The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick marks a pivotal point in Peter Handke’s literary career, emerging as his first commercially successful novel. Prior to this, Handke had ventured into the realm of experimental narratives with his initial works, Die Hornissen and Der Hausierer, which were largely inaccessible to a broader audience. With this third novel, Handke introduces Joseph Bloch, a character whose experiences foreground the author’s preoccupation with language and perception—a recurring motif in Handke’s earlier plays like Publikumsbeschimpfung and Kaspar. These works collectively affirm Handke's standing as a formidable postmodernist writer keen on unraveling the intricate processes through which meaning is constructed.

The themes of autobiography and existentialism that later become central to Handke's oeuvre are subtly interwoven into The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, though not yet fully developed. In the milieu of the 1960s, a period marked by a demand for literature that was socially concrete and politically charged, Handke’s focus on abstract concerns like language theory and psychology drew its share of critique. However, the novel's exploration of isolation, alienation, and the idea of art as a means of transcendence places Handke in the esteemed tradition of modern existential fiction. He finds himself among the ranks of literary giants such as Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Thomas Bernhard.

In The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Handke deftly balances the abstract with the tangible, crafting a narrative that challenges the conventional expectations of literature prevalent in his time. This novel not only marks Handke’s emergence into the commercial literary landscape but also showcases his commitment to exploring the philosophical underpinnings of human existence through innovative narrative forms.