Friday, April 30, 2010

BRIEF AN KLAUS KASTBERGER A PRO PO "FREIHEIT DES SCHREIBENS / ZCOLNAY VERLAG

Zwei höfliche an Sie gerichtete E-Mails bleiben unbeantwortet,
solche Unhöflichkeit reizt mich leider wie sonst kaum was,
und ich weiss auch warum; und nicht deswegen weil meine Großmutter Alexandra von Einsiedel mir mal sagte dass man Manieren nicht
lernt sondern damit geboren ist. Also: da Frau Schwagerle es beglückwünscht ihr Essay über Handke als Uebersetzer auf die dementsprechende Site zu setzen werde ich es dann als PDF Bilder bringen. Ich werde mich mit Herrn Höller in Verbindung setzen, vielleicht erlaubt er mir seine Sache über Velica Hoca auf die Seite zu setzen die diesem Buch auf der 
http://www.handkeprose2.scriptmania.com/
gewidmet ist

Ich habe gerade das ja auch von Ihnen und Frau Schwagerle geführte Interview mit Handke in diesem wirklich wunderbar  reichhaltigen Band "Freiheit des Schreibens" noch einmal gelesen; dazu fallen mir einige Bemerkungen ein;
zwischendurch kommen ein paar Fragen die ich an Handke stellen würde sollte es nochmal zu einem ausführlichen Interview kommen.

Ich stimme mit Handke überein dass er eigentlich immer ein konservativer
Schriftsteller war, ich kannte die Wiener Gruppe Sachen zu der Zeit als er einen auf
sich aufmerksam machte... Hatte mir das alles Mitte der 60ziger Jahre von Raddatz/ Ledig Rowohlt beschafft, und als Witz auch einmal einen Vertrag  zur Übersetzung von der Ossie Wiener Sache auf einer Serviette on Harry's Bar mit dem von mir beliebtesten Verleger Ledig-Rowohlt gemacht, sowas konnte man dann wenn man sich umentschied einfach in ein Whisky Sodatunken... {Genau so charmant wie die Amina Handke im Gewicht der Welt] 
Wenn ich mich recht erinnere hat der grässliche Joachim Neugroeschel
auch einen Auszug davon für mich übersetzt... Auch ich fand dass der Konrad Bayer wohl am meisten was los hatte... Ich kann nicht beurteilen was Serialistisches Handke von den Leuten mitbekommen, ich erinnere mich dass er wie ja so viele andere von Peter Weiss' Kutscher  und Gespräch beinflusst waren. Warum Handke den Wolfgang Bauer [woanders] als Genie betrachtet, komisches Fehlurteil. Er selbst ist es!

Nur Leute die von nichts was verstehen nennen Handke einen Avantgardisten.
Aber er hat das Summarium des Klassischen für den Schreiber wie den Leser ungeheuerlich erweitert, in dem er u.a das filmische, besonders ab ABWESENHEIT, mehr noch als Schnitt, bis zum Erleben des Textes als Film auf der Traumleinwand/ Dream Screen [wenn ihnen der Begriff was bedeutet? Bertram Lewin hat das formuliert und beschrieben.] In dem Sinne ist er modern und zeitgemäß... ich erlebte den ganzen Gredos als Film, diese "self-consciousness" von ihm, oder das Bewusstsein das der Schreiber in der La Mancha von seiner Protagonistin hat trägt dazu viel bei... und aus seinem  Wissen über Syntax stammt wohl, ausser seiner Virtuosität, die Möglichkeit mit Traumbildern und dem Traum Syntax... zwar immer ganz klassische vorzugehen.... das ist so etwas worüber ich ein paar Fragen anhand von Zitaten von Nachmittag  und In einer Stillen Nacht stellen würde. Und rein formalistisch ist der ja 75 % Beispielhaft... komisch dass sie Beiden nicht darüber
unterhalten haben ... ja ich weiss, man kann nicht alles....

Handke sagte einmal die "Linkshändige Frau," 
die ja als Übersetzerin arbeitet, hätte ihn
auf die Idee gebracht  das selbst mal zu versuchen um zu sehen wie so was geht, also schon 1975/76... 
Welches das erste war das er übersetzt hat ist
 ja leicht herauszufinden, Walker Percy
oder Patrick Modiani  wahrscheinlich, oder Bove? 
Warum nichts aus dem Lateinischen
oder Spanischen bis jetzt?

Die Bewegung "Aufregung - Beruhigung durchs Schreiben" die sie mit Handke besprechen war ja zu einer Zeit schroffer. Angst, dann wunderte er sich selbst dass das dann so ruhig dasteht. Ich habe einmal, anhand des Gedichtes
"Die Einzahl und die Mehrzahl" [Innenwelt] versucht zu demonstrieren dass durch den Akt des Schreibens er, der einst "neue Kafka," sich entängstigt, die Angst dann beherrscht,  da aber diese Angst von Libido angelegt wird und aus dem Kindheitstrauma stammt  muss er immer schreiben, aber da er das Schreiben
über alles liebt und schon seit Kindheit probiert... also... das steht
glaube ich auf der http:www.handkelectures.scriptmania.com/
 da ich dieses
Psychodrama/ Gedicht als  Beispiel benutzt habe bei einigen Vorträgen.

