Here is how Handke begins:. G township , a housewife, aged 51, committed suicide on Friday night by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Maman died today. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.
Maybe it was yesterday. This goes in the opposite direction as well. On some readings, Meursault has seemed indifferent to me at the beginning of The Stranger โhow could someone not know whether such an important event happened this day or the day before? Yet reading Handke makes me see things differently. It takes something boundless and sets limits on it, creating an official account upon which all can agree.
He begins by recounting his own version of events and is immediately destabilized; his inability to remember if the death occurred one day or another is not indifference but a loss of lucidity as he is overwhelmed. Read more ยป. I was there because, as my last chapter noted, Wel-Met , my summer sleep away camp, had a free-range philosophy.
Campers planned their own activities, hiked into the woods for sleepovers andโwhen olderโlived in tents rather than bunks. This was a preparation for the next step: Cross-country camping trips.
Wel-Met ran six of these each summer and in the s they all stopped at the farm of Clarence and Florence Jensby. The Jensbys welcomed all with open armsโcampers and returning counselors alike. I arrived three times. On the surface, we could not have been more different. Most of us were Jewish New Yorkers. The Jensbys were Christian midwesterners.
