Handke, Peter (Vol. 135) - Gitta Honegger (review date 1995)

Gitta Honegger (review date 1995)

SOURCE: “Language and Reality,” in Partisan Review, Vol. LXII, No. 2, 1995, pp. 314, 316, 318-20, 322, 324, 326.

[In the following review, Honegger analyzes Handke's literary and aesthetic preoccupations in The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling.]

Claude Lanzman, explaining his approach to filmmaking, quoted from an uncredited source: “When I have the answers, I write an essay, When I have the questions, I write a novel.” This in a nutshell sums up the problem with the English title given to three exquisite prose pieces by Peter Handke, presented in one volume as Essays about Story Telling: On Tiredness, The Jukebox, and The Successful Day.

In the original German editions, each piece appeared separately as a slim, handsome book, each entitled Versuch—a difficult term to capture in English without losing some of its resonances. Literally meaning...

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