Das Verhältnis zur Angst ändert sich nach der Krise 1971-76, die Panik zu der Zeit - ich finde dass der Anlass dazu der Selbstmord der Mutter, sowie dass die Libgart abgehauen ist, aus 100ten berechtigten Gruenden -
als ihm im Krankenhaus Valium verschrieben wurde, also wurde Angst jetzt artifiziell gezügelt. Ob aus diesem Aufenhalt oder den Gesprächen mit dem Therapeuten den er zu der Zeit sah wohl die Diagnose "autistische"
Episoden stammt? Selbstdiagnose wohl kaum? Darüber würde ich weiter fragen als Gamper es getan, woraus die bestehen, Überladung aller Sinne bis zur Nausea der Augen scheinbar. Wenn man so überempfindlich ist auch zu der eigenen Innenwelt... zu Sprache...

 Man fragt sich inwiefern er immer noch Valium zur Beruhigung nimmt;in New York, beim Schreiben des "Langsame Heimkehr" hatte er grosse Angstzustände da das nicht so gehen wollte als er sich vorgestellt hat
und hat sich etwas stärkeres besorgt.  Ein Grund warum das in New York nicht gut ging war glaube ich einfach Heimweh an eine hospitalere
Umgebung als es New York zu der Zeit war... Ich erinnere mich an eine Bemerkung von ihm - wir lehnten waren beide an den kahnartigen Rand des
Daches meinem Loft-Gebäudes gelehnt -
"Das ist sehr hart hier."  Ich bin dann selbst Mitte der 80zigerJahre weg aus Kalkutta am Hudson wie einige es nannten...

 Es war ihm wohl vorgeschwebt da auch mal oder in einem der Vororte zu leben. Schon bevor Handke nach New York um die Langsame Heimkehr zu schreiben habe ich für ihn so alle Lycees abgekloppt die auch Unterricht auf Französisch gaben...  das war schon interessant zu beobachten ab welchem Alter der Ernst des Lebens diesen jungen Geschöpfen aufgegangen war und sie einen mit Masken-Mienen anschauten als die Führerin mit mir in den Klassen auftauchte, nicht mehr verspielt lachten. 
So Mitte der 70ziger Jahre als ich ihn einmal zum Rückflug nach Kennedy fuhr bat er mich  in  Long Island Vororten ruhige Straßen zu zeigen... und die gefielen ihm auch... ich war im Begriff mich in der Boheme von Tribeca zu Tummeln... in so zehn Jahren hab ich mitbekommenwas Marx "Lumpen" nennt... das muss kurz vor dem Umzug aus der
Rue Montmorency nach Meudon/ Clamart gewesen sein, dort fand er ja den Shortcut nach Chaville.... wo es inzwischen ja auch sehr laut ist wenn man seinen Worten trauen kann...
Sonst wohl auch nicht so einen schönen und vollkommen ausgeführten Witz wie das "Symposium über den Lärm". Das hat ja etwas von einer Abschwörung  oder Austreibung an sich!

 Dass wenigstens ein Teil der Niemandsbucht in so einer Baum-Wiege- Höhle geschrieben ist war mir aufgefallen, und alles seitdem - ausser eben diesem grässlichen Versuch das Verdreschens von Marie Colbin zu rechtfertigen, was mir den Hals abschnürt, sonst bringt er ja frische Luft ins lesende Gehirn, auch wie sehr er das schreiben liebt springt jedenfalls auf mich über... Vielleicht könnte ein Freund oder  Vertrauter ihm mal andeuten, dass er gar nicht so defensiv mit dem Thema "Frauen Verhauen" umzugehen braucht, denn er hat doch nichts anderes erlebt ab seinem 2tn Lebensjahr in Berlin, bis er nach  Tanzenberg....
das könnte genügen ihn auf Gedanken zu bringen; nämlich, sein Statement in dem
Interview, dass er nur defensive/ aggressiv sei, ungefragt taucht das da plötzlich auf, von keiner Frage ausgelöst, stimmt ja wohl kaum, weder sprachlich noch körperlich... Ein
Dunkelmann ist er leider... Der Wenders als er hier in Seattle war sagte mir das Handke jedem nahestehenden Schmerz zufügt....ich habe ihn nicht gefragt wie er verwundet wurde, kann mir das aber leicht vorstellen... und das der Engel es dann sofort vergessen hat mit seine Kapazität in der Richtung hin.

Wiederholungen..... ja wie oft ist/ sind seit ÜBER DIE DÖRFER...Rhythmen/ Anspielungen Erläuterungen aus diese Fundgrube in den Werken nachher aufgetaucht...es ist seine reichhaltigste Projektion seines Selbst, auch nuancierteste...unter allem anderen das das Stück ist.
 

 Ich finde dass es da schon Periodisches gibt in seinem Werk... sechs oder sieben sogar, alle sieben Jahre erforscht man eine neue Richtung, dass es trotzdem einheitliches organisches gibt... eine Plattitüde eigentlich. Eine Ceasura z.b. wäre
Der Versuch ueber die Müdigkeit; wurde ja auch in den Fantasien der Wiederholung
annonciert.

