Slow Homecoming

Langsame Heimkehr-Tetralogie #1-3

by Peter Handke, Ralph Manheim (Translator), Benjamin Kunkel (Introduction)

By Nobel Prize Winner Peter Handke Provocative, romantic, and restlessly exploratory, Peter Handke is one of the great writers of our time. Slow Homecoming , originally published in the late 1970s, is central to his achievement and to the powerful influence he has exercised on other writers, chief among them W.G. Sebald. A novel of self-questioning and self-discovery, Slow Homecoming is a singular odyssey, an escape from the distractions of the modern world and the unhappy consciousness, a voyage that is fraught and fearful but ultimately restorative, ending on an unexpected note of joy.   The book begins in America. Writing with the jarring intensity of his early work, Handke introduces Valentin Sorger, a troubled geologist who has gone to Alaska to lose himself in his work, but now feels drawn back on his way to Europe he moves in ominous disorientation through the great cities of America. The second part of the book, “The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire,” identifies Sorger as a projection of the author, who now writes directly about his own struggle to reconstitute himself and his art by undertaking a pilgrimage to the great mountain that Cézanne painted again and again. Finally, “Child Story” is a beautifully observed, deeply moving account of a new father—not so much Sorger or the author as a kind of Everyman—and his love for his growing daughter.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Nobel Prize, Novels, Classics

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Peter Handke (* 6. Dezember 1942 in Griffen, Kärnten) ist ein österreichischer Schriftsteller und Übersetzer.

Peter Handke is an Avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright. His body of work has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2019. He has also collaborated with German director Wim Wenders, writing the script for The Wrong Move and co-writing the screenplay for Wings of Desire.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Slow Homecoming Peter Handke investigates the inner world of man… What is an inner world and how does it reflect the world outside?
The hero of The Long Way Around is a geologist so he exists on the background of nature in the world of landscapes and forms…

Capable of a tranquil harmony, a serene strength that could transfer itself to others, yet too easily wounded by the power of facts, he knew desolation, wanted responsibility, and was imbued with the search for forms, the desire to differentiate and describe them, and not only out of doors (“in the field”), where this often tormenting but sometimes gratifying and at its best triumphant activity was his profession.

The summer in Alaska is over and he decides to return to his homeland… But his way home is quite circuitous: through the West Coast, through the East Coast, through his memories of the past, through his inner visions…

The crests of foam were snow-covered mountain ranges. The air brought him a smell of fire, and for the first time on the coast he had a feeling of autumn. Ocean, autumn, and colonnade: the world was growing old again. There he stood as though the season were his destination.

In The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire the author explores his own inner world… His attitude to the nature… To the fine art… He compares his Weltanschauung to the perception of the world by Cézanne and other artists…

And then one day I was at home with colors. Bushes, trees, clouds, even the asphalt of the road, had a shimmer, which came neither from the season nor from the light of that particular day. The world of nature and the work of man, one with the help of the other, gave me a moment of ecstasy…

And Child Story is an analysis of the inner world of the newborn child’s father… Time passes… The child is growing…

Often, in adolescence, he thought of living with a child later on. He looked forward to an unspoken sense of community, to quickly exchanged glances, to sitting down with the child, to irregularly parted hair, to being close together and far apart in happy unity.

We all live in the same world but our inner worlds are so dissimilar.

[Vladys Kovsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a book that resists. It does not let you in. It takes some time and effort to penetrate the defensive barriers of the text. You might be rewarded if you persist.

It is equally difficult to write about this book. When I presented it at a book-club meeting I chose to focus on how and why the book resonated with me, on certain similarities of events and ideas. But it was more about telling my story through Sorger/author/adult when I should have been more focused on the book itself.

I have to take a step back to properly acknowledge the objective rather than subjective qualities of the book. I fully admit that it will take time as my reflections take shape. It feels like a Slow Homecoming indeed.

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought reading this would be a quick read, and while I finished it pretty much in one sitting, it was a fairly long sitting. It's not a terribly long book, but it requires the reader to read slowly. As someone who naturally reads quickly, it was interesting to be forced to slow down, to match pace with the narrator.

