Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – still in the As.
Country: Austria
Title: The Piano Teacher
Author: Elfriede Jelinek
Language: German
Translator: Joachim Neugroschel
Publisher: Rowholt Verlag GmbH (1983), English translation by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1988)
What on earth did I just read? The Piano Teacher is one of the more disturbing novels I’ve cracked the spine of. The blurb indicates “the dark passions roiling under her subdued exterior explode in a release of perversity, violence, and degradation.” – That doesn’t even scratch the surface. Umph.
Erika is a 38-year-old piano teacher who was supposed to be a famous pianist but didn’t exactly live up to her mother’s unrealistic expectations. She teaches at the Vienne Conservatory (where the author attended having had similar expectations placed on her), and lives entirely under mother’s control. While she has a room in which she keeps her items, it doesn’t even have a bed – she continues to share a bed with her mother. She secretly watches peep shows and softcore porn, but she feels nothing when watching them. She also feels nothing when she cuts herself, including cutting her genitals.
One of her students becomes a bit obsessed with her. He wants at times to possess her and other times to have her teach him how to be a good lover. (He doesn’t know Erika has limited experience.) The book indicates he is 17, but it also indicates only ten years separate them. Personally, I’d rather imagine them closer in age.
He assaults her. She assaults him. Her mother assaults her. He assaults her mother. She assaults her mother. It’s a violent book of misplaced emotions and lust – Erika is a bit Norman Bates.
The second half of the novel either went entirely off the rails or the translator didn’t know how best to translate it. More than likely, it’s both. The student’s seven inch “small” “love organ” is also referred to as “his asparagus,” and he is referred to as a “venomous love-dwarf.”
Y’all. I can’t.
A Girl Named Tommi 