Keine Schreibmaschine mit Deutscher Tastatur zu finden finde ich komisch, er hätte mich fragen können, oder den Kurt Bernheim der Suhrkamp Agent zur Zeit mit dem er so wie ich gut auskamen, die Österreicher, ob er sich mit dem Kultur Referent dort Bekanntschaft gemacht hat weiss ich nicht, aber einmal in Paris hat er mich eingeladen mit ihm und Amina
und dem Kultur Attach
é, der eine Tochter in selben Alter hatte, einen Tag in der Bois de Boulogne zu verbringen... das war noch bevor
"Wahre Empfindung" erschien... ich glaube der Attaché hatte das Auto? er soll früh gestorben sein und ich erinnere mich auch nicht an den Namen,und ob er es war  oder es ein Esterhazy, den ich irgendwann mal getroffen habe,
der eher schmal und dünn geraten, oder beide... ich weiss es im Moment nicht
mehr...

Das Hotel Adams wo er da ziemlich hoch wohnte
und von dem aus man Aussicht auf den Central Park hatte, war 2 Avenue Blocks, ein halben

Kilometer, entfernt von dem einstmaligen Deutschen Quartier, Yorkville da gab es zur Zeit mindestens noch einen Schreibwaren Laden
 auch für Deutsches Zeug.

Eine der wenigen Sachen die mir in der 
Niemandsbuch [t] nicht gefallen
ist dass der sich lustig macht über die Schwierigkeiten die er, wenn man die andere  Aussagen zu dem Thema liest, im Hotel bei dem schreiben von Heimkehr hatte... ja was ihm komisch vorkommt, der Humor haut oft daneben.

Zu dem Thema  "schwindeln" fällt mir folgendes ein: 
hie und da finde ich  ein oder zwei Seiten -z.b. im Del Gredos - die im Vergleich mit der Magie den das Gros des Textes in mir erweckt, eben nur den "Profi" am Werk,
hie und da gibt es eine oder ein paar Seiten, denen fehlt die Spannung ...  Ob er wenn er Tage hat wo's nicht richtig geht... oder 
 vielleicht sind das dann nicht gestrichene Tagesanfänge...
Fällt sowas den Herren Fellinger und Hamm auf?
 Ich bin sicherlich nicht der einzigste Leser auf Erden dem die Abwesenheit von
"tension/ Spannung" dann auffällt, hoffentlich nicht.
 Und sagen die Herren dann nichts dazu???
Zu einer Zeit war es doch "ich schick's den Leuten [ab Hornissen] und die drucken das.." Das hat sich also verändert.

Bei Hemingway scheint das auch so gewesen zu sein bis er auf Trab kam...
Auch bei einer lange Passage im "Unsterblichkeit" läuft der Formalismus ganz hohl...
Ich habe sowas vor ungefähr 50 Jahren zum ersten mal bemerkt, und zwar in James
Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room"... so in der Mitte stirbt das Buch und wacht nie wieder
auf! Letztens,  ganz kurz vor dem Ende von "Erased"  dem dritten Roman meines Freundes und einstmaligen Lektor in L.A. Jim Krusoe, das sonst den Leser mit seinen verlangsamenden Mischung aus real/surreal in eine Geisteszustand bringt für den nur das Wort "stoned" passt... um ein oder zwei Grad "derang
é"....Alle ganz leicht wahnsinnig. Krusoe stammt ab von Kruschewitz, noch so'ne ausgewanderte Slowenische Birne! [Der Grossvater!]und ich fragte ihn ob er, als er zu dem Teil kam, einen "bad hairday" gehabt hätte, er antwortete, dass er kaum noch genug Haare hatte um einen "bad hairday" zu haben!

Lese gerade seinen ersten Roman "Iceland" [2002/ Dalkey Archive] der wunderbare
Frische und Klarheit in jedenfalls dies sonst oft stumpfe Gehirn bringt, auch ein lyrisch sehr begabter Romancier, er arbeitet gerade und dem vierten und letzten Teil  dieses Cyklus. Sein zweiter Roman "Girl Factory" hat mir ungeheuerlich gefallen... wäre schon was für einen Deutschen Verlag, gibt auch ein Band kurzer Geschichten...  Hat seine 
ganz eigene cool California Sensibilität, mir angenehmer als Barthelme....auch ein viel lieberer Kerl der immer noch unterrichtet und fabelhaft in der contemporainen Amerikanischen auswuchernden Literatur belesen ist, ich überhaupt nicht mehr. End of
pitch.


1] In wie fern ist der Zustand in dem er schreibt, dieser "Schwellen Zustand, Zwischenfeld", threshold, ist ihm in dem Zustand der Zugriff auf Traum Bilder und Syntax.... na ja irgendwie beantwortet er da ja schon..."bis die Bilder kommen"... wie gesagt, mein Hund träumt auch in Bildern Chiffren... so ist das alles verankert...ich frage den Hund inwiefern er die Gerueche dann bildlich in seinem Traum auftauchen...


2] In wie fern spürt er eine Melodie die im Hintergrund....
ich selbst spüre da das Formgefühl eine Komponisten..

