The Loser: A Novel (Vintage International)

It’s bleak, but Bernhard is also weirdly funny in that pitch-black Austrian way. The repetition becomes hypnotic. At some point you stop reading it like a normal novel and start riding it.

Thomas writes in an almost hysterically misanthropic style. Though he writes German sentences to the extreme - sentences can be a paragraph long, if you can find a paragraph - even so I found the translation well parsed and easy to comprehend. Of course the question is, is he actually misanthropic or empathetically frustrated and ironical. The reader will have to make up his/her own mind. Even die hard fans seem able to read only so much of Bernard at a time. He is heavy going with the diatribe against humanity or its individual examples. - or human, self centered folly. I can only say he is easier and more enjoyable to read than Elias Canetti. Or Dostoevsky. The book has absolutely nothing to do with Glen Gould. That this is clear very early on helps the reader understand that this fiction is not about common reality.

Thomas Bernhard writes, "When we meet the very best, we have to give up, I thought." This is a book about the agony, envy, and resignation of not being a genius. Do you require such a book? I needed it, though I did not know that. It's also a book about the misery of inheriting a vast sum of money, /not/ a book I needed, particularly, though I was so hooked I went right along with it. Of all the books I've read that consist of a single, unbroken, paragraph -- Garcia Marquez, Beckett, Saramago -- this was my far the most effortless, the most compulsively readable. My bitterness, I discovered, was downright ecstatic to have some company. It warms like a bonfire, piling on obsessions, repetitions, and brilliance, and some of perhaps the best sentences I've ever read: "A person can be ruined for life in Chur, even if he only spends one night there." This must be a good place to start reading Thomas Bernhard, since I'd never read any of his novels before this one (I'd read only stories of "The Voice Imitator") and now I am determined to read everything. It is an oddly addictive voice; a week later I am still cross I don't have more Bernhard to read. In the midst of investigating misery, ways of surviving it are found and lost, then found and lost again. Art, for one, though it is found to be a most uncertain raft.

One has to read one Thomas Bernhard, after that apparently they are all the same. I'm glad I chose the one that had Glenn Gould as a major protagonist, and it made it easy to identify the author's fugal style, but at under 200 pages, it was still a slog of a read. Bernhard has technique down, and I guess that's impressive, but without character and plot development it's really not very interesting. The narrator, who may or may not be conflated with the author, is misanthropic, but in the way that a spoiled, failed bourgeoise artist might be misanthropic. His concerns are career, money, real estate, competition and family. Everything is ugly, but most of all his own soul. Was that the point? Well, okay.

What more need be said about Thomas Bernhard than that he is one of the most important writers of this century, an original in the original sense of the word. He stated in interviews he was not interested in plot. Look in vain for a plot. Think rather you are journeying with an eccentric who takes you through a series of digressions. I had not known of The Loser, but own most of Bernhard's books starting with Concrete which I could not put down. I became an impassioned advocate. Bernhard is a miniaturist with a profound grasp of the use of implication. An isolate in the Austrian alps living with a rare heart condition, his early death was a great loss to literature despite his rather prolific number of––shall I call them books?

Some even get 10. Some even 20 (Correction: Ausloschung). Not to everyone's tastes - just as Musil or Proust, for example, may not be to everyone's taste - which is a shame since apart from everything else you are missing varieties of true innovative genius.

First T.Bernhard novel I’ve read and I want more.

Here, you have a story told in complete narration inside the primary character's head. This story takes you through the landscape of Austria , completely inside the mind of one person. It is a fascinating story and means to story telling. A definite read for anyone who enjoys something a little outside the ordinary.

