Loser

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This is not intended to be a full statement of all your rights under the Distance Selling Regulations. Full details of your rights under the Distance Selling Regulations are available in the UK from your local Citizens' Advice Bureau or your Local Authority's Trading Standards Office. Donde no encontraremos complicación es en la trama, ya que en realidad no es más que una excusa para encajar una digresión tras otra. El narrador viaja a una aldea suiza para acudir al entierro de su amigo Wertheimer, que se ha suicidado. Ambos estudiaron piano en el Mozarteum, en Salzburgo, junto a Glen Gould (un Glen Gould de ficción, aunque muy parecido al real). Pese a ser pianistas notables ambos, la comparación con el genio de Gould arruina sus carreras: el día en que lo escuchan interpretar las Variaciones Goldberg mueren sus aspiraciones y, desde entonces, cada uno de una manera diferente, viven a la sombra del virtuosismo de Gould. ¿Qué sentido tiene continuar después de vislumbrar en qué consiste el auténtico genio? Roald Dahl Funny Prize-winning series, perfect for fans of Dennis the Menace, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Tom Gates, and Mr Gum. El libro, junto a la película citada, me trajo a la mente otra novela que tenía olvidada - "La muerte del adversario", de Hans Keilson- que, de hecho, no me gustó demasiado, en buena parte porque me humilló en unas cuantas ocasiones en las que no entendí nada, pero que también reflexionaba en cierto modo acerca de esa felicidad que se extrae de la infelicidad y que es, en mi opinión, el tema fundamental de este libro. En su libro, Keilson intenta explicarnos el comportamiento, siempre muy chocante para mí, de los judíos ante la opresión nazi y venía a decir, o eso creo, algo así como que los seres humanos tenemos una necesidad perentoria de tener enemigos, bien para perseguirlos o bien para que nos persigan. Nuestro “malogrado” parecía necesitar a los dos. The story began well, concisely drawing an unshapely circle around its characters as if a hand was either shivering or consciously teasing during the entwining exercise. Then, a solid tangent was drawn from a vantage point in the book, where all the characters had rushed in to create the richest pool of their natural shades - a point where Glenn had donned the recluse's garb, Wertheimer had submerged in pools of pungent losses and our narrator had mastered the oscillations between insipid and not-so-insipid days. On this tangential thought, I rejoiced and braced myself for a ride of a lifetime.

Bernhard es un autor difícil, muy exigente con el lector; sus obras requieren una disposición de ánimo especial y una gran atención. También se suele decir que es un autor de culto, un escritor para escritores, aunque no tengo nada claro si eso significa algo. Es distinto, denso, adictivo, profundo, no hace concesiones ni se detiene en términos medios. Es, perdón por el tópico, literatura en estado puro. The relationship that the three share begs the question - what if their paths hadn't crossed with Gould? Perhaps they would have still led a life of being nothing, Gould simply being the excuse they found. However, their lives are so heavily clouded by that of Gould, that it seems impossible to even begin to imagine Gould's absence. This relationship was rooted in their common idea and understanding of music, and it forged a lifelong bond between the three. The intellect of the two, the loser and the philosopher, was also responsible for their failure. Because it takes some acumen to even recognize a genius and be aware of one's own abilities and deficiencies. On the other hand, I cannot factor their wealth out of the equation either. These are two people who do not have to worry about earning a living and thus have the privilege to spend their lives fixated on just one idea. Had that not been the case, sooner or later, the basic necessities of life would have pulled their attention away and forced them to do something with their lives and perhaps lead a life of being good enough, but not the best.And Wertheimer became the ultimate loser, because Gould confirmed his fears about the same and couldn’t shun that image until his suicide, which became the only thing he did without any external influence, with a feeling that “at least I can decide how I’m gonna die.” Why Suicide? Because Glenn died a natural death and for once Wertheimer didn’t have to die in the same fashion. He became loser in front of Gould’s Genius and couldn’t do anything else because being a Piano Virtuoso is all he wanted, he was a failure at everything else, even at his relationship with his sister (which is one of the high points for me in this novel, it’s really disgusting) and on top of that he was filthy rich so he didn’t have to bother about economic aspect of life. What plot there is, is simple. In 1953, the unnamed Narrator and the “loser” Wertheimer, both advanced students of piano, met at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, intending to study with Horowitz. There, one day, standing just outside a practice room, they heard Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations. Although the three become friends, the narrator and Wertheimer both knew perfection when they heard it, and from that moment their ambition to play serious piano began to die. Before the monologue that is The Loser begins, the narrator has learned that Wertheimer has committed suicide, and he begins to examine—in obsessive detail—the friendship of these three men: how both he and Wertheimer were not like Gould, and how he himself is not like Wertheimer. A single paragraph. One breathless monologue. Genius. Failure. Perfection. Obsession. Friendship. Death. Ello podía haberme influido negativamente: un tema que ya estaba bien tratado por la película, al que poco, pensaba, se podía añadir. Y si a eso le añadimos que es un drama en torno a un triángulo de personajes misántropos y elitistas, en el peor sentido de la palabra, y que nos llega por medio del discurso mental de un ser antipático que conforman una prosa incómoda, que por momentos me llegó a parecer torpe, la verdad, es que no parecía tener mucho futuro conmigo. Sin embargo he quedado fascinado y con ganas de más Bernhard, de mucho más. hadn't been able to even imagine returning to Vienna in these three years and hadn't thought about it either, never again to Vienna, that profoundly despised city, to Austria, that profoundly despised country."