3] Für mich ist Über die Dörfer der zentrale Text überhaupt, jedenfalls der sogenannten
Wende... wo sich so jede seiner Seiten offenbart, und wenn man das Werk seit dem verfolgt tauchen auch, z.b. im Del Gredos noch Rhythmen davon auf - meine Frage wäre, ob Dörfer etwas ist wozu er zurückgreift wenn er in einem Text an dem er arbeitet sich verloren vorkommt, nicht weiter weiss.

4] Da ich gerade den Don Juan noch einige male gelesen habe um etwas bei seiner Amerikanischen Veröffentlichung darüber zu schreiben,würde ich ihn fragen ob er auch dieses Buch drei Seiten per Tag
in einem Monaten geschrieben, dass das sein Pensum ist war mir aufgefallen
und auch mein Pensum als Handke Leser...und wie lang die Idee dafür in seinem

Kopf herum-geschwirrt, gediehen ist, bis zum Moment als er Anfing, da in diesem Text ja es mehr Weichen gibt als in all den anderen zusammen beinah... also weniger unausweichlich, ausser vielleicht, dass die Umgebung um Port Royal beschrieben, niedergelegt werden sollte, also auch'
ein Wanderbuch, und das die 3-Akt Form angenommen hat...

5] Da es mich mindestens zwei Monate mit der Uebersetzung von Tormann beschäftigt habe, er es aber in einem Monat geschrieben,
interessiert es mich wie lange die Idee dafür [die ganz "organisch", aus meiner Sicht, aus dem Hausierer stammt] mit sich herumgetragen hat, und inwiefern den Text über Paranoia/ Schizophrenie den der dann als Buch des Jahres empfahl ihn auf die Idee brachte die Fehlleistung Bloch's am Anfang auf rein grammatische Art darzustellen, und ob
er wusste, oder sich jedenfalls wünschte dass der Leser auf diese Art in den selben Zustand versetzt würde. [Was ja auch besonders bei der
Wiederholung der Fall ist in dem Sinne das der Leser dann auch ein "Koenig der Langsamkeit" werden kann.

Entschuldigen Sie bitte, oder auch nicht, das dieses so lang geraten ist.


Ihr,

naechste Woche gibt es ein Symposium auf de

HANDKE-YUGO BLOG,

  http://handke-yugo.blogspot.com/ [developing]

das sich mit zwei Fragen beschäftigen wird:

1] Why did "everyone" blame the Serbs and Milosevic

2] and - since this is a US-based undertaking - "everyone"
decide to  demonize Handke - that is, in a situation, where "everyone"

could only conclude, on reflection, that they knew far too little
to be conclusionary.  More next week.





"Chiquita abraços a todos"


File:Sydney Greenstreet headshot.jpg
Kasper Gutman guffaws as he wishes Wilmer a very good day!





"





 

Monday, April 12, 2010

Yet another Letter to Johnathan Galassi at Farrarr, Straus about the proposed HANDKE READER

April 2010


Dear Jonathan Galassi,

Attached you will find a proposed "Handke Reader", 
not yet fine-tuned, and the thought that went into each section. Such a
"reader" will be a boombox of a book, and force the morons to think
a little bit about what the genius who wants to be and may be the best writer ever is up to. 

I put it to you: you can put Handke over in this country...
or  fail to do so
!  You are the publisher and he deserves  your attention to the same degree
as he has that of his German publishers, Ulla  now instead of Siegfried Unseld,
and of Jochen Jung. You have an author of the importance of  Joyce of Proust on your
hands, actually of greater importance for the logos, and he deserves
a publisher's personal care, not to be palmed off to whatever editor
who never gets up to speed, or be treated as shoddily
and amateurishly as he has been not only over the years but currently by
Farrar, Straus
 [details exquisited once more below],  and now under your aegis...
[and  you have my assurance that I empathize with whatever load of work you carry]...
what with passing on the amazing marvels KALI and THE CUCKOOS OF VELICA HOCA.
Consulting his first rate translator of his prose who, however, hasn't a clue about
Handke from 1965 to the late eighties, won't do; and even my trying to convince
her [with whom I have been in the most pleasant touch for more than ten years],
that it is essential to read WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES, because
Handke takes recourse to so much from his most essential work...
so much, his cradle... including the rhythms of some long section of DEL GREDOS.
Krishna, translating so many other authors, and also teaching, hasn't
the time, and I quite understand; but there are other fine translators, and consultants,
and since there is already a Handke industry - 200 books and dissertations? -
 , and he is bound to win the Nobel,
as no one deserves it more for what he has availed the logos... You know,
get on the ball, don't miss this chance.
If he doesn't I will loose yet another shirt off my back! Or be skinned alive!
I want the great exhibitionist of the protean self for once to be
able to address the entire   world... . Whether that will stanch his wound - who knows? 
I sort of doubt it.  Will provide sufficient mirroring?

There are some fine Germanisten, also in this country who
 have concentrated on him and so have a far better idea than
 Krishna of the whole of his work and the
stages it has gone through. German and Austrians galore.
And isn't there an editor in the house who
has German??? Don't be caught too flat-footed.

