Jukebox and Other Writings

by Peter Handke

  “But now you’re losing the line completely. Go home to your book, to writing and reading. To the original texts, in which for example it is said: ‘Let the word resound, stand by it—whether the moment be favorable or not.’ Have you ever experienced a successful day? With which for once a successful moment, a successful life, perhaps even a successful eternity might coincide?”

  “Not yet. Obviously!”

  “Obviously”?

  “If I had experienced anything even remotely resembling that, I imagine, I should have to fear not only a nightmare for the following night but the cold sweats.”

  “Then your successful day is not even an idea, but only a dream?”

  “Yes, except that instead of having it, I’ve made it in this essay. Look at my eraser, so black and small, look at the pile of pencil shavings below my window. Phrases and more phrases in the void, to no good purpose, addressed to a third incomprehensible something, though the two of us are not lost. Time and again in his epistles, not to the congregations, but to individuals, his helpers, Paul, from his prison in Rome, wrote about winter. For example, ‘Do try to get here before winter. And when you come, bring the cloak I left with Carpus at Troas …’”

  “And where is the cloak now? Forget the dream. See how the snow falls past the empty bird’s nest. Arise to transubstantiation.”

  “To the next dream?”

  Farrar

  Straus

  Giroux

  New York

  ALSO BY PETER HANDKE

  Kaspar and Other Plays

  The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

  Short Letter, Long Farewell

  A Sorrow Beyond Dreams

  The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays

  A Moment of True Feeling

  The Left-Handed Woman

  The Weight of the World

  Slow Homecoming

  Across

  Repetition

  The Afternoon of a Writer

  Absence

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Peter Handke and Ralph Manheim had a fruitful, long-standing collaboration and were accustomed to reviewing translations together. Mr. Manheim, who translated works by many internationally acclaimed writers, died shortly after completing his translation of two pieces included in this volume: Essay on the Successful Day and Essay on Tiredness. The final editing on these two essays was done after Mr. Manheim’s death, with Mr. Handke’s approval.

  Translation copyright © 1994 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in German under the titles Versuch über die Müdig-

  keit, Versuch über die Jukebox, and Versuch über den geglückten Tag

  © Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1989, 1990, 1991

  Published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollinsCanadaLtd

  Designed by Fritz Metsch

  eISBN 9781466806986

  First eBook Edition : December 2011

  First edition, 1994

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Handke, Peter.

  [Essays. English. Selections]

  The jukebox and other essays on storytelling / by Peter Handke ;

  translated by Ralph Manheim and Krishna Winston.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Published separately in German under the titles Versuch über die Müdig-

  keit, Versuch iiber die Jukebox, and Versuch iiber den gegliickten Tag.

  I. Title.