Research Catalog

Title

Short letter, long farewell / Peter Handke ; translated by Ralph Manheim ; introduction by Greil Marcus.

Author

Handke, Peter

Publication

New York : New York Review Books, [2009].

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Manheim, Ralph, 1907-1992
• Manheim, Ralph, 1907-1992.
• Marcus, Greil

Description

xiv, 167 p.; 21 cm.

Summary

Short Letter, Long Farewell is one the most inventive and exhilarating of the great Peter Handke's novels. Full of seedy noir atmospherics and boasting an air of generalized delirium, the book starts by introducing us to a nameless young German who has just arrived in America, where he hopes to get over the collapse of his marriage. No sooner has he arrived, however, than he discovers that his ex-wife is pursuing him. He flees, she follows, and soon the couple is running circles around each other across the length of America---from Philadelphia to St. Louis to the Arizona desert, and from Portland, Oregon, to L.A. Is it love or vengeance that they want from each other? Everything's spectacularly unclear in a book that is travelogue, suspense story, domestic comedy, and Western showdown, with a totally unexpected Hollywood twist at the end. Above all, Short Letter, Long Farewell is a love letter to America, its landscapes and popular culture, the invitation and the threat of its newness and wildness and emptiness, with the promise of a new life---or the corpse of an old one---lying just around the corner.

Series Statement

New York Review Books classics

Uniform Title

• Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied. English
• New York Review Books classics

Alternative Title

Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied.

Subject

German fiction > Translations into English

Genre/Form

German fiction – Translations into English.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

• 9781590173060 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 1590173066 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2008042825

OCLC

• 227930013
• SCSB-11124074

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library