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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. 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! (  ) daniilkharmsarms | Nov 17, 2009 |  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. (  ) samfsmith | Jul 24, 2009 | "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. ( ) nuwanda | Jun 16, 2009 | Fiction, Meditation on genius and failure, Nature of the human psyche, Three friends study piano with Horowitz in Salzburg: Glenn Gould, the narrator and Wertheimer, The latter two after hearing Gould’s unearthly genius at work, feel compelled to renounce their musical ambitions, Wertheimer after a long decline commits suicide, The narrator uses failure as the grounds for writing, First published, with the title "Der Untergeher", by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt, 1983, 243 pp., paperback, First Italian editon, with the title "Il soccombente", Adelphi, Milano 1985, translated by Renata Colorni, First US editon, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1991, 190 pp., hardcover, translated by Jack Dawson ( ) Voglioleggere | Jul 13, 2008 | A novel in a single paragraph. Only because of this a great work. Cynic like nobody else and excelent in his prose. As background: the life of the virtuoso Glenn Gould. Deep down: human misery, imperfection, frustration. (  ) bairel | Apr 28, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
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Bernhard fans will recognize the restrained rant, the execution of an idea carried to a logical, caustic extreme. The rant creates, of the novel, a grand philosophical speculation: What is devotion to one's art? What is it to truly understand one's art and to not misuse one's gift? And, alas, The Loser can also be read as the profound consequence of perfectionism, whereby all efforts to create or execute anything of note are squashed in the critical mind's ruthless self-scrutiny. The narrator works, for example, on his Glenn Gould essay for nine years, grateful, in the end, that he has published nothing. "How good it is that none of these imperfect, incomplete works has ever appeared, I thought, had I published them.... [T]oday I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness." The one regenerative act seems to be that of self-destruction. Destruction, indeed, becomes the flip side of perfectionist rigor. Thomas Bernhard (1931-89) was his own unique genius and in The Loser, one of his most acclaimed novels, he creates a chilling portrait of tragic compulsion, teasing and testing our assumptions human behavior. --Hollis Giamatteo
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400)
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