Reading: The Piano Teacher

    I read The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek for the fab book club hosted by Annie Rose of the podcast Girls Guts Giallo and it was definitely one of the more challenging books. Stylistically, the text is quite dense and layered, flowing from one metaphor to another and shifting seamlessly between perspectives of omniscient narrator and different characters. Structurally it takes a very different approach to story-telling, though the events are all quite linear and easy to follow. Aside from its dense and descriptive nature, I actually found the actual content of the book more challenging than the style, which is used to intensify the emotional experience of the text.

    Erika Kohut is a talented pianist in Vienna who never made it big in her field. Instead she teaches piano for a living and has a repressed and very controlled homelife with her domineering mother. The relationship between mother and mid-30s daughter is a very toxic and codependent one that borders on incestuous, with mother forbidding Erika of anything she may find indecent. Mother and Erika also sleep in the same bed. When one of Erika's students fancies her and begins to make a move on her, the results are utterly devastating in ways I hadn't anticipated.

    I'd mentioned that the stylistic choices of the author serve to heighten certain feelings in the book and this is especially true for illustration the parent/child relationship in the book. The text at times feels cloying, smothering, like it's choking you the same way Erika is being dominated in every aspect by her mother. Mother thinks highly of her daughter but also seeks to punish her in many different ways for any number of infractions- buying clothes for herself, being late, having any kind of life anywhere that mother can't call her or check in. Erika in turn enacts little cruelties upon others, particularly her students, upon whom she metes out the same kind of exacting expectations as Mother has for Erika. In one disturbing scene, Erika also puts shattered glass into a girl's coat pockets to punish her for being flirtatious.

    In Erika's spare time, she goes to peepshows and likes to spy on couples making love in public parks at night. She's never had a relationship of her own due to her mother, and all her erotic energy is focused into acts of voyeurism or expressed as acts of self harm.

    Most synopses you find of the book mentions that Erika and Walter Klemmer, her student, begin a sadomasochistic affair that has horrible consequences, but really, the affair is something that fails to get off the ground and it turns violent in a non-consensual way. You'd expect this book to be erotic, but so much of the desire is stifled. Both Erika and Walter have very different expectations for what their affair will be- Erika wants to be dominated and punished, but all within very strict parameters of her fantasies. Walter wants to conquer her, but in the very typical sense, a young man wanting to bag an interesting lay and mark it off on his scorecard before moving on to greener pastures. And his internal dialogue tells us this is his aim from the start. The idea of her fantasies actively repulses him and he fails to perform in even the most vanilla act- which drives him into a violent rage. I think this book is quite interested in illustrating both male fragility and the kinds of neuroses that exist around sex.

    If I had to describe the way the style choices mesh with the erotic non-events of the book, I'd call it the literary equivalent of a ruined orgasm. It's fitting in a book that's all about how ruinous sexual repression can be.

    The world of The Piano Teacher is a cynical and nihilistic one, and with the way the narrative voice never feels in one perspective entirely, it's curious to think about what is the characters' perception of the world and what is the narrator. In the descriptions of Vienna and its people, it seems that the world reflects just as much nastiness and pessimism as exists in the main cast of characters- children are always hit by parents, husbands cheat on wives, women are left sexually unsatisfied, friends quarrel- and it's ambiguous if that is just how the characters perceive the world or if it's a specific point the narrator is making. So much of the book reads as an indictment of consumerism, capitalism, modernity- and learning that Jelinek is an author with communist party affiliations actually makes a lot of sense. The Vienna that is presented in The Piano Teacher is one of people alienated from one another and from their labor, wound up in petit bourgeois aspirations and notions of respectability.

    There are elements in the book that feel like a commentary on fascism as well- both in terms of Austria's past as well as the every day "conservative values" that drive a capitalist society. The rigidity of traditional gender roles is also a large component of fascism and so much of the book deals with gender, sex, and the politics of the family.

 I was also thinking a lot about the odd casual racism and xenophobia peppered into the text, whether or not that's Erika's perspective or more a commentary on Vienna's perspective, particularly about Turks and other immigrants. I think it's perhaps both, Erika as a reflection of Vienna but also a victim of its demands and expectations. Vienna is as much a character as Erika, Mother, or Walter, with the style of the book being so much like a movie camera traveling from the interior to the exterior world.

    I can't say I really loved the experience of this book. It's both claustrophobic and quite harrowing in terms of style and the acts of emotional and physical abuse in the story. I understand the point and I like that it makes you think, but it's not enjoyable. That's not me saying don't read it, though. Art of course, is not supposed to comfort or make you happy, though it very much can. I don't know where the disconnect is for me personally, I like some pretty grim and nihilistic stories but this didn't click somehow.

    I haven't yet watched the film adaptation of this novel but it makes it a ton of sense that it was Michael Haneke who directed it. He really excels at this sort of "smart story that also pisses you off," if Funny Games is anything to go by. I'll report back when I see the film.