Spotlight on … Peter Handke The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1970)

‘One of the first things you need to know about Peter Handke’s The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, is that here are no easy answers here. If you are inclined to believe that literature should purvey rational motivation, moral certainty, and a satisfying denouement, you might want to look elsewhere. This is a novel that dismantles everything that one expects a novel to be, but, because Handke engages in this process from within the mind of man whose own processes of perception and comprehension are unraveling, one can argue that for all its inherent strangeness, The Goalie’s Anxiety approaches a reality of experience that is startling.

‘After all, how do we measure reality? The only measures we have are our thoughts and perceptions. Narrated with an almost clinical, documentary clarity from a limited third person perspective, the reader is presented with an opportunity to exist inside the mind of a dispassionate murderer and face the uncomfortable possibility that rational explanations for behaviour may not always exist–and that someone who may not be in their right mind can be disordered not only in their thinking, but in their emotional responses.

‘At the outset of the novel we meet Joseph Bloch, a construction worker who had formerly been a well-known soccer goalie. He arrives at work one day and interprets small insignificant signs from his coworkers to mean that he has lost his job and, taking the hint, he leaves. He goes to the movies, takes a hotel room and otherwise occupies himself with random activities. Strange moods and thoughts pass through his mind. One night he decides to wait for the cashier at the movie theatre to get off work and follows her home.

‘When he wakes after spending the night with her, he discovers, lying in bed with his eyes closed, that an odd inability to visualize things has come over him. He tries naming objects, then making up sentences about things, all in an effort to bring the images to mind. He becomes aware of the pressure of things, distressing when his eyes are open, magnified when they are closed. His thoughts and experiences are starting to fall out of synch with the world around him. As he spends time with the cashier, he notices his irritation increasing and then, with little provocation or self-reflection, he strangles the young woman.

‘An unearthly calm envelopes the narration as Bloch’s actions and thinking processes are recounted with a surreal, slow motion quality. Before long he leaves the city to head out to a small town where an ex-girlfriend runs a tavern. He shows no particular desire to hide from the authorities, but as he spends time in the town his thinking continues to fall apart. Talking and communicating begins to take on a disordered quality. Bloch starts analyzing and double checking his thoughts–the words and expressions that pass through his mind catch him up and he questions the meanings he attaches to the words of others, for example in this exchange with two cape-wearing (yes, cape wearing) bicycle policemen outside a closed pool where Bloch has found himself standing.

‘Over time his interactions with others continue to grow increasingly surreal, at least from within Bloch’s increasingly distorted perceptions of the world. We are, after all, firmly ensconced in the head of a man whose emotional and cognitive functioning is unspooling. The story may be proceeding with detached and disconnected sequences, but the tightly controlled limited third person narrative is deeply affecting for the reader. We can only see the world as Bloch experiences it, but with just enough distance to watch the internal decline. We are told what he is doing and thinking, but everyone and everything he encounters is filtered through his distorted lens–he imagines that messages are being sent to him, even if he is not certain what they are trying to indicate, objects and events hold meaning. As his paranoia grows, his sense of prescience is also heightened and he observes that his thoughts seem to proceed the words or actions of others.

‘At the same time Bloch exhibits an enhanced awareness of the world in small, often insignificant details that impose themselves on his consciousness to the point that he is sometimes irritated by the sensory input and his own intrusive observations. His breakdown is skillfully orchestrated. Handke captures his hyper awareness in descriptive passages that reflect the odd acuity of his attention and his internal difficulties with his own fragmenting thoughts. At one point, as Bloch tries desperately to cling to individual words, images briefly replace the terms that have abandoned him. And although, like Camus’ Mersault to whom he is often compared, he never expresses any remorse for his violent act; as the police appear to be closing in on him, his thoughts betray more than he can or will admit to himself.

‘It is sometimes said that Handke’s protagonist stands as an allegory for the disintegration of modern man and society, but I could not help but recognize in Bloch a striking depiction of the internal irrational rationalizing of the psychotic mind. The supercharged sensitivity, the paranoia, and the ultimate inability to string together coherent thoughts all echo my own unfortunate experience with mania and the experiences of many of the schizophrenic clients I’ve worked with over the years.

‘As the book nears its conclusion, Bloch has a recurring memory that seems to indicate there is an incident that may have been a mitigating factor in the progress of mental decline that plays out in the novel. It is subtly drawn and reinforced with the closing scene, but even then, one would imagine there might well have been an inherent psychological weakness that was triggered by the event. The 1972 movie based on this novel which marked the first collaboration between Handke as screenwriter and director Wim Wenders is more explicit in this regard, but the film proceeds with effectively disconnected and disorienting scenes to maintain the surreal feel of the book.’ — roughghosts

 

_____
Further

Peter Handke @ Wikipedia
Handke Online
PH @ goodreads
A son’s long good-bye
Peter Handke, l’insaisissable
The Austrian writer Peter Handke, European public opinion, and the war in Yugoslavia
Peter Handke Research Platform
Experience II – The Ninth Country
Peter Handke and His Reception in the German-speaking world
Peter Handke: The Essay Writer
STORM STILL BY PETER HANDKE
Literary provocateur Peter Handke turns 70
Taking Refuge in the Loo
The Peter Handke affair
Peter Handke on American Writers
Peter Handke: the truth about sorrow…
Meditation on a poetic meditation: To Duration by Peter Handke

 

____________________
Handke on film & stage

Corinna Belz Peter Handke – In the Woods, Might Be Late (2016)
The filmmaker explores the life and work of the Austrian novelist, playwright and political activist, Peter Handke. The titles of his books sound like the tunes in a jukebox: Offending the Audience and Other Spoken Plays, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick or A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. In the 1960s, he was the definition of a “pop star” author. Yet as soon as he started making the bestseller lists, he turned his back on stardom and went travelling, taking his readers along with him, dragging them into the rhythm and precision of his language and into his own examination of reality. As a young man, and still now, in his daily life, Peter Handke never stopped asking: “Where are we now?” and “How should we live?”

