Nobels: 2004: Elfriede Jelinek

Elfriede Jelinek was awarded the prize in 2004. She was virtually unknown in Britain at the time, and because she has the nerve (da noive!) to be Austrian and to write in German, a thick, pun-ridden, allusive German, there clearly must have been some mistake.

Her work is dense and modernist, with an elusive narrative thread and shifting points of view, but is centered on two themes: the willful amnesia of Austrian society about its part in twentieth century history, and the tendency of men to dominate women, both linguistically and physically. There's a long and detailed survey of her work by Nicholas Spice at the other side of this link.

My own German isn't good enough to read this book in the original, but from the preview of the ebook on the German Amazon site, I can see how playful and difficult it is. The translation by Joachim Neugroschel is fittingly roughcast: it doesn't have the "smoothness" that's so often praised by monolingual reviewers. A smoother translator would never have dared to use the phrase "Little shop of whorers" (p 48) to describe a peepshow, for example but as far as I can tell it's exactly the kind of almost-clever, almost-trite pun Jelinek loves.

Once again, though, I'm puzzled by the translation of the title. In German it's "Die Klavierspielerin" which simply means "The (female) Piano Player". You can make a case that Piano Teacher is a better title (in that it foregrounds the pupil/teacher relationship that's a vital part of the plot), but Jelinek could have called the book "Die Klavierlehrerin" and didn't. Why would a translator try to improve on what the author decided?

Anyway, the book itself is one of those where I feel like an alien visitor to the planet, watching people behave in ways that I will never understand. I think that's my problem, and that other people will find it easier to relate to what goes on. It's the same bewilderment I get from knowing that some people like the books of Michel Houellebecq: I'm sure they do, but I really can't see why. Actually, this is the kind of book he would write if only he had any talent for writing or for understanding people. Largely (I think) an exploration of the writer's own obsessions, but at least Jelinek gives her characters some depth and her writing is always quirky and intriguing.

Apparently this is her least challenging book so I don't think I'll read any others.

Elfriede Jelinek, trans Joachim Neugroschel: The Piano Teacher Serpent's Tail 1988