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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 Loser centers 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 show more 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 Loser is a brilliant meditation on success, failure, genius, and fame. show lessTags
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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 show more 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. show less
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. show less
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 show more 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.show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
Bernhard is amazing, and this book perfectly captures his obsession with obsession. His narrator is a music student who realizes he's a failure when he, Glenn Gould, and another pianist study together, and nobody can hold a candle to Gould, the supreme genius. It's told in Bernhard's inimitable style, as one long rambling looping paragraph that takes ideas and beholds them from several angles, all the while maintaining a relentless energy that just takes my breath away.
I get it, I get it. This is a novel written as a piece of classical music with a central theme constantly repeated with a few other themes revisited often. I do not know enough to recognize the specific composition it is supposed to represent but it’s certainly not Goldberg Variations, which would have been the most suitable choice. After all the central theme revolves around the friendship of the speaker, the main character and Glenn Gould. We hear about music, life choices, successes and failures, meaning.
What a great setup! How much potential it offers! Yet, all this potential is washed down the drain by the monotonous voice of the speaker - a middle-aged grumpy man, full of bitterness and contempt. The monologue does appear witty show more at times but the overwhelming dominance of cynicism drags the whole novel down.
It might be the first time that a work of literature represented a stream of conscious mumbling in a form of a musical composition. Great idea, terrible delivery. I am glad that my first experience of this literary format came through a much better book - The Cemetery in Barnes by Gabriel Josipovici show less
What a great setup! How much potential it offers! Yet, all this potential is washed down the drain by the monotonous voice of the speaker - a middle-aged grumpy man, full of bitterness and contempt. The monologue does appear witty show more at times but the overwhelming dominance of cynicism drags the whole novel down.
It might be the first time that a work of literature represented a stream of conscious mumbling in a form of a musical composition. Great idea, terrible delivery. I am glad that my first experience of this literary format came through a much better book - The Cemetery in Barnes by Gabriel Josipovici show less
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Author Information
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Thomas Bernhard was born to Austrian parents in Holland and reared by his mother in the vicinity of Salzburg. His temperament and erratic health created difficulties for him as he grew up in a society governed by National Socialists. Bernhard found the alpine landscapes of his native Austria far more harsh than lyrical. The isolation of the show more characters in his novels is only slightly mitigated by friendship, generally only between men, and never by love. Yet many readers feel this lack of sentimentality gives Bernhard's work an epic power. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Loser
- Original title
- Der Untergeher
- Original publication date
- 1983
- People/Characters
- Glenn Gould
- Important places*
- Salzburg, Österreich; Schweiz; Wien, Österreich
- First words*
- Lange vorausberechneter Selbstmord, dachte ich, kein spontaner Akt von Verzweiflung.
- Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Ich bat den Franz, mich für einige Zeit in Wertheimers Zimmer allein zu lassen und legte mir Glenns Goldbergvariationen auf, die ich auf Wertheimers Plattenspieler liegen gesehen hatte, der noch offen war.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 833.914 — Literature & rhetoric German & related literatures German fiction 1900- 1900-1990 1945-1990
- LCC
- PT2662 .E7 .U5513 — Language and Literature German, Dutch and Scandinavian literatures German literature Individual authors or works 1961-2000
- BISAC
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