Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #576679 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 196 pages

Synopsis
A fictional account of an imaginary relationship among three men - the late piano virtuoso Glenn Gould, the unnamed narrator, and a fictional pianist, Wertheimer. The book tells of how they meet in 1953 to study with Vladimir Horowitz.

Customer Reviews

Bernhard is the undisputed genius of indifference.
Thomas Bernhard approaches his best ever form in this book. It charts with extreme bitterness, and self-loathing the progress of an old-man as he lumbers around 'in the inn'. It is a work of undisputable genius, as Bernhard's lines seem to go on for ever, almost crazed in its style, but somehow darkly brilliant. This piece cannot be categorised as a 'serious' work - on the contrary! It is the funniest book I have ever read, and the italicised rants 'the deterioration process', 'a professional aphorist' etc. and the indifference with which the narrator approaches the subject, but continues with a venomous indifference is pure entertainment, and pure ridiculousness.

One of the best books by this wonderful writer
Bernhard is still relatively little known to the Anglo-American audience, but I believe he is the most serious contender for the inheritor of the mantle of Celine and Beckett.

In 'The Loser' he produces a heartbreaking meditation on the demands the pursuit of an art at the highest level places upon an honest devotee. I have never encountered a more clear-sighted study of human failure depicted with an utter lack of sentimentality or self-pity. In this book Bernhard disposes definitively of the charges of heartlessness and flippancy which are sometimes laid at his door.

Fascinating
Bernhard is one of those discoveries one makes in literature - due to the fact he is quite obscure - which will either leave you cold, or, as in my case, with a new favourite author.
His writing is - 'labyrinthine' - is probably the best word, and he uses a method of repetition a little like Broch (emulated by Sebald and Rick Moody), which serves mostly to hypnotic effect. The prose is hypnotic and rhythmic and repetitive, and quite stream of consciousness, and usually his novels are constructed in one, or a few, paragraphs, and only as many sentences as there are pages. The Loser is one of the more conventional narratives, largely about a guy who is so distraught that his sister won't 'look after him' that he hangs himself in front of her house. Though she doesn't notice. This is typical of Bernhard's black and sardonic sense of humour. It is also about the aforementioned man and the narrator's not being able to deal with the vituosic genius of Glenn Gould - and thanks to this novel I am now discovering the genius of his oeuvre - but strangely gives a lot of quite false details about this real person's life. It is very much about the musician's vocation, but not really music, which incidentally is what Bernhard studied before turning to journalism, then drama then novels. Illness, depression, music, philosophy, suicide and writing are Bernhard's core themes, and as in this novel, The Loser, you get a quite depressing, though darkly funny, and interesting read. If you are a fan of Broch, Sebald, Joyce, Bellow or Houellebecq, this is the same pessimistic labyrinthine engrossing kind of prose. The Loser is a novel not easily forgotten - highly recommended.