Comments on: Elfriede’s Blog

By: anaj

anaj — Sat, 05 May 2007 20:52:33 +0000

And I regret tremendously that, over the years, I’ve somehow lost my literary analysis vocabulary… I’d really like to be able to put my finger better on what is going on in that novel regardind the construction of the feminine death wish - does the film have the teenage self-mutilation plot line as well?

Benevens, heb je een goede vertaling van gezellig naar het Engels?

By: parodycenter

parodycenter — Sat, 05 May 2007 19:19:44 +0000

Well I haven’t read the book but I must because the film was tremendous. And it had to do something with affirming her ”death drive”, showing her as a heroine actually, precisely for being such a masochist. But I have to think about it some more before I can churn out a half-decent thesis. Gezellig he?

By: anaj

anaj — Fri, 04 May 2007 22:03:12 +0000

If you’re talking about the film: I haven’t seen it. The novel was my very first encounter with Elfriede (and I think that Lenina gave it to me, but that’s well 10 years ago, so I am not sure) and shocked an intrigued me at the same time. I didn’t like the recapitulation of the protagonist’s childhood (dunno whether that’s in the movie) because I’m tired of renditions of deviant sexuality that are tied to a biographic justification. Apart from that, it was the deviant depiction of female sexuality that hooked me - even though I couldn’t read the thing in one go. I often have to stop when I read novels or watch DVDs), and I think that’s when I think to have detected the author’s direction (rather than intention) - I hate the idea of fate (rather: rationalization according to a particular regime of thought), and often the intention/direction presents itself as some sort of fate, of which ever denomination. In the case of Die Klavierspielerin, it was female masochism - at the same time, certainly not as unbearable as Cabbage’s naturalist novels

Btw, I am watching Så som i himmelen http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382330/ right now and almost genuinely hate it because it’s so contrived that I have to stop every 10 minutes (and that with me being a choir singer). Never watch a ’sophisticated feel-good movie’.

By: parodycenter

parodycenter — Fri, 04 May 2007 21:43:12 +0000

what did you think about ”Le Pianiste”?

By: anaj

anaj — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:36:36 +0000

Yes, I (would like to) believe that it is exactly that: “part of that project of disorientation” and I didn’t assume that her publisher pushes her (btw: I always wonder how one ends up with such conclusions, certain assumptions about people that one doesn’t know and without which the whole celebrity system wouldn’t work) - I just hoped to catch a glimpse of the someone/thing behind the fictional persona. But alas, no one / nothing….

By: whetted

whetted — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:33:34 +0000

Jelinek is such an amazing writer and, as you said, it’s impossible to really say or defend one’s admiration for her. Her style is brutal, her subject matter is often the most terrifying things about ourselves and our world that we normally would never dare think about—let alone write about. I think that is why I so admire her: she creates these worlds that are necessary in order to get certain truths about our own world across, fictional worlds that (as you say) might very well resemble textual barriers, or even prisons, in which we get caged. I think the design of that is wonderful, forcing the reader into a relation—a stylistically inhibiting one at that—with that from which he or she would normally flee. She is a courageous writer, definitely worthy of that Nobel despite all the naysayers.

Perhaps the blog as fictional outlet or even fictional persona is part of that project of disorientation which she seems keen on representing fictionally. It’s certainly better to think of it in terms of that then in terms of potential pressure from her publisher not to take off that fictional mask of hers.