Posts in Category: Scandinavian literature
Tunu – Eastern Greenland turns its back on you!
I’ve just spent a couple of days in the company of Kim Leine’s Greenlanders as seen and narrated through his book Tunu. Let me just say from the get-go; I did not like it. In short, Tunu is about the inhabitants of a village in Eastern Greenland (Tunu is Eastern Greenland, and means back). At the start of the novel a young male nurse from Denmark has just arrived to the village, and so goes the merry-go-round of funsies and death.
Tunu
When I borrowed it from the library I guess I was hoping that this novel would present a different experience, or point-of-view of Greenland than has been the case with so many accounts and narrations so often before. But it’s like hearing the same old, tired rantings about women and nature, and how the female sex is in a special symbiosis with nature, how the lunar cycle and my period are in sync, yadi-yadi-yah! Only here we have a whole nation destined to live out nature’s raw state of flux, leaving the people helpless and unable to function the way every other European does (because that’s what they are supposed to ultimately); in modern rational society. Not that they really mind this deficit as Leine narrates them. It’s such an easy solution to a “problem”. It seems to me that Leine really wanted to tell a story about a people who were still in contact with nature, but when I read it I just experienced drippings of sentimental Euro-centric Other-fascination, and deep down a resignation with the fact that these people were never going to be understood/explained, so just live with it. I didn’t feel like Leine went the distance himself and met his subjects halfway. Or maybe I’m just being a tad judgmental, after all, Leine did spend 15 years in Eastern Greenland, I went there for half a month!
If I can try to point to a specific point of irritation I would say that Leine is too busy getting every single person in the village down on paper, individualized in order to show the heterogeneous population, that he ends up painting a picture of a lump of people who are never really characters, but types. And these types stand for the different types of Greenland that the young male nurse experiences in Eastern Greenland. There are the drunken men, the strong, rough women who will boink every single man they meet, the uneducated ones who think that every sniffle can be cured with penicillin, the neglected children and the Dane. And it especially pisses me off that the old story about a man going crazy as a direct result of female callousness and inconsiderate behavior is being thrusted down my throat here. The Greenlandic women are so emotionally stumped, whereas the soft 30-something Danish Modernity Himself cannot help fall in love with each and every one – and to top it off let’s throw in the worthy-of-a-couch-and-Freud-psychoanalysis-theme that is; a 15 year old for him to fall in love with.
So just to sum it up: I think he could have done with half of this sorry cast and then really dug into the mud of it all. Because there is no law that says Greenland can’t be fascinating without one being stamped as a colonial twit Mr. Know-it-all. But somewhere along the line, it would be nice if one could be critical without the pointed moral finger that scolds the child (in this case; Greenlanders) and puts a Gordian knot around them, saying “you simply don’t understand what to do in a modern society” and “living in symbiotic state with nature must be soooo cool”.
I don’t know what I am supposed to do with this kind of thinking, it isn’t helpful to me. There are moments of Tunu that could be really good, but no scene or person seems to get the time to settle down, Leine is on a mission! And it is a shame, truly.
Darling River by Stridsberg
I have just spent the day with Stridsberg’s newest addition to Swedish contemporary literature, Darling River.
Me, engulfed in Darling River
Make no mistake, this is no fuddy duddy, school girl crush, chic-lit reading, as the Danish cover might have you believe (and this is not a critique of the cover at all, I love it for the very reason it plays with childishness and pink, blurry tones). This is hard core abandonment, wrapped in sexual frustration, topped with a language that crashes into the reader’s imagination, leaving it sore and a little less happy. Yet again (as with Drömfakulteten) Stridsberg’s language and composition is thorough and crisp. The novels’ subtitle is ‘Variations of Dolores’, and is both an homage to Nabokov’s Lolita (Stridsberg’s point of inspiration) and a variety of females in different acts of life – mother, child, animal, used, abused, terminated, dead. She has divided the novel into five main sections: Destiny, Time, The Mirror, The Sickness, The Loneliness, and within these, different variations of Dolores try to survive and search for some remote sign of intimacy.
Dolores (or Lo) and her father spend their nights driving around in his Jaguar, him looking for prostitutes, her going off with full grown men down by Darling River, both of them trying to fill the void Dolores’ mother left when she packed her white suitcases and left a stranger, a house where she can find nothing, and her child. He feeds Lo sweets, cigarettes and alcohol and waits in the distance for her to complete her ‘business’ with men she calls brothers, whom she feels empathy towards because they try to buy absolution with undersized dresses and tears. She lives of the affection they give her in return for her body, and when her body changes, their visits lessen until one day there is no one left but her father. This child, that never was a child and never could grow out of being a child, is left sick, overeating on sweets, and lacking the one thing she has craved more than anything.
The novel is brutal to say the least, and it is not just from the obvious fact that we are dealing with a child who is being abused, who lives a distorted child’s life, and has lost all contact with reality, but also because reality itself seems to be a misplaced term. The language performs in a way to conjure up an image of distortion. My schematized reading has been put to a test as these characters fade in and out of each other. I have to be honest, some of the times it doesn’t seem to matter if I am reading about one Dolores or another, it is the language, the pictures it invokes, that touches me. Nature and woman is bleeding, everything is pus and sickly, and it translates onto the pages and punches you in the face.
