Posts in Category: 2010
Hunger
A couple of weeks ago I finished Knut Hamsun’s Sult (Hunger). It has one of those epic starting lines that are so rare these days, probably because they either reek of cliché’s or have already been taken.
Knut Hamsun - Sult
“It was during the time I wandered about and starved in Christiania: Christiania, this singular city, from which no man departs without carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.”
(quote from the English translation by George Eagerton).
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the translation of the last part (from which no man departs…) doesn’t really emphasize the fascinating brutality of city life. I would rather translate it “from which no man departs until it has marked him”. The emphasis here is that the city has a hold of you, it devours you, and IT decides WHEN you are good and ready to go on.
This corresponds well with the city as literary image in the late 19th century (Hamsun’s Hunger is written in 1890). The city, now well versed in fast pacing revolutions in the fields of science, literature, physics etc., is always one step ahead of the individual who struggles to fit in and keep up. Thus began a new era of social misery: the individual of the early 19th century, the aristocratic dandy (a flaneur observing the city), is replaced by a stressed out, overstimulated wretch.
In Hamsun’s Hunger the protagonist is such a character. All of his experiences are interspersed with Christiania as a city and the people who inhabit such a place. And he struggles. He struggles to survive in the city, while the ramblings of a ‘mad-man’, a hungry and homeless man without a lifeline in either direction, are being flung out at the reader. Our protagonist alternates between paranoid and hopeful within pages. The darkest pit is replaced by the bluest sky depending on the way the wind turns. His survival is dependent on money, a trade of capitalist society, and his income is dependent on his writing skills. But the hungrier he gets, the harder it is for him to keep his thoughts in order. At first his work is accepted, giving him enough money for a couple of days of lodging and some time to recuperate, but he has no sooner become hopeful than he is out on the streets again. And thus starts a new round of misery. It is truly a work of great significance, and it would do people well to read, especially in these days when you hear more and more about the abuse of homeless people on the one side, and the overbearing laissez faire-“the state will take care of them”-attitude.
Sofi Oksanen
On March 30th the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2010 was awarded to Sofi Oksanen for her novel Puhdistus.
Sofi Oksanen - Renselse
I had planned for a long time to read it, as I read an interview with her and several reviews that spoke highly of the novel. Usually I don’t select my readings by reviews, but everything I read, both on and in between the lines, hinted at something special, so I reserved it from my library as soon as I could (and ended up only no. 24 in line!). I finally got it and read it in two days. I know it is every publisher’s press release orgasm wording, but it sucked me in and wouldn’t let go until I had read the last sentence.
The novel takes place in Estonia, where an elderly farmer woman Aliide finds a woman called Zara, a trafficking victim, battered and bruised on her property. The women’s different yet similar histories are told in a very harsh but poetic way. Every imaginable pain, guilt and shame that can befall a woman both in a political dictatorship and tyrannical misogynistic rule is present. But just so it doesn’t all become one color, the story also tells of pride, survival instincts and imagination. And it made me angry, it made me empathize and gag and smile and nod agreeingly. There were so many layers of female thoughts all coming together in the novel. And I say female thoughts, not to say it is an entity far from male thoughts, but only to emphasize that the novel deals with the female experience of a system set in order by men, in which it is almost impossible for them not to step outside the line and get penalized. Male dominance is pervasive and his sexuality is being used as a weapon against, and on, women in ways that make you cringe.
Something I found very interesting was how Aliide’s jealousy of her sister manifested itself in the book. It is, for lack of a more appropriate word, beautifully described. It represents a woman engulfed in her sisters assets and successes so much that her sister almost gains a divine glare, a virginal innocence towards all evil thought and behavior, only thence to manifest darkness so more blatantly in Aliide.
She is such a complex figure in my mind, and yet so cliché when it comes to the failures in sisterhood. Aliide knows what she wants, and she is determined to get it at all (and I mean seriously at ALL) costs. I think she represents a figure who balances on the very fine edge of desire and survival. She is determined to survive, even if that means that she has to give up so many things that could enrich her life. She survives but at a cost. Is it society’s fault? Men? Her own or her family’s?
And when she lashes out, takes control of her life, person and property , it is almost as if it is too little to late, or in a totally exaggerated way.
Another interesting and reoccurring scene is when the women experience assault and their mind, in survival mode, takes them out of this threatening situation. Being the little piece of dust or a fleck of light on the hard cement floor, fleeing into a hole in the wood, and with every sentence being read you, the reader, are painfully aware, but not explicitly told of the horrors that are inflicted upon them. I can’t recapitulate the intensity of these passages with as much fervor as Oksanen does, but they are worth the read.
There is so much to delve into in this book, so much to emphasize, but I don’t want to make this too long. Safe to say, I will be picking this book up again at some point in time.
This just in!
The Newly Acquired
They’re here, they’re here! On Saturday, April 3rd, they finally arrived. I had hoped they got here before Easter, so I could curl up in bed and read them from cover to cover, but who am I kidding?! There are so many and I have just started on the last batch I bought 3 weeks ago.