So [1] do 
Kali before you do Moravian Night and Handke will add
some Wagnerians to his readership, maybe... because 
Moravian will provide those
 who have their knives out  in this country [aside reviewers who cannot
 read or have an actual experience of a text or report experiences if they actually have them
I knew we lived in another dark age, just didn't think it would be that dark]
 with ample meat to sink  those knives . Even I have my Bowie out for about three
serious instances there!

I encountered the phenomenon of ridiculous reviewers once before
in my life, my freshman year, during which I managed to devote
every course to Faulkner. And since I used to be idiotically optimistic...
I didn't think I might see the likes again.

If something like the "reader" becomes a working project,
Handke I expect will have some ideas of his own so will 
 his editors, Jochen Jung and Raimund Fellinger,
 anyhoo, it needs to be batted about a bit, although anything
along the lines of what's called "process" here in Seattle will
  delay it for another fifty years. After all,
the major theaters here are still longing to put on 
Mother Courage,
which premiered in Zurich in the early 1940s,
Seattle has been "rounded" by all of modernism, and in that
fashion basks in being "post modern."

Needed aside good introducers to the various sections - e.g.
John D'Agata for the section on how Handke writes his essays [?] -
is someone sound  to do the general introduction. My first
choice would be William Gass, who provided the one and only peer review that
Handke received in all these years in this country [L.A. Times/ No-Man's Bay].
However, I gather that Mr. Gass is in no position to do that at age 85. Richard Gilman who
provided the first response to Handke's drama is no longer with us.
Via my letter to the NY Times on the occasion of the atrocity that
 Neil Gordon, head of the New School writing program, [oh look how the world
goes to the dogs!] committed on Del Gredos  I came into contact with James Wood at Harvard.
You would have to approach him. He would be my own first choice now.
 On the other hand, if he does a long piece in the New Yorker that might be at least as good.
David Bromwich I found out a few years ago was introduced to Handke's work through me!
I had no idea. I've followed his work for about 35 years.
Frank Kermode, also about 85, wrote the initial reception in the NYRB
in the 70s. Michael Wood then followed up there.  Harold Bloom is no spring chicken
and I have no idea whether he has appraised Handke. A friend has approached
Denis Donahue,  so far I haven't a clue whether he's ever read Handke, but
Mr. Donahue is certainly someone to keep in mind, I gather that when he does
matters along that line, he wants to read EVERYTHING - that 
might be daunting, and I have no idea whether he has German. Perhaps
Greil Marcus, who is a fan at least of the early work and wrote a fine intro
to the re-issue of SHORT LETTER LONG FAREWELL.

I know a little bit about "readers", they can also be "bread and butter" books
and I did quite a few of them, the "Frankfurt School Reader" being probably the
most famous , never got to do # 2, and would have done more... and put 
a year's work into truly fine-tuning [!] an Adorno reader  for which Susan Sontag was going to do the
introduction and which was killed by that marvel of small time killers, Michael DiCapua
after I left FSG in 1969.

 I gladly do a poll for you.
I have a couple of thousands on my e-mail contact list, most everyone
in German studies since there was a time I fancied taking a trip by
train all across the country to give Handke lectures, however,
they didn't seem to have enough so that I would even come close to breaking even from such
an interesting jaunt. Which then became an imaginary.
I learned to love traveling by rail as child expanding with the Reich
and then contracting back to the home base outside Bremen.
That is: German literature in translation,
the time that Handke will be taught like Goethe is probably still
a decade or so off. Then there are the writing programs, I have
little to do with them. David Shields at the University here is a
fan, so is John D'Agata, how many of them are aware what Handke
has opened up to them in utensils I cannot judge.
But at least I would call their attention to it.  I imagine the Austrian
government would buy quite a few copies.
In the event you are unaware of the mistakes that
account for the status of Handke in this country,
let me refresh everyone's memory:

1] At a time that 
Kaspar and Other Plays was in about it 10th printing,
FSG had sold something called "Two" and "Three by Handke, first to Avon
and then Collier paperback; as well as 
Weight of the World; 
and 
Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays had sold out and was not reprinted, and Lefthanded Woman had been successful;
then FSG waited nearly ten years before issuing the
three title collection, named after the 1978 
A Slow Homecoming - title novel, which, properly,
ought to have been published in 1980 at the latest, and the succession of the development
of Handke's intimate mytho-poeic way of going about his business might not have been
lost. Instead we get a 1987 collection that added two entirely different titles,
Lesson of St. Victoire [a biographical account of wandering and notification
of change in aesthetic, with some interesting biographical tidbits], and the 1981 a

A Child's Story
, a strictly autobiographical account of his life with his daughter,
very honest work, a good condensation I judge it to be since I saw quite a bit of
both of them from 1969 to the 70s in Paris. And what are reviewers to make of
such a threesome under the covers - Kunkel kunkels about postmentstrualist
intertextuality in his silly introduction in its re-issue at NYRB books.

Then in the early 80s FSG passes on WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES.
I had a fine editor for the second play collection, his name has escaped,
who went on to be editor in chief at Scribners, then there was Nancy Meiselas
I gather from Krishna that she felt she had had one of the best editors ever
in Annie Wedekind, and I had several pleasant exchanges with her.
No idea what happened really between Nancy's leaving, I suppose Krishna'
might who translated the last of the "Three Essays" when Ralph Mannheim
went to translator heaven. 
  
