The Piano Teacher

Erika Kohut is a woman in her mid-thirties who teaches piano at the prestigious Vienna Conservatory. She lives with her controlling mother in a very taught and unhealthy relationship. Erika rebels in various including buying clothing she never wears, self-harm, and deliberately injuring strangers. Over the course of the novel she also explores her repressed sexuality by going to pornographic movies, peep shows, and practicing voyeurism.

Walter Klemmer, a student over a decade younger than Erika, begins to show her attention. Their desire grows and when they finally acknowledge it, Erika requests a sadomasochistic relationship. Walter, who is an arrogant prick, really justs wants to have sex with an older woman and move on. Things go show more horribly, horribly wrong.

I saw this book described as "erotic" but there's absolutely nothing sexy about it. In fact, it is quite repulsive. Jelinek seems to revel in using the most unpleasant description possible for the human condition and the human body. It just gets worse and worse and I really struggled to finish this book. I've also seen the book described as "satire," but it reads to me as nothing more than caustic misanthropy. show less

A uniquely structured but uneven novel that largely deals with control, The Piano Teacher operates through childhood trauma and sexual repression underneath its series of masochistic degradation and violation. In this mother-daughter relationship moulded from unhealthy dependencies, a seemingly omniproof protection asphyxiates the prey: the middle-aged daughter Erika Kohut who does not have a life of her own outside her piano lessons. What seems to be a maternal preservation of innocence becomes a descent to self-destruction; and what seems to be the appealing notion of parental trust becomes a game of manipulation. Whilst this habitual power trip also tips the already off-balanced relationship it further plunges down with the arrival show more of a student who becomes infatuated with Erika. A cat-and-mouse chase ensues until it reveals itself to be another, but much perverse, game of manipulation. "Love" has a deformed face. Who shall be in control this time?

Behind the voyeuristic nature of the narrative which at times is horrific, even revolting, a gamut of loneliness runs its course amidst Erika’s filthy actions. There is a painful attempt at trying to take back any kind of control for one’s own sanity, however drastic, in any way possible. And it may be that even sanity loses itself in the process. The result is a dismal self-infliction. Adulthood is only a childhood warped in its worsened state with a worse outcome ("I have no feelings. Get that into your head. If I ever do, they won't defeat my intelligence"). It suggests a cycle without an end so long as loneliness is (un)successfully alleviated by dangerously pleasure-seeking comforts and consumingly fatal / foetal type of reliance. The possession of self-identity is lost or rather nonexistent in the first place. Art becomes a malady instead of a therapy; classical music will definitely never be the same.

(This is certainly one of the few instances where I prefer the film from the book. The outstanding Isabelle Huppert under Michael‌ Haneke’s direction has made an easily detestable character into a much conflicted and complex woman.) show less

This novel appeared in 1983 and was made into a film wih Isabelle Huppert in the title role in 2001. Possibly because of the success of the film, it seems to be Jelinek's best-known work among English-speaking readers. The central character is a woman in her mid-thirties trapped in a closed, possessive relationship with her elderly mother and a sterile career teaching students the mechanical process of interpreting music according to a set of predefined rules. If she were English, she would be a character in a wistfully ironic novel by Barbara Pym or Elizabeth Taylor. However, she doesn't have that luxury, but instead tries to break out by realising her violent and transgressive sexual fantasies, with disastrous results.

The novel is a show more savage, disturbing, but often also very funny satire that tries to dismantle our ideological assumptions about family relationships, love, sex, high culture and outdoor sport. Jelinek writes from a decidedly Marxist-feminist point of view, in which everything turns out to be ultimately about money, power and violence. But this isn't a dour political tract. Jelinek keeps us on our toes by constantly shifting the narrator's tone and style around, until we have no idea from where we are looking at Erika. Sometimes the language is mildly ironic, sometimes it's lyrical, sometimes analytically bureaucratic. But whenever you think you know where you are, that's when the narrator will swing round and hit you with something that looks unbelievably crude, shocking, and out-of-context, but is also undeniably completely true. She pulls the rug out from under us by telling us about things that we know (but don't want to acknowledge) would happen in that situation in real life, but which seem completely out of place in a novel. Definitely not an easy or a comfortable read, but a very rewarding one. show less

'a harsh expressionistic picture of sexuality'
By sally tarbox on 17 Feb. 2013
Format: Kindle Edition
Brilliantly written yet rather horrible story; I almost gave up on it in the earlier part but later on got quite hooked into the narrative.
Erika Kohut, a middle aged Austrian piano teacher, lives in a weird relationship with her overbearing mother, even sharing her bed and forced to bow to Mother's decisions about where she may go and what she may wear. Yet despite furious fights at times and her tendency to self-harm, Erika seems to enjoy the cosy world they share. And she works out her physical needs through visits to sex shows in the red light district.
Meanwhile handsome student Walter Klemmer has set himself the challenge of seducing show more his teacher before moving on to something better.
'Her two chosen mates will encompass her like crab claws: Mother and Klemmer. Erika can't have both, and she can't have just one, because then she would miss the other dreadfully.'
The strange and grotesque working out of this storyline was compulsive reading. Not for the easily shocked. show less

This book is definitely not for the faint of heart nor the judgmental. Jelinek tackles a difficult subject: when does hate become love or love become hate? Do we even know what those jumbles of emotion mean? Fetishism pulls on the hard line that some pain is an expression of love, but when does it become an expression of hate and disdain? Erika is the troubled outsider who seeks the explore that fine demarcation, one that Walter does not understand: he is too much in the world, or perhaps just too young, to explore the depth of the human psyche the way Erika wishes him to.
Jelinek has a powerful writing style which brings pure poetry to such a dark and sticky topic. It is not an easy read but a fascinating one.

