Lit Snobs Group Read: The Piano Teacher

Welcome to the trial run of the Literary Snobs Reading Group.

Selection: The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek.

I've got my copy (Serpent's Tail, movie tie-in, translated by Joachim Neugroschel), am 33 pages in and couldn't be more pleased. It reminds me of Therese Raquin, simultaneously telling the story of a woman's attempt to escape a controlling mother through a lover while also laying waste to one of the most romanticized of European cities (in Zola's case, Paris; in Jelinek's, Vienna). Jelinek's vision of both city and character seem far deeper than Zola's, however.

So, this is the place for discussion and comments among the people who have read or are reading this bleak, hard-bitten, unapologetic text. Your thoughts?

I'll be writing a full-length essay about The Piano Teacher for my CCLaP essay series. Once it's online, I'll give the group the link and then we can discuss it. But I really enjoyed it. Doesn't go down easy, but that's kind of the point. A demanding read, but very rewarding.

Question: Can this be considered "erotica"? A Nobel Committee member resigned in protest when Jelinek won, on the grounds that her work as "incoherent and pornographic." Thoughts, reactions, etc. Is this really pornographic or was the Nobel Committee member (a male, natch) just another patriarchal prude hanging on to outmoded prissy ideas of what Literature Should Be?

2: Erotica is a tricky term. A certain set of people would say it's not, because the pornographic material is unpleasant and fails at turning the readership on. It's certainly explicit, but is that really the sole definition? I would call The Rainbow erotic without batting an eyelid, simply for its unwaveringly sensuous prose.

The Piano Teacher is closer to Story of O for me, both in style and my own reaction, only with greater literary rewards. Both are confrontational, emotionally closed off, twist-your-arm kind of books but where Story of O came with only a few (too few) psychological passages and very little to glimpse of character or of Paris in the 50s, The Piano Teacher sets forth in excellent detail on both of those things. I would call it erotica for the same reason as O: The ability of so upfront and visceral a book to be so reserved and yet to bring up an incredibly strong emotional reaction (in this reader, at least).

I don't think the Nobel Committee man had anything to complain about with The Piano Teacher (which, judging by my research, looks like one of Jelinek's lighter offerings). It's definitely literary. And I'm really loving the prose, which is far from "incoherent."

Story of O is a good comparison, since it was a literary exercise with prurience in mind. But both The Piano Teacher and Story of O wrestle between hardcore sexual acts and a verbal puritanism. I'm also finding the terms "erotic" and "pornographic" rather limiting, if not oppressive to the act of literature. If someone wants to be all highbrow and proper, they lean towards calling something "erotica." Ya know, classy and junk, like The Red Shoe Diaries Whereas calling something "porn" has been a habit of small-brained sanctimonious control freaks since the age of Moses. Funny how the sliding scale of pornography has nearly become meaningless, especially with the Internet and the online pornotopia available at one's fingertips.

To switch gears, I would also call The Piano Teacher a social satire with pitch black humor, why I would compare Jelinek with her fellow countrymen Thomas Bernhard and Karl Kraus and French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine, at least in her early comic novels like Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan

I'm busy trying to sort out how much of the misanthropic attack on philistinism is Jelinek and how much is Erika. It probably doesn't matter, but I've heard the book is somewhat autobiographical (you want to talk about meaningless terms, that one's a beauty).

The real benefit of the novel is that it's propelling me to an investigation of classical music that I've been putting off much too long, philistine that I am.

I think The Piano Teacher is definitely a generational commentary and a morality play with a savage wit but my intellectual reaction is being overpowered currently by a great wave of despair that comes with sympathizing for Erika even as she shoots herself in both feet. The novel is so discordant and vile right from page one that Erika's first interaction with Walter Klemmer can't help but seem promising and wonderful by comparison - watching a young man actually give a damn about this woman is really quite sweet. That's what gives the ensuing fallout its terrible edge. I find it extremely scary and depressing, the most affecting book I've read in a long time.

