March 04, 2011
Thomas Bernhard
The Loser is one of the most darkly funny of his novels. In it, people grapple with the problem of not having to make a living, the problem of life, and the problem of art, which turns out to be the solution. It’s about three friends studying piano under Horowitz one summer in Salzburg. One of the friends is Glenn Gould, and on hearing him play only a few bars, the other two know at once that there is no hope for them, and they give up the piano altogether. Bernhard treats the only subject worth treating”life”in the only way that it should be treated, coming at it with increasing levels of paradox until it’s all there: art, genius, proving oneself, being taken seriously, not even trying, virtuosity, failure, friendship, fate, happenstance, personality, talent, happiness, and death”whether imposed or chosen.
Perhaps more than in the novels, Bernhard’s humor comes through particularly well in My Prizes. At times it even sounds like joy, a certain zest for life, such as when he uses all his prize money to buy a white Triumph Herald with red leather upholstery and a wood dashboard, though he”d never driven a car before and had to ask the salesman to drive it out of the showroom for him. Life is absurd but still, one might as well drive toward Italy in a sports car, and one might as well write, driving toward perfection in an outpouring of imprecations and hyperbole that seems to only see the sublime or the sordid. He writes on one theme with virtuosity, never quite exhausting himself. Bernhard is a master of variation, which is not repetition, and like music, it carries one along.
“Too repetitive for me,” said Mrs H., and we went back to talking of real estate and her photography.
