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Der Untergeher (SZ-Bibliothek, #5)

4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 · rating details · 1,619 ratings · 164 reviews

Drei Pianisten, eine Leidenschaft. Alle wollen sie "nur das Höchste" als wahre Kunst gelten lassen, alle stellen sie größte Ansprüche an sich selbst. Doch nur einem ist der Durchbruch vergönnt. Als der Pianist Wertheim den hinter geschlossenen Türen probenden Rivalen Glenn Gould hört, ist er als Künstler "tödlich" getroffen, weiß er doch, dass er dessen Genialität nie wird...more

Hardcover, SZ-Bibliothek, #5, 157 pages

Published April 30th 2004 by Süddeutsche Zeitung / Bibliothek (first published 1983)

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Nov 20, 2012 Garima rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: testing-patience-1-2-3

"everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death."

This is what Bernhard said as a part of his acceptance speech for the Austrian State Prize for Literature. So, Yeah! That’s the kind of man he was.

Along with many other writers, I discovered Bernhard through Goodreads only. The next step is usually checking out the author’s profile, from where I found the following description:

Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian author, who ranges among the most distinguished German speaking writers of the second h...more

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Jun 15, 2012 Megha rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews

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...more
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.

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Feb 07, 2012 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Hansi Hinterseer

Recommended to Mariel by: Der Leiermann

"Again and again we picture ourselves sitting together with the people we feel drawn to all our lives, precisely these so-called simple people, whom naturally we imagine much differently from the way they truly are, for if we actually sit down with them we see that they aren't the way we've pictured them and that we absolutely don't belong with them, as we've talked ourselves into believing, and we get rejected at their table and in their midst as we logically should get after sitting down at t...more "Again and again we picture ourselves sitting together with the people we feel drawn to all our lives, precisely these so-called simple people, whom naturally we imagine much differently from the way they truly are, for if we actually sit down with them we see that they aren't the way we've pictured them and that we absolutely don't belong with them, as we've talked ourselves into believing, and we get rejected at their table and in their midst as we logically should get after sitting down at their table and believing we should get after sitting down at their table and believing we belonged with them or could sit with them for even the shortest time without being punished, which is the biggest mistake, I thought."

Loser, Philosophizer, Genius. The hopeless catch in the throat part of the heart that swallows down all when it's not easy. The have to be a Loser, Philosopher or Genius.

Those mistakes over and over again. The starry velvet mental goldmine has had some horrific accident and you should have known not to step there already. Expectations... My goodreads friends say that The Loser is laugh out loud funny. I shook my head in a recognition kind of way. It started to feel like reliving an embarrassing moment and pretending you can laugh about it now because you feel like you should be able to laugh about it by now. But not really. It's something. I don't know if it was quite humor to me. It's not sad and it's not funny because it's not making something more out of what already is, like art. It's more like if you could cut the hole out of the heart and compared it to the black hole they would fit together like left and right. I guess it's funny like how irony is funny because I never really know why I'm moved to some laughter-like impulse (I don't understand irony or anything else. Have I ever laughed like Glenn Gould? Not if anyone else was around, I know that). I wouldn't have waited for Glenn Gould to assign me The Loser. Do you sit down at the table and not expect to get punished? Or not sit at all. Maybe stand in the doorway of the inn, thinking?

I don't care about the what is the use when there's Glenn Gould (I can imagine being Glenn Gould and starting to wonder behind that barricade about not composing like Bach, if you stepped outside of the music when you really shouldn't do that). The other day I read Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet (great) and he had some advice about how you shouldn't write if it wasn't something you would die over if you couldn't do it. I'm more walking the tight rope lines of David Foster Wallace's fiction is what it is to be a fucking human being (something like that. They both put it better than I could. I only live it now, as they did in theirs). I wouldn't want to do anything if I couldn't feel a story in everything. It's all the not expecting to get punished thing. The Loser isn't about not being the best in music or anything else. It's not ever being able to get over the feelings to avoid and you're always barricaded and always lost. What would they have done if they had never met Glenn Gould? My suspicion is that they would have been all for Genius if they had felt they belonged with it. (Does anyone?) It's a lonely feeling to not go that high. If you're one of those people who talk all of the time and never listen.