The piano teacher is Erika. She lives with her cold and controlling mother. Their relationship is dysfunctional, physically abusive and emotionally manipulative. It is also a co-dependent relationship and like nothing I have ever read or witnessed. But it does go a long way in explaining how there are some very messed up people out there.

Erika is and has been under her mothers control since childhood. Although she is now an adult and her mother elderly, Erika must be home on time and if out, will be phoned many times. Partly her mother does this to be sure of Erika's safety but mostly to assert her control over her daughter and to maintain ownership of her life. Erika's strict upbringing within a training regime to become a concert show more pianist is the guise under which this level of control has been allowed to escalate.

When Erika finds a student has an interest in her, she sees an opportunity to explore the self-loathing (see quote) part of herself even more, and to see if her admirer will partake.

"Rot between her legs, an unfeeling soft mass. Decay, putrescent lumps of organic material. No spring breezes awaken anything. It is a dull pile of petty wishes and mediocre desires, afraid of coming true." (p 197)

Unable to express herself other than through anger or pain, she makes this request by a lengthy and disturbingly specific letter. Klemmer, her much younger suitor, is thrilled by the chase, but has neither the emotional maturity to respond to her requests appropriately, nor the restraint to hold back his anger.

"Klemmer feels superior to other night people, who are wandering along, holding some lady's hands. He feels superior to them because his anger is a lot hotter than the fire of love." (p 252)

The resulting fiasco is possibly the most intense and disturbing piece of writing I have read. The kinds of pain Erika wishes on herself is fairly revolting and I cant help but fear that some type of person reading it would use it as justification for physical attacks. Nevertheless, people use all sorts of ways to achieve sexual gratification in a consensual manner, and this part of the story was interesting for that aspect.

The narrative was so distinctive with every comment adding more and more to flesh out the character until you feel that you are bizarrely in the know with regards to their intentions and actions. show less

Show, not tell. The eternal plaint of literature. Do not tell us of the parade; bleed our ears to the beat of cacophony. Do not list out the throes of death; pierce our lungs and tie them up behind our backs. Do not speak of emotions with a single word; grip our hearts and plunge them into the carefully calibrated abyss.

Well, alright. Let me give that a try.

People say, oh, the joys of music! People sigh, oh, the mystic devotion of motherhood! People scream, oh, the sacrilegious desensitization of modern society! People mutter, oh, the banal unknowns of sexual proclivity. People think, oh, the place for man, and the place for woman.

Align yourself in pursuit of Art, snip and stretch and crack the lazy spine into proper positioning till show more your soar high, high above the masses in your ability to listen, replicate, understand. Seek meaning in every pain and pain in every meaning, and you will begin to perceive the discontent that drove the masters, those divinities so much better than the uncouth animals slobbering over the music they left behind. Throw your all into it, gild and grate your sanity into perfect form, and laugh at those whose pitiful minds cannot handle the wondrous Truth. Never mind the banalities of evil that crop up in the beginning, those will soon recede before the tide of the Greater Things in Life. In awareness, at least.

There is a singular feeling to be found in those who know their mother well, well enough to register their status as a financial investment in her eyes. Step to the beat, clap to the rhythm, and she will assume you functional; a working appliance does not require attention. Break from the track, run around on newfound legs and divest yourself in dividends undesirable to the maternal streak, and watch as the furious threats and emotional gutting chases after the errant child, determined to slap and beat and bunch it back into shape. How embarrassing! It seems, despite all that she has given it in the form of monetary stimulation and business schedule counseling and a dash of 'Iloveyous' when a debt needs to be filled, it has not yet been housebroken. Back to the pruning it goes, fill its head with thoughts of homelessness and disgrace, then place a sack of cash at the end of the track. Who wouldn't do anything for money? Those who value healthy emotional rapport over commercial value? Ha ha, nonsense! Mommie knows best.

Society isn't desensitized. The social construct is simply content with its vague descriptions of horrors in a meaningless void of sound and fury, its fuzzy images that fetishize the physical antagonist, its panderings at atrocious thrills that spawn emulation rather than disgust. Because as soon as a book like this comes along that portrays verbal abuse, emotional manipulation, casual rape, and so many more of the dregs in full relief, in lurid detail lit not by candlelight but a spotlight seeking out the drippings and punctures of every orifice, many shy away. Show, not tell, remember? Careful that you don't eat your words in panicked offense. No one said you were allowed to comfortably watch from the fully furnished box, high up in the usual lofty assuredness of the Reader-God, sanitized and sanctified by virtue of distance. No one said you weren't going to participate.

That includes the sex, and the sexual build up, and the sexual reasoning, and the sexual genders, and the sexual expectations of said genders, and the sexual expectations of who controls whom, and for how long, and what goes where, and how the violence is to be rendered, and the methods by which the violations are to be conducted, and what gets mixed up in the mind and sludges itself down into the genitals, and the pain. Above all, the pain. Who plays, whom they play, and how.

Human being, so confident in your non-objectified status, so content in the unexamined life, so blind to your inner mechanisms where bone runs to blood and nurture squares off with nature on the battlefield of desire, rampant where limits are a thing unknown for all the audience may shrill and bleat. Are you sure? show less