JEROME KLiNKOWITZ
417
Wor ld
(1969). According to Robert Pynsent, in Raymond Federman 's
Surfietion ,
the second volume employs the "semantic, syntactic, or–
thographi cal and emoti onal aspects of language. Micrositua tions are
represented by sen tences, words, sounds, or letters of the alphabet; and
macrosituati ons by the bl urred pho tographi c and newsprint coll ages
inserted between the texts." H andke's story "Three Readings of the
Law, " says Pynsent , is written as a register analys is: " the first reading
con sists of a list of naked words, slogans- and the audience claps after
each one; the second is an obj ecti ve exp lana tion of wha t the slogan
mea ns in p la in language-the audience grows uneasy and a t the end
boos and hi sses; the thi rd is a list of slogans with an expl ana tion of
their meanings hi dden behind offi cialese and earns storms of applause
from the audience."
T he Goa lie's Anxiety at the Penalt y Kiek
(1970),
Short L etter,
L ong Farewe ll
(1972), and
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
(1972) have been
tra nsla ted into English and pu blished in 1972, 1974, and 1975 respec–
ti ve ly. All are fi rml y rooted in the process of detection : the first
encompasses an actual murder and £li ght from app rehension , while the
second fin ds a narrator being stalked by hi s es tranged wife. All the
whil e question s of language and reality come up; indeed, they are the
heart of each story. Onl y in the third,
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams,
does
Handke seem to take the world for granted . But here he embarks on a
deep-reaching analysis of hi s mother's sui cide, and by the end, his
examination of her worl d has p roved to be as thorough as the boy's in
T he H ornets.
In Handke's fi cti on , nothing may be ta ken for granted.
T he range of langu age, all the way to sil ence, is demonstra ted in
the fi rst scene of
Th e Goalie's Anxiety.
"When Joseph Bloch , a
con structi on wor ker who had once been a well-known soccer goalie,
reported for wor k tha t morning, he was told tha t he was fired . At leas t
that was how he interpreted the fact tha t no one except the foreman
looked up from hi s coffee break when he appeared a t the door of the
construction shack." We never know if Bloch 's interpreta tion of the
foreman 's sign is correct; the fact that he has difficulty coll ecting back
pay h ints that he may be wrong. But the larger world tha t Bloch lives
in demands tha t he energize it with his own words-reality is created by
those words, and when they are absent, every thing ceases to exist. Earl y
in the narra ti ve he is overcome by an inability to vi sualize anything:
"H e had barely closed hi s eyes again when the £l owers and the tea kettle
were unimaginabl e. He resorted to thinking up sentences about the
things instead of words for them, in the beli ef that a story made up of
such sentences would help him visualize things." At times, though , his
