{"product_id":"9780571349975-retail-the-loser","title":"The Loser","description":"'When indefatigable obsession looms large as it does in Thomas Bernhard (and his revered precursor Kafka) the result for the reader is a strange exhilaration and the thrall at being admitted into the mind of a maddened, magical genius.' - Edna O'Brien 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, Bernhard's dazzling meditation on failure, genius, and fame is a radical new reading experience: musical, paralysing, raging, and inimitable.","brand":"Book Grocer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50859508498651,"sku":"9780571349975-RETAIL","price":23.79,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/56e7c83f-c469-4720-b783-e5b895e32a12.jpg?v=1792490423","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9780571349975-retail-the-loser","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}