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JEROME KLiNKOWITZ
perfect index:
The waitress went behind the bar. Bloch put his hands on the
table. The waitress bent down and opened the bOllle. Bloch pushed
the ashtray as ide. The waitress took a cardboard coaster from another
table as she passed it. Bloch pushed his chair back. The waitress LOok
the glass, which had been slipped over the bOllle, off the bOllle, set
the coas ter on the table, put the glass on the coaster, tipped the beer
into the g lass, put the bOllle on the ta bl e, and went away.
It
was
starting up aga in . Bloch did not know what to do any more.
421
The las t two sentences, of course, are just the qualification that keeps
Handke's fi cti o n from being an imita tion of the French New Novel.
The writer's craft is not formed by the phenomenological code; rather
the protagonist's life is bein g acted out within and against it. The
tension between tha t code and the reader's larger perceptIon creates the
life o f H a ndke's fi ction .
The narra tor/ protagonist in
Short L etter, Long Farewe ll
bears
severa l points of resemblance to Peter H andke himself. Their ages are
the same; both are Viennese; and each is an active playwright. When
the n arra tor discusses hi s drama tist's craft , he makes an interes ting
remark on the method of Handke's fi ction . "It's hard for me," he says,
" to
write roles. When I characterize somebody, it seems to me that I'm
degrading him. Everything tha t's individual about him becomes a tic. I
fee l that I can 't be as fa ir to o ther people as I am to myself. When I
make somebody talk on the stage, he clams up on me after the first few
sentences; I've red uced him to a concept. I think maybe I'd do better to
write stori es." The problem, we learn , is tha t the author is dea ling with
people who formul a te concepts to the point tha t they won't have to
deal with them anymore. "They have words for everything. And then ,
because there aren 't really any words for what they're trying to say,
what they say is usuall y an invita tion to laugh, a joke, even if they
haven 't formul a ted it with this in mind. That's how it is in my play. As
soon as somebody says something, if only with a gesture, the character
is reduced to a concep t and I can 't do anything more with him. " The
narrator specul a tes about introduci n g a new fun ctionary to interpret
the scen e for authors-in simpler terms, the omniscient voice of fiction.
Ha ndke's confess ional prose work grants this voice full control.
The seriousness of its subj ect demands it: subtitl ed "A Life Story,"
A
Sorrow Beyond Dreams
is an analysis of the suicide of the writer's
mother. There is no ma tter for detection , no suspense in the narra tive,
other than an unders tanding of thi s terminal event. " In the village of
