Peter Handke appeared on the literary scene when as a completely unknown twenty-two year old he attacked the members of the Gruppe 47, the most influential group of post-1945 writers, in what was then an unprecedented act of disrespect. Among his broad output, Short letter, Long Farewell is one of the most successful and popular of his novels, probably due to its accessibility. It also marks the beginning of Handke’s turn to ‘inwardness’, an introverted and introspective way of writing typical of his later style.

Short Letter, Long Farewell deals with the aftermath of a failed marriage and is about as romantic as a Peter Handke novel gets, which is not very. The narrator, an unnamed Austrian writer, travels through America. In the first hotel he stays at, a letter from Judith, his estranged wife, reaches him; ‘I am in New York. Please don’t look for me. It would not be nice for you to find me.’ Now a strange sort of chase ensues. Strange, as the narrator acts as an accomplice to his own pursuit by Judith: He makes sure to leave details of his next destination whenever he leaves a hotel, and even checks by telephone if Judith has picked up his tracks and followed. His flight leads the narrator from the East to the West coast of the USA. Because of a longing to be more like the Great Gatsby, he chooses, in homage to F.Scott Fitzgerald, to stay at the Algonquin hotel in New York.

The novel heads towards its natural conclusion, which is a final confrontation between Judith and the narrator. Dilettantish death threats lead to a scene where she finally confronts him with a pistol in the street. The narrator knows that the outcome of this confrontation will be determined by the progress he will have made in his quest for his identity.

The narrator spends long stretches of the novel thinking about himself, and subjecting his character to painstaking analysis. At one point, the reader finds an unexpected ally in the narrator when he brilliantly diagnoses himself with a ‘thinking cramp’. Parts of the novel indeed read like a study in self-consciousness as when the narrator does not even seem be able to walk down a street naturally.

Its very straightforward plot makes Short Letter, Long Farewell ideal for getting a first taste of Handke’s writing and the almost esoteric pleasure of his introspective focus, but if you are put off by ‘navel-gazing’ you probably won’t much enjoy the rest of his work.

‘I walked east on Forty-fourth Street. «No, west!» I turned around and went in the opposite direction, thinking I would come to Broadway. I had crossed Fifth and Madison avenue before I realized that I had not really turned around. I must only have imagined that I had turned around and gone in the opposite direction. However, because I felt turned around, I stood still and thought it over until my head was spinning. Then I went down Madison Avenue to Forty-second Street. There I turned, proceeded slowly, and actually reached Broadway at Times Square.’ p25