Strategists in the Literature Fight

Thomas Bernhard (19311989) and Peter Handke (*1942) became the most influential writers of contemporary Austrian literature in the mid-1960s. As authors of the prestigious Suhrkamp publishing house, they stood at the centre of media interest and attracted attention not only with their books, but also and especially with their public appearances and interventions. They participated intensively in journalistic debates and were the subject of bitter controversy. This publication describes Bernhard and Handkes multi-layered engagement with literary criticism. It examines the close connection between literary writing, poetological reflection and critical commentary. The two authors repeatedly defended themselves against negative reviews of their books; they vigorously upheld the principles of their writing and objected to literary criticism. The decades-long feud between Peter Handke and Marcel Reich-Ranicki serves as a vivid example of the fierce confrontations between authors and critics, which sometimes escalated into public insults of the opponent. A detailed reconstruction of the relationship between Handke and Reich-Ranicki provides insights into micro- constellations of literary polemics. In addition, two chapters examine the literary criticism of Bernhard and Handke and analyse it in the context of the two writers literary socialisation. In the early 1950s Bernhard began working as a journalist for the Demokratisches Volksblatt and wrote numerous articles on readings and other cultural events in Salzburg: an early work which he liked to keep quiet later on, because the subsequent scandal writer in it turned out to be surprisingly tame. Handke in turn wrote several radio feuilletons for Radio Steiermark from 1964 and appeared as a young, self-confident critic and commentator; to this day Handke regularly publishes texts on other authors, on contemporaries and classics alike. Up to now there have been only individual essays and research contributions dealing with Bernhard and Handkes relationship to literary criticism. By including a variety of sources from literary texts, speeches, letters to the editor, notebooks, private correspondence, feuilletons and reviews to interviews, telev ision broadcasts and previously unpublished archive material the topic is now being comprehensively examined for the first time. In any case, the confrontation with literary criticism proved to be productiv e for Bernhard and Handke time and again, because it challenged them to formulate their ideas of literature in a particularly concise manner. From the rejection by critics, they often drew energy for new projects to prove their strength and artistic independence.