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You drew my attention to that first sentence and i...

2026-06-27T01:53:05.401+01:00

You drew my attention to that first sentence and it came alive as it did for you. My questions are largely rhetorical, for myself, the kinds of questions that are rewards for careful, slow, inquiring reading. And thus I thank you for slowing me down with your thoughts.

Ah....summer and Proust. Thanks for the entry. I ...

2026-06-26T11:39:38.091+01:00

Ah....summer and Proust. Thanks for the entry. I am immersing myself in Proust, triggered by https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/what-it-is-like-to-read-proust – decided to take the dare I've long postponed and attempt Swann's Way in French. Slow going, but wonderfully luxurious with time. And your mention of Handke brings back a very close read of A Moment of True Feeling back in 1994, which I think I need to revisit now. Enjoying the World Cup without knowing what I'm watching and pulling for the Brits. Best wishes, Kurt.

Thanks Scott. I can't answer your questions an...

2026-06-23T20:00:01.115+01:00

Thanks Scott. I can't answer your questions and don't feel the need to worry too much about that. However, now that I read it again with your comments in mind, I wonder if it has a similar quality to Proust's opening line: "Eight words [that] emerge from the silence, hang there for a moment in the air, then die away" as Gabriel Josipovici says about it in the first line of The World and the Book. He says we should not ask what the words mean but "What do these words when spoken by that person mean?". For me, it means for Handke, for Andreas Loser, a withdrawal to seek distance. Perhaps that's what I found that day in the bookshop.

Thoughtful and enlightening, as I've come to e...

2026-06-23T17:26:40.896+01:00

Thoughtful and enlightening, as I've come to expect.

Near the end of your essay, you turn to the first line or sentence of Handke's novel "Across" and experience "time's essence." How does the novel open? I ask myself. Will it affect me similarly? In Ralph Manheim's translation it reads" "I shut my eyes and out of the black letters the city lights took shape." The narrator has been reading or writing black letters. He shuts his eyes and the city lights take the shape the following sentences detail, parts of the city "on the big plain" ("in der großen Ebene"). Echoing Proust, Handke's novel is also an exploration of time: "Now I had time. . . . Perhaps what is commonly called a 'state of grace' should be called a 'state of having time.'" Thresholds, places and times between, are explored throughout the novel, and thus Manheim's title "Across."

You've made a link between Proust and Handke that will now influence my re-readings of Handke's work. In fact, despite the many marginal notes made on first reading a couple of decades ago, I sense that "Across" will open in new ways as I begin to read again.

Manheim's title makes sense given the featured thresholds. For reasons I don't fully comprehend, Handke's title is "Der Chinese des Schmerzes," or The Chinaman of Pain.

Handke's first sentence works in ways Manheim's doesn't: "Schließ die Augen, und aus dem Schwarz der Lettern bilden sich die Stadtlichter." Close the eyes, and from the black of the letters the city lights take shape. What a remarkable opening! It moves me as it did you.

Manheim again: "I shut my eyes and out of the black letters the city lights took shape."

Why "I"? Absent the "I", the sentence includes the reader, implies the narrator.

Why past tense, a past that contrasts with the following sentences' present tense?

And why cut the comma that establishes a pause between reading/writing and remembering the city's shape? Comma as threshold.

Thank you for your attention to Proust, to translations and readings of Proust, and for the note that took me back to Handke.

Thanks for the links to the interview - look forwa...

2026-02-23T15:46:18.178+00:00

Thanks for the links to the interview - look forward to listening.

I just finished it. I’m not sure what exactly kept...

2026-02-22T00:02:36.027+00:00

I just finished it. I’m not sure what exactly kept me reading this puzzling book, but I’m glad I did. I think he’s been teasing us along and perhaps chuckling. And I really want to know what comes next.

Thanks Scott. My reading was prompted by his refer...

2026-02-01T11:38:01.033+00:00

Thanks Scott. My reading was prompted by his references to poetry in Was heisst Denken? ("What Calls for Thinking?" in the translation I read; though "What Calls Forth Thinking?" seems fairer to the contents). Also, his "Discourse on Thinking", Blanchot's essay 'The "Sacred" Speech of Hölderlin' (in The Work of Fire) and Charles Bambach's short book "Heidegger and Poetic Thinking". These may be marginal to my real interests but wandering such byways often helps in unexpected ways.

You've been reading Heidegger on Hölderlin, as...

2026-01-31T19:57:44.477+00:00

You've been reading Heidegger on Hölderlin, as have I, most recently "Hölderlin's Hymn 'The Ister.'" What puzzles me in this and other instances is Heidegger's claim that certain pre-Socratic Greeks had non-metaphorical naming powers. He claims the same ability for Hölderlin. I've just finished a chapter of my book on the standing metaphor with a reading of Heidegger's Nazi-era "Introduction to Metaphysics." I argue that the standing metaphor is an initially useful tool for him that finally devolves into his praise of the Nazi state (Sta*te) given form (Gesta*lt) on and by means of German soil (Bodensta*ndigkeit). I'd love additional thoughts on this line if you encounter them.

My copy of "Four Quartets" isn't as amazing as yours, but it has been a source of inspiration for me since I bought it in 1971.

I didn't know Handke had written on Stifter. W...

2025-12-27T17:25:48.053+00:00

I didn't know Handke had written on Stifter. Where does he do this?

Yes, sorry I didn't identify myself. I wouldn&...