It is worth your while.
Lucie by Amalie Skram
Woe is me, the pain and degradation in 19th century women’s literature! The anger, frustration and solitude!!
I just spent the last couple of days reading a book by Amalie Skram called ‘Lucie’. Recalling some of the passages still sends shivers down my spine. It is a story of society, marriage and the bonds that are being put on both sexes (but in all honestly, it’s mostly women who bear the heavier judgmental shackles).
- Lucie by Amalie Skram
Lucie is what you may call a fallen woman, one who has let herself be romanced into a relationship before marriage that results in a child who dies at an early age. In the beginning of the novel she manages so fortunately to marry up in society to a Mr. Theodor Gerner, attorney. And while optimists would have liked this to be a happy-go-lucky situation for our girl here, she soon finds out that marrying Gerner is not all sunshine and cream cakes, far from it. Instead of putting her past behind them, Gerner ends up being a jealous husband who sees it as his role as a man and husband to educate, save and punish Lucie like an ill-behaved child who has had her hand too many a time in the man-jar.
If only she would not stand up to him, answering rudely like this morning. Resentment flushed his face red. This had to be dealt with in all strictness, uprooted; she had to learn, once and for all, that this was not proper behavior. Was this the kind of gratitude she owed him? No, she had to apologize, he would not tolerate being berated by her. He would make her aware of what she had done. Of course, he would forgive her, but first she had to be punished resoundingly.
And the worst part is that Lucie initially bows to his dictatorship and jealous behavior, because she really is in love and feels grateful. As time goes by though, she is more and more disappointed and grows depressed, because no matter how she carries herself at dinner parties or other social gatherings, she can expect a scolding from her loving husband. And Theodor is torn between loving his wife and being angry at her ill mannered temperament. The relationship grows sick, and the novel really is breathtakingly good at exploring the psychological terror of a mismatched relationship:
… and the palpitations she got when she heard him coming home, or when she just sat there waiting for him. In the end she had thought that she saw ghosts in the corners and black shadows everywhere, creeping around her. And when he sat there silently it was like his silence whooshed in her ears and filled her with fear. Oh, the kind that made her want to kill herself out of sheer fear. And it was not until she went to him, crawling on her knees, begging and crying like a madman, that he pardoned her. It was always like that. Not until then did her pardon her. Oh how he had broken her – he was strong, the fellow, and he would not budge. Not even if his life depended on it would he budge. Now he had gotten what he wanted; she was on tenterhooks all the time and was so afraid of him that she would shiver all over simply if he looked at her. He had succeeded in civilizing her, and he probably thought it was all well and done with, because now he was merciful and gentle with her. If only he knew how angry and bitter she was with him. Every once in a while she thought that she desired to kill him just to get back at him. She wished to God she had never known or seen him.
Both Theodor and Lucie are victims of societal norms that destroy both of them. She hopes for a leg up in society, to be respectable, liked, loved and feel secure. He hopes for love, properness and the chance to reform a ‘lost’ soul. Whatever their reasons for marrying are, the novel makes a model of a critique in Scandinavia in the 1880’s that has become known as ‘sædelighedsfejden’ – a battle of morality against the contemporary society that held women in a prudish role, repressing their desires to express/live their sexuality and granting a free-pass for men to do and go as they pleased, in and out of wedlock. It is a strife within a society built up on double standards. Many others like Amalie Skram voiced their critique in letters, novels, plays and art, amongst which probably the most famous is Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, who set up the play ‘Et dukkehjem’ in 1879 in Copenhagen.
Lucie is an important piece of literature in the sense that the voice of a societal outcast is being portrayed, taken out in to public and given a voice. Even though her situation is dramatic and tragic to the core and pessimism is dripping off the pages, it also offers some insight and a chance to say, ‘this must be changed, the outrageous situation is not viable in our society’. And hopefully, this will continue to stir people’s minds, make them think and, most importantly, act.
Sara Stridsberg
I had some good news today.
Sara Stridsberg is out with a new book called ‘Darling River’, published in Sweden in early 2010 and just translated to Danish pending appearance on August 20th. I, however, (sorry Danish publishers and bookstores) will shoot my future career in the foot and buy it in Swedish and on the internet! My fingers were tingling just by the thought of this book as I was reading an interview with the author in Weekendavisen’s book section. And at one point Stridsberg explains her writing process and I knew just what she meant, only with me it’s in regard to my reading process.
When I am writing on a novel I always have the feeling of being away in a dream for a couple of years and afterwards I almost can’t remember it.
The thing with dreams is (as Mr. DiCaprio says in the movie Inception, which I went to see the other day btw) you are just there in the middle of the dream, all of a sudden. And as with dreams, literature, for me, behaves in a similar fashion. I couldn’t tell you how it started, I can’t remember every detail, there is often just the feeling afterwards of having felt something, which in reality is really blurry, and I really have to concentrate if I want to recollect details. But the bigger picture is so much more colorful and vibrant.
