Peter Handke by Richard Arthur Firda (review)

Book Reviews 143 him the authority to discuss their collaboration in detail. He has brought to our attention two important figures in modern Gennan theatre, and has left this reader wanting to know more. DAVID KRASNER, UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO RICHARD ARTHlJR FIRDA. Peter Handke. Twayne's World Authors Series, David O'Conneil , Editor, New York: Twayne Publishers 1993. Pp. xv, 170. $22.95. In 1981, June Schlueter published an excellent monograph-on The Plays and Novels of Peter Handke (University of Pittsburgh Press). Richard Firda's Peler Handke is the first English monograph to appear since then - three plays, six: novels. four non-fiction books. two major film scripts, two poem collections, and twelve years later. A new book on this important postmodern writer and literary innovator, who at thirty was already "canonized" by Richard Gilman for his "effort [0 renew drama, to combat ... inertia and self-repetition" (The Making ofModern Drama, 1971, xi), offers the opportunity not only to "update" Handke's output, but to recontextualize and reassess his importance. After the plays of Thomas Bernhard, Heiner Muller, Botho Strauss, Sam Shepard or Michel Vinaver, it is now possible (0 see Handke as one of the central initiators of a radical, deconstructive, postmodern theatre (and prose) aesthetic - a view often alluded to though never examined in this book. Conceptually, Firda's Peter Handke aims to be "a modest introduction and overview " of Handke's plays and novels "directed at a general audience without personal access to the Gennan texts" (vii). Oddly, although the book was published in J993, Firda limits his overview ~o 1987, thus precluding discussion of Handke's two latest and only post-l98I - plays (1989 and 1992, the laner probably too late for inclusion in any case). Regrettably, although we learn in a note thac Firda has a sub-specialty in the European feature film, and although Handke is moving ever more in that direction, he chooses nol to discuss Handke's screen-writing. Thus the opportunity to probe Handke's work with Wim Wenders on Wings Of Desire (1988) and other films, to consider the connections between his playwriting and screen-writing, his adaptations of his own novels (most recently: The Absence), his work as a film director, is missed. What this means is that Firda covers much the same ground as did Schlueter, adding one play and seven prose works, but very little else. There are two major problems. Instead of a renewed reading of Handke - for whom "renewal" is an artistic imperative - Firda has chosen to seek "the 'core' of general critical consensus" concerning each work (viii). While this purports to give the reader a broad view of Handke criticism, it in fact creates a stitched-together quilt of quotes which inhibit a coherent reading and finally allow the author to dispense with critical summation. This contrasts oddly with the utter lack of quotation (longer than a few words) from Handke's plays or novels themselves. Since much of Firda's discussion circles around "language," this lack renders the texts ephemeral, objectless. 144 Book Reviews The second problem is the writing itself. Firda's prose is opaque and uninviting, a serious hindrance especially in an introductory study. Handke, famous for the precision of his elegant language, fanatical in his Wittgensteinian search for verbal clarity, loses his contours in Firda's often nebulous prose. Consider this scenic explication of The Ride across Lake Constance: "The face of 'realisrh' gleaned from the sets of the opening scenes of Bodensee is no less deliberately artistic than the stylized and fonnalized shape of the stage settings Handke ~equires for Mundel" (30). While Schlueter divides her book almost equally between Handke's plays and prose works, Firda's is heavily weighted towards the prose. Only 35 of his 149 pages of text deal with the plays, and those 35 are often impatient and out of focus, Pertinent points are mixed with imprecise detail- such as Firda's description of Kaspar as consisting of "65 paragraphs (?) divided inLO two sets of parallel texts with Handke's commentary on stage directions. Actors' lines are often spoken in tandem with each other" (22). Surely there is only one 'actor who has...