HANDKE'S "Nacht Buch"

Lothar Struck has a nice review of Handke's "Nachtbuch" at the first rate German blog combine I suppose one could call this enterprise of first rate reviews.

http://www.glanzundelend.de/Artikel/abc/h/peter_handke.htm

I have only read the 50 or so one liners from this strange experiment in putting a quick dip stick into you dreams for one year but not writing down the whole dream or the for...ever ongoing dialogue in the semi-conscious halflight state, and found these excerpts overwhelmingly underwhelming and an act of sheer grandiosity to put them out in a book, from Lothar's piece it appears that 1 out of fifty dipping come up with some oil

http://www.glanzundelend.de/Artikel/abc/h/peter_handke.htm

Handke has been thinking of himself as Goethe re-incarnate for near on
20 years now, and certain of his works, DON JUAN, THE ABSENCE, MY YEAR IN THE NO-MAN’S-BAY, SIERRA DEL GREDOS, KALI, THE CUCKOOS OF VELICA HOCA, the plays THE HOUR WE KNEW NOTHING OF EACH
OTHER, THE ART OF ASKING, THE PLAY ABOUT THE FILM ABOUT THE WAR would justify such a self-ranking, if one needs to do that to re-assure the BIG SELF, which at other times can feel as low as at the ending of AFTERNOON OF A WRITER. However, as the newest “Dichterfuerst” we seem to think that every time we clear our throat or our nose [“er sich die Nase rotzt”] it is also at least gold dust if notnuggets.

 I am just completing a big round up “Easing
out of, Winding down theHandke Project……after an 25 year involvement coming on the heels of having translated all the early plays and poems"…and
am dedicating this Swan Song to Karl Heinz Braun, Marie Colbin and to myself,
and perhaps also to Klaus Peymann; I thought I could do it in 5 k words, but I
am at 15 and so it will be 20 k I suppose.

After all, Handke is also Goethe-like in having “two souls swaying in his chest” – that is, a person who is not only a hyper-grandiose genius, but split; and I have a bunch of good guesses as its over-determination. Here is someone who will display himself and play mourner to the hilt at the Milosevic funeral, etc etc., but not appear as a witness forthe defense; here is someone who will beat up women, nearly to death, most notoriously Marie Colbin, who best as I know has my man as a man down pat, and then in MORAVIAN NIGHT lie horrendously   about it, but in certain works WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES and DON JUAN, if you know how to read them, acknowledge all his sides, here is someone who
might rape a friend's g.f. and think he still has a friend, here is someone who
says “as soon as I am caught at something I will lie like the dickens” and at that moment speak the truth, a layabroad as I used to be too when all the broads
wanted to get laid, but who can’t handle it when the wives runaway from the
Icecold Salamander, here is someone who might a spend a threesome with two
whores and then write: "An den Morgen
aufgewacht von dem morgenhellen Himmel
über den noch dunklen Dächern
treibt aus den den Kaminen schon langsamer Rauch
Die Vögel: sine fine dicentes
Und all Liebe leben"

In other words, here is someone one of whose sides could easily make you puke, because we are back in the idyll of the hypocrisy of olde and fine reviewers like Lothar Struck bends over backwards for him. Not on my watch, a bit too Protestant after all, I defend his work against basically a US non-reception understanding, and have immense pleasure in writing at great length about some of it on the various Handke blogs http://handke-magazin.blogspot.com/2010/06/handke-magazine-is-over-arching-site.html

But I pull no punches and will go out with bang!