Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Appreciating simplicity.

It is hard to describe The Afternoon of a Writer by Peter Handke. If I tell you the gist of what goes on (guy goes for a walk after writing all day) then you’ll say, “What a snooze that book must be.” But I really didn’t find it a snooze at all. Yes, it is a really simple story but the descriptions are so beautiful and the ideas in the book are so thoughtful.

This book is super short (something like 85 pages) and I felt like it was over before I even really got started. It’s an amazing portrait of an individual and the whole craft of writing in a very short novel. I’m impressed when writers can accomplish so much in so few pages. This was a really simple but very cool book.

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