I have read about five books of Jelinek thus far. I actually agree with what you guys have said about how grim and serious her works are. But you guys have to appreciate her formal experimentalism. Among the female Nobel Laureates, I would say she's the most experimental, especially in her theatrical pieces. Her plays makes use of fairytales, Greek Choruses (voices and counter voices), mass psychology and other stuff. I don't really have a problem with writers writing grim or pessimistic stories (Beckett and Cela did and I loved them), but when your work slip towards pornography or controversial scenes just to say that society's decaying, kind of keeps me off from her at times. As for recommendations, I think one should start with Piano Teacher. However, my favourite piece from Jelinek is her masterful drama Sports Play, which I read last month. It explores mass psychology and how violence emerges through sports, with references to Canetti and other philosophers. It's based on a true story about how the civil war in Yugoslavia in 1991 began during a football match. It's not a usual play, sometimes the character, partly inspired by Jelinek, usually speaks of how the play would be directed in the play. Let me provide an illustration using myself:
Ben
I want the director to cast the player this way: the fan can wear a red jersey, he might be married or not, he might be 30 or younger, but he must be tall, at least six feet and dark skinned. He might attend the match alone or with his friend.
Despite the literary community, and some Academy Members attacking the choice of Jelinek, some citing her works as too pornographic and lacking morals, some even saying Oates is deserving choice, but Engdahl defended her choice when he said something like "when some writers want to become transgressive, they do it to the point of been too artificial and fake." And honestly, if Oates has been more consistent in her vision, which's something Jelinek definitely has, she could have been a whole better choice.
