The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke offers three intimate, eloquent meditations that map a self-reflexive journey from Alaska to the Austria of his childhood, while illuminating the act of writing itself.
In his "Essay on Tiredness," Handke transforms an everyday experience--often precipitated by boredom--into a fascinating exploration of the world of slow motion, differentiating degrees of fatigue, the types of weariness, its rejuvenating effects, as well as its erotic, cultural, and political implications.
The title essay is Handke's attempt to understand the significance of the jukebox, a quest which leads him, while on a trip in Spain, into the literature of the jukebox, the history of the music box, and memories of the Beatles' music, in turn elucidating various stages of his own life.
And in his "Essay on the Successful Day," for which there is no prescription, Handke invents a picture of tranquility, using a self-portrait by Hogarth as his point of departure to describe a state of being at peace.
Playful, reflective, insightful, and entertaining, The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling constitutes a literary triptych that redefines the art of the essay and challenges the form of the short story, confirming Peter Handke's stature as "one of the most original and provocative of contemporary writers" (Lawrence Graver, The New York Times Book Review).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Handke's metafictional title piece--a parable on self-evasion and writer's block--a traveler in Spain makes elaborate preparations to begin a long-planned essay about the jukebox, symbol of American pop culture. The transparent luminosity of the Austrian novelist/poet/memoirist's earlier books ( A Sorrow Beyond Dreams ) has given way, in the three essays gathered here, to a freewheeling, innovative, sometimes tedious experimentalism that pushes back the limits of narrative form. ``Essay on Tiredness,'' a question-and-answer dialgoue, relates various types of fatigue and ennui to student rebellion, lovers' disenchantment, political apathy and so forth. In the concluding piece, a self-portrait by William Hogarth leads Handke to contemplate the idea of a ``successful day,'' which springboards into a meditation on the art of living in the present moment. Handke seamlessly mingles memories, associations, precise observation, digressions and social commentary.