I know shit about philosophy. I wouldn't have known about allusions to Wittgenstein without other goodreads reviews (I have seen the movie with Tilda Swinton in it). I tend to feel hopeless when hearing/reading other people talk about philosophers and then I do something else like read novels. My version of their never-gonna-rock-me-Amadeus is feeling stupid in the face of what appears to me to be clear-eyed clarity compared to my cataract confusion. What I know is that I can relate way too much to feeling bad. My heart broke for our narrator that he could never get himself to tell that story about Gould or Wertheimer (it goes without saying that the only person I truly felt sorry for was Wertheimer's sister. Please, don't ever let me be a sister in a Thomas Bernhard novel). It's like being the piano and eliminating Gould to just play some Bach. He got in the way of telling/hearing a story. I know all about that. If you want to talk about genius in strumming those inner violin chords of self pity and acoustics of loneliness and that shit... It is what it is and how it can be that way and not what it could be, with a leap. (And the art is in the listening.)

I wonder what would have happened if they could keep it up every day, all of the time, of feeling good enough. Or seen somewhere they wanted to belong. The trio probably wouldn't have need fortresses...

I "discovered" this Austrian musician while in Germany last year. Um, no one ever, uh, played him any Glenn Gould recordings? Why wasn't he stopped? (No wonder Bernhard hates Austrians!)

And I want to read this Glenn Gould biography. Otto Friedrich can fricking tell a story. His City of Nets was pretty damned perfect. Talk about not being able to catch a break! Geniuses are everywhere.(less)

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Mar 05, 2013 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

‘…he said, I thought…’

As intrusive as this interjection might appear, in Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser it (and other permutations) serves as a sort of cadence or metered pause between lines of enjambment, fusing the sentences of the book together into one extended run-on thought, turning and twisting tortuously through the aggressive machinations of three stubbornly wilful human beings, whose central difference might be the amount of insecurity each manifests in the face of the others' achievement...more ‘…he said, I thought…’

As intrusive as this interjection might appear, in Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser it (and other permutations) serves as a sort of cadence or metered pause between lines of enjambment, fusing the sentences of the book together into one extended run-on thought, turning and twisting tortuously through the aggressive machinations of three stubbornly wilful human beings, whose central difference might be the amount of insecurity each manifests in the face of the others' achievements. As this story is about a loser certainly there must be a winner. But Bernhard isn’t so clear on that. The story centres on two narrative elements: the suicide of Wertheimer and the greatness of Glenn Gould. Wertheimer and the nameless narrator are both wealthy, privileged Austrians who were piano prodigies in their youth. Then in their twenties they both travel to Salzburg to study at the Mozarteum with Horowitz. There they meet Glenn Gould. Both the narrator and Wertheimer are premier performers but cannot endure the comparison with Gould, whose genius towers over even Horowitz’s. So both abandon the piano. And when Gould dies of a stroke (while playing the Goldberg Variations at the piano) some years later, Wertheimer decides to kill himself in a pathetic and resentful manner. The majority of the novel is the narrator’s attempt to understand Wertheimer’s death and also to justify their different lives.

This book, with its weird cadence of ‘…he said, I thought…’, is like a long nodding prayer locked inside someone’s head, reserved for a God no longer believed in. It’s a story about obsessive people and also possibly an allegory about Bernhard’s much meditated subject: Austria. He obviously fictionalized Gould’s life and turned him into a kind of superhuman artist, a pure creative, interpretive machine unlike any other virtuoso--and unlike the real Glenn Gould. Painting such a grandiose picture Bernhard is able to make the torment all that more intense for Wertheimer who is terrifically insecure and inward, a figure a lot like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. The narrator too also betrays himself when he compares himself to Wertheimer, explaining how much more like Gould he was, and that possibly because he’s the one who has lived on and actually written something about Gould and Wertheimer is the actual Winner of the three. No, it couldn’t be that! And yet it’s a possibility, since the narrator explains how for years he attempted to write a work on Gould but was unable to do so; and here, after Wertheimer’s death, has achieved his goal, if indirectly so.

