Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Handke, Peter (Vol. 135) - Michael Hofmann (review date 24 May 1991)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

Michael Hofmann (review date 24 May 1991)

SOURCE: “A Superior Reality,” in Times Literary Supplement, May 24, 1991, p. 20.

[In the following review, Hofmann offers a positive assessment of Absence.]

Peter Handke's descriptions of reality are of two kinds: some are of superior accuracy, some describe a superior reality. After an initial struggle, Absence settles down as a book of the second type. In German, it was subtitled Ein Märchen. The English publisher’s blurb works out an ambitious platform for it as “a narrative scrutiny of the absence which lies at the heart of human identity and endeavour”, but to me it seems a book entirely without and against reason: it could have been any length, about any subject, under any title. Purely aleatory, it allows the author and reader the greatest possible freedom.

Handke brings together four protagonists—the epic trope from Homer to Westerns—and then takes them...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Michael Hays (essay date January 1981)
   2. June Schlueter (essay date January 1981)
   3. Bruce Cook (review date 26 August 1984)
   4. D. J. Enright (review date 14 August 1986)
   5. Linda C. DeMeritt (essay date 1987)
   6. Michael Linstead (essay date 1987)
   7. Gail Pool (review date 8 July 1988)
   8. Paul Oldfield (review date 5 August 1988)
   9. Ursula Hegi (review date 16 July 1989)
   10. Mark Kamine (review date 2-16 October 1989)
   11. John Leonard (review date 4 December 1989)
   12. John Updike (review date 25 December 1989)
   13. Erich Wolfgang Skwara (review date Winter 1990)
   14. Erich Wolfgang Skwara (review date Summer 1990)
   15. Ursula Hegi (review date 1 July 1990)
   16. Hugo Caviola (essay date Autumn 1990)
   17. Eva-Maria Metcalf (essay date Autumn 1990)
   18. Michael Hofmann (review date 24 May 1991)
   19. J. J. White (review date 4 October 1991)
   20. Erich Wolfgang Skwara (review date Autumn 1992)
   21. Gitta Honegger (essay date 1993)
   22. Thomas H. Falk (review date Summer 1993)
   23. Erich Wolfgang Skwara (review date Autumn 1993)
   24. Richard Arthur Firda (essay date 1993)
   25. Times Literary Supplement (review date 16 September 1994)
   26. Gitta Honegger (review date 1995)
   27. Erich Wolfgang Skwara (review date Summer 1995)
   28. Edward Timms (review date 26 April 1996)
   29. Theodore Ziolkowski (review date Winter 1997)
   30. Tom Sellar (review date 1997)
   31. David Rieff (review date 12 January 1997)
   32. Theodore Ziolkowski (review date Summer 1997)
   33. Erich Wolfgang Skwara (review date Winter 1998)
   34. Thomas McGonigle (review date 20 September 1998)
   35. William H. Gass (review date 29 November 1998)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright