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Loading... The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kickby Peter Handke
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Si ce livre se veut etre un exercice de style, je n aime pas ce style! Great dustjacket design by Janet Halverson. Such an extremely odd book. Not sure how to describe it. Definitely not a fun, pleasant read, and in parts it was boring. That said, however, I'm glad I read it, and on some level I found it absolutely fascinating. It's about an ex-soccer goalie and former construction worker who wanders around Austria with little explanation or purpose. Early in the novel, he murders someone for no apparent reason. The thing that I found most fascinating about the novella was the narration: the narrator appears to be omniscient, but the voice really follows only the main character, and is very selective about what it says. In some parts it goes into extensive detail, and in others it is incredibly vague. The language is deceptively simple, perhaps matching the vocabulary with that of the uneducated goalie. The only time he is able to articulate himself effectively is when he talks about soccer. The ending is unusual, and going out on a limb here (and this isn't a spoiler), I think it tells the reader not to overthink things--which most readers have probably done if they've made it to the end. A very existential book. Recommended for its narrative technique, but not for the story. no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0374531064, Paperback)The first of Peter Handke’s novels to be published in English, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a true modern classic that “portrays the…breakdown of a murderer in ways that recall Camus’s The Stranger” (Richard Locke, The New York Times). The self-destruction of a soccer goalie turned construction worker who wanders aimlessly around a stifling Austrian border town after pursuing and then murdering, almost unthinkingly, a female movie cashier is mirrored by his use of direct, sometimes fractured prose that conveys “at its best a seamless blend of lyricism and horror seen in the runes of a disintegrating world” (Bill Marx, Boston Sunday Globe). (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:16 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Ich kann zu dieser Erzählung nur ein paar Eindrücke wiedergeben. Da wäre zuerst Handkes Sprache, die mich in ihrer Satzkonstruktion und Wortwahl mehr an die 1920er-Jahre, teilweise sogar an Kleist erinnert, als an eine Erzählung von 1970. Dann bekommt der Leser wenig Einblick in das Innenleben des Helden und so bleiben dessen Motive völlig im Dunkeln. Dabei trägt der Er-Erzähler nicht viel bei die Hirngespinste des Helden zu erklären. Erzähltechnisch jedoch hat das Buch einiges zu bieten, viele Vorgänge werden sehr indirekt und subtil beschrieben und die vielen kleinen beschriebenen Dinge schaffen eine interessante Athmosphäre. Inhaltlich dachte ich an ein wenig Dostojewskis Schuld und Sühne. Mit Fußball hat das Ganze letztendlich nur sehr bedingt zu tun, dafür dürften Germanisten ihre Freude daran haben, vieles in die Erzählung hineinzuinterpretieren. Ich hätte es nicht unbedingt lesen müssen.