The world Bernhard paints never becomes vivid; it is locked inside the words themselves, like the prayer in the head of the narrator, simply running on without resolution, like an atonal piece of music, a type of music which Bach himself foreshadowed with his much more grandiose ‘The Art of Fugue,’ a work which he was finishing when he died and which, as Spengler claims, finally pried open the Faustian, infinite cosmos through the medium of music. Bernhard’s prose, like Bach’s fugues, pries the lid of cosmic darkness open and leaves us there to stare wide-eyed at the inescapable travesty that is not just our mediocrity in the face of life’s awesome brevity but also the pitiless reflection found in the work of our greatest geniuses—talent that outstrips possibly even death when one has high hopes and ambition.
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Aug 20, 2012 Emilian Kasemi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Fondamentalmente siamo capaci di qualsiasi cosa, e altrettanto fondamentalmente siamo destinati a fallire in ogni cosa, pensai. A un’unica frase ben riuscita sono stati ridotti i nostri grandi filosofi e i nostri massimi poeti, la verità è questa, spesso ricordiamo solamente una cosiddetta tonalità filosofica, non ricordiamo nient’altro, pensai. Noi studiamo un’opera colossale, l’opera di Kant per esempio, e col passare del tempo essa si riduce alle piccole pensate di un filosofo della Prussia o...more Fondamentalmente siamo capaci di qualsiasi cosa, e altrettanto fondamentalmente siamo destinati a fallire in ogni cosa, pensai. A un’unica frase ben riuscita sono stati ridotti i nostri grandi filosofi e i nostri massimi poeti, la verità è questa, spesso ricordiamo solamente una cosiddetta tonalità filosofica, non ricordiamo nient’altro, pensai. Noi studiamo un’opera colossale, l’opera di Kant per esempio, e col passare del tempo essa si riduce alle piccole pensate di un filosofo della Prussia orientale chiamato Kant, e quindi tra il lusco e il brusco della sua opera non rimane nient’altro che un mondo estremamente vago che suscita in noi, come qualsiasi altro, un senso di desolante inermità. Di ciò che voleva essere un mondo colossale è rimasto un ridicolo dettaglio, pensai, come capita con tutte le cose. La cosiddetta grandezza è diventata alla fin fine a tal punto ridicola e meschina che non suscita in noi nient’altro che un senso di pena. A voler ben guardare, anche Shakespeare si riduce per noi a un essere ridicolo. Da tempo gli dèi ci appaiono soltanto come figure barbute dipinte sulle brocche di birra. Ad ammirarli son rimasti gli stupidi, pensai. Il cosiddetto uomo d’ingegno si consuma in un’opera che egli reputa epocale, eppure alla fine si è solo reso ridicolo, può chiamarsi Schopenhauer o Nietzsche, non ha alcuna importanza, può essere stato Kleist o Voltaire, ciò che abbiamo di fronte a noi è solo un pover’uomo, un essere pietoso che ha abusato della propria mente e operato in sé una reductio ad absurdum. Un povero essere travolto e superato dalla storia. I grandi pensatori li abbiamo ingabbiati nelle nostre librerie, da dove essi, condannati al ridicolo per sempre, ci guardano con gli occhi sbarrati. Notte e giorno io sento il lamento dei grandi pensatori che sono stati rinchiusi nelle nostre librerie, quei ridicoli grandi spiriti ormai ridotti come mummie sotto vetro. È tutta gente che ha violato la natura, ma il delitto capitale lo hanno commesso contro lo spirito, è per questo che vengono puniti e da noi ficcati per sempre nelle nostre librerie. Perché in queste librerie soffocano, la verità è questa. Le nostre biblioteche sono in un certo senso istituti di pena dove noi abbiamo rinchiuso i nostri grandi spiriti, naturalmente Kant in una cella singola e così Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Pascal,Voltaire, Montaigne, i grandissimi nelle celle singole e gli altri nei cameroni, ma tutti per sempre e in eterno, per tutti i tempi e all’infinito, la verità è questa. E guai se uno di questi uomini che hanno commesso un delitto capitale si dà alla fuga e scappa, subito viene per così dire impacchettato e reso ridicolo, la verità è questa. L’umanità è in grado di difendersi da questi cosiddetti grandi spiriti. Dovunque si presenti lo spirito, subito viene impacchettato e ingabbiato, e ovviamente subito bollato come spirito malefico.
Comunque è tutto assurdo quello che diciamo, pensai, qualsiasi cosa veniamo dicendo è assurda e l’intera nostra vita è di una assurdità davvero unica. Questo l’ho capito molto presto, non appena ho incominciato a pensare ho subito capito che tutto quello che diciamo è assurdo, ma ugualmente assurdo è tutto quello che ci viene detto dagli altri, come del resto ogni cosa che viene detta in generale, finora a questo mondo sono state dette soltanto cose assurde e, in effetti e com’è ovvio sono anche state scritte solo cose assurde, tutte le opere scritte in nostro possesso sono assurde perché non potevano essere altro che assurde, come la storia dimostra, così...pensai.(less)