The first part of the story takes place in Alaska, where the protagonist, Sorger, throws himself into his work in order to forget himself. This section is page after page of descriptions of Alaskan landscapes, which may sound boring on the outside but which never once bored me. We watch Sorger's quest for self-definition and (if one reads it well) join alongside him for one's own quest. Despite his efforts to lose himself in his work, he can't forget his home and he yearns to return.

Conscious in his sleep of being wrenched out of place, he never, though years had passed since his change of continents, enjoyed a quiet, homelike sleep; immediately on closing his eyes (a moment against which he invariably struggled), he began to gravitate, growing steadily heavier and more clodlike, toward a magnetic horizon. (p 25)

He is on an odyssey to find himself and his place in the world. Who can't relate to that?

The second part of the story takes place in the south of France, revolving around Mont Sainte-Victoire. Instead of so much about his self-discovery project, the focus is more on Sorger's art (ie, writing), comparing and contrasting it to the art of Paul Cézanne.

Time and again I am afflicted by my ignorance, and this feeling gives rise to an aimless striving for knowledge which engenders no idea, precisely because it has no "object" with which to "conform". But then one small thing may convey a message and thus instill the "spirit of the beginning"; then I may start to study in earnest, when previously, however busy and active, I had only longed to. (p 154)

The third and final section involves the relationship between a man and his newly born daughter. This section didn't quite have the same impact on me as the first two did, but that probably has more to do with the fact that I don't have children and can't relate on the same level. Searching for myself, losing myself in my work, my desire to learn - that is all familiar and comfortable. Babies? Ack, not so much. Still, a touching part of the story, and important nonetheless.

This will stick with me, the way I think any "novel of self-discovery" should, and more than will others of similar genre - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values or Siddhartha, for examples. I could probably re-read the first part a few more times without getting sick of it. That's sort of unusual for me, but there you have it. Kudos, Mr. Handke.

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing book with a unique structure and a strong, clear voice.
Divided into 3 parts, the reader at first assumes and then comes to question the consistancy of the narrative point of view. It doesnt seem to matter.
What can I possibly say, other than detailing the plot, that can convey the delight I took in this reading, even the middle part which was the most challanging.
Probably would help to be German, but the translation was awesome.

[Jim Elkins]

Handke as a Late Romantic

Here are some thoughts on "The Long Way Around," the first and longest of a trilogy of short novels titled Slow Homecoming. Although the novels are short, their language--especially in "The Long Way Around" is dense, and they read slowly in English or German. In this respect "The Long Way Around" feels more like a 350-page novel than a 150-page novel.

The narrator of "The Long Way Around," who is called Sorger (an allegorical name, meaning something like "Person Who Cares"), defines himself largely through his interactions with the Arctic landscape. Handke's prose here is full of tropes of subjectivity, woven into tropes of landscape: it owes the most, I think, to Rilke, but also to Trakl and other modernist nature poets. Sorger, however, claims he isn't working in the Romantic tradition:

"He did not believe in his science as a kind of nature religion; on the contrary, his always 'measured' practice of his profession... was at the same time an exercise in trusting the world, for the measured quality of his technical manipulations but also his personal, everyday movements resided in his constant attempt at meditation..." (p. 8 in the Collier edition of Manheim's translation)

A reader might wonder at this point what "measuring" is, and what "technical manipulations" might be, but at least it's clear that Sorger mixes nonscientific ideas like "trusting" (and "caring," as in his name) with possibly scientific ones. A page later Handke tells us "Sorger never ceased to regard the linguistic formulas of his science as a hoax": science, Sorger thinks, is only about "description and nomenclature," and he is after something less "dubious."

The "measured" practice turns out to be drawing, and the process of drawing turns out to be empathetic consonance with the landscape. According to Benjamin Kunkel, Sorger's "patient and reverent bestowal of attention... resembles geology" (from his introduction to the NYRB edition, quoted from the n+1 site). But this resemblance is so distant that it doesn't really help: Leonardo's landscape drawings, which have also been analyzed as proto-geology, are closer to geology than Sorger's nearly abstract "search for forms."

