The Goalie’s Anxiety

Peter Handke has been a very prolific artist during his lifetime, leaving behind several novels, plays and film scripts. He started his career working closely with the German literary avant-garde, which promoted works of post-war authors, unknown at the time, of the calibre of Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll. His 1970 novel, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, is one of his most notable works. It tells the story of the Austrian construction worker and former football goalkeeper Joseph Bloch, beginning abruptly with the protagonist being fired from his current job: at least, this is what Bloch understands when he notices that only one of his colleagues looks at him upon his arrival at the construction site. This reaction, devoid of any rational justification, immediately immerses the reader in the particular atmosphere of the novel.

A spoiler alert should probably make an appearance at this point, as I am about to reveal the story’s turning point: but the truth is, the unfolding of events is the last concern one should have when reading this book. Rather, what matters is the way that all happenings are approached and interpreted by the main character – the novel really takes place in Bloch’s consciousness, perception and feelings (or absence thereof). After a romantic night with a cinema clerk in Vienna, he spends the morning in her company and, suddenly, strangles her. He then leaves the city and reaches a small town on the southern border. Here he spends several days, while seemingly random signs, barely acknowledged by Bloch, tell us that the investigations on the girl’s death are slowly leading to him.

During this time we get to know Bloch and the absurd, dreadful anxiety that pervades him. The latter manifests itself in different ways. For one, the predictable paranoia of the fugitive; but this is relatively mild. A major part of Bloch’s mental processes denote a cold detachment from the world. This is not due to a conscious estrangement on his part, but to an obsessive tendency to search for meaning in the objects he sees and people he meets, along with his incapacity of finding it. His interpretation of external events is free and irrational (like when he assumes he has been fired at the beginning of the novel). This is particularly evident in his interactions with other people, characterized by a sense of unreality, as if seen through a thick lens. There are rare exceptions: Bloch indulges in provoking others into fights, especially after a few drinks, and in those instances he seems to forget himself and be immersed in the events. This is brilliantly and simply translated by the author into a lack of the usual descriptive frenzy.

Bloch is compelled to spend large chunks of his time maniacally noting details about his surroundings. This is accompanied by his perception of language as artificial, absurd and disconnected from reality. He often tries to describe things he sees with words, but these always fail him. A passage reads: “Bloch grew nervous. On one hand this intrusiveness of the surroundings when his eyes were open, on the other the intrusiveness, worse yet, of words for the surrounding objects, when he closed his eyes!”. Everything appears to him present in that place and time for an obscure reason unknown to him, and every attempt to make sense of things, to make them accessible again through language and description only contributes to increasing his sense of alienation.

The book’s last pages are worth a thorough look. The story is truncated so that we don’t know if Bloch gets arrested (although it is the most probable conclusion). The last scene takes place by a small-town football pitch. Bloch is talking to another spectator, and he invites him to try out an exercise: when a team is attacking, to concentrate on watching the opposing goalkeeper and observe his movements rather than the strikers and the ball. I think what is meant here is that Bloch feels, in the world, just like that goalkeeper on the pitch, condemned to respond to something removed and detached from him. At the end, a penalty kick is awarded: the goalie stays still and the ball is kicked into his hands. And like him, Bloch the murderer does not try to escape: but accepts that no movement is possible in response to a world that has become meaningless and stranger to him.

The novel fits into a tradition of works through which the authors have wanted to convey human anxiety, inadequateness and estrangement; the creeping feeling that true understanding and communication is impossible – or a mere artifice. It invites comparisons with Camus’ Stranger and, in more recent times, John Banville’s The Book of Evidence. It is a compelling and interesting book, and leaves the reader with a disturbing uneasiness inside.