5: I was actually planning to read Journey to the End of the Night this year past. Didn't get around to it. Will have to wait for 2014 and Celine might look like a walk in the park after Jelinek.

Celine, at least the early novels, is more comically farcical. His much later work is hallucinatory and borderline incoherent.

The Piano Teacher is autobiographical, to a certain degree, although a more useful way of thinking about it might be this: She uses details from her personal life as raw material for the novel, cranks things up to 11, and then lets it rip. Jelinek trained to become a concert pianist ... and her ideological upbringing (feminist, Communist), although the novel transcends being a delivery device for agitprop (mainly because it seems like an attack on everything and everybody).

Jelinek is also ripe for author parallels:

*with Kathy Acker -- a ferocious feminist experimentalist, albeit Acker is more of a postmodern formalist.
*with Thomas Bernhard -- a fellow Austrian who wrote turgid misanthropic novels that could double as tirades.
*with Sigmund Freud -- because of Erika's Mommy and Daddy issues. Makes Oedipus look serene and well-adjusted.
*with Ferdinand Celine -- he wrote black comedies and also a bit of a misanthrope.
*with Karl Kraus -- the Great Hater who wrote this: "Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world." Sounds like a one-line review for the novel.

>5 nymith: I'm busy trying to sort out how much of the misanthropic attack on philistinism is Jelinek and how much is Erika.
I was wondering that too, but decided to not care and just read Erika's story.

It was certainly a difficult story to read, and I took from it that she was either mentally unwell, or had a serious case of self-loathing stemming from her dysfunctional relationship with her mother. Or both.

I wouldn't call it erotica though. I think it goes beyond that. And I definitely loved it, even if I cant think of exactly who I could recommend it to without coming across as a deviant- this is more a comment on my friends who read safe than the story itself.

I'm about twenty-five pages into the book and reserving judgment as to whether it is art or just bollocks.

Hey! Now there's enough of us here for a game of bridge! Welcome, two new posters.

As I continue with the novel, I grow more and more convinced of its genius. Erika is an exceptional portrait of human dichotomy with her many opposing traits and desires. Once looked at as a character study I've decided that the seemingly-gratuitous sadomasochism is thematically perfect for the text at hand. I'm with Ireadthereforeiam - it goes way beyond erotica. And I'm feeling confident that I'll be voting it one of the best books I've read all year.

6: You are very well-read. Great list.

I was actually going to mention how pleased I am that The Piano Teacher avoids being some kind of feminist screed (which some of the reviews led me to expect) because, as you said, her misanthropy goes in every direction. I'm not sure she isn't attacking it as well. The mother's "absolutely no men" principle could certainly be viewed as feminism gone awry.

>9 nymith: seemingly-gratuitous sadomasochism
That is probably where a lot of people's problems with the novel start. They see it as gratuitous and do not look into it further to see what it is representing.

Erika certainly has mummy and daddy issues! As stated in #6

'Ugh'. I'm all the way up to pg23, and have just read the bit about how she behaves on the tram. It's exactly as I'd feared. I imagine this is the kind of writing the literary establishment heaps praise upon, when it's really, umm, quite bad. In this passage SHE is described as a butterfly, a mauling dog, a ram (though this may be more general, I give you); others on the tram variously as dogs, sardines, sheep, ants, trees, one as a buffalo; music is a cow. She is also a refrigerator. There are metaphors all over the place and no consistency between them. One about her mother unscrewing her head, which, although it does make sense, is strange nonetheless; another about a 'colourfully printed package' almost immediately makes no sense whatsoever. Indeed, much of the description is done so indirectly and haphazardly it was difficult to follow or understand. Often, paragraphs fail to flow into one another, some simply appearing seemingly without reference to that which immediately preceded them (for example the one beginning 'A member of the Philharmonic audience reads the program notes'), as if perhaps they were written individually, weeks apart.