Jim Smith is the keelest kids’ book author in the whole wide world amen. He graduated from art school with first class honours (the best you can get) and went on to create the branding for a sweet little chain of coffee shops. He also designs cards and gifts under the name Waldo Pancake. Bernhard was a man of contradictions, and his works-- The Loser, for instance—are full of contradictions too. They are filled with solitary characters who spew forth spleen and invective, loathing the seediness of everyday life, and yet these solitaries are often bound together by some ideal which points beyond pettiness, some absolute which both inspires and degrades them. In Losers that ideal is music. This was my third book by Jerry Spenelli, the first ones were Stargirl and Love Stargirl. I had immediately liked the writer in the first two books; his writing style was simple, yet astonishly magical. Jerry Spenelli writes for children and juveniles, actually--his target audience are those in middle grade--yet teenagers, young adults, and adults could totally enjoy reading his books. Bernhard fue un crítico implacable de la sociedad en la que le tocó vivir. Vehemente en todas sus opiniones, no podía soportar la estupidez, la ignorancia, la maldad que percibía a su alrededor, en todas partes. Todo eso se filtra en sus libros, en sus personajes. No hay nada de admirable en ellos, y tampoco se puede decir que sean unos perdedores; sencillamente se trata de seres tan limitados por sus miedos y sus obsesiones que su única alternativa es el desastre.Glenn, durante toda su vida, quiso ser el Steinway mismo, odiaba la idea de estar entre Bach y Steinway sólo como mediador musical, y de ser triturado un día entre Bach y Steinway, un día, según él, quedaré triturado entre Bach, por un lado, y Steinway, por otro, decía, pensé. Toda mi vida he tenido miedo de quedar triturado entre Bach y Steinway, y me cuesta el mayor esfuerzo sustraerme a ese temor, decía. Lo ideal sería que yo fuera el Steinway, que no necesitara a Glenn Gould, decía, que pudiera, al ser el Steinway, hacer a Glenn Gould totalmente superfluo. Pero todavía no ha conseguido ningún pianista hacerse a sí mismo superfluo, siendo Steinway, según Glenn. Despertar un día y ser Steinway y Glenn en uno, decía, pensé, Glenn Steinway, Steinway Glenn, sólo para Bach. The setting of my book is school & grades in school I know this because the story takes place in school when he was in different grades during his life.The major events of the book where when he was growing and found out he was different from the other people in his school until he found somebody that was weird like him. Its person vs. person because Zinkoff tries to become friends with other people but they reject him because he's weird and different than everybody else. Weird is the theme because he is very different and weirder than everybody else. What a soul-piercing read... After I finished The Loser by Thomas Bernhard I thought: this is how you write a book! Or well, a long internal monologue that rambles on and on without any pauses. It’s simply amazing satire with a lot of absurdism, nihilism, and self-destructiveness narrated in one breath. El malogrado es un monólogo interior obsesivo, caótico y en ocasiones agotador. Al ser mi primer Bernhard me ha costado un poco entrar en la novela, pero pronto he quedado atrapada en ese discurso repetitivo y atormentado, que poco a poco te va envolviendo en los odios y obsesiones del narrador, que vuelve una y otra vez a las mismas ideas, incluso a las mismas frases y expresiones. Postscript: There is an interesting and informative afterword to the Vintage International edition of The Loser, written by Mark M. Anderson, which discusses how the events of the book relate to Bernhard's life and how Bernhard selectively altered the details of Glenn Gould's life to suit his narrative purposes. Also, the essay begins with an example of Bernhard's bitter humor with respect to his country of residence Austria, for which he harbored an intense ambivalence throughout his life:

