist music by whether or not you know him), and so it's clear that he made a decision to omit any detailed talk about music from the book.
In the book, music and pianism are entirely matters of "genius." The narrator talks incessantly about who was the "best" "piano artist," and who was second best. Gould was of course "better" than Horowitz, and so forth.
What strikes me here is that this is not how any professional I know, in any field of the arts, thinks. Once you learn about an art (classical piano, abstract painting, whatever) you come to care about individual artists and artworks, and even about parts of artworks. I admire Gould for his performance of some of the variations in Beethoven's Op. 109, but not others; some preludes and fugues in the WTC, but not others. I am convinced by his performance of individual passages and even single notes in Bach, and not others -- for example in the Aria, where some notes sound overdone and intrusively ornamental, and others crisp and "modern." I don't think this is unusual, and it's attested by the intense scrutiny listeners give to performances by their favorite pianists. (Those comparative videos on Youtube are a contemporary manifestation.) Once you get to know an art, a medium, or an instrument, it no longer makes sense to say things like "Gould was the best pianist in the world."
(This is related to the reason why I put off reading "The Loser" until I'd read almost all Bernhard's work: I have my own ideas about Gould and Horowitz, and I imagined Bernhard's thoughts would get in the way of a sympathetic reading of his novel. As it turns out, there are no specific ideas about Gould or Horowitz at all -- you could never tell, from "The Loser," how they played.)
So this is my question: why did Bernhard deliberately avoid writing anything specific about Gould's technique, or Horowitz's, or about their interpretaions of any pieces of music?
Here are a couple of possibilities.
1. "The Loser" has a satiric purpose, and it's about obsession, self-destruction, and people driven by claims of precedence, fame, and genius. This question could perhaps be asked without reference to music. There is little of Wright's architecture in "The Corrections," little of the Wittgensteins in "Wittgenstein's Nephew," little of Goethe in "Goethe Dies," and so forth. But "The Loser" seems different to me, because it names enough actual music to signal the reader it is not only about personalities, that the music matters.
2. Bernhard thought that literature itself -- fiction -- could not accommodate detailed discussions of music, because references to individual works would not be known to readers. I don't like this as an answer, because Bernhard was absolutely the last person to care about his readers' level of education.
3. He was averse to music criticism, description, or analysis of any sort. This is possible; I don't know his position here.
4. He thought discussion of music is incompatible with the narrative forms and voices of literature. This is the explanation that intrigues me. Bernhard was aware of precedents for including descriptions of individual passages and performances, especially Proust.
This question is a live one for me, because I am working on a novel that includes not only precise descriptions of music, but actual sheet music. If there's something to the fourth answer, I'd like to understand it better.… (more)
I'd like to pose this review as a question. Why is there so little talk about music in "The Loser"?
This is a book about Glenn Gould (named, and with mainly true things said about him), Horowitz (same), a character named Wertheimer (who has echoes of Paul Wittgenstein, the pianist and friend of Bernhard's), and the narrator, also a pianist. The entire novel is consumed with music, and yet there is very little here that's specific about music: a couple of individual pieces are named, and there are stray mentions of Schoenberg, Webern, Handel, and some others. There is exactly one passage on an individual piece of music, when Wertheimer overhears Gould playing the second half of the Aria in the Goldberg Variations.
It's known that Bernhard knew a great deal about music (one of his favrites was Josef Matthias Hauer: you can judge your own knowledge of modernist music by whether or not you know him), and so it's clear that he made a decision to omit any detailed talk about music from the book.
In the book, music and pianism are entirely matters of "genius." The narrator talks incessantly about who was the "best" "piano artist," and who was second best. Gould was of course "better" than Horowitz, and so forth.
What strikes me here is that this is not how any professional I know, in any field of the arts, thinks. Once you learn about an art (classical piano, abstract painting, whatever) you come to care about individual artists and artworks, and even about parts of artworks. I admire Gould for his performance of some of the variations in Beethoven's Op. 109, but not others; some preludes and fugues in the WTC, but not others. I am convinced by his performance of individual passages and even single notes in Bach, and not others -- for example in the Aria, where some notes sound overdone and intrusively ornamental, and others crisp and "modern." I don't think this is unusual, and it's attested by the intense scrutiny listeners give to performances by their favorite pianists. (Those comparative videos on Youtube are a contemporary manifestation.) Once you get to know an art, a medium, or an instrument, it no longer makes sense to say things like "Gould was the best pianist in the world."
(This is related to the reason why I put off reading "The Loser" until I'd read almost all Bernhard's work: I have my own ideas about Gould and Horowitz, and I imagined Bernhard's thoughts would get in the way of a sympathetic reading of his novel. As it turns out, there are no specific ideas about Gould or Horowitz at all -- you could never tell, from "The Loser," how they played.)
So this is my question: why did Bernhard deliberately avoid writing anything specific about Gould's technique, or Horowitz's, or about their interpretaions of any pieces of music?
Here are a couple of possibilities.
