In my book there is a boy named Donald Zinkoff that is in school and he is different compared to other students Zinkoff is not like the other kids raising his hand with all the wrong answers, tripping over his own feet, falling down with laughter . For there’s nothing more terrible than to see a person so magnificent that his magnificence destroys us and we must observe this process and put up with it and finally and ultimately also accept it, whereas we actually don’t believe such a process is happening, far from it, until it becomes an irrefutable fact, I thought, when it’s too late. But then Darren Darrenofski joined the school and he's been making Barry's life a misery about it ever since. Greg's idea of a perfect summer holiday is to sit indoors and play computer games but for some reason his Mum thinks fresh air and 'family togetherness' are a much better plan. He could have been pulled from a car wreck by a fellow Austrian, only to turn to the hero in question and with resentment become oppressive.

On page 217, his classmate Bonce thinks "… [this kid] doesn't know that…he's only going to be ignored. The novel is fueled by a peculiar intensity, and his unique prose style infused with a venomous extreme bitterness is something that simply seeps into one's consciousness with no intention of leaving any time soon. In theory we understand people, but in practice, we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. Zinkoff is not like the other kids -- raising his hand with all the wrong answers, tripping over his own feet, falling down with laughter over a word like "Jabip. It's a book that's going to be enjoyed by boys in the six-to-eight age range and it could well be the encouragement that the reluctant reader needs to get them going.

But rather Why is it going on and why am I reading this and why oh why Bernhard wrote something of this sorts? Lo ideal sería que yo fuera el Steinway, que no necesitara a Glenn Gould, decía, que pudiera, al ser el Steinway, hacer a Glenn Gould totalmente superfluo. Aunque Bernhard utiliza la repetición de expresiones de un modo rítmico en todas sus obras, en El malogrado este recurso cobra una dimensión especial; en cierto sentido está haciendo con la escritura lo mismo que hizo Bach con la música en las Variaciones Goldberg: toma un tema sencillo y lo repite una y otra vez cambiando algo en cada ocasión. Sin ninguna estructura que guíe al lector, continuamente se abren paso distintas voces (Wertheimer, Gould), que se superponen a la del narrador, intercalándose entre sus propias reflexiones.

The musical genius of Glenn Gould, the pinnacle of art, is what serves as the reference defining all three of their lives. What is special about Donald's behavior as a winner, and how does it challenge the idea that winning is best?Had that not been the case, sooner or later, the basic necessities of life would have pulled their attention away and forced them to do something with their lives and perhaps lead a life of being good enough, but not the best.