Sometimes Sorger doesn't even need to draw to achieve his identification with landscape:

"For a moment he had felt the strength to propel his whole self into the bright horizon and there dissolve forever into the undifferentiated unity of sky and earth" (p. 16)

Still, "he preferred drawing to photography, because it was only through drawing that he came to understand the landscape in all its forms" (p. 29). This study of forms, which emerge slowly for him, through the act of meditative drawing, is more from Humboldt than Hermann Weyl: it's a 19th century species of imagination, not a 20th century one. In every landscape, Sorger says, "consciousness gradually creates its own configurations"; the mind needs time "to form ties with it," so that "characteristic forms reveal themselves" (pp. 71, 72)--all straight out of Humboldt, 150 years before Handke wrote "The Long Way Around."

Superimposed on this first-generation Romanticism is late Romanticism, as in Rilke and Trakl, which is especially evident in the coils of self-awareness, in which all natural processes are also processes of self-understanding, and in which interpretation--as in conventional natural science--is to be avoided in favor of "the pure, unexplained description" of "forms" (p. 72). (The second novella in the book, "Mont Sainte-Victoire," has elements of phenomenology, because the Cezanne literature is so infused by Merleau-Ponty's essay, but those elements are overlaid on a foundation of Romanticism--as they are, often, in art historical scholarship which presents itself as phenomenological but is perhaps more deeply Romantic in its first instincts. But that's a subject for another essay.)

In what sense, then, is "The Long Way Around" a postwar (read: modernist or postmodernist) fiction? It seems better understood as one of the last gasps of late Romanticism, in which poetry can only be recovered by the most convoluted writing, the densest and most introspective images, the strongest vigilance against cliches. It has just the slightest touches of postwar sensibility, for example when Sorger concludes that the best he's doing is "not betraying" the world, and creating a "science of peace": an ironic ambition given Handke's later career.

Appendix: a note on Handke's politics

Since politics is what as stifled Handke's career, it's interesting that "The Long Way Around" is weirdly coy about its location. For the first fifty pages it's impossible to tell if Sorger is in the Siberian or North American arctic. He calls the natives "Indians," which is not correct for either continent. He sleeps with an "Indian" woman and gives her a "pet name" (p. 17). She laughs at the "inconceivable notion that there might be another continent" (p. 19): an outrageous European fantasy of isolation. Together they speak a language foreign to both of them: it could be Russian or English. Manheim says Sorger sees "elk " (p. 16) but that's either Handke's or Manheim's error, because it eventually turns out he's been in Alaska. When we're finally given enough information to conclude Sorger's been in Alaska, it's done in a crazily coy way. The narrator flies down to a place on the Pacific coast, "in a different time zone (two hour later)." This is inaccurate -- it would be one hour later -- but it makes the location unambiguous. He makes brief references to "a nation," and finally to the United States (p. 62). All this is in service of Sorger's (and Handke's )attempt to lose himself in a place without history, culture, or a name. It's intensive myth-making, and really unnecessary when it comes to what Sorger actually does in the Arctic community (drawing, sleeping with the "Indian" woman).

[PaperBird · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did a review of this book here https://youtu.be/btD7yQONYiU

[Sini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Onlangs werden drie samenhangende novellen van Peter Handke voor het eerst in een Nederlandse uitgave gebundeld: "Langzame terugkeer" (in herziene vertaling), "De leer van de Sainte- Victoire" (voor het eerst vertaald) en "Kindergeschiedenis" (bestaande vertaling, ooit apart uitgegeven). Ik vond het mooi om deze raadselachtige novellen in één band te hebben, en om ze achter elkaar te kunnen lezen: niet omdat ze elkaar verhelderen, maar omdat ze elkaars raadselachtigheid verdiepen en in perspectief zetten. Die raadselachtigheid en ongrijpbaarheid zal voor veel lezers te groot zijn, en was ook voor mij wel even wennen. Daarnaast hikte ik nogal aan tegen de wel erg plechtige, gedragen stijl, vol Grote en Mythische woorden. Maar ergens halverwege de tweede novelle, "De leer van de Sainte- Victoire" raakte ik helemaal gegrepen. Ook de daaraan voorafgaande novelle "Langzame terugkeer" vond ik met terugwerkende kracht prachtig, vooral toen ik diverse passages weer langzaam herlas. En ook de afsluitende novelle vond ik fraai. Raadselachtig fraai.

