Book Reviews - Review 280

(Qualifier: ages since I read this.)

I can't even remember if I finished this novel. I think I did. An Austrian man travels through America. I don't think there's much of a story - something to do with finding his wife? I don't know. Having chosen postmodernism as his style, Handke can throw what he likes into his novels without having to justify it narratively or in terms of realism. It gives him the advantage that he can insert poetic perceptions into his novels as they occur to him, and there are enough of these in Der kurze Brief... to make it superior to the mostly vapid Die linkshändige Frau. But Handke refuses to accept his talent as a poetic writer, insisting on being a philosophical one, which he isn't. His writing, at its (rare) best, has an ecstatic, visionary quality that reminds me a little of John Ruskin. But he is too undisciplined - or perhaps too lacking in self-awareness? - to play to his strengths.