The loser

"mid-century austria. three aspiring concert pianists – wertheimer, glenn gould, and the narrator – have dedicated their lives to achieving the status of a virtuoso. but one day, two of them overhear gould playing bach’s goldberg variations, and his incomparable genius instantly destroys them both. they are forced to abandon their musical ambitions: wertheimer, over a tortured process of disintegration that sees him becoming obsessed with both writing and his own sister, with whom he has a quasi-incestuous relationship culminating in death; and the narrator, instantly, retreating into obscurity to write a book that he periodically destroys and restarts. written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, thomas bernhard’s dazzling meditation on failure, genius, and fame is a radical new reading experience: musical, paralysing, raging, and inimitable." --