[Excerpt 1]

[Excerpt 2]

[Excerpt 3]

[Excerpt 4]

 

Lola Pierson KASPAR (2014)
Lola B. Pierson’s 21st century production of Peter Handke’s 1967 drama, Kaspar is a thought-provoking production that interrogates how recent technology influences the way that we define language and learn to communicate with one another. Using several media vehicles throughout the production, including a large projection on one wall, a television screen, and a radio, Kaspar traces one girl’s discovery and search for language, while bombarded constantly by technological interruptions.

 

Peter Handke The Left-Handed Woman (1978)
A train shatters the stillness of a Paris suburb, leaves a puddle on the station platform quivering with some unsolicited, mysterious, moving energy. This Romantic metaphor is at the very centre of Handke’s grave, laconic film, produced by Wim Wenders, which begins where The American Friend left off: in the ringing void of Roissy airport. Here, the Woman (Edith Clever, superb in the role) meets her husband (Ganz) and, for no apparent reason, rejects him in favour of a solitary voyage through her own private void. In her house, with her child, the film records a double flight of escape and exploration, her rediscovery of the world, her relocation of body, home and landscape. This emotional labour makes its own economy: silence, an edge of solemnity, an overwhelming painterly grace. Self-effacement is made the paradoxical means of self-discovery, and the film becomes a hymn to a woman’s liberating private growth, a moving, deceptively fragile contemplation of a world almost beyond words.

Trailer

 

Wim Wenders The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972)
The goalkeeper Josef Bloch (Arthur Brauss) is sent off after committing a foul during an away game. This causes him to completely lose his bearings. He wanders aimlessly through the unfamiliar town, spends the night with the box-office attendant of a movie theater (Erika Pluhar), and strangles her the next morning. But instead of turning himself in or fleeing, Bloch then goes to the country place of his ex-girlfriend (Kai Fischer) and passively waits there for the police to come and arrest him. As Wim Wenders himself has stated, the visual idiom of Alfred Hitchcock’s films provided the model for his debut film. He adheres minutely to the thoroughly “cinematic” source, a novel by Peter Handke. With his cameraman Robby Müller and his editor Peter Przygodda—both of whom had already worked with him on his film thesis at the HFF (University of Television and Film Munich)—in The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, he set forth a collaboration that would weld this team together for years.

 

___________
Other media

Wim Wenders, Peter Handke in conversation with Ian Buruma

Peter Handke – Gespräch mit Friedrich Luft (1969)

Peter Handke im Gespräch mit Katja Gasser

Peter Handke – Self-accusation

OUTRAGE AU PUBLIC de Peter HANDKE

 

_______________
Interview (1979)

JS: Do you consider any of your writing “realistic”?

Peter Handke: I try to avoid distinctions such as “ realistic” or “ romantic,” for in the process of writing, these distinctions no longer occur. When I used the term “ realistic” in this essay it must have made sense, and I think that everything in this essay is clear. But one cannot write according to a set of rules. The essay was not a set of rules; it was an attempt to make things clear at that time. I really don’t know what “ realistic” is.

JS: You once called your play Der Ritt über den Bodensee (The Ride Across Lake Constance) “ realistic.”

PH: Where did I say that?

JS: It was some years back, in an interview for the Munich Abend
zeitung.

PH: Such words certainly do get used, but one would have to know the sentences, the vibrations, the situation. There are times and places in which any word can be used, but it is not applicable in general. I can imagine that one can say “ realistic” this day in this place on this topic, and that the word is then completely appropriate. I have no idea where one gets then, for to hear the term “realistic” immediately stops my every creative impulse. But I really don’t like being asked whether that which I write now is the practice of that which was, so to speak, the theory. When writing, there is no theory and practice; there is only practice. And in practice, a new theory is generated in every sentence. But at the same moment that it comes into being, this theory is immediately invalidated.

JS: Do you feel the same way about “ Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms” (“ I Am an Ivory Tower Dweller” ) (1967), the essay in which you explain your attack upon the impotence of the descriptive language used by your colleagues at the Group 47 meeting in Princeton?

PH: I am glad that I wrote that essay. Naturally, there are theore tical expressions or explanations of aims and imaginations. They are, as I found out, always very dangerous because for those who read them they create a pressure to relate narratives or poems to such explanations. But I am also to blame, if I have written such an essay.

JS: Were you to write these essays today, then, they would be different.

PH: Yes, definitely. I don’t want to write any more essays.

