The blog Short Term Memory Loss offers a substantial Books of the Year list. To my surprise, two Peter Handke novels are included - Across, one of my favourites (read the customer review for why), and Absence, which isn't. "I wanted to like them" says STML, "but they really got under my skin. There was something extraordinarily loveless about them - not just misanthropy, but a real self-hatred, and a kind of sexless passion." Well, one can't argue with impressions, but is this meant to be a warning or a recommendation?!
He goes on: "There’s also a terrible dichotomy of a writer who clearly hates modernity and its embodiment in America, but longs for wide-open spaces, grand vistas and a very American kind of freedom." Setting aside the half-rightness of that apparent clarity, presumably the brother in Repetition walking over the limestone escarpments of the Karst region of Slovenia and the woman crossing the Sierra de Gredos in the forthcoming novel are experiencing "a very American kind of freedom". If so, then US imperialism really knows no bounds. But there is more than one America.
He goes on: "There’s also a terrible dichotomy of a writer who clearly hates modernity and its embodiment in America, but longs for wide-open spaces, grand vistas and a very American kind of freedom." Setting aside the half-rightness of that apparent clarity, presumably the brother in Repetition walking over the limestone escarpments of the Karst region of Slovenia and the woman crossing the Sierra de Gredos in the forthcoming novel are experiencing "a very American kind of freedom". If so, then US imperialism really knows no bounds. But there is more than one America.
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Handke