Volume 54, Number 12 · July 19, 2007
How To Read Elfriede Jelinek
By Tim Parks
Greed
by Elfriede Jelinek, translated from the German by Martin Chalmers
Seven Stories, 330 pp., $24.95
OTHER BOOKS BY ELFRIEDE JELINEK DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE
Women as Lovers
by Elfriede Jelinek, translated from the German by Martin Chalmers
Serpent's Tail, 192 pp., $14.99 (paper)
Wonderful, Wonderful Times
by Elfriede Jelinek, translated from the German by Michel Hulse
Serpent's Tail, 176 pp., $14.99 (paper)
The Piano Teacher
by Elfriede Jelinek, translated from the German by Joachim Neugroschel
Serpent's Tail, 280 pp., $14.99 (paper)
Lust
by Elfriede Jelinek, translated from the German by Michael Hulse
Serpent's Tail, 207 pp., $14.99 (paper)
In her avowedly autobiographical novel The Piano Teacher, the Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek has her alter ego Erika Kohut engage in a variety of voyeuristic activities. She pays to sit in a booth at a peep show, smells a tissue into which the man before her has masturbated, and watches attentively as the girls on display feign sexual pleasure. On another occasion she takes greater risks spying on a couple having sex in a car and then on a 'Turklike' 'man emitting foreign yelps [as he] screws his way into a woman' in the park at night. The descriptions are lengthy.
Review, 5025 words
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