But then in the early 90s Roger writes Unseld that he has a problem called Handke -
no: Handke and Suhrkamp had a problem called Roger, and 
and he and I had a problem called Michael DiCapua, 
and had it not been for Bob Giroux he would have nixed that project too,
at its inception, as he did so many others. So you will understand how glad
it  made me to come on Christopher Lehmann-Haupt's quote from Bob at his obituary,
 who sure played it close to his banker's vest  when I was there, that the very
thought of Roger
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/books/06giroux.html?scp=1&sq=BOB%20GIROUX%20OBITUARY&st=cse

Meanwhile, FSG failed to follow up the success of WEIGHT OF THE WORLD with
the successor volume, HISTORY OF PENCIL which would have alerted readers
and reviewers to the thought he gives his projects [especially WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES
in that instance, and how some matters are achanging]; and subsequent to 
No-Man-Bay FS+G has passed on what is a kind of extra chapter to it: Lucie in dem Wald mit den Dingsbums - "Lucy in the Woods
with the Thingamajigs" might be a fitting American title... which would also
work as a YA, Handke the cute on going mushrooming in the Chaville Forest.
As we know, Amurricans love cute!

Even more astonishing is that neither FSG nor anyone else has done
the Wenders/ Handke screenplay for
 Wings of Desire. It must be the best-
liked art film in this country! Just check with Google how many sites
are devoted to it. I have left the mark of my Handke sites at each. Usually
these devotees quote his poem 
When the Child was a Child, it exists on the web
in no end of translations, Italian being my favorite.

About  a year ago I had a brief e-mail exchange with Steve Wasserman...
who felt that I was all wet when I wondered why after Handke had appeared
in Avon and Collier fairly mass paperback editions he might not have been put
into the forever stepchild Noonday Books paperback line, and the plays at Hill and Wang,
  considering how well they had done. Steve really had no answer, and I am not surprised that he's part of some
"innelectual" property LLC meanwhile, and edits one book review a week for 
Truthdig.
 How is it possible not to have made Noonday Books into a good paperback line in all these 50 + years, what
with all those Hesse books I brought Farrar, Straus as lead dogs?
During which time Suhrkamp must have established half a dozen!

I quite understand that there is nothing you can do about the human rights hyenas
ignorance in matters Balkan, I am hoping for a symposium on
how such all around agreement came about, ... "duh" I imagine will be the
result . I am going to approach  a former Senior Editor at FSG
who did a one of a kind stupid review of JOURNEY ACROSS THE RIVERS
for the L.A. Times Book Review. What is the difference in levels of ignorance
and inability to think reflectively and be halfway well informed and not run
in pret-at-porter mob of bien pensant between the "innelectual" sheep and tea partying Palinskies....
I was happy to note the other day that DON JUAN has worked its way up from # 260,000 
at Barnes and Nobel to 160,000, and perhaps writing to my 2,500 contacts
will goose the book up to 80,000 - how minuscule is the difference
in actual sales between those rankings? Thanks for the book by the way,
if I had received it sooner I would have written my 15 K words sooner,
as it is I have another 15 K words of commentary... nothing like a tad
of the erotic to get the aging word processor spinning.

I wish you all the best and if I don't hear back from you, as is my custom
in such instances, I will post this communication  at the handke-trivia blogspot,
for the record as it were, the record of an infamy.
 And best regards to the one acquaintance
we all have in common, the 
femme fatale Judith Thurman who actually could do a good
review of 
Don Juan.

 General Considerations:
THE TITLE:
PETER HANDKE, THE MELANCHOLY PLAYER
A Self-Appellation that fits!
Division into periodicities would be easy in Handke’s case, and also appropriate,
but each period requires its own focus.
Rather and also, why not [also, chiefly] three intertwining foci on Handke’s three main avenues of communicating as playfully as he does, his three ways of playing?
[1] Narrative Prose
[2] Plays
[3] Essays
I am going to take a chance and have three central sections devoted to the development of the prose and plays and essay and thus obviate, or interlink what would otherwise be required in a chronological arrangement. But also provide on example of its near perfection.
 After all, Handke’s work is over-determined, that makes him challenging, and drives what he says through to real readers; and these sections would be of interest not only to readers but to writers and playwrights and also to philosophers of language.
Also, The Reader might afford the opportunity to translate certain texts not otherwise available.
Since The Reader, and each section of it, is  chronological, each of those sections might have excerpts from the contemporaneous spontaneous diary notations that Handke started to keep as of what I call the Paris crisis period of the early 70s, from WEIGHT OF THE WORLD, THE HISTORY OF THE PENCIL, MORNINGS AT THE ROCK WINDOW; YESTERDAY, ON MY WAY...
[texts in italics are not in English but exists in all major Romance languages]
On the aspect of Handke as "assayer"
as I think of his different kinds of essays – it isn’t just the “THREE ESSAYS” or DON JUAN but the play THE ART OF ASKING falls into it too,
John D'Agata is a natural to address if he is game, what with having picked a long text from Innerworld as an example of the “lost origins of the essay”, say Singular and Plural from Innerworld  [where I once demonstrated how by writing Handke conquers fear! now if that isn't something to have given the "new Kafka" a swollen head!]
I would put in a center fold of photos,
of Baby Handke and his mother Maria eyeing each other, of the young student holding a book, these are in Haslinger’s “Jugend eines Schriftstellers”
Then one of his with fist wife Libgart, the one where they are drinking beer, it catches his spirit of the time… of him in his workroom in Salzburg… there are hundreds to choose from…
 





