what's good
― ||||||||, Sunday, 1 February 2015 14:34 (nine years ago) link
Since she hasn't been mentioned in the thread so far, Inger Christensen is great if you like procedural poetry that manages still to be lyrical and socially incisive: check out Alphabet or It.
― one way street, Sunday, 1 February 2015 21:15 (nine years ago) link
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1541210.ece
The baron introduces Siri’s pretty young cousin into the house as his mistress. Strindberg is obliquely invited to complete the quartet. Ambiguity reigns. Lesbianism whispers softly in the shadows. Strindberg becomes prey to the certainty that his rigid lower-class moral code is being undermined by the sophisticated flexibility of the confident aristocrats. Siri is willing to risk ruin for a career on the stage. She leaves her doll’s house, divorces the baron and marries Strindberg, who permits her to live the liberated life of sexual equality they both believe in. They write a feminist manifesto. She becomes an actress; smokes, drinks, treats everyone of both sexes with the same uninhibited even-handedness. He is disappointed that liberation leads her to behave as licentiously as a man. His suspicion over small incidents, which at first he recounts humorously as farcical vicissitudes, grows into jealousy, then full-blown paranoia as he interprets her unfettered behaviour, first as promiscuity, then as nymphomania. Who is right ? Who is wrong? Who is lying? Who is mad? The reader has no idea, and their violent clashes sweep headlong into tragedy. When at last Strindberg wrings a confession of sexual infidelity out of Siri, he wonders – even while beating her up – whether her confession is true or if it is designed to drive him mad so she can gain total power by committing him to an asylum.
This sounds great.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 30 January 2016 22:25 (eight years ago) link
Haven't read the English translation but Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse is probably my favorite novel of his and, yeah, the English translation was released last year. Also a little ghosty re: Aliss at the Fire above.
― abcfsk, Wednesday, 3 February 2016 11:24 (eight years ago) link
Surprised there's not more discussion of Dag Solstad around here- I loved 'Shyness & Dignity', but currently struggling a bit with 'Prof Andersen's Night'
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Thursday, 4 February 2016 10:45 (eight years ago) link
There are only 2/3 things published in English but yes 'Shyness & Dignity' was fantastic.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 4 February 2016 11:14 (eight years ago) link
bummmmmmmmmmmphttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/11/top-10-modern-nordic-books
― ||||||||, Friday, 13 October 2017 17:36 (six years ago) link
http://lithub.com/lydia-davis-at-the-end-of-the-world/
end up thinking abt Solstad's Telemark novel now and then
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 26 October 2017 21:05 (six years ago) link
Such a crime that so few of his novels are translated
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Friday, 27 October 2017 06:45 (six years ago) link
Just three books in English - this is v v bad.
Its strange as actually others of a similar ilk like Bernhard (not that they are the same at all writing-wise, more of a similar generation/outlook) have almost everything of theirs available in English.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 27 October 2017 13:11 (six years ago) link
We should compose a strongly-worded letter to the Authorities on the matter.
― Tim, Friday, 27 October 2017 13:38 (six years ago) link
http://www.swedishbookreview.com/article-2000-2-tate.asp
can't quite believe she died 17 years ago, she was my primary inspiration as a kid to become a writer
― mark s, Friday, 27 October 2017 13:50 (six years ago) link
(her kids often babysat me and my sister in the late 60s: naturally at the time they were all maoists)
― mark s, Friday, 27 October 2017 13:53 (six years ago) link
Are you planning to go to the show at the Dull-itch Picture Gallery, Mark?
― Tim, Friday, 27 October 2017 16:10 (six years ago) link
Haha I didn't click on that and assumed it was about Tove Jansson. Apologies to all concerned. But my question in ref the Jansson show stands.
― Tim, Friday, 27 October 2017 16:11 (six years ago) link
i think the answer has to be YES!! (also hurrah)
― mark s, Friday, 27 October 2017 16:19 (six years ago) link
(also finland not a scando nation)
*removes pedant's hat*
― mark s, Friday, 27 October 2017 16:22 (six years ago) link
"A Madman's Defence"? I read this recently 0_o a terrible man, terrible man. More of a child than a man though tbf.
― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Friday, 27 October 2017 16:26 (six years ago) link
She wrote in Swedish though.
