This Hardcover Book item from Grove Press was reviewed on 18-Oct-2008. Search ISBN:0802118062 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. The Piano Teacher: A Novel Reference Book. Classifications : Movie Tie-Ins Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Adult Fiction Erotica Literature & Fiction Subjects Books General Erotica Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Contemporary Literature & . Click the following link to view the cover of The Piano Teacher: A Novel. Related topics: Movie Tie-Ins. Genre Fiction. Subjects. Books. Adult Fiction. Erotica. Subjects. Books. General. Erotica. requestid: d4c79538-9694-45c7-b6d4-6aa44d8438a8
requestprocessingtime: 0.0714410000000000
salesrank: 225025
numberofitems: 1
packagedimensions: 11084095560
1) Hardcover Book The Piano Teacher: A Novel by Grove Press. As an Austrian I was skeptical. Is it possible to translate Jelinek properly ? Joachim Neugroschel, who has also translated works by Kafka, Hesse, Mann, etc. proves that the answer is Yes. Jelinek´s novel, respectively Jelinek´s sharp deconstruction of phrases does not lose more than what necessarily gets lost. Neugroschel successfully managed this task !
~Pat Paul Jammernegg, author of Prototype¤ 2) Hardcover Book The Piano Teacher: A Novel by Grove Press. I was taken aback by this book, and had to abruptly throw it down near the end. Now I can hardly even look at the cover without feeling slightly ill. Perhaps I missed the point - perhaps I´m too squeemish - but I could NOT read the end of this book. I´m confused about why it won a nobel prize, certainly, and as an avid reader and literature major, I have read quite broadly. When I got this book I had no idea I would find it so disturbing and that it would be so sadomasochistic. I thought I should warn other readers of this. (The reason I have it two stars is that the writer is obviously gifted and parts are written beautifully.)¤ 3) Hardcover Book The Piano Teacher: A Novel by Grove Press. This is probably Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek´s most famous novel. Here she creates an arena in which three characters -- Erica, the teacher of the title, Erica´s mother, and Erica´s prize student, a young engineering student named Klemmer - stalk and attack each other to the ultimate benefit of nobody. There is a fourth person who cannot be ignored - the unnamed narrator, who it is difficult not to identify as Jelinek herself. Each of the character´s thoughts and feelings are dutifully provided to the reader, but only as deconstructed, to the character´s disadvantage, by the narrator, who relentlessly strips away all pretense and self-delusion. Jelinek employs multiple techniques in this implacable exercise in ridicule, and this is where her considerable artistry is most on display. Probably the most obvious weapon in her arsenal is in tacking some cliché or banality onto her characters´ sentiments, but she has many more subtle strategies for degradation; I can´t itemize them all. There is no direct speech. The book proceeds primarily by offering the characters´ perceptions as reified by the narrator. The plot builds inexorably toward three climactic (I use this word ironically) scenes compounded of extreme sexual frustration and violence, the last of which involves all three characters. I have read that Jelinek´s ultimate intention is to satirize the flimsiness and hypocrisy of contemporary Austria. I´m not competent to judge her success in accomplishing that goal. What I can say is that she is the mistress of scorn, and she gives us an authentic depiction of the mentality of the damned.¤ 4) Hardcover Book The Piano Teacher: A Novel by Grove Press. 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.
¤ 5) Hardcover Book The Piano Teacher: A Novel by Grove Press. From a Nobel-Prize-winning novel, I expected a whole lot more than this. Am I amiss for expecting greatness? Instead, this novel is confusing and hard to follow, and not in an incompetent reader sort of way. The novel pushes the envelope with its hyperbolic discussion of male sexuality and the male tendency/necessity to gaze at the female. Maybe in the height of the feminist-crazed, literary world, this translation from German was all the hype.
Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens¤ 6) Hardcover Book The Piano Teacher: A Novel by Grove Press. The Piano Teacher, the most famous novel of Elfriede Jelinek, who was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, is a shocking, searing, aching portrait of a woman bound between a repressive society and her darkest desires.
Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the prestigious and formal Vienna Conservatory, who still lives with her domineering and possessive mother. Her life appears to be a seamless tissue of boredom, but Erika, a quiet thirty-eight-year-old, secretly visits Turkish peep shows at night to watch live sex shows and sadomasochistic films. Meanwhile, a handsome, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old student has become enamored with Erika and sets out to seduce her. She resists him at first, but then the dark passions roiling under the piano teacher´s subdued exterior explode in a release of sexual perversity, suppressed violence, and human degradation.
Celebrated throughout Europe for the intensity and frankness of her writings and awarded the Heinrich Böll Prize for her outstanding contribution to German letters, Elfriede Jelinek is one of the most original and controversial writers in the world today. The Piano Teacher was made into a film, released in the United States in 2001, was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. ¤Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 15-Nov-2008, 08021180629780802118066, 780-860-520-620-711-P6B-QUB-5EB-8 
The Piano Teacher: A Novel, Book, Image © Grove Press
|
