THE FIFTY OR SO MILES that separate Josef Haslinger's home town from his current residence in Vienna belie the distance that Haslinger has traveled in achieving prominence in the Austrian literary world.

Born in conservative Zwettl, in lower Austria, at the age of five Haslinger was already driving a tractor on the family farm. His childhood dream of becoming a priest faded when experiences at a Catholic grammar school led to disillusionment with the church. Disagreements with his family about religion were one factor that caused Haslinger to leave home at sixteen. He financed his continued education by working in Germany as a guest worker during school vacations. Experiences as a waiter, disc jockey, gas station attendant, warehouse worker, and office clerk provided material for his later work.

In the story “Claudius,” in Der Konviktskaktus, a journalist asks the author Hetner why he began to write. Hetner replies that it was because he couldn't play soccer. Haslinger, too, pursued writing rather than athletic hobbies while growing up. Interest in literature led Haslinger to study Theater, German Literature, and Philosophy at the University of Vienna. He wrote his dissertation on Novalis, and it was subsequently published as a book under the title Die Ästhetik des Novalis (1981).

In 1977, Haslinger became an editor of the Viennese literary magazine Wespennest. In 1984 he was awarded the Theodor Körner Prize by the city of Vienna and since 1986 he has served as general secretary of the “Grazer Autorenversammlung.”

Haslinger has concentrated on shorter literary forms. Der Konviktskaktus, a collection of short stories, was published in 1980, when he was only twenty-five years old. This was followed by Der Tod des Kleinhäuslers Ignaz Hajek in 1985. Haslinger's most recent work, Politik der Gefühle, a book-length essay on Austrian politics from 1945 to the controversial election of Kurt Waldheim as President, appeared in 1987.

A Brecht enthusiast who hitchhiked in order to see plays in Vienna, Haslinger became interested in the use of literature as a political tool while a student at the Gymnasium. “Literature is resistance,” he writes. “Not necessarily the most effective resistance that a writer can mount, although it can be that too, but all told it is certainly one of the most potent cultural forces against the constant threat of an obliteration of the social good by the patterns of economic and political realities.”