De openingszin van de eerste novelle luidt: "Sorger had al enkele hem vertrouwd geworden mensen overleefden voelde geen verlangen meer, maar vaak een onbaatzuchtige bestaanslust en bij tijden wijle een animale, op de oogleden drukkende behoefte aan heil". Dat zijn nou niet direct zinnen die ik meteen snap, al vind ik een term als "onbaatzuchtige bestaanslust" wel meteen heel aansprekend. En de zin wint naarmate je in het verhaal vordert meer en meer aan betekenis. De hoofdpersoon, Sorger, blijkt een geograaf die in Alaska de oerstructuren van de bodem onderzoekt. Bij dat onderzoek doet hij meer en meer afstand van zijn wetenschappelijke kennis. Hij tekent zo nauwkeurig mogelijk de dingen maar laat daarbij alles wat hij meende te weten helemaal los. Ook beschouwt hij op meditatieve wijze de landschappen en bodemstructuren, en bereikt daarbij toestanden van "onbaatzuchtige overgave" en "pure observatie" die zijn blik op die landschappen en bodemstructuren geheel veranderen, en die ook een onvermoede openheid aanboren in zijn eigen hoofd. Door met totale openheid naar de wereld te kijken resoneert die wereld op totaal nieuwe manieren in zijn zintuigen en zijn hoofd; door die resonantie verandert bovendien ook zijn hele ik. Alsof ook hijzelf, en zijn eigen relatie tot de bodem waarop hij staat, totaal verandert door deze meditatieve "onbaatzuchtige overgave": een overgave die volgens mij neerkomt op het jezelf radicaal losmaken van elk eigenbelang, van elk houvast aan conventies, en van het beeld dat je had van je eigen identiteit. Je hoofd verandert door die overgave in een totaal ontvankelijke resonantieruimte, waarin gans onbekende vormen vol van nog niet eerder geziene schoonheid zich ontvouwen: een ervaring die zo overweldigend intens en vreemd is dat ook de beschouwer erdoor verandert.

Zo ongeveer meen ik Sorgers zoektocht, en die van Handke zelf, te kunnen begrijpen. Maar Handke laat bewust elke analyse, argumentatie en verklaring achterwege. Hij kiest ervoor om dit soort ingrijpend- ambigue ervaringen bij benadering voelbaar te maken, in uitgesponnen beschrijvingen vol ambigue beelden. En dat leidt dan tot passages als de volgende: "Aan zijn voeten was de opgedroogde modder van de oever tot heel ver weg opengebarsten in een netwerk van bijna regelmatige veelhoeken (met meestal zes zijden). Terwijl hij de scheuren observeerde, begonnen ze langzaam ook op hemzelf in te werken, ze braken hem echter niet zoals ze dat met de grond deden, maar sloten al zijn cellen (nu pas navolgbare leegte) tot een harmonisch geheel aaneen: iets van het gespleten aardoppervlak sloeg over op de man - iets wat zijn lichaam sterk, warm en zwaar maakte. Terwijl hij roerloos over het patroon stond uit te kijken, stelde hij zich voor een ontvanger te zijn, niet van een bericht of boodschap, maar van een tweevoudige kracht die hij ontving op de beide verschillend geplaatste vlakken van zijn gezicht: op zijn voorhoofd voelde hij ook echt het overdwars liggende bot verdwijnen, en dat alleen doordat hij niets anders meer van plan was dan deze hindernis bloot te stellen aan de lucht; en het vlak onder zijn oogkassen, bijna in een rechte hoek ten opzichte van de aardbodem, kreeg als het ware de nieuwe trekken van een gezicht, met mensenogen en een mensenmond; allebei apart, maar niet door bewustzijn van elkaar gescheiden; en hij had het gevoel dat de welvingen van de gesloten wimpers inderdaad ontvangstschermen waren".

