The Goalkeeper's Fear of Interpretation

Peter Handke decided to make the protagonist of his most famous novella a former goalkeeper. Could any other position have been an alienated murderer?

There is, at first glance, very little football in Peter Handke’s 1970 novella Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (annoyingly usually translated into English as The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, while the Wim Wenders film of the novella gets the far better title The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty). Joseph Bloch, the protagonist, is described…