JS: In “Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms,” you say that in your opinion, a story is no longer necessary in fiction, and that more and more of the vehicles of fiction are falling away. While this is the case in Das Gewicht der Welt and your first novel, Die Hornissen (The Hornets), it seems to me that some of your work- for example, Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell), Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams), and Die linkshändige Frau (The Lefthanded Woman)- have more of a traditional narrative. Do you agree with this observation?

PH: These narratives and novels really have no story. They are only daily occurrences brought into a new order. What is ‘‘story’’ or “ fiction” is really always only the point of intersection between individual daily events. This is what produces the impression of fiction. And because of this I believe they are not traditional, but that the most unarranged daily occurrences are only brought into a new order, where they suddenly look like fiction. I never want to do anything else. I don’t think I could do a grotesque fan tasy or a fresco-like representation of society, presenting a great many people who all come together, in a great epic. I once thought I could do that, but I now think that this is no longer right, that it no longer works. With my greatest effort I can expand myself, I can continue to expand myself. This is my only epic ability. But I cannot do this with various characters, these tricks of the novel ist. I cannot do that. What I can do is write an epic poem, a narra tive, which always has something lyric about it, because every thing I write is first verified through myself. I find it silly to write a social novel-for me. It may be that this is possible for someone, but everything, every tree which I describe, must also be myself. I cannot imagine writing any other way than that through which I achieve an expansion of self. Goethe also said that in Germany, or perhaps everywhere, there is a stupid discussion about new, subjective sensibilities.

JS: The American critic Lionel Trilling, as well as others, remark ed that he feels the novel as a genre has exhausted itself, that its time is up. Do you think this is so?

PH: I have often heard this. I believe every generation and every time has the need to read narratives which go beyond a mere report, beyond a mere description, beyond journalism, to read a creation of man which is not the repetition of daily occurrences one finds in newspapers or on television. And I think that perhaps the novel-and I really don’t know what “ novel” is, but that a definite narrative posture–can do justice to society. I don’t say “novel,” but the posture of narrating the common experiences of the past- there once was, or I went, or he went, or the woman went-I imagine that this is an eternal language and that this is also the freest language. That does not mean “novel,” but the narrating language, and I’ve already told you that all my narratives, or what ever one calls them–novels–are more epic poems. And I think that this is a form which suits our time. There is no expansion of character or plot, but an “I” is writing a narrative poem about the time in which he lives, about the self, and about others. But I think this was always so, that the novel, as it is understood, has been a bastard, more something to entertain people, and it will always remain so, and it will always exist. But I no longer think that the novel can continue to hold its place as an expression about a society and about a time.

JS: You have said many times that the only thing that concerns you as a writer is language. Is this still true?

PH: Yes. I mean that language is a very valuable proof of life, not only for me as a writer, but also that I have language. Most language which presents itself as language is no longer language. There is almost no language any more. It is only when I live and have a feeling that there is a future, that language appears, not only for me as a writer. Language is the most valuable thing there is. Most people have no language at all. There is a sigh of relief through the masses when there is someone who has a language. What is this language? I believe this language is only poetic language. That is what language means. All other languages are a set of rules, routines. At its best such language is a routine of living. But normally it is something that kills and closes in; it is something aggressive, something evil. Even when I talk with psychoanalysts, or theologians, or with almost everyone, I think that what they have as language is evil. Only someone who has a design of man also has a friendly, an open, a precise language. There are, of course, a few theologians and philosophers who know this, who know that their language is stuck in conventions. The only thing which is valid for me, where I feel very powerful- powerful without power-is when I succeed in finding form with language. I think language for me is form, and form is perma nence, because otherwise there is no permanence in human existence.

JS: How important is the writing of Roland Barthes for you?

PH: It was important for me fifteen years ago, for structures. It helped me to see structures, and that is a pleasure, because there is formlessness in every phenomenon, every “I” for itself, and all are confused. It helped me at that time to see an order, not a hierarchical order but a structural order. But all that is long forgotten, and in spite of that I am grateful. Poetic writing must continue on much further.

JS: Do you consider yourself primarily an Austrian writer?

PH: I consider myself a German-language writer and I am Austrian. That is the answer. And somebody else can by all means call me an Austrian writer. That is also true. But I can only say I am a German-language writer and I am Austrian.

JS: But can one compare you with any particular Austrian writer? PH: I think everyone who works conscientiously with language and with a sentence can be compared with anyone else who tries the same. I hope to be compared with someone who takes seriously what a sentence is.

JS: In “ Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms,” you say that Kleist, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Faulkner, and Robbe-Grillet have changed your consciousness of the world. Since 1967, when you made that statement, would you add any new names to this list?

PH: There are so many and so few great writers. Perhaps I should have gone a little bit further back into history and tried to re-read from the beginning on. Years back in school I was fascinated by Homer, by Pindar, by Heraclites, and I have re-read everything which I, and perhaps many others, read too early, this time more slowly. Goethe. But there is one who I only now totally compre hend and who for me writes a holy scripture in a complete object ive sense, and that is Hölderlin. I had not understood him in this way before. But now I can read his work as far better writing, as moral, high-standing, holy scripture, where one is not forced to be lieve but, because sentences stand like mountain ranges, can simply believe, or at least see an ideal. At the moment I am also reading many scientific essays, because this gives one such a strange kind of concentration and quietness and, above all, a creative impulse, a completely objective creative impulse. A writer is always threatened by a creative impulse which goes anywhere it likes. While I am reading geological description, for example, my creative impulse remains contained and, in spite of that, very strong. This creative impulse does not become pictures, but goes, so to speak, into grammar, giving grammar new life.