In "De leer van de Sainte- Victoire" volgen we niet langer de tastende ervaringen van Sorger, maar die van een ik- figuur die zich als de schrijver van de eerste novelle presenteert. Een intrigerend dubbelzinnige figuur: het is duidelijk Handke zelf, maar dan zo afstandelijk beschreven dat het eerder een allegorische schim wordt dan een personage van vlees en bloed. En bovendien iemand die lang stil staat bij het werk van Cézanne: de man die maandenlang de top van de Sainte- Victoire schilderde vanuit steeds verschillende perspectieven, om uit te drukken dat elk voorwerp, bekeken vanuit verschillende invalshoeken, van een onuitputtelijke menigvuldigheid is. Cézanne is voor velen een van de eerste grote moderne schilders, omdat hij radicaal brak met het natuurgetrouw 'fotografisch' schilderen van de natuur. In zijn schilderijen vind je geen conventionele afbeeldingen van herkenbare objecten, maar constellaties van kleurenspel en vormenspel waarin naar nieuwe harmonieën en betekenissamenhangen wordt gezocht. Of zelfs een nieuw betekenisvol verband, ontstegen aan de aardse conventies en vormen. Of op zijn minst een landschap dat er totaal anders uitziet dan het landschap dat je meende te kennen, en dus anders dan welk bekend landschap dan ook. En dat is een behoorlijk onthechtende en ontregelende ervaring. Geïnspireerd door Cézanne komt de ik- figuur tot tastende, welhaast religieus klinkende overdenkingen en ervaringen als:" Daar, met die weg en die bomen, stond de wereld open. 'Daar' werd ook elders. De wereld was een vast, dragend aardrijk. De tijd staat eeuwig en dagelijks. Het opene kan, altijd weer, ook ik zijn. Ik moet bestendig zo rustig buiten (in de kleuren en de vormen) zijn".

Ook kijkend naar Cézannes "Le grand pin" (de grote pijnboom) ervaart de ik- figuur die fascinerende openheid: "hij verandert de bodem waaruit hij oprijst in een plateau, en de in alle windrichtingen verdraaide takken en het naaldendek met het veelsoortigste van alle soorten groen brengen de leegte eromheen in trilling". Bovendien heeft de ik- figuur, zelf wandelend en zelf kijkend naar de Saint- Victoire, pure Cézanne-ervaringen, sensaties die hij alleen weer kan geven door te schrijven in een stijl die even anti- conventioneel en open is als de stijl waarin Cézanne schildert: "De berg is al voor Le Tholonet zichtbaar. Hij is kaal en bijna eenkleurig; meer een lichtglans dan een kleur. Soms kun je de lijnen van de wolken verwisselen met hemelhoge bergen: omgekeerd komt de schemerige berg hier op het eerste gezicht over als een verschijnsel van de hemel; waaraan ook de ooit verstarde beweging van de parallel vallende rotsflanken en de in de sokkel horizontaal doorlopende plooien bijdraagt. De indruk ontstaat dat de berg van boven, vanuit de bijna gelijkkleurige ether, omlaag is gestroomd en zich hier heeft verdicht tot een klein massief in het wereldruim. In andere gevallen valt aan ver verwijderde vlakten immers vaak iets merkwaardigs te observeren: die achtergronden, hoe vormeloos ook, veranderen zodra in de leegte ervoor een vogel opvliegt. De vlakten schuiven van je vandaan en nemen tegelijk merkbaar vorm aan; en de lucht tussen het oog en die vlakte wordt stoffelijk. Het overbekende, plaatsgebondene, ook het door de vulgaire namen als het ware objectloos gewordene staat dan opeens op de juiste afstand; als 'mijn object'; met zijn werkelijke naam. Dat gold [ook] hier, waar dit wordt geschreven [...]".

