BOOKS
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In using elements of, and commenting on various literary languages (the
existentialist canon, the American crime novel, the
Btldungsroman, etc.),
Handke implicitly asks: in what sense can one incorporate past conventions.
His answer: only in fragments, lavishly decked with irony; judge past works
fiercely, but take from them what wisdom is to be had . Handke 's matter-of–
fact , bare-boned prose prevents him from weaving all of his sources together
into an intricate tapestry (as does, for example, Nabokov). Handke simply
places heterogeneous elements side by side: acute observations about child–
hood and improbable happenings (like those involving acid in faucets, hired
thugs , and letter bombs) ; terroristic dream sequences and essaylike passages
on the movies and marriage ; richly drawn characters (the academic woman)
and ciphers (the wife) ; realistically observed details and extreme dramatic
stylization; excruciating seriousness and flippant comic touches. The results,
as might be expected, are very uneven . While many of the book's passages are
beautifully sustained , others (like the final confrontation between the narra–
tor and his wife), while they follow thematically, are dramatically awkward
and peculiarly unfelt.
Some
of the motifs, like the ones from John Ford's
movies , become obtrusive , even silly (particularly at the book's end, when
Ford himself makes a
guest
star appearance). At times Handke
seems
to fall
into the thrall of the pop iconography he debunks ; instead of using it, he
becomes its victim.
Deeply
flawed,
Short Letter, Long Farewell
is nevertheless powerful and
ambitious. Even as the book falters aesthetically , one admires its intellectual
rigor and its complex meditations on language . Here as elsewhere Handke
redefines the unexamined life as , precisely, the unexamined
use
of language.
His hard-edged sensibility, sharply attuned to the contemporary scene , serves
a rather old-fashioned and honorable activity : forging an ethics , presenting a
model of conduct.
Short Letter, Long Farewell
also contains the most interesting encounter
between a European writer and the United States since Michel Butor's bril–
liantMobtie .
Handke's accounts of America's daily rituals and its tableaulike
vision of history are precise and witty and full of evocative metaphors. One
example : There is a deep yellow light found only in America, a painter
ex–
plains to the protagonist, which
comes
not from the sun or sky but from the
ground itself. The color first entered art in nineteenth-century paintings by
Catlin and Remington. Today one finds this indigenous yellow in the plastic
arches of MacDonald's restaurants and the neon arrows of Holiday Inns .
STEVEN SIMMONS
