fiction files redux discussion

Back in 2002, I was traumatised in the cinema by Michael Haneke's film The Piano Teacher. It is a very daring movie...especially because it starred Isabelle Huppert doing very disgusting things.

The novel on which the movie is based is written by Nobel Prize winner (2004) Elfriede Jelinek, an Austrian writer who also studied at the world famous Vienna Conservatory.

The Nobel Prize for Literature peeps said this about her:

'Elfriede Jelinek is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of societies cliches and their subjugating power'.

That is an interesting observation, as The Piano Teacher which I read over the past two days, weaves narratives voices in such a spectacular fashion. I haven't read a novel before using it's strange flow of voices, thoughts and observations. It's not stream-of-consciousness...something different, yet achieving the same sort of effect.

The Piano Teacher follows a music professor named Erika Kohut who lives with her old mother and explores their bizarre love-hate relationship. Erika is a sexual sadist, and when she meets a student named Walter Klemmer, their relationship begins Erika off on her self-destructive path.

Some of the novel is upsetting, when you realise how much Erika hates herself and the things she asks, an at first bemused, then horrified Walter, to do to her.

The mother is a demonic force in the novel, and yet needs her daughter's love...the two characters are complete monsters, but pathetic and sad at the same time.

The novel deals with some very fucked up middle class people.

Here's an extract, as an example of how strange, dark and great this book is!

'Use a rubber hose-I'll show you how-to stuff the gag so tightly into my mouth that I can't stick my tongue out. The hose is ready! Please use a blouse to increase my pleasure: tie up my face so skillfully and thoroughly that I can't get it off. And let me waste away in this torturous position for hours on end, so I can't do anything. I'll be stuck with myself, in myself'

i read Wonderful, Wonderful Times last year and thought the same about her writing style. felt like i was flitting around the characters as they went about their horrid life. interesting voice this jelinek has... will be reading Women As Lovers shortly... same voice, gives the page an interesting texture of words.

Brian wrote: "i read Wonderful, Wonderful Times last year and thought the same about her writing style. felt like i was flitting around the characters as they went about their horrid life. interest..."

I read a book recently on the Austrian (and Los Angeles) serial killer Jack Unterweger...Jelinek was one of the intellectuals in Austria who campaigned for his release...for murder back in 1974...Unterweger became a writer and journalist...and soon as he was out of prison in 1990...starting murdering prostitutes again...now what does that say about the Austrian intelligentsia?

Considering the topic and tone of Wonderful, Wonderful Times that doesn't surprise me. I would also not be surprised if she was an accomplice to Unterweger's crimes. That was a dark book... wicked dark.