In "Langzame terugkeer" en "De leer van de Sante- Victoire" wordt dus radicaal naar nieuwe vormen van schoonheid gezocht, naar vormen van openheid en ontvankelijkheid die de wereld als nieuw doen oplichten en die ook het eigen ik zeer verruimen. En die schoonheid probeert Handke dan steeds in beelden te vatten die even fascinerend meerduidig en ongrijpbaar zijn als de schilderijen van Cézanne. Ik hou wel van de radicale ambiguïteit van Handkes beelden, en van zijn al even radicale verlangen naar geheel nieuwe vormen van schoonheid en harmonie. Ik waardeer ook de politieke inzet ervan: de vertellers in deze drie novellen zien het Duits als een taal die nog te veel is besmet door het Nazi- verleden, en door allerlei repressieve dan wel gewoon versimpelende denkbeelden van de moderne tijd. Handke en zijn personages zijn kortom doordesemd van wantrouwen tegen hun eigen taal en cultuur en hun vertrouwde wereldbeeld. Handkes personages kiezen ook daarom het vreemde: de oergronden in Alaska, de ons vreemde werkelijkheid in de schilderkunst van Cézanne, of - in "Kindergeschiedenis" - de nauwgezet geobserveerde eigen wereld van een in ongebruikelijke omstandigheden opgroeiend kind. Handke zelf neemt zijn lezer mee in een eindeloze reis langs fascinerend meerduidige, naar mijn smaak soms zelfs hallucinante beelden en beschrijvingen. Drie novellen en 314 bladzijden lang. In een soort Odyssee zonder eindpunt, want bij Handke is er alleen de reis en geen Ithaka. Gelukkig maar!

[Paul H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5 stars.) I can't quite figure Handke out; all of his books are quite similar in themes/tone, 'good but not great', a major-minor prose style trapped in plotless meandering . . . things (I wouldn't even call them stories, exactly; fictionalized diary entries?).

At times he is very good indeed; a more poetic DeLillo, a chilled-out Bernhard, meditative, langourous, philosophical, superficially 'boring' but rewarding deeper attention; but then he's also often . . . non-superficially boring.

Anyway, the first and longest novella in Slow Homecoming is very good until near the end, where he begins a descent into awkward navel-gazing mawkishness that continues into the second novella, but the third ("Child Story") is insanely good and worth the price of admission.

[David M · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Not so much postmodern as antediluvian' - Benjamin Kunkel

Slowly coming around to the idea of Handke as one of the great postwar European writers. Much like Repetition, this book is an uncompromising spiritual quest.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author produced a serious piece of writing which works through the gravity and levity of life

[أحمد الحقيل · Rating 4 out of 5]

أثر هاندكه على الكتاب الأوروبيين، ومن أهمهم سيبولد، هائل وكبير. الرجل اخترع نمطا سرديا فريدا من نوعه. صناعة الجمل، تركيبة النص، صوت السارد. هاندكه موسيقي لغوي عظيم، ولكنه أيضا متأمل فذ. المزيج المتناغم من أوروبا ما بعد منتصف القرن العشرين، البرود والتصلب والعدمية المتماشية جنبا لجنب مع رومانتيكية الشعرية المادية التي تبحث عن إجابات في الطبيعة واليوميّة والذاتية. تفشل أحيانا وتنجح أحيانا، ولكن لغتها تظل متعالية ومتأنية وفوقية. هو بالفعل من أهم الروائيين الأوروبيين في المنتصف الثاني للقرن العشرين.

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is an amazing book, really 3 novellas related by the incredible poetry of the language, about the meaning of home, awe of nature and the growing revelation of love of a father for his child. This is not a book for anyone who requires action or much of a plot, but I loved reading it, and it's the kind of book to be reread again and again.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow Homecoming is a collection of three novella length pieces (written and published as separate works from 1979-1981) that explore the meaning of home in strikingly different ways. The first, "The Long Way Around," introduces a geologist named Sorger who is living and working in the far north. Sorger's obsession is with place, and as he follows a meandering route in the general direction of his European homeland, via several American towns and cities, we understand that this restless adventurer both craves and fears his place of origin and only feels "at home" when in motion. In "The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire," the author of Sorger's story narrates an account of his struggle to rediscover his art by studying the life and aesthetic philosophy of the artist Paul Cezanne, and draws solace and a kind of wisdom from the mountain in Provence so often revisited in Cezanne's works. And in "Child Story," a young father raising his daughter alone seeks a place where they can be at home with each other as they negotiate the hazardous byways of early childhood. The writing throughout this book is lush, closely observed, and filled with intricate detail. "Child Story" could best be described as an extended prose poem. In 1985, Slow Homecoming confirmed Peter Handke's reputation as one of the most deeply probing and original writers of his generation.