Table of Content Rough  


-I-
 THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION

[II]
An essay on the early work.
 The introduction to this section, or the general one, needs to dwell on how this Innerworld ./Outer World/ of the Innerworld phenomenon/ procedure [not that different from T.S. Elliot’s] grows yet remains an essential feature of Handke’s self based work, “Objective correlative”; and in general, on how Handke uses his self, self-states and experience as his own material while generalizing it. Masks, personae later in the novels, starting with Goalie.

a] When I was 15 [to be found in an early anthology by Eckehard Kronenberg, needs to be translated,  effervescent]

b] “Welcoming the Board of Directors…
The title story from the early virtuoso things in Begrüssung des Aufsichtsrats, it exists in an Austrian story collections.  
c] I am an Inhabitant of the Ivory Tower [one of the playful provocative essays of the period, might have been translated meanwhile]

d] Half a dozen texts from Innerworld

e] Radio-Play I ???[because it demonstrates how Handke plays with fear, and it disappears] and is in the then strict serial mode… and because it is not readily available as are the other early play texts. Or Self-Accusation.

f] at this point I would segue into the prose section with excerpts from:…
 
[III]
PROSE DEVELOPMENT ESSAY
This would be the central section on the development of the prose. It needs to address the “personae” that Handke finds, Josef Bloch, Keuschnig, Sorger, Loser, Kobal, The Pharmacist, The Ex-Bankieress; The Ex-Author; and needs to have commentary, annotation, guidance from section to section…

There ought to be one section that focuses very closely on technical innovations...the way dream writing arises out of the control of deep syntax,  and what Edmond Caldwell calls "the Handke effect",  Handke’s use of filmic techniques…
A section from both Die Hornissen [The Hornets] and Der Hausierer [The Panhandler] which exist in the Romance languages, whose audience has been more receptive, especially Spain and Portugal. I translated a few pages of Hornets as part of an essay on Handke’s development as a prose writer. I was going to translate Panhandler until Handke told me that it contained a lot of quotes from U.S. “black mask” type detective and crime novels, and not from the originals! One section to illustrate both his phenomenological procedure and how fear is quelled while being toyed with.    
1] A section from Die Hornissen
2] from Der Hausierer [i.e. pure phenomenology]
3] The opening of Goalie as an example how
syntax can involve your state of mind in that
of a paranoid-schizophrenic...
4] the dream image section from Afternoon of the Writerwhere the writer is injured by the Salzburg
gossips and feels like a hit and run victim in a ditch…
5] “the king of slowness” The Repetition excerpt… to show how you are slowed down by reading a text
6] the dream syntax section and the section that Edmund Caldwell picked in One Dark Night I Left my Silent House where textual doubt is demonstrated most successfully.. From the same book, after the "Pharmacist" gets bumped on the head...
7] a section from The Hour we knew Nothing of each Other because the text takes you
by the scruff of your syntax and doesn't let
go until the end. A better translation than
the Honegger one, perhaps the one that was done for the performance at The National in London
two years ago???
8] Either the opening of Absence or of the 2007 novel Kali where the text is not only experienced as such but also as opera to adumbrate the reading experience...
9]  RE-MAGICKING THE WORLD: A section from Del Gredos
10] A page of so from the “Apache” section of Moravian Night where the underlying fury rumbles barely suppressed through the syntax… Faulknerian…

10]PROSE PURE: ecriture pure A few sections from Moravian Night  
11] LEFT-HANDED WOMAN in its entirety?
12] One of the pieces from Once More for Thucydides. As an example of pure lyric prose.

[IV]
Problematics [1971-76]

Can one get away without the mistitled
Sorrow Beyond Dreams… and the need to annotate it from the perspective of imagining what life was like for Maria Sivec's firstborn under those circumstances? This section affords the opportunity for a good biographical essay.
Perhaps one of the progressively more
fugueing poems in Nonsense & Happiness
[but if there is a separate short section on Handke's poem???...] A section from Moment of True Feeling perhaps not the suicidal parts but the one of that famous Moment?
  This section would address itself to what I call Handke's Paris Crisis [1971-78] the lay-a-broad left high and dry both by his mom and his wife, and like many a lay-abroad before him... couldn't handle it, started to fugue, but wrote some first rate things about his then state of mind.  And didn't learn the lesson that you have to treat a woman right, or they will split no matter how famous or a great artist you are! Not many French saints about! Fewer and fewer by the year who want to live with a frigid Salamander who hits and bites!
[V]
PLAYWRIGHTING
The “Second Weaving” as it were, picking up
The Radio Play / Self-Accusation  and HOUR strands..
Needs an introductory essay, describing the early procedures and intentions, and the transition to and with an excerpt from VILLAGES, ART OF ASKING
Perhaps La Cuisine as something more playful and quite different???
Or his Becket play “Until the Day Parts us.”
???