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Oct 06, 2011 Lee rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: favorites

Funnier and nastier and less full of shit than anything I've ever read. More laughs per ten pages than Sedaris etc, but with WAY MORE suicide! Awesome Austrian lit. Glenn Gould, the one true piano genius. One paragraph for 155 pages! Zero pretension. Few sentences extended over the course of the book in fugue state. Sort of like lame-ass literary fiction if you removed every standard literary convention (plot, dialogue, setting, scenes) and just freakin' mainlined the narrator's consciousness: I...more

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Jul 29, 2008 Mike Ingram rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I keep reading books described as "darkly funny" only to be disappointed when they're either not all that dark, or (worse) not all that funny, more like "mildly amusing" or "kooky" or "worthy of the occasional chuckle," the kind of laughs you indulge in while watching a movie in the theater, but only because laughing out loud is part of the communal moviegoing experience, rather than the kind of spontaneous out-loud laughter you can't hold in, even if (like me) you're on an airplane, which laugh...more

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Mar 02, 2008 Tosh rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Thomas Bernhard is one twisted brilliant guy. A novel about the nature of guenius - and with the great genius piano player Glenn Gould, one has a subject matter that is both fascinating and slightly scary. The intense nature of doing something well, something that others can't do well - and the relationship between artist and everyone else is a heady subject matter. Bernhard by his nature, doesn't flinch in front of a difficult subject. A work of genius, really!

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Jan 20, 2012 Warnie B. rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: around-the-world-in-books-book-club, read-in-2011, music, central-europe

Man, it's been a bad book spell--I think this is the third book I've abandoned in the last week and a half or so. I used to feel really bad about that, but now I just feel annoyed that the books I've abandoned weren't entertaining enough to hold my interest. Heh...

Anyway...I think maybe I just don't get this one. I'm about halfway through, and the entire book so far has been the main character thinking about his two "friends" (really none of them seem to actually have liked each other, or anyon...more

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Dec 24, 2008 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Bernhard certainly is an intense one. The Loser is a cerebral and methodical dissection of genius, perfectionism, obsession, and music- in short: Glenn Gould. The writing is schizophrenic and enraging at times; Bernhard was never content to tell an easy story in an easy manner, and in fact, he makes it about as difficult as possible for the reader, with frequent, feverish bouts of repetition, little character development, and ideas about everything that just seem to leap out and then vanish back...more

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Apr 19, 2008 D. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

1. I am a consummate Bernhard fan. I've loved almost everything I've read of his. And I've been wanting to read this one for a long time. Also, I love Glenn Gould--that's partly why I really wanted to read it!

****SPOILER ALERT???*****

Can I really spoil a Bernhard book? Bernhard is one big spoiler. The main plot point, the suicide of his friend, is mentioned within the first five lines. (I was about to say the first paragraph--haha!) But this edition includes some notes about Bernhard's life, and...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Christian Krüger rated it 1 of 5 stars

Die Geschichte ist laut Klappentext virtuos und enthält ein faszinierendes literarisches Spiel. Alles Worte die mir nach dem Lesen nie in den Sinn gekommen wären. Die Geschichte ist originell und trägt viel Potential. Leider nutzt es Bernhard einfach nicht. Die Schreibweise langweilt. Ständig gibt es Wiederholungen. Technisch kann so etwas sicher gut sein, aber es muss nicht (siehe dieses Buch). Nie habe ich so oft nachgesehen, ob das Buch wirklich erst auf Seite 157 endet. Am Ende ist man sich...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Eraserhead rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 Los...more 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. (less)

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Jun 17, 2012 Rozzer rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: foreigners, fiction

Very interesting indeed. I wonder about the mental differences between those who reviewed this book very favorably and those who did not. What state or states of mind distinguishes those attracted to Bernhard's prose and those turned off by it? However good it may be in essence, I myself could not slog all the way through this work. I found it a wild and impossible self-indulgence on the part of the author. An unfeeling imposition on his readers. Which of course is entirely possible, though in m...more

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Jan 10, 2011 Sam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the funniest book I have read in months. Whether you also find this book funny will be a crucial factor, I think, in whether or not you enjoy it/finish it/refrain from ripping it into pieces. Because I thought The Loser was funny - hilarious, in fact - I had a hard time understanding all the hype about its supposed difficulty. However, if you don't think the book is funny, then its endless repetitions and obsessive-compulsive reiterations of dark themes might be hard going. It's a monolo...more

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Dec 30, 2010 Mary Overton added it · review of another edition

"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 immedi...more "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(less)

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Nov 26, 2010 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: misery-loves-company, thomas-bernhard

Recommended soundtrack for this review.