[Pat Stokes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of three novellas by Handke. He feels like a personal treasure. The prose style is romantic and flowery, but at the same concrete and material. It is really special.

[Meteorite_cufflink · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique book. 'Slow Homecoming' is made up of three seperate parts or novellas, written in a dense abstract/romantic style, which makes for slow and experiential reading. After the first twenty or so pages I was ready to return this book to the shelves - the writers unwillingness to name characters and his choice to prioritize the confusing way in which we can experience being alive above traditional narrative devices made for a frustrating read.

Then I realized this book only allows to be read on its own terms - I as a modern reader have no active say in what I need from this book. It will happily exist without me finishing it.

So I accepted that this was to be a different and less 'consumerist' reading experience than I have grown used to. Thankful I did - 'Slow Homecoming' left a deep impression, with some locations and feelings still on call in my short term memory.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hadn't realized how important Handke was to Knausgaard. This book seems to have been a touchstone prefiguring his whole career. Ks best books mine the best parts of this (which are excellent) and his worst books (the essay collections) are all extrapolations of the boring middle half of this book. The opening 60 and closing 60 pages are sublime.

[Gina Jiang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how the book started with ‘Sorger had outlived several of those who had become close to him’… and ended with Sorger discovering the child within him while spending time with his daughter

- slow homecoming!

Also…
Finished this book on the New York J train, as i arrived at the final page, the train started climbing up the Williamsburg bridge… saw the most beautiful sunset that day

[Alta]

A stylistic masterpiece in Ralph Manheim's extraordinary translation. The novella "Child Story" is a very powerful love story between a father and his growing daughter (though the word "love" only appears once, at the end).

[Zd87 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I barely read through the first story. It was torture: no plot, long ambiguous descriptions of surroundings and feelings that are unrelatable and make no sense. I don't know who might enjoy it, are those people alright?

[Charles Elin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scenery, in the hands of Peter Hanke, is a poetic description of a vast ontology. He lets movement, itself, trace the form of our humanity, as we watch and let the mind roam its natural course.

[Sue Wang]

Born from the long historical course of progressing civilization
Self-casted in the time-despising wilderness
Flitting between in-side-out consciousnesses of interior universality and exterior worldliness

He was a man deposited in all-encompassing form of possibilities of his own perceptions of existence, the rudimentary primeval link with the earth in a felt self-assurance of metaphysical entirety, the popping desire of commingling with his commiserated fellow peers through a verbal unison, the sensing discrepancy of the landscape uncharted by advancement and the city’s dazzling power of showcasing its man-made urban achievements, …..
this book is so densely introspective that it resonates precisely and strongly with the reading soul who ruminates and metamorphoses as the writer as well, a chaotically disciplined universe unfurls itself in front of the mind’s eye with the heavenly orders and disorders.

I really can’t comment with certainty on its overflow of prosaic stream of thoughts. It is intoxicatingly awesome in its own right and way, which some might find choking. Each sentence of it challenges the reader’s patience to go with the flow of it, and thus so beautifully written.

[Kevin Vanhoozer · Rating 3 out of 5]

"In fusing Sorger's individual history with the movement of the northern autumn, the landscape was in turn transformed by this human history into a temporal vault in which this self-forgetful man, without a destiny but also without sense of loss (freed altogether from fluctuations of feeling), was still present" (33).

"He had never thought of himself as a scientist, but at the most (occasionally) as a conscientious describer of landscapes. As such, to be sure, he sometimes felt as excited as if he had invented the landscape – and as an inventor he knew that he could not possible be wicked or selflessly good but was, in his work, an ideal human being. But then it might occur to him that perhaps he was doing good after all, not by giving something to others but by not betraying them. And htis non-betrayal was not a failure to do something; it was a strenuous activity. At times he felt that his study of landscapes was a science of peace" (73).

"Here, in a manner of speaking, he was a 'licensed foreigner,' which fell in with his existential ideal" (269).

[Jenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is rare that I find absolutely nothing to relate to in a narrator, but these navel gazing, disconnected males really began to annoy me. This is three stories, I guess purporting to be moving back through the layers from a story, to a story about the narrator of the first story, to the "actual" narrator of the two stories, of course all three written by Handke. Only the third story creates a character I liked for at least most of it - his angst is more relatable to me because an exploration of parenthood and so outward, world directed.