The loser Is it sometimes harder to accept mediocrity honestly than to chase greatness endlessly? clear acceptance of limits is always a strength, or can it sometimes be a subtle form of giving up too early? Anyone standing next to a true genius becomes, in some sense, a loser. Even talented people. Even intelligent people. The hierarchy becomes unavoidable. The book revolves around the presence and acceptance of someone's ingenious existence, which could bring about ruin to one's life, the book pivots from acknowledging genius and the poisons residue it implicates. The tedious catastrophe of never surpassing the limits of genius and to remain an unhappy mediocre. When one is confronted with genius, could one go on living tossing up the dream to reach the summit ? If so then what becomes of the second-hand life after giving up the unbearable dream? Bernard slowly and discreetly unciphers the monstrous dilemma, the narrator and werteimer close friends struggle with an existential crisis when they meet Gleen, who was unequivocally above them and anyone they knew. Werteimer and narrator do not remain oblivious but gain crystal clarity in the presence of glenn. And this clarity comes with an heavy burden,both give up their paino virtuoso, forsaking their respective painos. Werteimer settles for human sciences,and the narrator deteriorates in solitude while ruminating on the past. Both couldn't find harmony in mediocrity. The attempt to go on living knowing their life was destroyed the moment they met glenn,and couldn't match his ingenious capabilities nor surpass their limits. To witness first row seat of their genius friend reach heights they only dreamt of was an inherently hazardous element of their fallout. Which psychologically affected them, Werteimer turning the blade of loss inwardly disembowelling any hope of living, dies by suicide, while the narrator turns the blade externally being witty, cruel and unbearable to live with. Book personifies,A mind that barricaded itself in comparison will most certainly lose. Some people become losers not because they lack ability or talent but because they cannot tolerate comparison, which is an impending disaster. "To be best or nothing at all" is a seed of disaster When Comparisons occur between the mind or in reality,losers get names, actions justification, choices reflection and death alleviated by applying a break to seemingly dreadful comparisons. So, the troubling question emerges: do we turn into losers when comparisons are hidden under the invisible veil of hierarchy, society, or any general form of comparison? Or are we inherently born as losers, with the world simply reflecting that reality? I think we are not all losers but many of us are unexamined Wertheimers. And the difference between functioning and collapsing may just be: what (or who) we encounter and whether we can survive that encounter without absolutising it, shedding the claws of obstinacy. Yet Bernhard does not argue against ambition or even comparison itself. The existence of genius can also clarify, refine, and push one forward. danger lies in allowing that comparison to become total, to transform a difference in degree into a difference in worth. When being “not the best” becomes indistinguishable from being “nothing,” collapse is inevitable. The thing that I picked up from the book is if we are not best at something we should not let it eat away our life. "One can live one's life in falsehood but one cannot go back"

Probably the best book I have read since Ballard last year and it will certainly take something truly good to displace this as best read of the year. I can hardly add to the excellent Afterword written by Mark Anderson on this book and Thomas Bernhard. This is not so much a book as a supreme work of art which uses form to delineate something bigger and more important. Bernhard uses the method that he used in most of his writings which is a long, single paragraphed monologue of great intensity. Anderson points out that there is much in the book which is auto-biographical but he distorts his facts to serve his purpose. His means to do this is through his three protagonists, all friends and colleagues and piano students under Horovitz at the Mozarteum in Salzburg - Glenn Gould, Wertheimer and the narrator. All three have elements of Bernhard in them as they appear on the page. Gould is more or less true to life as the virtuoso genius of the Goldberg Variations which plays an important function through the book. The book unfolds like one great series of variations - Bernhard's own Goldberg - turning on itself, giving a line, repeating that line with added information later, never resisting the flow of information but by repeat building up layer upon layer of truth and beauty as Bernhard sees it. In some ways one should read the afterwords first to give a lien to the complexity and modern relevance of 'The Loser' which Anderson is to be complimented on, as too is Jack Dawson for the excellent and painstaking translation. But to read the Afterword first would detract from the voyage of discovery and pure pleasure that this book brings to the reader. A word of warning. Do not pick this book up if you want linear narrative. If you want it all laid out on a plate for you, if you are not prepared to think and work at this book and to read EVERY word, every sentence - every note so to speak - then give this one a miss. It needs the extra care and attention. However if you DO do this then you will be opening up a modern master. This is a brilliant book and Thomas Bernhard's work needs to be more readily available.

Vc fica girando em torno do mesmo tema e parece não sair do lugar. Mas quando vê, o tema cresceu muito

Art Matters: The Art of Knowledge/The Knowledge of Art I am a huge Glenn Gould fan and when I came across this book I had to read it. I should add I am NOT a fan of biographies, except if they try to explain where an artist gets his/her ideas from. I always afraid of reading a biography of someone whose work I love only to find I don't like the person. But in a novel one can take liberties and have fun with the character. And this novel isn't so much about Gould but his influence on others, I decided to give a try. The writing, even in translation, is great. Great imagery, great emotions, great descriptions. The technique of stream of consciousness--the whole novel is written in one long paragraph--would make James Joyce proud. The story itself--the influence of Gould on two young virtuoso pianists who thought they were the greatest until they heard Glenn play--is marvelous. Especially since each person is affected differently. Recommended to anyone who loves great, but very different, writing styles and to anyone who loves Glenn Gould.

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.