Peter Handke Critical Essay | Critical Review by Reinhold Grimm

Critical Review by Reinhold Grimm

SOURCE: Grimm, Reinhold. “Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder Das Stuck zum Film vom Krieg.” World Literature Today 73, no. 4 (autumn 1999): 728-29.

In the following review, Grimm dissects Handke's Die Fahrt im Einbaum Oder Das Stuck zum Film vom Krieg plot line and character development, giving the play a negative review.

Peter Handke's faible for the Balkans, and for Serbia in particular, is well known. In his new book, Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder Das Stück zum Film vom Krieg's (The Voyage in the Dugout or The Piece about the Film on the War), this penchant comes to the fore again, in however veiled or masqueraded a manner.

Handke's “piece” (i.e., play, or alleged play) is equipped with no fewer than three mottoes—from Ivo Andrić, Goethe, and the fourteenth-century laws of King Dušan—all of which are meant to justify his apologetic endeavors. The dramatic action, if indeed that is...
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