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'The Loser' is the narrator's single-paragraph monologue recounting the history of the frienship of three pianists. All of them take their (future) profession too seriously; all of them are extremely ambitious to the extent of being obsessed with perfection, success and fame. Unfortunatelly, the three are not equally talented and not at all mature and this is where the problems start. This all-or-nothing attitude forces them to become prisoners of their obsessions making them unable to live and enjoy and appreciate life which leads to self-destruction.
Certainly, the novel is an exaggeration, a caricatural depiction of the life in music, but I think that this story of the high hopes and the inevitable failure (to live, to be yourself) the author wants to ask 'What is the true meaning of life?' This makes "the Loser' a philosophical novel.

'I barricaded myself and stared out the window, without seeing anything but my own unhappiness.'
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'Again and again we try to escape ourselves, but we fail in our efforts, constantly run our heads into the wall because we don't want to recognize that we can't escape ourselves, except in death.'
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'But simple people don’t understand complicated ones and thrust the latter back on themselves, more ruthlessly than any others, I thought. The biggest mistake is to think that one can be rescued by so-called simple people. A person goes to them in an extremely needy condition and begs desperately to be rescued and they thrust this person even more deeply into his own despair. And how are they supposed to save the extravagant one in his extravagance, I thought.'
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'Our libraries are so to speak prisons where we've locked up our intellectual giants, naturally Kant has been put in solitary confinement, like Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, like Pascal, like Voltaire, like Montaigne, all the real giants have been put in solitary confinement, all the others in mass confinement, but everyone for ever and ever, my friend, for all time and unto eternity, that's the truth.'
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'Whoever can't laugh doesn't deserve to be taken seriously...'