JS: You and Wim Wenders have made films together and you per sonally made a film of your novella Die linkshändige Frau. I know that films have always been an interest of yours. Is there any possibililty that you will in the future prefer filmmaking to writing?

PH: I think I will make a film, or perhaps two, if I can. But the greatest difficulty is that there cannot be any arbitrary crossing of borders, because one loses one’s identity very easily, an identity which as a writer is difficult to have anyhow. It is very difficult for me to say, “ I am a writer.” Only sometimes, in moments where I know what is, where I can say what is, by writing, am I a writer. But this identity is not an everyday one, as with a doctor, or a German professor, or whatever. When I made this film, I didn’t count on coming so close to losing my identity, which is fragile anyhow. And there was a long time afterwards when I was nothing. And one must be very philosophical to endure the fact that one is nothing. You understand, one cannot simply say, now I’ll make a film again, and now I’ll write a book again; it doesn’t work like that. It is a very, very dangerous and adventurous thing. If I make a film again I know that I have to be very, very careful. It was very, very difficult then to find my way back to sentences, to writing, and not to feel totally like a dilettante or a pretender when I afterwards tried again to write a story or, as we said, a narrative poem. It is also a great problem that two sentences come together. What does it mean, that one sentence follows another? It was as though everything were isolated and I were lying by adding one sentence to the other. That is how I felt then when I was writing.

JS: Two last questions please. A colleague of mine recently commented that students in America today are reading Handke the way his generation read Hesse, even before their works were being taught in the university curriculum. Can you explain why the young intellectuals of American feel such an affinity for your work?

PH: I believe because they are independent people. I know that there are also people here who read what I write, but they are not a congregation as they were in the past. They are independent people. They have no ideology, they are skeptical, and at the same time they have longing, and they are objective and at the same time they don’t want to perish in objectivity. This might be the case everywhere. But there are not so many. That flatters me, of course, but I don’t have the impression that there are many in America. I’m proud that this is so anyway. There is a nice saying by Ingeborg Bachmann which goes, “I long for you, reader.” I don’t look down upon readers. All I want is to be read. I think it is something extremely beautiful for a human being to read. I don’t want to say anything about American literary criticism, but what I really want is not to be criticized but only to be read. On the other hand, I must say that sometimes I am pleased to read something precise where I can see that this critic has a sympathetic under standing of what I have written. That is very, very good for one who writes. I believe that to receive no encouragement but to be portrayed always as an enemy is very, very damaging to this good creative impulse which a writer needs. This creative impulse is the most valuable thing which one can have; that is all I know. It is only there when one feels the divine in oneself. And in the literary world this valuable creativity can easily be destroyed. If I have learned anything at all, I have learned that I have to be careful of my creative impulse, of this difficulty, which perhaps everyone has, of this good, of this new-world-creating creative impulse, where everything, so to speak, can become language and where one thinks he can bring the world to shine with language, and not to betray it as it almost always happens with language. Every beauty is destroyed by language. What one really wants with writing is the fact that beauty achieves permanence. But I’m going on too long. You began with Hesse, and I think he is a very honorable writer. But a comparison is not possible.

JS: And finally, can you tell me something about your new novel, Langsame Heimkehr (Slow Homecoming), which you recently completed?

PH: I can only say I have expanded myself as never before with this writing. It is an attempt to reach a world harmony and at the same time to reach a universality for myself as someone who writes, an attempt which may have been too daring. Sometimes this is so in this narrative-or in this epic poem, as you will surely call it. I have the feeling that for centuries this has not been tried: to capture this harmony with language, and to pass it on conta giously, because we have, especially in the German-language part of the world, the problem with our history, and because of this we have almost no future. Because of what happened forty or so years ago, we have no more power for beauty; no one can really live the right way here, and there is no nature. Or there is na ture, but there is no language for nature, what Hölderlin speaks of as the great nature, which was still possible in his time. In Austria, too, there is, naturally, no difference. This is the great problem with the past and, because of the past, with the future. And because of this we have the problem with the poetic creation of human beings living together. And in this which I have written, without wanting it, it came to the conflict between these two. I wanted to create beauty, so to speak, the quiet beauty, with language, and then I noticed that I came into conflict with the history of my ancestors, which is also in me. This is how it happened. I don’t know whether the story is not torn into pieces by this, but in any case I was able to narrate this conflict. I did this in the quietness in the form. I think that it has a form, which is the most important thing. Short on feelings and long on form. (Laugh). And because of this it became fragmentary; the story stops abruptly. With the greatest effort of which I am capable, I brought everything in this story to a beginning, and with that the story ended. All problems with home, with language, with family, with history, with nature, I have tried to bring to a new beginning, but not in a philosophizing way, not in an essayistic way, but in a narrative way, in the narrative language. And then I suddenly noticed that the story was ended. I was immensely relieved and at the same time it was a great shock for me, because I thought it would be a story of 300 pages and it is only 200. What I really wanted was that it start in America, in Alaska, for ten pages, and that the rest happen across Europe. And now all 200 pages take place there, and it stops in the plane above Europe. It will make sense, but that, too, is a great shock. What do I mean “ great” ? It is a shock.

