In a piece for Gazebo’s ‘Author Talks’ podcast, Catherine Rey (pictured above) reflects on the work of Elfriede Jelinek, the Nobel Prize-winning author of On the Royal Road. (Photo by Danielle Oxton)
Elfriede Jelinek is known as a writer who works in response to contemporary crises and cultural phenomena. Perhaps none of her works display that quality as clearly as her latest book, On the Royal Road, which brings into focus the phenomenon of right-wing populism.
French-Australian author Catherine Rey shared her reflections on the work of the Austrian novelist in a piece for Gazebo’s ‘Author Talks’ podcast.
“The text of Elfriede Jelinek, On the Royal Road, was written in 2016 in reaction to the election of Donald Trump. And if you have never heard about Jelinek, even though she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004, you will certainly be in for a surprise…”
Catherine Rey on Gazebo’s ‘Author Talks’ podcast
Catherine says: “I discovered [Jelinek’s] work when her novel Lust was translated into French in 1991. She had already published The Piano Teacher, a novel later turned into a movie. And while reading Lust, I remember thinking that I had never seen something like it. I was speechless, blown away not so much by the violence and the pornography of the text, as critics spitefully noticed at the time, but by the freedom.
“I couldn’t believe that a woman writer could be so bold, so fearless, so unconcerned by the moral taboos strapping society and literature.”
Fast forward to 2016 and just three weeks after Donald Trump was elected, Jelinek mailed her German editor the first draft of On the Royal Road, which turned out to be a stunningly prescient response to Trump and what he represents.
“Jelinek was able to write in 2016 what would happen over the four following years,” says Catherine, “clearly foreseeing the devastating effect of the Trump administration, and drawing a parallel with the rise to power of Hitler, which she understood through her own family history, witness as she has been of the harmful consequences of the Nazi regime in Austria.”
Carefully perched somewhere between tragedy and comedy, the text has been staged by directors in Germany, France, the US and Australia, but it is not a play.
“Jelinek’s work is a long monologue uttered by a blind seer with bleeding eyes. The seer is Miss Piggy, one of the characters of The Muppet Show.
“Her unruly flow of speech might be disconcerting but reading Jelinek, and especially On the Royal Road, was for me more than reading: because stepping into Jelinek’s world is entering a vortex of words that pulls you to the next paragraph and constantly draws you forward. The author explains that when she writes, she is in a ‘state of stimulating trance, between wake and sleep’. And anyone who reads her work will experience the same trance.
“Reading Jelinek will also make you ponder about the future. We know what happened: Trump is gone, Joe Biden has been elected. Still, is it the end? Should we turn the page and think: Let’s forget. Never again. Is someone like Donald Trump has a chance to be elected in any modern democracy? Yes, in every democracy, there is a Trump in hiding. It happened in the past and it will happen again.”
Listen to the full episode with Catherine Rey below.