*replaces pedant's hat*
― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Friday, 27 October 2017 16:29 (six years ago) link
lol excellent point
*removes pedant's hat from where it was replaced and puts it on tom's head instead*
― mark s, Friday, 27 October 2017 16:33 (six years ago) link
(finland is a scando nation)
― Frederik B, Friday, 27 October 2017 16:54 (six years ago) link
ssonned in a baltic beef
― mark s, Friday, 27 October 2017 17:01 (six years ago) link
eh, i thought finland was not part of scandinavia and I'm p sure i got this from a finn?
― -_- (jim in vancouver), Friday, 27 October 2017 17:08 (six years ago) link
Danish expansionism.
― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Friday, 27 October 2017 17:17 (six years ago) link
Swedish
― Frederik B, Friday, 27 October 2017 17:22 (six years ago) link
http://www.visitdenmark.com/sites/default/files/styles/news_and_article_image/public/vdk_images/Attractions-Activities-interest-accommodation-people-geo/TV-movies/broen.jpg
― mark s, Friday, 27 October 2017 17:25 (six years ago) link
I went to Iceland but didn't read much due to exhaustion and there being far too much raw beauty to look at. Did meet a history PhD though, and got myself plenty of background on Laxness, and some support, from what little I had read of Independent People, that Laxness was very Soviet-influenced - in his prose, and his outlook.
― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Friday, 27 October 2017 17:45 (six years ago) link
Danes don't do irony, obviously.
― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Friday, 27 October 2017 18:08 (six years ago) link
Not in my generation, no. We all remember this famous youth tv discussion of the disease known as Chronic Irony. Never been ironic since then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmF0hGXkA8M
― Frederik B, Friday, 27 October 2017 18:20 (six years ago) link
We should compose a strongly-worded letter to the Authorities on the matter.― Tim, Friday, 27 October 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Tim, Friday, 27 October 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I want to write a letter to Lydia Davis to implore her to translate The Telemark novel. That piece has made sorta obsessed with it.
If she ever replied she would just tell me to learn Norwegian :-(
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 28 October 2017 12:34 (six years ago) link
"A Madman's Defence"? I read this recently 0_o a terrible man, terrible man. More of a child than a man though tbf.― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Friday, 27 October 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Friday, 27 October 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Its really good and those few prose works are definitely on my canon of 19th century lit. They are all written in this high energy loud confessional hallucinatory tone. Very Trumpian man-child, and he would not be doing too good in the #metoo stakes either.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 28 October 2017 12:39 (six years ago) link
Top free PDF magazine on this page http://www.eurolitnetwork.com/the-riveter/ has lots of recent Scando lit reviews/extracts/etc
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Tuesday, 31 October 2017 04:16 (six years ago) link
there was this review in the new yorker recently of a norwegian short story writer, and she was compared to lydia davis - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/28/a-norwegian-master-of-the-short-story
― just sayin, Tuesday, 31 October 2017 04:58 (six years ago) link
i love this thread
― flopson, Tuesday, 31 October 2017 05:04 (six years ago) link
Two new Dag Solstads into English next May: 'Armand V' and 'T Singer'
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Wednesday, 1 November 2017 00:12 (six years ago) link
Anyone other than me read Stig Saeterbakken? Norwegian author around the same age as Knausgaard, apparently quite famous in Norway, committed suicide in his mid 40s. I've read a couple of his, including his last, Through The Night, which was excellent but pretty harrowing stuff, about a man mourning the suicide of his son who goes on a journey to a mysterious house in Slovakia. (shades of Edouard Leve, who wrote the (also excellent) novel Suicide, then promptly committed suicide)
― Zelda Zonk, Wednesday, 1 November 2017 01:02 (six years ago) link
That's terrific news re: Solstad
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 1 November 2017 10:37 (six years ago) link
It is.
I read "Siamese Twins" by Saeterbakken - "excellent but pretty harrowing" sums up my memory of it rather well. It sits fairly squarely in a genre of Nordic lit which revels in angry grimness, I liked it.
― Tim, Wednesday, 1 November 2017 10:51 (six years ago) link
Danish writer Kirsten Thorup wins this years Nordic Council's Literature Prize! Danish critics are pretty surprised and ecstatic, apparently she's very good.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 1 November 2017 23:33 (six years ago) link
Why are awful people writing about Dag Solstad:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/03/dag-solstad-t-singer-armand-v-reviews
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 8 June 2018 11:54 (five years ago) link
I scored copies of both the new Solstad translations in Chicago the other day; I am very excited to read them.
― Tim, Monday, 11 June 2018 10:50 (five years ago) link
Got them too, starting one of them next I think.
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Tuesday, 12 June 2018 06:23 (five years ago) link