2025-12-27T17:13:56.321+00:00

Yes, sorry I didn't identify myself. I wouldn't recommend Witiko to anyone. Surely the most thoroughly boring book ever written and because of that marvelous in its own way. Compared to Witiko, Nachsommer is a thriller. I read Nachsommer as a graduate student working on Bildungsromane from Wilhelm Meister to Keller's Der Grüne Heinrich to Stifter's work. An interesting set. Like you, I prefer Stifter's stories. As you many know, Peter Handke writes often about Stifter. Taking a look just now at the Sebald book you mention, I see he writes about Stifter and Handke in an essay I haven't read. I'll take a closer look.

Thanks Scott (as I presume it's you). Witiko h...

2025-12-27T15:18:34.191+00:00

Thanks Scott (as I presume it's you). Witiko has been translated but, after reading Der Nachsommer – translated as Indian Summer – I'm not sure I want to! Mind you, I loved Penguin's collection of stories Brigitta and Other Tales. I read Indian Summer after Victoria Best wrote about it as "a coming of age novel in which very little happens, but its emotional climate is one of achingly suppressed passion" (https://litlove.wordpress.com/2006/06/03/a-life-in-books/).

Stifter's gluttony! Reminds me of Pepys' &...

2025-12-27T15:10:10.584+00:00

Stifter's gluttony! Reminds me of Pepys' "stone feasts." More importantly, and to your point, these notes from a reading of Stifter's last, huge novel "Witiko":

Never have I read a book so utterly consoling, so deeply certain, so steadfast. And, yes, so conservative. The Reich established in these pages will have its crises, will exert its power unjustly. It will have tragic consequences, especially in its third iteration. But at this time and with these fundamentally good people it stands a reminder of what can be done, what can be built, what can be ordered, what can be given beautiful form.

Who would, who could write such a novel?

A man with severe liver problems. A man whose eyes are failing. A man suffering from psychological breakdowns. Adalbert Stifter must retire early, must seek relief where he can. The year after part three of Witiko is published he attempts suicide with a razor and lives for two days before dying.

That tortured man wrote a novel so precise, so detailed, so rich with description (I thought while reading that were one to cut out all descriptions of what people wear, the novel would be a pamphlet), so replete with nouns, so packed with long lists of names of people and places, so firmly established on the foundation of the standing metaphor that it stands as a monument to discipline and hope.

Thanks for the comment Noah. My experience is the ...

2025-10-08T09:17:08.906+01:00

Thanks for the comment Noah. My experience is the same. His task of depiction explains why he doesn't like Bernhard's fiction.

I really wish there were a better title given to C...

2025-10-07T22:54:54.282+01:00

I really wish there were a better title given to Crossing the Sierra, a book which I remember reading in something of a slowly gathering fury, looking for something as brilliant as the three sections of the Slow Homecoming were; I found Crossing very listless, all these little moments as though cut off from connection, the characters each incredibly dry and impossible to love, I've lost much of the memory now. As always with Handke, even if the project at hand does everything in its power to avoid embodying what I value, his depictions of natural and built forms - of space - tend to be really inspiring for me, and so in sum I think all I got from that book, the whole thing, was geography and frustration.

Thanks Scott. I haven't read any of his other ...

2025-09-29T12:54:45.263+01:00

Thanks Scott. I haven't read any of his other books.

And…thank you for these thoughts on the novel

2025-09-29T03:05:11.045+01:00

And…thank you for these thoughts on the novel

I recently read and used Han’s book “Absence” for ...

2025-09-29T03:03:45.297+01:00

I recently read and used Han’s book “Absence” for a critique of Heidegger’s use of the standing metaphor in his Nazi-era Introduction to Metaphysics.

Many thanks for the link to my pieces about Silent...

2025-07-16T01:16:07.784+01:00

Many thanks for the link to my pieces about Silent Catastrophes on Vertigo!

I too have been contemplating “what really nourish...

2025-07-09T18:23:24.783+01:00

I too have been contemplating “what really nourishes”…with new impetus this summer as I enter retirement, with different rhythms available for reading and writing. Thanks, as always, for these good thoughts

Thanks for the comment. It's a long time since...

2025-06-16T20:19:35.887+01:00

Thanks for the comment. It's a long time since I read the book but you may have prompted me to read it again.

Though I've read a number of works by French a...

2025-06-16T20:08:05.571+01:00

Though I've read a number of works by French authors in the original, I read this book because I was prompted to order it because of its title, which happens to be the title of my favorite work by the 18th century composer Francois Couperin--a work that is also mentioned in Quignard's book.

I tend to be on the latter side Joseph. For the re...

2025-06-13T19:38:46.016+01:00

I tend to be on the latter side Joseph. For the record, I saw it on the 'New Arrivals' stall in my local library and having read of that 'breathless anticipation' felt it was worth trying, and I did read to the end with interest.

I have heard mixed responses to this book from bre...

2025-06-13T19:33:00.127+01:00

I have heard mixed responses to this book from breathless anticipation of the books to come at one end to little-more-than-interesting for one book, but not much more at the other. By my own calculation of volume I cannot imagine, even if it is brilliant, it would be worth 7 x $24.50 or $171.50. So I think I will pass.

Thanks Tony. I presume you mean: https://tonysread...

2025-05-16T14:04:42.683+01:00

Thanks Tony. I presume you mean: https://tonysreadinglist.wordpress.com/2025/02/20/the-tale-of-genji-1-kiritsubo/

Yes, it's amazing how what you deem important ...

2025-05-16T13:53:10.463+01:00

Yes, it's amazing how what you deem important is a sign for others to ignore you completely. This year, I've decided to start a project summarising the chapters of 'The Tale of Genji', currently at the rate of one a fortnight. I can't say it's doing wonders for my stats, but at least I'm enjoying it...