Of course Thomas Bernhard's The Loser covers some of the usual Bernhardian terrain -- misanthropy, madness, death, all the fun stuff really -- but failure is the real star of this show. The 'Loser' of the title, named Wertheimer, was unfortunate enough both to have been a gifted piano player and to have studied contemporaneously with piano legend Glenn Gould, whose life and genius -- albeit in a somewhat fictionalized form -- haunt Wertheimer until he is at...more Recommended soundtrack for this review.

Of course Thomas Bernhard's The Loser covers some of the usual Bernhardian terrain -- misanthropy, madness, death, all the fun stuff really -- but failure is the real star of this show. The 'Loser' of the title, named Wertheimer, was unfortunate enough both to have been a gifted piano player and to have studied contemporaneously with piano legend Glenn Gould, whose life and genius -- albeit in a somewhat fictionalized form -- haunt Wertheimer until he is at long last able to 'assert himself' [as the narrator puts it] for the first time -- by committing suicide just outside his sister's Swiss home. It's this final act of defiance against a world he cannot master that is his one success. He accomplishes renunciation.

The unnamed narrator of the novel, another failure who has languished in Gould's long shadow, also turns his back on piano playing resolutely, and yet with some measure of (seeming) equanimity. Even though music is all he's really cut out to do, the piano has been irrevocably ruined for him by Gould's brilliance, his native ability, his setting of a standard neither to be met or outstripped. It was ruined the first time he heard Gould play The Goldberg Variations while still studying in Salzburg under Horowitz. Gould was still a student then, an apprentice -- but even his performance of Bach as a relative novice destroyed the promising careers of the narrator and Wertheimer. It was impossible to carry on after hearing Gould. Everything else was -- must be superfluous.

But while the narrator attempts to shut out the past, to avoid it altogether, drifting vaguely through life, Wertheimer becomes a willing, ecstatic victim of the past. He becomes the Loser, as Gould anoints him, not without blunt humor or insight. As Gould intuits, Wertheimer is doomed to perish, body and soul, in his adjacency to the genius and accomplishment of others. There is no contentment, no grace or dignity, for the also-ran, who acknowledges his insignificance, his insufficiency in the field of his 'calling' or his ordained vocation. When the foundation has been proven rotten, decayed, inadequate, the entire structure in its turn gives way. And so Wertheimer one day travels to his sister's house in Switzerland -- the sister he dominated until she escaped -- and kills himself. He even failed at dominating his weak sister, at terrorizing her into abjection, so he elects to fail comprehensively. To yield to failure, to succeed at failing.

The themes of The Loser will immediately be recognizable to anyone who has made any tentative venture into a field (particularly an artistic field) only to be stymied by the mastery of others. If Shakespeare and Dostoevsky have done their part, for instance, what can my writings add to the collective pool to make it worth the effort? In the shadow of the Canon, the ridiculous things I jot down, more like notes and scribbles than literature, can only be signposts of my vulgarity and inferiority rather than assertions of something original and meaningful. I can assert my failure, like Wertheimer, or I can flee from it as best as I can, like the narrator. Neither is an attractive option, of course, but the neurosis of the artist evokes this dilemma, even if logically he realizes that the question is entirely disingenuous.

Postscript: There is an interesting and informative afterword to the Vintage International edition of The Loser, written by Mark M. Anderson, which discusses how the events of the book relate to Bernhard's life and how Bernhard selectively altered the details of Glenn Gould's life to suit his narrative purposes. Also, the essay begins with an example of Bernhard's bitter humor with respect to his country of residence Austria, for which he harbored an intense ambivalence throughout his life:

During his lifetime Thomas Bernhard's texts provoked more than an ordinary share of scandals. But perhaps the most enduring scandal will turn out to be his very last text, his will: '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 the state defines itself.' Bernhard had taken care not to reveal the contents of his will before he died; in fact, he even stipulated that news of his death not be announced until he was buried. 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.

