Sam's review of The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick: A Novel
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick: A Novel by Peter Handke
Yes, Handke has a mind for exposing certain cliches of postmodern textual politics, and, at least in his earlier works, managed to be an intriguing storyteller as well (he's apparently in his finest form in his latest novel), but The Goalie's Anxiety Kick falls short of some measure of decorum, of a compelled impulse that would necessitate the text's formal assumptions. Handke can be great, and even in this book pulls off a fat handful of fine moves, but at his worst he can also read as a poor man's Thomas Bernhard, failing, in the end, to suspend your recognition of his formal devices for the substance of the story itself, to guide his own text through such devices toward what abstract truths of voice and text theoretically lie beyond.
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