The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (Masterplots II: World Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Peter Handke
- First Published: 1970
- Type of Work: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: The late 1960’s
- Setting: Vienna and a small Austrian village bordering on Yugoslavia
- Principal Characters: Joseph Bloch, Gerda
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: 1960’s, Perception, Murder or homicide, Mental illness, Austria or Austrians, Semiotics, Soccer
- Locales: Vienna, Austria
The Novel
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick presents, on one level, a psychological case study of a man undergoing an apparent schizophrenic break-down. The novel, which is written in the third person, follows the former soccer goalie turned construction worker, Joseph Bloch, as he wanders around the city of Vienna, commits a senseless murder of a cashier, and finally flees to a small Austrian border village. The plot is minimal, and the narrative focuses primarily on the character’s disturbed perceptions of his surroundings.
The novel begins as...
[The entire page is 1669 words long]
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