 

__
Book

Peter Handke The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
FSG Glassics

‘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).’ — Macmillan

 

Excerpt

WHEN JOSEPH BLOCH, a construction worker who had once been a well-known soccer goalie, reported for work that morning, he was told that he was fired. At least that was how he interpreted the fact that no one except the foreman looked up from his coffee break when he appeared at the door of the construction shack, where the workers happened to be at that moment, and Bloch left the building site. Out on the street he raised his arm, but the car that drove past –even though Bloch hadn’t been hailing a cab–was not a cab. Then he heard the sound of brakes in front of him. Bloch looked around: behind him there was a cab; its driver started swearing. Bloch turned around, got in, and told the driver to take him to the Naschmarkt.

It was a beautiful October day. Bloch ate a hot dog at a stand and then walked past the stalls to a movie theater. Everything he saw bothered him. He tried to notice as little as possible. Inside the theater he breathed freely.

Afterward he was astonished by the perfectly natural manner of the cashier in responding to the wordless gesture with which he’d put his money on the box-office turntable. Next to the movie screen he noticed the illuminated dial of an electric clock. Halfway through the movie he heard a bell; for a long time he couldn’t decide whether the ringing was in the film or in the belfry outside near the Naschmarkt.

Out on the street, he bought some grapes, which were especially cheap at this time of year. He walked on, eating the grapes and spitting out the skins. The first hotel where he asked for a room turned him away because he had only a briefcase with him; the desk clerk at the second hotel, which was on a side street, took him to his room himself. Even before the clerk had gone, Bloch lay down on the bed and soon fell asleep.

In the evening he left the hotel and got drunk. Later he sobered up and tried calling some friends; since most of these friends didn’t live in the city and the phone didn’t return his coins, Bloch soon ran out of change. A policeman to whom Bloch shouted,thinking he could get his attention, did not respond. Bloch wondered whether the policeman might have misconstrued the words Bloch had called across the street, and he remembered the natural way the movie cashier had spun around the tray with his ticket. He’d been so astonished by the swiftness of her movements that he almost forgot to pick up the ticket. He decided to look up the cashier.

When he got to the movie, the theater’s lights were just going out. Bloch saw a man on a ladder exchanging the letters of the film for tomorrow’s title. He waited until he could read the name of the next film; then he went back to the hotel.

The next day was Saturday. Bloch decided to stay at the hotel one more day. Except for an American couple, he was alone in the dining room; for a while he listened to their conversation, which he could understand fairly well because he’d traveled with his team to several soccer tournaments in New York; then he quickly went out to buy some newspapers. The papers, because they were the weekend editions, were very heavy; he didn’t fold them up but carried them under his arm to the hotel. He sat down at his table, which had been cleared in the meantime, and took out the want-ad sections; this depressed him. Outside he saw two people walking by with thick newspapers. He held his breath until they had passed.Only then did he realize they were the two Americans. Having seen them earlier only at the table in the dining room, he did not recognize them.

At a coffeehouse he sipped for a long time at the glass of water served with his coffee. Once in a while he got up and took a magazine from the stacks lying on the chairs and tables designated for them; once when the waitress retrieved the magazines piled beside him, she muttered the phrase “newspaper table” as she left. Bloch, who could hardly bear looking at the magazines but at the same time could not really put down a single one of them before he had leafed through it completely, tried glancing out at the street now and then; the contrast between the magazine illustrations and the changing views outside soothed him. As he left, he returned the magazines to the table himself.

At the market the stalls were already closed. For a few minutes Bloch casually kicked discarded vegetables and fruit along the ground in front of him. Somewhere between the stalls he relieved himself. Standing there, he noticed that the walls of the wooden stands were black with urine everywhere.

The grape skins he had spat out the day before were still lying on the sidewalk. When Bloch put his money on the cashier’s tray, the bill got caught as the turntable revolved; he had a chance to say something. The cashier answered. He said something else. Because this was unusual, the girl looked up. This gave him an excuse to go on talking. Inside the movie, Bloch remembered the cheap novel and the hot plate next to the cashier; he leaned back and began to take in the details on the screen.

Late in the afternoon he took a streetcar to the stadium. He bought standing room but sat down on the newspapers, which he still hadn’t thrown away; the fact that the spectators in front of him blocked his view did not bother him. During the game most of them sat down. Bloch wasn’t recognized. He left the newspapers where they were, put a beer bottle on top of them, and went out of the stadium before the final whistle, so he wouldn’t get caught in the rush. The many nearly empty buses and streetcars waiting outside the stadium–it was a championship game–seemed strange. He sat down in a streetcar. He sat there almost alone for so long that he began to feel impatient. Had the referee called overtime? When Bloch looked up, he saw that the sun was going down. Without meaning anything by it, Bloch lowered his head.

Outside, it suddenly got windy. At just about the time that the final whistle blew, three long separate blasts, the drivers and conductors got into the buses and streetcars and the people crowded out of thestadium. Bloch could imagine the noise of beer bottles landing on the playing field; at the same time he heard dust hitting against the windows. Just as he had leaned back in the movie house, so now, while the spectators surged into the streetcar, he leaned forward. Luckily, he still had his film program. It felt as though the floodlights had just been turned on in the stadium. “Nonsense,” Bloch said to himself. He never played well under the lights.

