Paris Blues

Though Peter Handke, the young, widely acclaimed Austrian playwright and novelist, writes very short novels, they are not to be read quickly. Indeed, if one zips through The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick and Short Letter, Long Farewell, one may just conclude that they are not novels at all but, rather, unfinished, unrefined products, mere sketches and reflections for possible books. Even the careful, conscientious reader may not always be convinced that they work as novels, noting their failure at times to develop either dramatically or thematically. But such a reader is always aware of Handke’s talent: his wonderful eye, which focuses on the absurd details of everyday life, and his ability to take apart the world and put it back together again after having revealed its mystery and menace.

Though the novels are brief, they are quite ambitious and more complex and dense than they may appear to be at first. The Goalie’s Anxiety, which can be read simply as an account of an inarticulate man’s increasing alienation and mental disintegration, demonstrates the disparity that exists between the private, inner self and the self that is projected to the world by means of the spoken word. Short Letter, Long Farewell (in which Handke draws upon his experiences in America) can be looked on as a travel journal of a vaguely depressed foreigner who has recently separated from his wife. But examined more closely, it is an account, among other things, of a man trying to impose some order on his life and on a world he sees as fragmented and strange. To succeed fully, both novels require a certain “creative” effort on the part of the reader. It is necessary for him to work with the author. In a sense, the challenge adds to the books’ appeal—intellectual appeal, I should say—for the serious reader must constantly reflect and interpret. The meanings, messages, what have you, are not simply laid out before him.

RF

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Ronald De Feo

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Though Peter Handke, the young, widely acclaimed Austrian playwright and novelist, writes very short novels, they are not to be read quickly. Indeed, if one zips through The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick and Short Letter, Long Farewell, one may just conclude that they are not novels at all but, rather, unfinished, unrefined products, mere sketches and reflections for possible books. Even the careful, conscientious reader may not always be convinced that they work as novels, noting their failure at times to develop either dramatically or thematically. But such a reader is always aware of Handke’s talent: his wonderful eye, which focuses on the absurd details of everyday life, and his ability to take apart the world and put it back together again after having revealed its mystery and menace.

Though the novels are brief, they are quite ambitious and more complex and dense than they may appear to be at first. The Goalie’s Anxiety, which can be read simply as an account of an inarticulate man’s increasing alienation and mental disintegration, demonstrates the disparity that exists between the private, inner self and the self that is projected to the world by means of the spoken word. Short Letter, Long Farewell (in which Handke draws upon his experiences in America) can be looked on as a travel journal of a vaguely depressed foreigner who has recently separated from his wife. But examined more closely, it is an account, among other things, of a man trying to impose some order on his life and on a world he sees as fragmented and strange. To succeed fully, both novels require a certain “creative” effort on the part of the reader. It is necessary for him to work with the author. In a sense, the challenge adds to the books’ appeal—intellectual appeal, I should say—for the serious reader must constantly reflect and interpret. The meanings, messages, what have you, are not simply laid out before him.