New Review at the Review of Contemporary Fiction

Here’s an excerpt of my review of Peter Handke’s Don Juan: His Own Version, translated by Krishna Winston:

In Handke’s recasting of the legendary libertine’s adventures, we find the Don characterized by sadness, an “inconsolability” that is, ironically, the source of his invulnerability. The infamous lover tells his labyrinthal tales of deflowering to a failed businessman who’s now an innkeeper and chef. This amanuensis, an inveterate reader, was enthralled by Racine and Pascal before the Don seemingly somersaulted into his garden; and he later alludes to works by Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Georges Simenon, and Chrétien de Troyes. So this book—itself a kind of library—offers another kind of love, namely, bibliophilia.