Loser is slightly better than Schooled in that the teasing is not as obvivous and Don is written to be that clueless. However it is hard to be in sympathy with such a clueless character. The action of the plot is also more believeable. Questo sdoppiamento di prospettiva concede un po’ d’aria a una scrittura e a temi che tendono all’asfittico. Another well-known aspect of Bernhard's personality was his hatred for his country Austria. Not only did he face multiple controversies while alive, he delivered a parting blow in death as well:Again and again we picture ourselves sitting together with the people we feel drawn to all our lives, precisely these so-called simple people, whom naturally we imagine much differently from the way they truly are, for if we actually sit down with them we see that they aren't the way we've pictured them and that we absolutely don't belong with them, as we've talked ourselves into believing, and we get rejected at their table and in their midst as we logically should get after sitting down at their table and believing we should get after sitting down at their table and believing we belonged with them or could sit with them for even the shortest time without being punished, which is the biggest mistake, I thought." This is what Bernhard said as a part of his acceptance speech for the Austrian State Prize for Literature. So, Yeah! That’s the kind of man he was. As Zinkoff enters middle school, he transitions from being the butt of all jokes to being completely ignored. Isolated and alone, he struggles to deal with his solitary way of life. O Glenn Gould, o nosso amigo e o mais importante virtuoso do piano do século, também só fez 51 anos, pensava eu ao entrar na estalagem.

Here it is Bach's Goldberg variations, played by Glenn Gould, that provides as it were the basso continuo for Bernhard's own deliberately droning repetitions and variations. With the monologistic, uninterrupted flow of its sentences, the novel conjures up the image of a singer fighting to sustain his breath to the end of an impossibly long, embellished aria." The novel ends with an interesting afterword that throws some light on Bernhard's life and his writing. His later novels, including The Loser, contain characters which carry an image of the author in themselves. In the present case, Gould is meant to be doppelganger for Bernhard. Bernhard having studied music, his writing has been informed by music as well. The afterword compares his writing to Gould's music: I hated Glenn every moment, loved him at the same time with the utmost consistency. For there’s nothing more terrible than to see a person so magnificent that his magnificence destroys us and we must observe this process and put up with it and finally and ultimately also accept it, whereas we actually don’t believe such a process is happening, far from it, until it becomes an irrefutable fact, I thought, when it’s too late. So.............we're doing novel study in our class. And I finished this with two periods (or three?) when I was *guilty smile* NOT supposed to. *nervously laughs--heh heh heh* Frist off this book is a character study and I perfer books with plot. The book also like Schooled is about a character who is above the negative opinions of his classmates. In fact like Schooled Don Zinkoff seems is clueless that he is being teased.The Loser goes about in a humorous and absurd way of exploring the universal experience of encountering someone better than you in an activity that, prior to the encounter, you felt you were sitting at the head of the table as top dog. Some people walk away from such an experience somewhat chastened and then chalk it up as a normal part of life to simply brush under the carpet with the dust, dead spiders, and crumbs of food. In other words, they move on, forget it. Other people hang themselves from a tree outside their sister’s home. We have three aspiring concert pianists-Glenn Gould (drawn from real life), an Austrian pianist named Wertheimer (the notional protagonist) and the unnamed narrator-who become friends in 1953 in Salzburg while studying piano with the great Horowitz. Wertheimer and the narrator have dedicated their lives to becoming piano virtuosos, but one day they chance to overhear Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations and his genius destroys them. Gould gracelessly adds insult to injury by calling Wertheimer a loser, thus Wertheimer is the loser of the novel's title. It is this fact that these two cannot seem to reconcile, one quits the piano altogether, and the other just can't be bothered with existing. Wertheimer non era capace di vedere se stesso come un essere unico al mondo, mentre in effetti è così che ciascuno di noi può e deve concedersi di vedere se stesso se non vuole cadere in balìa della disperazione [...]. Non necessariamente dobbiamo essere dei genii per poter essere e per poterci riconoscere come unici al mondo, pensai”.]