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Oct 17, 2010 Rexistopheles rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-reads

Three stars may be a bit harsh for something that single handedly inspired a whole generation of writers, from lydia davis to donald barthelme. What do you do when the literary device you choose to employ is to be as repetitive, tedius, and autistic as possible so as to express a particular narrative character? We're talking not a single paragraph indentation for 200 pages. First, Mark Haddon did it better with the "Incident of the dog.." Second, put a warning label on the book that says: this b...more

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Apr 14, 2012 Jim Leckband rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is my first Thomas Bernhard book I've read and I was pleasantly surprised. My vague recollection/image I had of him was of a misanthropic nutcase who wrote difficult books. There are definitely some in Austria who would call him a misanthrope (or an Austriaphobe since he despises many aspects of Austria) but this book was not written by a nutcase nor is it difficult.

Like most of his novels (I read in the afterword) it consists of a monologue by an unnamed narrator. The narrator, the main ch...more This is my first Thomas Bernhard book I've read and I was pleasantly surprised. My vague recollection/image I had of him was of a misanthropic nutcase who wrote difficult books. There are definitely some in Austria who would call him a misanthrope (or an Austriaphobe since he despises many aspects of Austria) but this book was not written by a nutcase nor is it difficult.

Like most of his novels (I read in the afterword) it consists of a monologue by an unnamed narrator. The narrator, the main character - Wertheimer, and Glenn Gould - the Canadian pianist, met in the 50's at a course taught by Vladimir Horowitz. They are all budding concert musicians, but they are awestruck by Gould and the two Austrian's lives end up being quite different than they thought.

The novel in a sense is a meditation on Art and the Artist (excuse me, putting on my pretentious hat....there, firmly on my big head oo-la-la, now I'll carry on.) Gould's art is very well described by Bernhard - it is an art where the artist lives in the work and becomes the work and the piano. Gould is not interested in the composer's intentions, the composer's life, or in any "outside" influences such as other artist's interpretations. He also chose music that is "Apollonian", intellectual in counterpoint and the mathematical "lines" the melodies make as they weave. He never played Chopin or the Romantics - I am sure they are way too messy. Think of Glenn Gould as a piano-playing Sheldon Cooper.

The problem that the two Austrians confront is that they cannot find a way to continue after hearing Glenn Gould play. They made a God of Gould and despaired when they couldn't achieve the heights as Gould defined them since they are not as life-denying as Gould was. Which of course is their mistake. There are many ways to play the piano, even many ways of playing Bach. To become an individual and rejoice in that is what I see is the underlying counterpoint of this book. Gould hummed loudly when he played and it is very apparent on recordings, the hum in this book is the Stretherian "Live all you can, it is a mistake not to."

Though I'm sure Bernhard despised Henry James as well.(less)

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Feb 19, 2013 Anabel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A través del suicidio de un amigo común, y de un denso diálogo consigo mismo, Bernhard contrapone la vida de este amigo, el Malogrado, para así retratar la personalidad arrolladora de Glenn Gloud. Lo cual es la excusa para la crítica y la reflexión sobre aquellos que viven a la sombra de los genios, sobre la creación artística, la frustración y en último caso, la muerte. No se trata de un libro deprimente, ni mucho menos. En más de una ocasión, me he sonreído ante la ridiculez de las personas y...more

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Dec 08, 2012 Manuel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

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 t...more

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Jul 25, 2012 Ametista rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook

Cupo. A tratti noioso, ho impiegato un bel pò per finirlo.

"Fin dall'infanzia aveva coltivato il desiderio di morire, di togliersi la vita, come si suol dire, però non si era mai concentrato su questo desiderio fino al limite estremo. Non era riuscito a rassegnarsi al fatto di essere stato partorito in un mondo che in sostanza e fin dall'inizio lo aveva sempre disgustato in tutto e per tutto. Poi era cresciuto e aveva creduto di poter uccidere in sé questo desiderio, pensava che esso ad un tratto...more

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Oct 06, 2011 Chris Hennessey rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, worst, ebook

He said, "he said, I thought," I thought, at least a thousand times and just "I thought" about twice as much as that, I thought.

I didn't find the narration cute. Not only did it fail to re-align perspectives, it jarred me out of a repetitive story that I didn't care to have repeated in the first place! Maybe it's the translation, but this read like a bad parody of, I don't know, 'Notes from Underground' + something by Knut Hamsun.

