This is because it tries to link to /lib/libhandle.la. There are only .so's in /lib. The static versions are in /usr/lib. I worked around this by using a symlink. libhandle is a part of xfsprogs. NOTE: At this time this breaks emerge sys-kernel/linux-sources, So I bumped severity to major as new installs will not work.
should be fixed in 20020124-r2