Also, I understand how she could be so spiteful, but it confuses me how this is seemingly framed as her being fiercely individual. At first I thought this was simply her mother manipulating her - 'Erika always refuses to submit' (which I do think is clever btw, having some foreknowledge of where the story is heading) - but I have the impression this is actually how the author imagines her. For me, it doesn't fit that she would be so dominated by the relationship with her mother, manipulated by her, that she could be so individual.

But perhaps it's too early to judge.

>11 leigonj: Indeed, much of the description is done so indirectly and haphazardly it was difficult to follow or understand.
I see what you mean.
In these sections I just allowed it to wash over me and I was able to glean an understanding of it, in a general sense. I quite liked the nebulous word associations and treated it as a bit of a puzzle to solve.

11. I'm with you on that. The tram scene seemed to me to be just bad writing. I'm reading it in German, so my experience might be a bit different from some of you, but I noticed all those nonsensical metaphors and more - the old lady looking under people's seats for her tram stop! Germans (and Austrians) have a higher tolerance for this kind of hyper-stylistic nonsense and are less likely to notice that the Kaiser has no clothes, so I'm donning my spiky helmet, making allowances and seeing where it goes.

Maybe it's just me, but I reckoned those passages with SHE were dream sequences, fantasties, etc. Reminiscent of Arthur Schnitzler and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, two stylists from Austria.

14. More like condensed recollections I think. All her tram rides replayed as one.

I don’t know if any of this comes across in the English translation, but Elfriede has a bit of a playful streak, inserting the odd jeu de mots. Some of them are very odd jeux de mots indeed, coming across as rather forced in a schoolboy pun sort of way, and I’m not sure this is her strong point. (Actually, at page 73 I’m still unconvinced that writing is her strong point).
During the concert at the Polish couple’s house, Erika plays Bach. Bach is also the word for a stream or brook in German, and there is a lot of rippling and babbling and other moving liquid verbs, which occur throughout the passage. (Der Bach rieselt in den schnellen Satz hinein- The Bach/brook babbles into the fast movement, etc.) It’s hard to see how a translator could capture this, but I’d be interested to hear if it was attempted.

There is no Haydn the fact that a Listzt of her other puns would include some that are more than a Schumann being can Handel.
What? She started it.

My two cents on The Piano Teacher:

http://www.cclapcenter.com/2013/12/the_nsfw_files_the_piano_teach.html

As far as bon mots goes, she's preserving the Austrian tradition of acidic commentary by aphorism perfected by Karl Kraus

I read it last year and thought this: http://iansales.com/2012/10/02/world-fiction-reading-challenge-6-the-piano-teach...

17: did you read it in its original German? Seems 18 would have liked it better that way. It is interesting how both of you started your reviews with an analysis of the language.

19: I didn't read it in the original German, but with Neugroschel's wonderful translation. Remnants of high school German classes remain. I did want to emphasize that Austria is a totally different culture than Germany. Prussian militarist machoness versus Hapsburg decadence and that nation's submission to Catholic sexual derangement (and the Holy See's traditional history of anti-Semitism -- not that Prussian Lutherans were slouches in that department either.)

20: Good to see you steering clear of simplistic national stereotyping.

A painful story of a emotionally repressed woman who hides behind the rigid(and frigid) discipline of classical music to control others and to control her desires.

A masochistic woman who preys on young male pupils.
It is not really a pornographic novel, but should be kept side by side with Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence , The Reader by Bernhard Schlink and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

What a teacher, tutoring piano music lessons with sex? Very unlikely lesson for the young.

It is still a taboo now , it is a statutory rape.

21: It's not stereotyping when you have historical evidence to back it up. Besides, if Mel Brooks can be used as a metric, when you're nation is explicitly culpable in the mass murder of 6 millions Jews, abortionists, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Communists, and whoever Hitler didn't like that particular Tuesday, well ... then you deserve people making broad nation-based jokes at your expense ... for eternity.

Hell, after 8 years of misrule by Dubya's fundamentalist junta, the world is still correct in making the United States the butt of its jokes.

