Customer Reviews

The Piano Teacher

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

You might not expect to find a novel that among other things links chamber music with the perils of perfectionism, sexual masochism and sadism - and the inner and outer life of a talented and tormented woman. "The Piano Teacher" does this and much more.

Erika Kohut is a former music prodigy in her late thirties, a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory, strict and rigid with her students - as well as with herself. Her father left shortly after her birth and she lives with her elderly mother, who is, we are told, old enough to be her grandmother, and her "inquisitor and executioner all at once." Her mother has given her all to assuring her daughter's talent: "Erika has never had to do housework, because dustrags and cleansers ruin a pianist's hands." The daughter's "vocation is her avocation: the celestial power known as music." Erika has a room of her own in their apartment - mostly a place to hide some of her possessions. Mother and daughter sleep in one bed. Her mother expects obedience, loyalty - and Erika's paycheck, which is to help buy them a new apartment.

Erika wants a life of her own but has no idea of how to go about getting it. She is repulsed by the fact of her aging and by her femaleness. Love and suffering are inextricably linked. She wanders through Vienna after work and lies to her mother in order to indulge herself occasionally in excursions to peep shows and furtive shopping trips to buy beautiful, well-made clothes which she takes home stuffed in her briefcase - so that Mom won't see.

Erika's cacophonous memories of her past sexual episodes with men roil in her head. She is overwhelmed by herself. She cannot feel nor respond to conventional expressions of tenderness and love. She knows what she wants, however, and develops a relationship with a much younger student, Walter Klemmer, in order to get it.

This is an amazing novel about an unconventional and unconventionally disturbed woman, the urge to direct one's own suffering, and the consequences of a life so thoroughly dedicated to control and perfection. The descriptions are compact and rich: not a word is wasted. It's a political novel, too: critical of modern bourgeois life. I was mesmerized and disturbed by it, and awed by Jelinek's abilities.

I was first exposed to The Piano Teacher by way of film, which is excellent, but it left some lingering questions about the psychological mindframe of the leading characters. The book offers a very twisted glimpse into the minds of Erika, her Mother and Walter Klemmer, and does so with incredible dexterity.

If anything, I was impressed by the fluidity of the text, of the author's ability to integrate all three voices into one and still sound impartial with every character. Her language might bore some people as it is filled with curious metaphors and details, but she has an amazing ability to go on many tangents from something very trivial to something quite absurd.

This book is very psychologically disturbing. There is a constant power struggle within the Mother-daughter-intruder triangle and the roles are constantly switching off, with the rarest of outcomes. Sexual roles are also misplaced, with the woman the violent and rapeful while the man is cast into the submissive and traditional type.

If you could look past the violence and insanity of this book, you would find it highly enjoyable and thought provoking.

This is a difficult book, though gruesomely compelling in its exploration of psychological and sexual pathology. Erika Kohut, in her late thirties, is a piano teacher at what is clearly the extension division of the Conservatory. A failed concert pianist, she has been brought up under the total control of her mother, who still shares a bed with her. But Erika has a fantasy life of her own, and when she attracts the attention of a much younger student, her fantasies and the young man's interests collide, dragging both down into a mire of perversion.

The first hundred pages are the most difficult, since they set up the background for what follows. Jelinek writes in a dense but colloquial prose style that mingles various strands of psychic monologue, sometimes dealing with the past, sometimes the present, sometimes occupying a dream world, sometimes almost literal, so that the reader is forced to let go of all normal landmarks. But by the time the actual narrative takes hold, one has been mesmerised into following the story from the inside of the characters' minds rather than as a series of external events. That in itself is quite an achievement.

Jelinek was herself a student at the Vienna Conservatory, so she knows what she is talking about in musical matters. Music is used as a constant frame of reference, though more frequently as a demanding taskmaster than a romantic escape. But while all this rings true to a professional musician (I am one myself), I do not think that the metaphors would be lost to those without a musical background. On the other hand, do not read this book expecting a window on a glamorous world; there is very little glamor in Erika's life, and her service to music is no exception.

Elfriede Jelinek was the 2004 Nobel laureate in literature, but I recall that it was a controversial choice. Though her voice is unique and compelling, it is difficult for an outsider to place her among the greatest authors alive today. So I suspect that this novel can also be read as a political statement, in terms of what the Nobel citation called "the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power." Unfortunately, I do not know enough about modern Austria to know whether the story of these three particular characters can be seen as an expressionist metaphor for the Austrian psyche, or as a lurid parallel to events in postwar history.

Chamber music and sado-masochism: not your usual mix, but they represent the inner and outer lives of a tormented woman. Holy moly, what a story, as well written as it is shocking, as mesmerizing as it is terrible.
Erika, a child musical prodigy, is now in her late thirties, a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory, a teacher as strick and rigid with her students as she is with herself. She lives very unhappily with her elderly mother who has given her all to assure her daughter's success. Erika has a room of her own in the small apartment they share, a room in which she hides the secret yearnings of her stifled life. But mother and daughter share a bed - definitely a weird dynamic going on here, and it gets weirder. In return for her lifetime of sacrifice, the mother expects loyalty and devotion; Erika wants only to escape - but she's powerless to know how to do it - except by the excesses of her sado-masochistic desires. It's when she enlists the complicity of a young male student, Walter Klemmer, that things begin to veer into the truly disturbed corners of Erika's brain, cracking the fragile shell of a life thoroughly dedicated to control and perfection.
Yowie!

