SOURCE: “Language and Reality,” in Partisan Review, Vol. LXII, No. 2, 1995, pp. 314, 316, 318-20, 322, 324, 326.

In the following review, Honegger analyzes Handke's literary and aesthetic preoccupations in The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling.

Claude Lanzman, explaining his approach to filmmaking, quoted from an uncredited source: “When I have the answers, I write an essay, When I have the questions, I write a novel.” This in a nutshell sums up the problem with the English title given to three exquisite prose pieces by Peter Handke, presented in one volume as Essays about Story Telling: On Tiredness, The Jukebox, and The Successful Day.

In the original German editions, each piece appeared separately as a slim, handsome book, each entitled Versuch—a difficult term to capture in English without losing some of its resonances. Literally meaning “attempt,” the term suggests an experiment that implies a certain humility in tackling the given subject matter...