The Loser

Thomas Bernhard · 1983 CE · Novel · German · Contemporary

Three young pianists meet at the Salzburg Mozarteum in 1953, and two of them hear the third — Glenn Gould — play the Goldberg Variations through a practice-room door. Both give up the instrument on the spot: one for an essay on Gould that he writes and destroys for decades, the other for a life whose name Gould had already supplied when he called him the loser. The whole thing is delivered standing in the doorway of a country inn.

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