This book is not for everyone -- I was disturbed by all the graphic violence in it, particularly in the last quarter. The only reason I'm not giving it five stars, in fact, is that I think the author went a bit farther than necessary with the violence.

That one point aside, the novel is a good one. The characters of Walter, and Erica in particular, are tragic. Their relationship is twisted, but I could understand how he got caught up in her web, and why she acted the way she did. Erica is absolutely fascinating. Her relationship with her mother is oustandingly portrayed. What was interesting was that the author was able to make me empathise with all the characters, no matter how depraved their actions were on some level.

The book was somewhat like seeing a car wreck -- I wanted to turn away, and yet I was compelled to keep reading. The quality of the imagery, be it a bird singing or a theatre showing a pornographic film, was stunning. Jellinek was also extremely deft in her use of symbols -- the book is rife with symbolism.

If you can handle the graphic violence, this book is definitely worth taking the time to read.

If you are conservative, I do not recommend the book, otherwise very much. Yes, it contains some phornographic details. And?
The book helps very much to understand people you meet every day. Erika, the piano teacher, has an extremely problematic relation to her mother. Some examples: Although Erika is not a joung woman, the mother expects her to be at home in time, they sleep in a same bed -Erika grows up without a father, etc. I have never seen a better description of such a situation. You get a very good insight of the motivations behind the everyday acts and the developement of Erika's voyeurism. Erika, then, finds herself in a love relation with her young student. She can in this affaire live out her sexual phantasies, but none of them is prepared for the things comming, the sadistic phantasies of her also break out, but somehow you feel sorry for her.
It is difficult to summarize the many observations of the author. Read without preoccupations, it's worth to do! Congratulations for the Nobel prize!

This book depicts a woman who grew up in a company of a controlling mother, who kept her in rigid boundaries. She's been deprived of everything a normal girl has while growing up. No clothing, no games, no friends, no loving tender family. Thus she constantly has to suppress her feelings and sexual drives. This abuse forms her into a person with confused, hurt psyche, cut from the world, and totally disconnected from her own emotional world as well. And because she does not understand her own feeling, she has no empathy for other people at times as well. She torments her students and Klemmer, a man who happens to step into her life. Since her relationship with her mother is based on love and hate at the same time, she is used to being tortured by someone she loves. And she projects this pattern of relationship into her connection with Klemmer. She has an anomalous and confused understanding of a relationship. She expects to be hurt on one hand, and on the other hand she is terrified of being hurt. And so this confusion of hers develops into a tragedy. It does, because Klemmer is an ordinary guy with normal perception of the world. Just like a normal society responds to anomaly, so does he, with disgust. He's hurt himself and to restore his inner balance, he revolts and ends up acting violently himself.

I love this book, because not many creators manage to delve deep into a psychology of anomalous behavior so well. Jelinek makes her life personal. Society often mistreats abnormal people, responding to them with mistrust and repulsion. That happens because we do not understand them. This book is a chance to see up close what it is like to live a life of a deviant. Now we're in her shoes.

Being German, I read the German version. If the translation is any good, I can only recommend the novel. Not as a Christmas present for your boy-/girl-friend, though - it might spoil the evening.

Jelinek's novel is about violence. And everything about the novel is violent - the things she describes, the characters, the society they live in, and most of all the language. If you don't discredit it right away as outright obscenity, you'll be surprised, what Jelinek does with language (or rather: to language).

I wouldn't say that the book is a must for everyone. But if you are in the mood for something brutally true and don't get shocked or depressed easily, go right ahead ...!

Elfriede Jelinek writes with no concern for smoothing over rough edges. Her purpose is not to write for shock value, I am convinced, but she certainly does not mind if the reader is shocked every once in a while. Her insights approach the raw core of sexuality, but not with the careful tools of a surgeon or the methodical inquiry of the scientist. Her approach is a carefully orchestrated full-on assault. She has little pity for her characters and their right to privacy. They are hers to expose, in graphic detail, and not just their actions but their thoughts and motives as well. What ends up on the page is not pretty - at least, not if you were the one being written about. But as far as literature goes, her writing is indeed beautiful in its originality and its genuine quest of truth.

For those who follow the selections of the Nobel Committee each year, you know that their attempt at making political statements through their selections has at times compromised the literary integrity of the award. Not so this year, I am pleased to see.

Though it has been almost twenty years since this book was firstly published, you can hardly see its ages. Now, you may name lots of other books that did (or still do) the same, but every single one of them stood as a giant monolith versus rest of the literature.
There is certain ammount of dark majesty in this book. Somehow, when one travels, one only gets to see those polished places made especially for toursit, those plastic feelings without passions that we grew accustomed to, and when someone smashes you with exactly that, passion, you must fall in wonder, or be forever silent and stunned.
When it first camed out, it was received badly, by fellow artists and not-so-fellow critics. But waht is to expect from the work that spits into the center of the "old grandeur" of Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Dark Prater, place of whores and their customers, where cries of rage and lovemaking are silenced with slaps and knife cuts, so different from the shiny Prater by daylight, built and made for tourist which cannot see farther than spinning wheel. It is no surprise that darkness of Wienna portraied here made some people uneasy. Somehow, it is by far more easier to awert ones eyes and refuse to see anything, than face the challenge, risking sanity.
Book that should be read, and studied....