Showing posts with label peter handke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peter handke. Show all posts

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.