Books like The Double Bass

This is a dramatic monologue which introduced me to some great music. I read most of this while listening to Brahm's Symphony No.2 which is the first piece of music that the protagonist, a double bass player, is listening to before he sits down to drink beer and talk about his life. Patrick Süskind really nails the tone of voice here. I had a very clear image in my head of a mid-30s lonely musician who starts off arrogantly praising his instrument to downright hating it in a couple of pages. The more he talks, the more his bravado distanced attitude gives way to a desperation, centered around the fact that he can't find life's fulfillment in music, since he doesn't believe himself to be a good enough musician and he plays an instrument of lesser significance (although he keeps pointing out music that DOES use the double bass effectively. Or as he put it: Do you think Franz Schubert would begin his Symphony No.8 with an instrument that can't be played beautifully? What kind of man do you think Schubert is? ). He also has a desperate crush on a soprano singer named Sarah and keeps going down rabbit holes with her, as to why in god's name she would eat at expensive restaurants with much older men, when all the while he is the one who loves her? What is she thinking?Although this is really short, there's a lot to unpack. I loved the humor as well. My favorite part is a weird digression in which the protagonist psychoanalyses his instrument and musicians in general in an over-the-top manner, just to claim a page later, that psychoanalysis is over, of course, because its truths have become common knowledge. There are no insights left to be had. Ha! I would have liked to spend more time with this character - can we please get a sequel, in which the double bass player gossips a bit more about terrible men like Wagner, who would not have written Tristan (allegedly) if he'd gone to therapy? Or in which we get to know if Sarah finally noticed him and if that might've changed his pseudo-intellectual views on women in music? Die Frau spielt ja in der Musik eine untergeordnete Rolle. In der schöpferischen Musikgestaltung, meine ich, in der Komposition. Oder kennen sie eine namenhafte Komponistin? Eine einzige? Sehen Sie! Haben Sie darüber schon einmal nachgedacht? Darüber sollten sie einmal nachdenken. Über das Weibliche in der Musik schlechthin, vielleicht. Jetzt ist ja der Kontrabaß ein weibliches Instrument. Trotz seinem grammatikalischen Geschlecht ein weibliches Instrument - aber ein todernstes. Wie ja auch der Tod - jetzt assoziativer Gefühlswert - weiblich ist in seiner bergenden Grausamkeit oder - wie man will - seiner unausweichlichen Schoßfunktion; zum anderen auch als das Komplementäre zum Lebensprinzip, Furchtbarkeit, Mutter Erde, und so weiter, hab ich recht? Und in dieser Funktion - jetzt wieder musikalisch zu reden - bekämpft der Kontrabaß als Todessymbol das absolute Nichts, in das Musik und Leben gleichermaßen zu versinken drohen.