"Der Untergeher" by Thomas Bernhard is the first book I've read in German. I discovered it in an English translation while browsing at a bookstore in New York, two days before leaving for Vienna. I had never heard of Bernhard but was attracted to the cover photo of Glenn Gould playing the piano, though at the time I didn't know that was him. In English, the book was called, "The Loser," which appealed to me. It was translated by a professor who once taught the friend I happened to be with at the bookstore. That fact alone was enough for me to buy it but not, apparently, to take it with me. Later in Berlin, when my German was improving, I emailed the professor to ask him for the original title and author's name. Then I found it and read it. It's about a philosopher who gave up playing the piano after once hearing Glenn Gould practicing the Goldberg Variations at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, knowing he would never be able to play as well as what he heard, but whose friend went on playing despite the same knowledge and ended up hanging himself.
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