V
The Home-Coming Period
Sections from History of the Pencil as the transitional
from Walk about the Villages
Opening Chapter of A Slow Homecoming, the Alaska section..


-VI-
HANDKE AS ESSAYIST
Needs an introduction, my choice is John D’Agata
“Assayings” as I call his approach
The strand [s] that are picked up… Innerworld… Art of Asking

A text from INNERWORLD,
On the Jukebox in its entirety
A Section from THE ART OF ASKING
A section from THE PLAY ABOUT THE FILM ABOUT THE WAR to show Handke’s indebtedness to the German tradition - Brecht, Kipphardt, Grass, Weiss – of critical drama, with Handke’s very own twist.
VII
The Salzburg Period
.An Essay linking SORROW with THE REPETITION
And indicating the firming up of Handke’s identity with the installation of his Slovenian Grandfather as the father figure, on his closer identification with Slovenia, Yugoslavia, and their literatures

The Salzburg period 1979 to 1987, another 7 year stint, at which point we fled back to Paris, we'd gotten ourselves into trouble with a wench! who is haunting and hunting him even now as I write.  Erinyes like that exist!
No fury has hell...
 Linking up with the
The Repetition

As an example of the fellow's state
of mind The Afternoon of the Writer, which differs not that much from "Loser", the case, who differs as a “case” not that much from su suicidal Keuschnig the once again murderously minded,
in Across [Chinese des Schmerzens] 1984,
 

[VII]
Chaville Paris II
1998 to the present

A section, which one [?] from
No-Man’s-Bay
From Del Gredos: The five thousand words
on the destruction wrought by the hurricane that hit Northern France around 2000.

Perhaps: Lucy with the Thingamajigs”?


[VIII]
Handke the Traveler Walker?????
Sections on walking in Yugoslavia
From No-Man’s-Bay
Del Gredos
From the Diary volume Yesterday, on my way”

IX

How does one deal with the Yugoslavia involvement? If at all here?
I think I mentioned initially that such a reader represents a wonderful opportunity to make up where his main US Publisher
Farrar, Straus has been remiss over the years.
The Cuckoos of Velica Hoca [2007] see this page devoted to it at handkeprose2.scriptmania site [link to all matters mentioned here
via the link below] Velica Hoca  is certainly by far the best focused text on that subject and demonstrates what a great reporter Handke can be
who normally showers obloquy on these critters.
Scott seems to fell that JOURNEY TO THE RIVERS is the most important text… I disagree, because at the very least it needs to be put in tandem with SUMMER’S REPRIEVE
[and I think all the Yugoslavia texts plus the
THE PLAY ABOUT THE FILM ABOUT THE WAR
need to be published as one volume.
With an essay by Scott Abbot on Handke's involvement in Yugoslavia
where I only fault Handke for then copping out when it came to
being an "expert witness" for Milosevic at Scheveningen.
I myself have written a small book’s worth of pieces on the subject
and did so to make Handke’s engagement comprehensible to myself. That is how I work.
 
German reviewers meanwhile - Weinzierl, Kastberger, Detering
who come out of Germanistik - have become utterly deferential,
now that Handke is about to win the Nobel, has sold his notebooks
and manuscript for a total of about one million Euro to two institutions
 that buy that kind of stuff, keeps the company of princes of industry
and presidents....but Handke has always been his own best critic. The German
reviewer rabble is nearly as hideous as those here, and some of them have jobs
at major papers! Aren't merely occasional idiots but convey their
idiocy into print day and week in and out. Hubert Spiegel at the FAZ,
a couple of folks at Die Zeit. One fellow who usually has a cool head, Lothar
Struck has become prematurely Apfelmus over Moravian, in Glanz und Elend.
One of those on-line review organs that give you hope as there are increasing
numbers in all languages!!
 

 



Poems
A wonderful edition of Handke's complete poems
was published recently by Bartelsby in Madrid,
it contains all of Innerworld, all the long poems from
Nonsense and Happiness, the incidental poems
as they appear in the four published notebook volumes
and the wonderful, as yet untranslated into English,
Das Gedicht an die Dauer
["Poem to Lasting Things," as it might be called]

.MICHAEL ROLOFF
http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society

This LYNX will LEAP you to my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS
http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/favorite_links_1.html 

http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html


"Degustibus disputandum est." Theodor Wiesenthal Adorno
"May the foggy dew bediamondize your hoosprings + the fireplugof filiality reinsure your bunghole! {James  Joyce}
"Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde." [von Alvensleben]
"Siena me fe, disfescimi Maremma." [Dante]
"Ennui [Lange Weile] is the dreambird that hatches the egg ofexperience." Walter Benjamin, the essay on Leskov.


http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/ 
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/
http://artscritic.blogspot.com/
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http://seattle-vistas.blogspot.com/



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MICHAEL ROLOFF http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name exMember Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society this LYNX will LEAP you to all my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS: http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html "MAY THE FOGGY DEW BEDIAMONDIZE YOUR HOOSPRINGS!" {J. Joyce} "Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde" [von Alvensleben] contact via my website http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html
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