Luckily the Catholic Church got over the whole blood libel thing against the Jews ... in 1965 (!!!), twenty years after the Holocaust. Let it be shown in the record that both Jelinek and Thomas Bernhard lashed out against the twin monsters of Austrian national heritage: National Socialism and Catholicism.

Although I come from a nation that gave the world The Trial of Tears, Japanese internment, J. Edgar Hoover, and Mitt Romney speaking in public ... so who am I to judge?

22: I am not reading the book but the descriptions also remind me of Durrell. Is that off base?

> 20: Don't forget that Austria was also a country where "Rote Wien" ("Red Vienna") offered a counterbalance to that Catholic angst and where the political debate for over a hundred years was "Are we Germans?" It took a Hitler to prove to them, horribly, that they weren't.

It's the contrast between conservative Austria and the Austria of Freud, Mahler and Kokoschka that makes the place so fascinating to me.

25: Germany and Austria is akin to the United States and Canada. Both nations speak the same language (more or less), but are radically different cultures.

where the political debate for over a hundred years was "Are we Germans?" It took a Hitler to prove to them, horribly, that they weren't. Probably why Austria put up as much resistance to Hitler as the Poles ... no wait ... they didn't:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWanschluss.htm

All that was missing that day was the flight suit and the Mission Accomplished banner. But I digress ...

Well, the Austrian Left had been pretty well beaten into submission during the Civil War (which is what the Austrians call the inter-war period), and by 1936 the argument was between Nationalists (who, by our modern standards, were fairly right-wing) and the Austrian Nazis. The Nazis attempted a coup which led to the death of Chancellor Dolfuss when he was held hostage in his own office for hours whilst he bled to death. Truly, the first casualties of any totalitarian government are those who are more moderate (i.e. less committed) than yourself.

Many ordinary Austrians who were ambivalent towards, or who even supported, Hitler looked forward to the Anschluß in the belief that Germany and Austria would work together as equal partners, just as the old Austro-Hungarian Empire had worked, with each country sharing a head of Government and pursuing similar overseas policy objectives but maintaining separarte internal policies and laws. Instead, within a very short time after the Anschluß, Austria was redesignated the "Ostmark" and fully integrated into the Reich. Austrian trade unionists, communists and other "undesirables" were sent off to the concentration camps along with the Jews.

Vienna was one of the few places that successfully rebelled against the Nazis when the Stauffenberg plot was triggered by the bombing of Hitler's HQ, but the plotters were betrayed by Austrian Nazis. Later, at the war's end, the Tyrol rebelled against their Nazi Gauleiters, and when the area was liberated by American troops entering Austria from Italy, they found a provisional government already in place in Innsbruck.

> 25: And that link goes to a page that omits a big chunk of the history and politics. I won't even mention the plebiscite ballot papers that were pre-printed with the "Yes" box already filled in...

"Yet while many of these shows and publications recognize the tension and struggle in Vienna in the early years of the twentieth century, there has been a tendency to glorify the outpouring of artistic and intellectual creativity and to romanticize or minimize the psychic pain and the corrosive social setting that spurred it."

An interesting essay on Vienna:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/dec/06/trapped-vienna-1900-portraits/

> 29: Thanks for that. I'd always felt that the existential angst was a central part of the intellectual life of early 20th century Vienna. It's not hard to spot it once you begin looking at the art, or visiting the cultural sights.

24: Anna, if you're still wondering, I don't find much similarity between Jelinek and Durrell except insofar as they both tell an unromantic, though sexually tense and obsessive story, through extremely romantic means - Durrell by way of his use of language, Jelinek through her development of parallels. The text draws an endless array of similarities and parallels between Klemmer and Kohut - they live in the same neighborhood; both stay with their parents; Klemmer wants experience while Kohut longs for her youth back; both seek total control of their foreseen relationship, Erika through restraint, Walter through passion; each lays waste through the follies and delusions of arrogance; etc. etc. etc. All the sort of stuff that normally makes you think "aw, they're made for each other" here used as a diseased but strangely harmonious duet. A story that's vile but not discordant.

