Wonderful, Wonderful Times

Wonderful,Wonderful Times is the ironic title for a nasty, engrossing story of four young people in post-war Vienna. The author spares no mercy in skewering their character, their dreams, their hopes on her didactic pen. So much venom. These are characters you will love to despise and which the author delights in showing in the worst possible light and is creative enough to make it almost poetic--if you see the beauty in psychic wounds which bleed hatred. The plot is a series of encounters in which the young people--some parents and others are preipheral characters--meet and talk with the purpose of committing the perfect crime: unmotivationless, calculated. How that comes about caught me by surprise, like a blow to the solar plexus. Read it and weep--not for them but for mankind.

In a time when our own children are shooting their classmates to relieve their sense of isolation, this book is a must. By a Nobel Prize winner, it is a study of youth's disaffection and how it is created by that youthful tendency toward idealism - idealism that is often simply idealism against society instead of for something - and class differences. Although it takes place in a particularly drifting and disrupted time and place, those years after the second world war in Europe, it seems pretty topical. The events of this book not only can happen, they do happen. For writer's this book is fascinating as well. It is written in an almost anti-modern third person. One that is fully omniscient and dryly reportorial. And yet, that distance is the what allows us to fully understand the inner and outer lives of the characters. It's brilliant.

I only became aware and interested in Jelinek after her Nobel win, because to be honest I'd never heard about her beforehand (not many in the U.S. have.) After surviving the black elegance of The Piano Teacher I decided to read this one next, intrigued by the setup and interested in how she would present this material. Overall, it serves as a brutal companion piece to The Piano Teacher; whereas the former is about the morbidity within the instructor, this one explores the sick tendencies inherent in the pupils. The four teenagers who steal, lie, beat, and (in one case) murder are all metaphors for Jelinek's portrait of modern-day Austria as a wasteland full of twisted secrets and a general disreguard for life. One wouldn't think it'd be worthwhile to spend free time exploring such subject matter, but Jelinek's storytelling abilities are so confident enough, her prose so determined enough, and her ability to make sadism blase strong enough, that you leave the novel wondering where the sharp kick in the guts came from. Each of the kids embodies a specific trait that contributes to the gloom following everyone around, and in time all the lust, violence, revenge, and anger permeating the text culminates in a grotesque act repellant in any other book, but in Jelinek's world seems quite fitting. This book is for anyone interested in dense literature unflattering to the human condition. While unsettling, it is also very necessary.

Also, if you are interested in the lives of atypical teenagers. THere were parts of this book that were too, too violent. The style is very intense, objectified, and the author keeps her distance from the grotesque actions and words of her subjects. If you were riveted by A Clockwork Orange, you will like this book.