Downtown he spent some time trying to find a phone booth; when he found an empty one, the ripped-off receiver lay on the floor. He walked on. Finally he was able to make a call from the West Railroad Station. Since it was Saturday, hardly anybody was home. When a woman he used to know finally answered, he had to talk a bit before she understood who he was. They arranged to meet at a restaurant near the station, where Bloch knew there was a juke box. He passed the time until she came putting coins in the juke box, letting other people choose the songs; meanwhile, he looked at the signed photos of soccer players on the walls. The place had been leased a couple of years ago by a forward on the national eleven, who’d then gone overseas as coach of one of the unofficial American teams; now that that league had broken up, he’d disappeared over there. Bloch started talking to a girl who kept reachingblindly behind her from the table next to the juke box, always choosing the same record. She left with him. He tried to get her into a doorway, but all the gates were already locked. When one could be opened, it turned out that, to judge from the singing, a religious service was going on behind an inner door. They found an elevator and got in; Bloch pushed the button for the top floor. Even before the elevator started up, the girl wanted to get out again. Bloch then pushed the button for the second floor; there they got out and stood on the stairs; now the girl became affectionate. They ran upstairs together. The elevator was on the top floor; they got in, rode down, and went out on the street.

Bloch walked beside the girl for a while; then he turned around and went back to the restaurant. The woman, still in her coat, was waiting. Bloch explained to the other girl, who was still at the table next to the juke box, that her friend would not come back, and went out of the restaurant with the woman.

Bloch said, “I feel silly without a coat when you’re wearing one.” The woman took his arm. To free his arm, Bloch pretended that he wanted to show her something. Then he didn’t know what it was he wanted to show her. Suddenly he felt the urge to buy an evening paper. They walked through several streets but couldn’t find a newsstand. Finally theytook the bus to the South Station, but it was already closed. Bloch pretended to be startled; and in reality he was startled. To the woman–who had hinted, by opening her purse on the bus and fiddling with various things, that she was having her period–he said, “I forgot to leave a note,” without knowing what he actually meant by the words “note” and “leave.” Anyway, he got into a cab alone and drove to the Naschmarkt.

Since the movie had a late show on Saturdays, Bloch actually arrived too early. He went to a nearby cafeteria and, standing up, ate a croquette. He tried to tell the counter girl a joke as fast as he could; when the time was up and he still hadn’t finished, he stopped in the middle of a sentence and paid. The girl laughed.

On the street he ran into a man he knew who asked him for money. Bloch swore at him. As the drunk grabbed Bloch by the shirt, the street blacked out. Startled, the drunk let go. Bloch, who’d been expecting the theater lights to go out, rushed away. In front of the movie house he met the cashier; she was getting into a car with a man. Bloch watched her. When she was in the car, in the seat next to the driver, she answered his look by adjusting her dress on the seat; at least Bloch took this to be a response. There were no incidents; she had closed the door and the car had driven off.

Bloch went back to the hotel. He found the lobby lit up but deserted. When he took his key from the hook, a folded note fell out of the pigeonhole. He opened it: it was his bill. While Bloch stood there in the lobby, with the note in his hand, the desk clerk came out of the checkroom. Bloch immediately asked him for a newspaper and at the same time looked through the open door into the checkroom, where the clerk had evidently been napping on a chair he’d taken from the lobby. The clerk closed the door, so that all Bloch could see was a small stepladder with a soup bowl on it, and said nothing until he was behind the desk. But Bloch had understood even the closing of the door as a rebuff and walked upstairs to his room. In the rather long hall he noticed a pair of shoes in front of only one door; in his room he took off his own shoes without untying them and put them outside the door. He lay down on the bed and fell asleep at once.

In the middle of the night he was briefly awakened by a quarrel in the adjoining room; but perhaps his ears were so oversensitive after the sudden waking that he only thought the voices next door were quarreling. He slammed his fist against the wall. Then he heard water rushing in the pipes. The water was turned off; it became quiet, and he fell back to sleep.

Next morning the telephone woke Bloch up. He was asked whether he wanted to stay another night.

Looking at his briefcase on the floor–the room had no luggage rack–Bloch immediately said yes and hung up. After he had brought in his shoes, which had not been shined, probably because it was Sunday, he left the hotel without breakfast.

In the rest room at the South Station he shaved himself with an electric razor. He showered in one of the shower stalls. While getting dressed, he read the sports section and the court reports in the newspaper. Afterwards–he was still reading and it was rather quiet in the adjoining booths–he suddenly felt good. Fully dressed, he leaned against the wall of the booth and kicked his foot against the wooden bench. The noise brought a question from the attendant outside and, when he didn’t answer, a knock on the door. When he still didn’t reply, the woman outside slapped a towel (or whatever it might be) against the door handle and went away. Bloch finished reading the paper standing up.

On the square in front of the station he ran into a man he knew who told him he was going to the suburbs to referee a minor-league game. Bloch thought this idea was a joke and played along with it by saying that he might as well come too, as the linesman. When his friend opened his duffelbag and showed him the referee’s uniform and a net bag full of lemons, Bloch saw even those things, in line withthe initial idea, as some kind of trick items from a novelty shop and, still playing along, said that since he was coming too, he might as well carry the duffelbag. Later, when he was with his friend on the local train, the duffelbag in his lap, it seemed, especially since it was lunchtime and the compartment was nearly empty, as though he was going through this whole business only as a joke.