All of the experimental writing is directed at creating the interior monologues of people who are very disconnected, timid artistic unsuccessful men estranged from society. Maybe a portrait of the artist, so would not be on the top of my list for famous people with whom to have dinner, lol.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's always nice to feel the buzz of ecstasy that's connected with knowing you're reading the right book at the right time. With ample reminder provided by great sentences flowing on and on, an intense expression of perception, an interplay of thoughts, feelings, and imagination that culminate as conscious experience. The divine experience of pure introverted now, as the river flows, the clumps of grass shimmer, and the sun-warmed gasoline drums hum. Its hard for me to fathom how someone can be such a good writer, and that what I was reading was a translation.

That was the first 130 odd pages anyway, about a 'geologist' walking around arctic America, I enjoyed the book's subsequent two stories less. Though I still liked them quite a lot, particularly the last story about Handke's relationship with his daughter and parenthood in general. Probably my new favourite Handke.

[Svante · Rating 4 out of 5]

Första boken av Handke jag läst. Första delen var mer haltande än de två sista. Handkes skrivande är svårgenomträngligt och ibland känns hans stil överdrivet komplex. Icke desto mindre, när han angriper de svåra ämnena (ensamhet, förlust, sökande m.m.) skriver han med sån otrolig precision och vissa styckeslånga meningar lämnar mig mållös. Kanske gör de partierna Handke läsvärd? Trots de sidor jag betraktar mer som intrikata transportsträckor. Många sidor måste läsas minst två gånger: ibland pga ren språklig komplexitet som gör den svår att följa, men oftast är det som står helt enkelt för vackert och intelligent för att gå vidare ifrån för snabbt.

[Ivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summer’s here. I’ve just added another #nyrbclassics edition to my collection: Peter Handke’s 𝘚𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘏𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨. I’m a slow reader and this book is not an easy read, I must say. Not in terms of plot device or vocabularies, but that it demands undivided attention. We follow the protagonist Valentin Sorger, a geologist on assignment in Alaska, as his mind steered back to his hometown in Europe. The book is lush with description of nature, solemn meditation as Sorger took notes of the seascape, earth’s forms, and wild conifer forests. It can only be read with your phone turned off and you dedicating a private time with coffee or tea at hand (at least that’s how I do it). It’s quite rewarding.

[Thea]

"As usual at that time of the year,the river valley was deserted, yet on that morning, which might have arisen out of the depths of the earth, it seemed everywhere to have caught fresh fire from that short period at the turn of the century when, traveled by side-wheelers, parceled out by trading companies, swarming with gold diggers, it had made its mark on history: all that passed irrevocably into plastic sieves from the phony Trading Post, into miniature dog sleds carved by Indian home workers, and inscriptions on tombstones, effaced more quickly than in other regions by the radical extremes if the weather." GIRL SHUT UP WHAT ARE THESE SENTENCES?😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[Alex Kohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a difficult novel (or series of novellas or whatever). Especially in the beginning third or so, sentences are hard to follow (and maybe not translated perfectly?), topics change dramatically from sentence to sentence, and there's not really a clear plot to follow. That said, I think there's pretty good payoff - there are a lot of interesting and beautiful ideas that are articulated here. Overall, I enjoyed Slow Homecoming, but there's a real effort and time expenditure required to read it.

[Branden · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a long and pretty difficult read for me but it does just get better and better and there's certain stretches that feel addictive and then once you finally lock into Handke's overall ambitions with this kind of storytelling, it's actually kind of marvelous. The last book of the three is, by far, the most moving and best written but I think this translator may also not be the best at capturing what's apparently so "beautiful" about Handke's prose in the original German?

[Jean Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this difficult to stay with, Ponderous and oh so German, there is very little to hold the reader’s interest. I was turned off by Songer. I found the cat more interesting than the man in the first novella (?) or movement. The second whatever was better for me because I love art history. The final section I thought was going to be a real bust, but I found it beautifully written. So a “mountain, a cat, and a child” yes, but that dark German philosophy, Heidegger, no thank you.