1. "The Loser" has a satiric purpose, and it's about obsession, self-destruction, and people driven by claims of precedence, fame, and genius. This question could perhaps be asked without reference to music. There is little of Wright's architecture in "The Corrections," little of the Wittgensteins in "Wittgenstein's Nephew," little of Goethe in "Goethe Dies," and so forth. But "The Loser" seems different to me, because it names enough actual music to signal the reader it is not only about personalities, that the music matters.
2. Bernhard thought that literature itself -- fiction -- could not accommodate detailed discussions of music, because references to individual works would not be known to readers. I don't like this as an answer, because Bernhard was absolutely the last person to care about his readers' level of education.
3. He was averse to music criticism, description, or analysis of any sort. This is possible; I don't know his position here.
4. He thought discussion of music is incompatible with the narrative forms and voices of literature. This is the explanation that intrigues me. Bernhard was aware of precedents for including descriptions of individual passages and performances, especially Proust.
This question is a live one for me, because I am working on a novel that includes not only precise descriptions of music, but actual sheet music. If there's something to the fourth answer, I'd like to understand it better.… (more)
LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
The unnamed narrator of this novel enrolls in a class in Salzburg offered by the piano virtuoso, Horowitz. There he encounters and befriends Wertheimer, the eponymous “loser”, and Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist and genius. Gould’s playing of The Goldberg Variations so astonishes Wertheimer that he finds he must give up the piano entirely. The narrator also abandons his hopes for a career as a virtuoso. Both acknowledge Gould’s supremacy, even greater than that of their teacher, Horowitz. That Gould himself gives up his career of public performance in order to become a recluse in the woods outside New York continuously perfecting his Bach (note — this is Bernhard’s fictional Gould) only underscores Wertheimer’s and the narrator’s need to also have abandoned their careers. But it is Gould’s early demise (in this novel, by stroke) that triggers Wertheimer’s eventual suicide at much the same age. The narrator considers both events and what led up to and surrounds them, what lends them significance, and in the process reevaluates his own life choices.
For devotees of Bernhard’s late style of uninterrupted misanthropic monologue, The Loser satisfies every hope. It is bleak, full of envy and spite, wreathed in self-loathing, and sporadically darkly humorous. And yet, with the almost miraculous figure of Gould, it’s clear that Bernhard commits himself to the possibility of a kind of human perfection, though that might necessitate an unremitting devotion to a specific artistic project. Still, the very possibility of Gould’s recordings makes life, for some, bearable. Alas, not for Wertheimer as he was, from the outset and always, the loser.
Heartily recommended for those who love Bernhard’s style, and gently so for everyone else.… (more)
For devotees of Bernhard’s late style of uninterrupted misanthropic monologue, The Loser satisfies every hope. It is bleak, full of envy and spite, wreathed in self-loathing, and sporadically darkly humorous. And yet, with the almost miraculous figure of Gould, it’s clear that Bernhard commits himself to the possibility of a kind of human perfection, though that might necessitate an unremitting devotion to a specific artistic project. Still, the very possibility of Gould’s recordings makes life, for some, bearable. Alas, not for Wertheimer as he was, from the outset and always, the loser.
Heartily recommended for those who love Bernhard’s style, and gently so for everyone else.… (more)
LibraryThing member BlackGlove
Peculiar intensity
This is my second Thomas Bernhard novel, and whilst reading it my liking for his unique prose style increased. An unnamed narrator walks into an inn and talks to himself about his two best friends (one being Glenn Gould the famous piano virtuoso, the other being Wertheimer "the loser" who has committed suicide by hanging himself near his sister's house). The obsessional, repetitive and funny thoughts of the unnamed narrator continue for half the novel whilst he stands in the inn: it must be the longest wait for a drink in history! Eventually the landlady sees him and it isn't long before he has moved on, both physically and mentally, to the subject of Wertheimer's decline and suicide. It all sounds grim and pointless, but it's surprisingly engaging, especially for the reader who has a liking for cynicism and unhinged rambling: the word "cretinism" pops up quite a lot. Overall, I didn't find The Loser as satisfying as Correction (my first TB novel), it isn't as deep or disturbing, but still I was impressed by the peculiar intensity of it all.… (more)
This is my second Thomas Bernhard novel, and whilst reading it my liking for his unique prose style increased. An unnamed narrator walks into an inn and talks to himself about his two best friends (one being Glenn Gould the famous piano virtuoso, the other being Wertheimer "the loser" who has committed suicide by hanging himself near his sister's house). The obsessional, repetitive and funny thoughts of the unnamed narrator continue for half the novel whilst he stands in the inn: it must be the longest wait for a drink in history! Eventually the landlady sees him and it isn't long before he has moved on, both physically and mentally, to the subject of Wertheimer's decline and suicide. It all sounds grim and pointless, but it's surprisingly engaging, especially for the reader who has a liking for cynicism and unhinged rambling: the word "cretinism" pops up quite a lot. Overall, I didn't find The Loser as satisfying as Correction (my first TB novel), it isn't as deep or disturbing, but still I was impressed by the peculiar intensity of it all.… (more)
Subjects
Language
Original language
German