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A review by screen_memory
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
5.0
If you read one book by Jelinek, make it this one. She's at her prime here; all of the elements of mania, obsession, sexual deviancy/violence, and the conflict between the sexes is all present here, concentrated into a potent dose and sprinkled with some erudite musings on classical music and composition.
Accusations and insults introduce the mother and daughter from the first page when Erika, the piano teacher, is met by her mother, still awake, after returning from a long night out. Her whereabouts were unknown, but they are inconsequential - her mother expected her home sooner, and an abrupt slap across Erika's face establishes the stifling and controlling nature of their relationship. Jelinek said she was influenced by Hegel's master/slave dialectic in her writing, and this influence is represented most distinctly by Erika and her mother.
When Erika is not at her studio tutoring her pupils, she is at home watching television with her mother, dining with her, and, at night's end, sleeping with her - her room is not furnished with a mattress; she belongs to her mother.
Erika's stifling at her mother's hands and her sexual repression leads her to bizarre and sadomasochistic behavior. One of her repeated escapades are her outings to porno shops and into the private viewing booths. Nothing seems too odd besides the spectacle of a woman intruding in on a man's domain, where *men* do their business, until, in the middle of a viewing, Erika reaches into the garbage bin, pulls out a crumpled, soiled tissue and holds it up to her nose, indulging in the odor of the semen which is perhaps still moist in a sort of rapture - the sensory realm of sex overwhelms her in all of its immediacy.
Erika is only slightly bursting at the seams until she falls for one of her pupils, Walter Klemmer, and this relationship, which she resists to the best of her abilities, precipitates a total explosion of the carefully tended and composed persona she has maintained for years prior.
Erika doesn't know what she wants - she is at once master and masochist. She wants to be damaged and injured, but according only to her exact instructions, and her desires eventually leads to an absolute upheaval of her life as she knew it; an upheaval of Erika Kohut as she knew (or perhaps did not know) herself.
Accusations and insults introduce the mother and daughter from the first page when Erika, the piano teacher, is met by her mother, still awake, after returning from a long night out. Her whereabouts were unknown, but they are inconsequential - her mother expected her home sooner, and an abrupt slap across Erika's face establishes the stifling and controlling nature of their relationship. Jelinek said she was influenced by Hegel's master/slave dialectic in her writing, and this influence is represented most distinctly by Erika and her mother.
When Erika is not at her studio tutoring her pupils, she is at home watching television with her mother, dining with her, and, at night's end, sleeping with her - her room is not furnished with a mattress; she belongs to her mother.
Erika's stifling at her mother's hands and her sexual repression leads her to bizarre and sadomasochistic behavior. One of her repeated escapades are her outings to porno shops and into the private viewing booths. Nothing seems too odd besides the spectacle of a woman intruding in on a man's domain, where *men* do their business, until, in the middle of a viewing, Erika reaches into the garbage bin, pulls out a crumpled, soiled tissue and holds it up to her nose, indulging in the odor of the semen which is perhaps still moist in a sort of rapture - the sensory realm of sex overwhelms her in all of its immediacy.
Erika is only slightly bursting at the seams until she falls for one of her pupils, Walter Klemmer, and this relationship, which she resists to the best of her abilities, precipitates a total explosion of the carefully tended and composed persona she has maintained for years prior.
Erika doesn't know what she wants - she is at once master and masochist. She wants to be damaged and injured, but according only to her exact instructions, and her desires eventually leads to an absolute upheaval of her life as she knew it; an upheaval of Erika Kohut as she knew (or perhaps did not know) herself.