Die Klavierspielerin/The Piano Teacher

I've been working on my book for my final paper, Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek (commonly translated as "The Piano Teacher", though it actually means "the female piano player"--I guess that piano teacher has a better ring to it) and I have got to say, this is the most screwed-up piece of fiction I have ever read in my life.

This book has it all--incest, pedophilia, unhealthy power dynamics, just about every fetish I can think of short of furries and diapers, violence, and some creative uses for pretty floral dresses. The narrator and the characters loathe and envy men with surprising violence and they act out their misplaced aggression through extremly controlling tendencies, painful, public sex acts, and random acts of violence on public transportation. This is both the most compelling and the most discomfiting work I have ever read. I keep getting caught up in what's happening and reading out of curiosity and without thinking analytically, so I've resigned myself to rereading it later. Right now I'm too shocked to think clearly.

I had expected strong, oversexualized power-play--I was even expecting incestuous overtones between the mother and her daughter--but it wasn't until the main character "accidentally" kissed her cousin's genitals in the middle of the neighborhood picnic shortly after a lengthy description of three generations of dusty steel vaginas that I realized just how overt and excessive this book is. I understand now why some critics called it "whining, unenjoyable public pornography," though I think it's more than that. Regardless, I am enjoying this book, as uncomfortable and intimidating as it is.