17: Karl, great review. You brought a lot to the table. I'm too ignorant of Austrian history to see the bigger picture, so thanks for the insight. Along with your essay on Our Lady of the Flowers, definitely my favorite of the NSFW Files.

I put The Piano Teacher down for a few days, having completed part I and needing a breather. Am now moving on with part II and am back into the downswing of things.

By the way everyone, I am really enjoying this whole "group read." It seems to be a success and it's very nice to have a thread where the discussion is thoughtful, in-depth and doesn't fruitlessly pillory bestsellers. I'm hoping the final vote will be to continue this project. It has really transformed the Literary Snobs experience for me.

I finished the book a week or so ago. In summary of my opinions I thought I'd return to the 'Pre-conceived ideas' which I wrote in the original discussion thread before I began to read the book(http://www.librarything.com/topic/158004#4378038).

having read nothing by the author, having skimmed the reviews, knowing that it's by a Nobel Prize winner, based on comments here, based on its title, I think it will be about a piano teacher.

This prediction, I'll admit, was a shot in the dark. Nonetheless, amazing. 5 stars.

I think it will be well written, in poetic language

A fairly vague prediction, that it would be 'well written'. Turns out it was in a sort of poetic language - at least, what I refer to as poetic language, that being things are described more indirectly than they could/ would otherwise be. You might call it 'style over substance' but that would be unfair, it needn't be. In this case, however, the style of writing was often irksome. I complained earlier about the chapter describing Erika's tram journeys: fortunately that was where Jelinek's style was at its worst and generally her writing was better - not great, often irritating (there were a number of very strange metaphors used later on, for example), but better. I can understand how some - the Nobel judges, for example - might be fooled into thinking such writing is of a particular artistic merit, or value, but it isn't really: her writing is simply thick with her style.

the focus will be on the inward feelings of the main character(s) and how these change/ evolve as their relationships develop

Obviously.

there will be very little, if any, abstract discussion

Overall this was correct. Almost the whole text was dedicated to depicting the characters, their relationships, or the narrative; there was nothing philosophical, nothing political in it. Although, here and there Jelinek involved Erika and Walter in discussions, or gave their thoughts, on music as an art. Personally, I appreciated these musings - even if they were, arguably, more style over substance - and now feel I should listen to some Schubert.

at certain points and at the end there will be the impression that we have been given an insight into the human condition - namely, in this case, how individuals are vulnerable to each other, how they become vulnerable to each other

The part about 'the human condition' was perhaps wrong. When reading I didn't get the impression that the characters represented anything more than themselves nor did Jelinek intend them to. Erika was uniquely, um, individual. Therefore, however (whichever) Walter's story was the more interesting for me. Whereas we knew from the beginning that the seed of Erika's doom had always been in her, it was not so obvious with Walter. Of course, without him she'd be the same as she was at the beginning of the book and so would her life, so circumstance brought that seed to fruit, yet the very same was always true of him - she was the one who was abnormal, and he was in every way the ideal, yet at the core, at least in the end, she was the innocent one, and he was utterly corrupt. Of course, it might be argued that it took HER, Erika, to reveal that side of him and without HER it might never have been revealed and so it was not an element of his character in itself but one born purely in reaction to her and her abnormality. But then, that doesn't remove the possibility that perhaps, therefore, Walter is meant to represent us all: on the surface, outgoing, athletic, shining; deep down on the inside, black. Perhaps, rather, and in line with everything Erika's mother warned her about, he merely represents us men. Perhaps, now that I consider it, I'm persuading myself this book was worthwhile. But, ultimately, when I said this will be any other literary novel I think I was right. And Erika wasn't a likeable character.

LT suggests I will 'probably like' it.

Hmmm. Perhaps. It was OK, but I won't be looking up Jelinek again or seeking out any of the recommended books either. I gave it 3.5 stars.