But they came, and they are beautiful, and it felt like the world was shiny and new and happy. New adventures, new experiences, new thoughts (well, erm… so many of them are classics, but good stuff dies hard). I can’t wait to sink my eyes into them, and I’ve already started on The Book Thief. I have shown interest in it as a possible translating job for the publishing firm I freelance at, and maybe, if I do a good job on the one I am currently on, I will be so lucky 🙂
I also got Alice in Wonderland but I donated it to my niece, since she had never read it (and I have, but never in English), and because we went to see the new movie version starring Johnny Depp. I hope she likes it.
Easter was a fairly good time, I’m no longer a stickler for traditional festivities, but it’s always good to have collective holidays to fill up the roads and parks with people who wind down and eat too much. There is a vibe that fills people and they move at a different pace, the rhythm is somewhat less mechanical. Normally it’s “off the train, to the stairs, on the bike, at the job, move to lunch, walking home, fall in bed” but these days it’s like people don’t yell at the person next to them if they miss the train, or rush the food in just to get to the next appointment. They’re not over the top serene, flower-picking mellow, carefree, just not panicky. It’s nice.
I am reading “Et stille umærkeligt drab” by Kaaberbøl/Friis, a Danish crime novel duo. Borrowed it from the library, that somehow has managed to give me the one copy in the Kingdom that dropped all the pages between 96 and 129 only to double back to page 129 and repeat every word when I hit page 163. Confused? So am I. I am seriously thinking if this is some kind of literary experiment of some sorts. Maybe you don’t or can’t know what is going on on those pages, because life is like that. Sometimes you get cut off, and have to pick up at some random place, and sometime life is a big deja vu. But I don’t know; maybe I just put too much into an organizational mistake.
Happy April. Keep using ye ole noggin.
Buying books
It can be very stressing on my bank account when I browse through an internet bookstore. Just two days ago I ordered for about 100 € worth of cheap books. And any day now they will be filing through my physical mailbox, giving the mailman a run for his money. We are almost on a first name basis, since I see him twice a week these days. I like the postal service, it’s a great invention when it works which, around these parts, is 98 percent of the time, so let’s hear it for the men and women in red!! I just can’t seem to stop buying books. Classics, literary theory, culture, encyclopedia’s, compilations et cetera. Is it a compulsive disorder when it’s useful, practical, enlightening?
Today the mailman brought me The Complete Novels of Jane Austen (yey for Austen, not so yey for the cheesy cover picturing Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, yikes, at least give me classic Mr. Darcy if you please!).
The Complete Novels of Jane Austen
Last week it was Alcott’s Little Women, Stoker’s Dracula, Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto and a compilation of international stories, Because I Am A Girl (for my niece, who is obsessing over the vampire craze that has turned every teenage girl into a self-denying servant of the dark side, all the while exploring the magnitude that is female sexuality, in a very weird bifurcated manner). Anyhoo, books, lot’s of them. I am expecting the massive amount I bought a couple of days ago to be here no later than the end of this week, jippey.
Because I am a Girl, Dracula, SCUM Manifesto, Little Women
The only problem is I don’t have time to read them (which is awkward, when people stare and ask about books in my bookshelf).
A day at the library
I did it. I finally hauled my backside off the nice armchair, away from my cozy little den I call home, defied all common sense and biked 10 km down to my university library.
I love the library and I don’t mean the casual “uh, I love taco’s”-statement or “I loved the game yesterday”, I mean over-the-moon-smittened-butterflies-in-stomach kind of love. The first thing I do when I move to a new place is finding out where the library is. I like to browse through the bookshelves, touch the covers, read the back, keeping an open mind. I like the silence, the joint agreement of a group of strangers passing each other by the shelves, a nod here, a smile there. The smell of books, ah, there is nothing like it in the world.
My library doesn’t smell quite like a library should though. The architects, I guessed, found the cramped, shabby, dark atmosphere too uninspiring, so they opted for at glass facade, light colors, and in my personal opinion, very few bookshelves. Everything is open, not a nook in sight.
But somehow that’s ok, because my university library is not really a library in the old sense of the word for me. This library is for when I need a place to read (read: own material, away from home, because somehow I never get to the studying part there), to write on my exam projects, or if I need to be in the presence of other people. The only downside to it is that because it is so open and light (my theory, no stats behind this claim) people tend to use it as a place for study groups, and the practice of not using phones or talking out loud in the library has changed to taking a call on the stairs and laughing about a youtube clip or the latest reality show on TV. But it’s not loud all the time, and those moments are worth the silent teeth grinding ones 🙂
My town library on the other hand is an old school, except when, between 10 am to 2 pm, it is turned into a school library. But even those kids are more quiet than what can be expected here. It’s a small two-storey library with nooks and silence. It smells of, and is filled with… you guessed it; books.
I love the library. When I grow up I want the biggest room in my house/flat/cardboard box to be filled, jammed, crammed with books.
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