418
PARTISAN REVIEW
verbalizing creates confusion . His imagined p ictu re of a noisy garbage
collecti on is contradicted by the picture of a departing bus and mil k
cans being loaded a block away. When this happens, Bl och is muddled;
like a detective story in its earl y stages of confusio n , the world does not
fit together. When his constructions cannot reach the depth of his
present reality, Bloch seeks out a simpl e provincial town (in fact on the
very border of the country) where he can be content with eas il y
controll ed surfaces.
T he predominance of surfaces may be the reason why H andke's
next novel,
Short L etter, L ong Farewell,
reads more conven tio nall y.
The narra tor is in a foreign land, America; moreover, he is on a journey
which moves him almost day by day from Providence to New York,
and from there to Philadelphi a, St. Loui s, Tucson , Cali forni a, and the
mountains of Oregon . H e lacks the time and knowledge to absorb more
than the surfaces of things . But the country itself seems to be formed o f
surfaces. " I had hardl y met anyone in Ameri ca," he says, "who was
immersed in anything. One look was eno ugh; then you turned to
something else. Anyone who stopped to look a little longer assumed
the pose of a connoisseur. The same with the vill ages, they were never
immersed in the landscape, they were always p lunked on top of it; they
stood out from their surroundin gs and seemed to have been put there
by accident. " As detached as possibl e, the narra tor lets the wor ld dance
past him, articul atin g it as it goes - "As if life were taking p lace on a
stage and there were no need for you to get mixed up with it. " It is the
same technique J oseph Bloch uses to control his rea lity in the little
Austrian border town where he hides from the poli ce. H andke's
America is even more the perfect land for this type of life.
How mayan analytical concern with language p rovide enough
action for a novel? T he drama is in part psychological: in
The Goa lie's
An xiety
we foll ow Bl och 's mind as it composes reality. As tha t reality
becomes probl ema ti c, Bl och reacts, a t one point vi olentl y. His ac–
quaintance with a movie cashi er leads to a set of linguisticall y
predictable conversa tions. Bloch is irrita ted beyond answering, since he
ass umes tha t she already knows wha t he has to say. "Was h e going to
work today? she wanted to know. Suddenl y he was cho king her."
Bloch 's hands take over the job of controlling the world when h is
words have fail ed. When he fail s to act a t all , he di sappears. "Gradu–
ally, when he said something now, he himself reappeared in wha t he
said ."
Words are the determining fac tor in Bloch 's life. As a dev ice, they
a re no more radi cal than the
donnee
of any detecti ve novel, d icta ting