Though what the empty compartment was supposed to have to do with his frivolous behavior was not clear to Bloch. That this friend of his was going to the suburbs with a duffelbag; that he, Bloch, was coming along; that they had lunch together at a suburban inn and went together to what Block called “an honest-to-goodness soccer field,” all this seemed to him, even while he was traveling back home alone–he had not liked the game–some kind of mutual pretense. None of that mattered, thought Bloch. Luckily, he didn’t run into anyone else on the square in front of the station.

From a telephone booth at the edge of a park he called his ex-wife; she said everything was okay but didn’t ask about him. Bloch felt uneasy.

He sat down in a garden café that was still open despite the season and ordered a beer. When, after some time, nobody had brought his beer, he left; besides, the steel tabletop, which wasn’t covered by a cloth, had blinded him. He stood outside the windowof a restaurant; the people inside were sitting in front of a TV set. He watched for a while. Somebody turned toward him, and he walked away.

In the Prater he was mugged. One thug jerked his jacket over his arms from behind; another butted his head against Bloch’s chin. Bloch’s knees folded a little, then he gave the guy in front a kick. Finally the two of them shoved him behind a candy stand and finished the job. He fell down and they left. In a rest room, Bloch cleaned off his face and suit.

At a café in the Second District he shot some pool until it was time for the sports news on television. Bloch asked the waitress to turn on the set and then watched as if none of this had anything to do with him. He asked the waitress to join him for a drink. When the waitress came out of the back room, where gambling was going on, Bloch was already at the door; she walked past him but didn’t speak. Bloch went out.

Back at the Naschmarkt, the sight of the sloppily piled fruit and vegetable crates behind the stalls seemed like another joke of some kind, nothing to worry about. Like cartoons, thought Bloch, who liked to look at cartoons with no words. This feeling of pretense, of playing around–this business with the referee’s whistle in the duffelbag, thought Bloch–went away only when, in the movie, a comic snitcheda trumpet from a junk shop and started tooting on it in a perfectly natural way; all this was so casual that it almost seemed unintentional, and Bloch realized that the trumpet and all other objects were stark and unequivocal. Bloch relaxed.

After the movie he waited between the market stalls for the cashier. Some time after the start of the last show, she came out. So as not to frighten her by coming at her from between the stalls, he sat there on a crate until she got to the more brightly lit part of the Naschmarkt. Behind the lowered shutter in one of the stalls, a telephone was ringing; the stand’s phone number was written in large numerals on the metal sheet. “No score,” Bloch thought at once. He followed the cashier without actually catching up with her. As she got on the bus, he strolled up and stepped aboard after her. He took a seat facing her but left several rows of seats between them. Not until new passengers blocked his view after the next stop was Bloch able to think again. She had certainly looked at him but obviously hadn’t recognized him; had the mugging changed his looks that much? Bloch ran his fingers over his face. The idea of glancing at the window to check what she was doing struck him as foolish. He pulled the newspaper from the inside pocket of his jacket and looked down at the letters but didn’t read. Then, suddenly, he foundhimself reading. An eyewitness was testifying about the murder of a pimp who’d been shot in the eye at close range. “A bat flew out of the back of his head and slammed against the wallpaper. My heart skipped a beat.” When the sentences went right on about something else, about an entirely different person, with no paragraph, Bloch was startled. “But they should have put a paragraph there,” thought Bloch. After his abrupt shock, he was furious. He walked down the aisle toward the cashier and sat diagonally across from her, so that he could look at her; but he did not look at her.

When they got off the bus, Bloch realized that they were far outside the city, near the airport. At this time of night, it was a very quiet area. Bloch walked along beside the girl but not as if he was escorting her or even as if he wanted to. After a while he touched her. The girl stopped, turned, and touched him too, so fiercely that he was startled. For a moment the purse in her other hand seemed more familiar to him than she did.

They walked along together a while, but keeping their distance, not touching. Only when they were on the stairs did he touch her again. She started to run; he walked more slowly. When he got upstairs, he recognized her apartment by the wide-open door. She attracted his attention in the dark; he walked to her and they started in right away.

