Austrian writer Peter Handke’s The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick was first published in 1970. According to the blurb on the back of my 2007 reprint, it caused quite a stir in Europe and the United States at the time, because of its “innovative use of language and its searing portrait of a troubled man in an equally troubled society”.

It came to my attention after I read a rather wonderful interview with MJ Hyland in which she named it as one of her influences. I love Hyland’s work (you can read all my reviews of her novels here) and this book sounded like something I’d like, so I promptly ordered a copy online. Fittingly, it arrived just in time for German Literature Month, which runs throughout November, and was an “interesting” palette cleanser after reading a steady stream of Canadian fiction for my Shadow Giller obligations.

The story is a simple one (though it’s astonishingly told): Joseph Bloch is a once-famous soccer goalkeeper (the “goalie” of the title), who has just lost his job on a construction site. With nothing to occupy his days and no friends of whom to speak, he fills in time by going to the cinema, where he develops a “thing” for the cashier, whom he later murders, almost by accident and without thinking of the consequences.

He flees to a village on the Austrian border, where he re-establishes contact with an old girlfriend, who runs a public house. By coincidence the neighbourhood is filled with police, all on the hunt for a missing boy. Bloch’s days are mostly filled wandering around aimlessly, observing the search efforts from afar; his evenings drinking in the pub. Nothing much happens.

But it’s not so much the actual things that Joseph does, but what goes on in his head that makes this novella such an intriguing read. Surprisingly, given it’s written in the third person, we get an alarming view of Bloch’s mental state and his subsequent decent into a kind of madness.

In many ways it’s like Bloch is watching a movie with the sound turned down too low. He has problems with his memory — he often gets a feeling of deja vu, as if it takes his mind a few seconds to catch up with his actions — and constantly mishears things or is woken up by noises that don’t actually exist.

To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.

Dün akşam bitirmiştim m uyku gözümden akıyordu incelememi yazamadım. Farklı bir kitaptı diyebilirim. İsmine bakınca kurgulanan olayın bir kalecinin hikayesi olduğunu kestirebiliyorsunuz. İçeriğin de futbol ile ilgili olabileceğini düşünüyorsunuz ama tam olarak öyle değil.

Okurken kişisel diyaloglardan çok betimlemeler ve paragraflarla anlatım yoluna gidilmiş. Bu kitabı alacak olanlarda "acaba sıkılır mıyım?" gibi bir endişe doğurabilir. Eğer otobüste, yolda, cafe gibi kalabalık ortamlarda okumayı düşünmüyorsanız iç rahatlığı ile alabilirsiniz.

Hikayenin ağır bir ilerleyişi olsa da ben severek okudum. Kişisel gözlemlerin, kahramanın iç dünyasına dair çözümlemelerin sık görüldüğü türde bir kitaptı.

Neden 3 yıldız: Bazen düşünceler birbirinden kopuk sunulmuş gibi geldiği. Durup neredeydik, ne oluyor analizi yapmk zorunda bıraktığı için...

Goalie is a manic noir, a Touch of Evil in the Austrian hinterland, it is breathless and yet sober—we follow a former footballer as he’s sacked from his construction job and begins a peripatetic towards meaning, though the layers fall away and language becomes so much dust. A curt wind arrives to scatter, motivation is just another accessory, the reptilian protagonist isn’t fleeing as much as refining. A local missing child reveals another fissure but the goalkeeper much like the reader can’t pause for either ceremony or contemplation. This story will end.

I read this on a flight from Frankfurt to Belgrade. I was sitting next to an asshole. He made an elderly guy change seats. Justice sometimes appears to be a rhetorical device, a philosophical ideal to balance the scales.

El libro está narrado en primera persona y te atrapa en la mente de Josef Bloch, una persona que no parece estar demasiado en sus cabales. El estilo fragmentado, inconexo, subjetivo y repetitivo te hace sentir la angustia sociopática del protagonista. Sus "idas de olla" están sujetas a múltiples interpretaciones, lo cual es un punto fuerte del libro. El final abierto es otro. Es interesante el uso del narrador poco fiable, lo que te hace dudar de lo que Bloch cuenta y de cómo interpreta el mundo. En ocasiones, recuerda un poco a "El extranjero" de Albert Camus, aunque hay que distinguir entre la enfermedad mental y la sociopatía de Bloch y la angustia existencial y "tierna indiferencia" de Meursault.

4.5