Solanas
I read Sara Stridsberg’s ‘Drömfakulteten’ about two years ago, which is a “literary fantasy based upon Valerie Solanas” – the girl who shot Warhol – and I was blown away by the style in particular, but also the very gripping story that interlaced the pages. There is the factual person Valerie Solanas, and then there is Stridsberg’s fictional Valerie Solanas. What’s so great is that factual Solanas may have been the stepping stone for the fictional one, but neither is in the others’ debt. Imagine a spoon and a bowl of water; you dunk the spoon in, making ripples in the water, and take a very little percentage of water out, drinking it and leaving the water disturbed, touched. With reading I feel like, on it’s own, the pages with signs on them are meaningless and still, but as soon as I read a page it is in my head, occupies my thoughts and forms my consciousness. Stridsberg has translated the SCUM-manifesto, written by Solanas, before writing ‘Drömfakulteten’, so it is a really interesting process to figure out how Stridsberg has read in between and on the lines to create her ”fictional” Solanas. The novel is raw and shifts between the past, present and thoughts of Solanas’, who carries herself with a sense of self-rightiousness of a radical political activist. At the same time it is also a very vulnerable and lonely novel. There is so much unresolved emotional baggage that dart out of the story and the pain is most explicit when Solanas is conversing with Silkboy, her companion and ally. It is a dark universe that sucks you in, and questions of sexuality, wronged and wrong are recurrent in the novel, forming a foundation for the pained individual.
Sara Stridsberg
Stridsberg
If you read Danish and are interested in Stridsberg’s authorship, I would recommend this interview, which is to be found in Weekendavisen’s no. 32 – August 13 2010. And I would definitely recommend ‘Drömfakulteten’ (of course, if you like stream-of-consciousness styled literature, Valerie Solanas, sexual politics, the tormented individual, take your pick!)
I can’t wait to receive my copy of Darling River, but if anyone has read it out there, feel free to make your impression known here 🙂
Price – brothers√ brand√ book√
A couple of days ago I finished the biography ‘Brødrene Price – maden, musikken, livet og kærligheden’ (The Price Brothers – the food, the music, the life and the love). It was a quick read and I must, first off, clarify that already at the beginning I had my reservations about this book when I found out that Kühlmann had published the biography in 2007. So this version is an updated one, as a result of the Price brothers’ sudden blast of fame among every Tom, Dick and Harry that has a television set.
Not that they weren’t known before. Kühlmann clarifies this on several occasions, that these boys were a lot more than their cooking show which everyone defines them by now. But now, this book might actually sell to a much wider audience, so I guess that is the reason for a revised edition.
Lone Kühlmann - Brødrene Price
There is a mold here, and this book is produced to make the Price family fit into that mould in a fashionable manner. The Prices are all artistic people – those who aren’t, aren’t worth mentioning for long, they all work like insane people – which is justified because those who don’t work until they drop don’t get books written about them or TV-shows and top positions, and somewhere in this mesh of art, careers and stress, there is the human. There are sections of the book which really get under the skin of leading, what seems to be a very intense form of, a life. These are the sections I like. The places where you see that the choices James and Adam’s parents make have an effect on the kids. Or how the brothers interact with each other while growing up. But I also get the feeling that these boys have been through the whole process of understanding why who did what and why. They are balanced, reserved and, I’m afraid to say, so is the book. Not that I crave blood and breakdowns, people can be over it and still have a sense of just how traumatic living the situation was. In parts of the book, if you imagine you are sitting with Kühlmann and the Price brothers, you can sense that they have had a lot to say about their experiences, but it all seems so overly edited in the book. It’s the mould again, and pressing them into it has been at a cost of a little of Kühlmann’s own artistic role as a writer. There is a serious loss of criticism. The whole reciting of 200 years of ancestry just to solidify the point that the Price brothers were meant for artistic life I can do without. I don’t need the justification, but maybe Kühlmann feels that the brand will only be credible if all can be justified by ‘that’s just how the Price’s do it!’ The book is 200 pages and, as the subtitle implies, it really, really wants to get around everything,everyone, everyplace. Too much for me. In my opinion, if you feel you want to ‘know’ the Price brothers, go to the horses mouth – see their shows, read their articles, watch the cooking shows (of which I am a monstrous fan).
I haven’t read Kühlmann’s first take in 2007, with the apt title ‘Needle in the arm – The family and the Price brothers’ (although Kühlmann apologizes for it, I love it), but I am guessing it says pretty much the same things, only without the last two years of TV-fame, a couple of recipes from the family cookbook and some divorces + new girlfriends.
One thing however that I felt was a stroke of genius – not sure who’s idea it was – is grandmother Bodil’s Squirrel Peter story which is copied into the book. It is also a break in the general narration of the book, which goes something like, ‘Kühlmann tells about the family and the statements from the Price brothers are used to support and legitimize’. But this story didn’t have commentary, it is just there, a little story of a squirrel and his poor family. And it was a great read.
Maybe I am just not into these kind of books – I don’t see the point if it is going to be a glossed over happy-happy-some-sad-but-mainly-happy rant. A little critical thought is needed for this book to be interesting.
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