Books like The Afternoon of a Writer

Handke’s narrator suffers from a writer’s block and takes a walk around town. This would be an entirely sufficient summary of the short novel, and it contains major plot spoilers. But as I am suffering from a reader’s block, and need to get rid of it by taking a walk around in Handke’s mind, I will add some reflections, in the same way the writer in the story lets his thoughts flow randomly while he spends his afternoon doing nothing. While writer’s block is a quite well-known phenomenon (which doesn’t prevent writers from spitting out new books almost on a yearly basis), reader’s block is a complicated condition and hugely neglected in research. In my case, it was triggered by a string of emotionally difficult, but highly rewarding reading experiences, such as Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster or Heinrich Böll’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum. Finishing those books, I felt drained, and couldn’t find my way back into my regular reading habits. Everything seemed meaningless, flat, boring. But just like Handke’s writer forced himself to write a couple of sentences to get going again, I forced myself to read some purposely plot-free books, like The Diary of a Nobody. Constituting an exercise quite similar to doing swim motions in the air while still being reluctant to jump into the cold water, I regained my equanimity by reading unimportant, lightweight literature. Handke’s writer describes the road, or the river, or an acquaintance to get back into the habit of writing descriptions.To finish my reader’s block therapy, I read Handke himself, and found my way back into literary language and subtle reflections. When the narrator reaches the point of recognising the huge gap between his existence as a writer, observing life from the outside, and as a regular person, trying to live it, I feel ready to be a real reader again. For that is the root of my reader’s block as well. When books get too close, impose their presence on my dreams and actions, I can’t let go, and I feel that I suffer from not being able to separate the diametrically opposed ideas of living life versus reading life. Small details of everyday business, written down or read, help a writer or reader to find a way back to balance. That is what this story is about, and what it did to me.I guess I am ready for Kafka and Dostoyevsky again!