I am also generally against using real people as characters in fi...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"But everything we say is nonsense, he said, I thought, no matter what we say it is nonsense and our entire life is a single piece of nonsense. I understood that early on, I'd barely started to think for myself and I already understood that, we speak only nonsense, everything we say is nonsense, but everything that is said to us is also nonsense, like everything said at all, in this world only nonsense has been said until now and, he said, only nonsense has actually and naturally been written, t...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Jafar rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The story of a suicide caused by the feeling of despair when confronted with someone else’s absolute and unattainable genius. (I occasionally feel depressed too when I read a genius like Daniel Dennett or Umberto Eco, but fortunately my intellectual inferiority doesn’t really bother me.) The narrative is in the form of a monologue, in one continuous paragraph, ruminating on this suicide. Great writing and a lot of razor-sharp observations on the nature of genius and obsession and perfection and...more

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Nov 06, 2012 Blackvelvet rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Das Genie, der Philosoph - und der Untergeher. Glenn Gould, der namenlose Erzähler - und ihr Freund Wertheimer. Sie lernen sich 1953 bei einem Seminar von Horowitz in Salzburg kennen. Eine Begegnung, die zumindest das Leben der beiden Österreicher verändert.

Ein scheinbar endloser gedanklicher Monolog... "sagte er, dachte ich". Ohne Absatz. Mit wenig Punkt und Komma. Immer wiederkehrende Gedanken und deren Wendungen. Ich wünschte, ich könnte die Gedankengänge einer einzigen schlaflosen Nacht so...more

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Dec 27, 2011 Suhrob rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Der Überästhet im Dreckbett" (The Über-aesthet in Dirtbed).

Yes, he is clever and yes he is funny (not kidding myself - somewhat). He has a very idiosyncratic style that goes from enchanting to hypnotic to annoying, he said, I though. It is due to its repetitiveness, that he achieves that his prose is enchanting, at first, even hypnotic, though the sheer repetitiveness can then lead to annoyance, so he, I thought. Certainly in his darkly funny, misanthropic litanies, one can find interesting tho...more

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Jan 28, 2011 Cody rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, music, mittel-europe

The Loser is a deep and personal meditation on the notions of genius, so precisely executed that the form of the text, which unfolds like a fugue, embodies all of the complexities of the subject. It is neurotic and disturbing but also hilarious and passionate, and Bernhard’s ability to strike a kind of balance, to offer this text as a witty and strange piece of counterpoint, is proof of his brilliance and singularity. This tale, which obsesses about misery, suicide, and failure is also a love le...more

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Jun 01, 2012 Noubia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mitteleuropa

"(...) il suono che fa la mente di qualcuno mentre si spezza proprio davanti alle tue orecchie."

Rubo la frase a Wallace (1), che naturalmente parlava d'altro. Mi pare che renda bene l'idea di cosa accade al protagonista di questo libro.
Altre citazioni che mi vengono in mente, così, disordinatamente:

"Io conosco le tue opere: tu non sei né freddo né fervente. Oh fossi tu pur freddo o fervente! Così, perché sei tiepido, e non sei né freddo né fervente, io ti vomiterò dalla mia bocca." (2)

"In fond...more

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Sep 17, 2011 Terry94705 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this quite a while ago. This is a fantastic book, his masterpiece perhaps. It's possible that I enjoyed it more than some of his other books because I knew a little bit about the subject of this rant--Glenn Gould. I had just seen a couple of short films about Gould and spent time with some recordings. I do enjoy Bernhard, but his other books can plow through topics that a non-European (or non-Austrian? or non-musician? or non-philosopher?) might be less familiar with. You feel like you ar...more

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About Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian author, who ranges among the most distinguished German speaking writers of the second half of the 20th century.

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“Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death.” — 3 people liked it

“I took a few steps toward the kitchen window although I'd already realized I couldn't look through the kitchen window because, as already mentioned, it's covered with filth from top to bottom. Austrian kitchen windows are all totally filthy and we can't look through them and naturally it's to our greatest advantage, I thought, not to be able to look through them because then we find ourselves staring into the mouth of catastrophe, into the chaos of Austrian kitchen filth.” — 1 person liked it

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Der Untergeher (SZ-Bibliothek, #5)

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