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Armando, Hi. I guess you heard back from them? Like I said, I don’t know what the exact deal is myself. I thought of a few presses for you, but I checked and none of them are accepting submissions right now, so I’ll keep thinking. Look, it’s a hard process, and especially the way you’re trying to do it by submitting a novel cold without your writing previously being known at all. Like I’ve said, I didn’t start that way, so I’m not wholly familiar with how that could work. I self-published my first two books and submitted fiction and poetry to lots of magazines and edited a literary magazine myself and, so, was kind of a known entity to some degree before I ever submitted a novel to a publisher, and, even then, ‘Closer’ was rejected by something two dozen publishers before Grove Press took it. Submitting a novel completely out of the blue like you are is not an easy way to go. You need a lot of patience and diligence to start publishing books unless you’re really lucky or enter the process already hooked up through your work being previously out there or from writing school or other connections. All I can say is to try not to take the rejections personally. It’s part of the real deal of being a writer and especially in the beginning. ** Terence, Hi, Terence, Thank you so, so much again. It really was and is a thrill and an honor. ** H, Hi, h. Okay, my lips are sealed. Jean Epstein … maybe I haven’t read Epstein? I don’t think so unless I’m forgetting. I’ll investigate. Thanks! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. How are you feeling, spine-wise? Are you doing and feeling much better, I hope? Definitely looking forward to the Leckey retrospective. I didn’t know about that TV project. Wow. I just noticed the other say that there’s a Maurizio Cattelan survey show here in Paris, and I’m excited to see that. I’m kind of quite delighted by his work. Do you like it? ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Oh, cool. Friday, awesome. I’m guessing that’s going to be a real load off your back and off your own art and work, no? My jet lag is not too bad. Just a little hazy. Yes, Zac and I actually start the serious editing work on the music video today. So that will probably be most of my doings this week. Colds are really stubborn things. Especially I guess when the air outside gets chilly and the air inside gets artificially heated. Or so they say. Yesterday was pretty good. The new GIF novel is totally finished as of last night and ready to go when the time comes now, and that’s exciting. Mostly I’m just getting ready for stuff: the music video edit, the upcoming ‘Kindertotenlieder’ performances, some opera work maybe. Not bad. How was Tuesday on your end? ** Ferdinand, Thanks again a whole bunch, man. I’ll get back to you soon. xx ** Steevee, Hi. Oh, good, yeah, ‘Cameraperson’ was really fine, right? And the director happened to be there at screening and spoke afterwards, and I liked her a lot. ‘Under the Shadow’, hm, I’ve heard of that, but I didn’t know what it was until now. I’ll definitely watch for a possible French run. Thanks, Steve. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Whoa, so weird about the Facebook outage. I think it must be an algorithm thing, no? I mean I can’t imagine what you could have posted that would get you banned. Bizarre. Well, ha ha, I hear you big time about diligently assessing the platform for your work, obviously. Try to enjoy the non-Facebook inflected peace of mind for now? ** Jamie McMorrow, Hi, Jamie. The jet lag’s not so awful. It’s only a six hour time difference, luckily. I’m just dealing with some mental fog, basically. Oh, let me see if I can remember my in-flight blockbusters. Hm. ‘Star Trek Beyond’ (kind of charming and okay, I thought), ‘Transporter Rebooted’ (junk), ‘Independence Day Resurgence’ (blah, and I’m a diehard disaster movie fan, so that’s not saying much), ‘The Huntsman Winter’s War’ (weak, tired), ‘Elvis and Nixon’ (kind of nothing), ‘The Last Vampire Hunter’ (strangely funnish). Whoa, you’re going to make a cartoon? That’s fantastic! Never done anything like that myself, but it’s, like, a lot of work, no? How are you doing the animation? How long is it going to be? That’s a really interesting project. I’m excited to hear more about it as it develops. Sweet, man! My week will be mostly full of music video editing ‘cos it’s due very soon. I’m really looking forward to that. And some prep for the looming performances of Gisele Vienne’s and my ‘Kindertotenlieder’. And a Tim Hecker concert. And I’m really happy because this weekend is the annual Salon du Chocolat, which is kind of heaven on earth if you’re into chocolate as thing and as a vehicle for worldwide art and creativity. I’m saving my pennies. How’s your week looking? Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Sad about Jack Chick. What a weird ‘artist’. ** B, Hi, man. I did pass your words along to Zac, and he was and is very chuffed. Oh, excellent, about your review! I’ll read it as soon as I get out of here. Congrats to you and to the publishing entity! Everyone, You’ll want to follow up on what d.l. and artist and fine fellow B aka Bear is about to tell you: ‘ I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was doing work with an organization called Gathering of the Tribes? Well, they just published a review I wrote of Ava Duvarnay’s new film “13th”. It was my first stab at reviewing a film, but if you are curious then you can read it here.’ I’ve certainly heard about ‘Black Mirror’, but no. I just barely even watch TV. It’s, like, the one medium that, due its addictive thing, I feel like I have to eschew as much as possible to be able to do all the things I need to do. But when I do dip in, I’ll try ‘BM’. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien. Yes, that’s me. That Rehberg track is taken from Gisele Vienne’s and Peter’s and my first collaborative theater piece ‘I Apologize’. Cool, yeah, that’s a great Peter track. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Ha, you were going for it, weren’t you? I’m glad you weren’t my uncle back when I was testing the waters of dating. Although God knows stuff like that can help a shy lad cut to the chase, I guess. Mm, at the moment, my only plans for April is that I think Zac and I be shooting our new film in the first two weeks of that month if everything goes as planned. In which case I would be in and out of Paris because we’ll be shooting most of it in this smallish French city Caen about a couple of hours away. But I can let you know when the plans are firmed up because it’s still up in the air right now. Your mom has never been to NYC? That’s nuts. It’ll blow her mind then, no? ** Bill, Hi, Bill. When Zac and I were in SF, I remember we wandered jonesing through some small shop that sold a lot of synths. I wonder if it’s the same one. I don’t remember the name. In the Mission maybe? No, Lucia Berlin’s stuff is not too cheery, that’s true, ha ha. ** Okay. I’m turning the spotlight on an early Peter Handke book today. See what you think. See you tomorrow.