Ti Amo by Hanne Orstavik “I love you.”

 

If Ti Amo wasn’t in the fiction section of the library, I would have thought I was reading a letter. Or, more accurately, a personal journal entry. 

It is exquisite in its poignancy.

At first, I was apprehensive about reading a novel in which the narrator’s husband is dying of pancreatic cancer. The pain is raw, and the description of his suffering is graphic.

But then, the novel evolves into being more about her than him. Suddenly, quite near the end, she discloses an attraction to a man who is only called A; he has come to meet her on a book tour for one of her books in Guadalajara, Mexico.

She does not betray her husband. She writes this about meeting him four years earlier:

It was when I was writing Over the Mountain that I met you. I wrote myself into a place then where our coming together became possible, I knew that the work I was doing in writing that novel, approaching the girl-child parts of me from which I’ve detached myself all my life, despised and shunned, was in order to ready myself to live in nearness to another person and love them. Because if I couldn’t be near the vulnerable, soft and silly girly parts of me, the parts that so yearned for affection, how could I believe I could ever allow another person to be? Another person can’t make me love what I despise about myself, therefore if I hate myself I can never feel loved. And I longed for someone to love. (p. 108)

We learn about the process of dying, as we read, and what it does to a couple who love each other. But perhaps more importantly, to me at least, we learn about how we must also love ourselves. 

Professor Andersen’s Night by Dag Solstad “…he kept himself at a certain distance, he had always done that…”

 

Silly me. I was intrigued to read this book not only for the Norwegian challenge I have put forth, but also because I thought it would be a kind of thriller. Professor Andersen’s Night by Dag Solstad has, at its core, a murder. And I love Scandinavian noir. But, this is noir of an altogether different kind.

On Christmas Eve, Professor Anderson sets the table in his dining room. He changes into formal clothes, and serves ribs with crisp crackling from his own oven. We think, perhaps, that he is preparing a party. But, no, he sits down and eats all by himself, taking his coffee and cognac to sit before the fire when he has finished his meal.

“That’s odd,” I think, for even to an introvert such as myself, this seems like a tremendous amount of effort for one’s own holiday celebration. Even more odd is that when he stands looking out of his window he sees a beautiful young woman in the window across from him. Suddenly, a man appears behind her, puts his hands around her neck, and with flailing arms she falls to the ground. Apparently, she has been murdered.

We never see the body. We don’t know for certain if she has been killed. We don’t even if this event really occurred, or if it is just Professor Andersen’s imagination. What we do know is that he doesn’t report the event. He goes about his business, accepting a dinner invitation with friends, and then flying to visit a colleague in another city, all the while consumed with what he witnessed and what he should have done. When it is entirely too late.

Professor Andersen is a professor of literature, and the author of his own bizarre life. He is removed from people; more interested in how he appears to them, than how he connects with them. 

“…he kept himself at a certain distance, he had always done that and it had become more and more important to him over the years.” (p. 113)

What is important to him is having a well-organized life. He makes assumptions that aren’t necessarily true. He is passive. Removed from people on any level beyond the superficial. He lives alone and chooses to be almost completely isolated.

New Directions, who publishes the book, says, “Professor Andersen’s night is an unsettling yet highly entertaining novel, written in Dag Solstad’s signature concise, dark, and witty prose. “He’s a kind of surrealistic writer, of very strange novels,” Haruki Murakami wrote. “I think he’s serious literature.”

If this novel is meant to portray society today, as I have read, then I fear for us. 

If comedy is not far from tragedy, then Solstad’s writing is very witty indeed. 

Norway in November: The Other Name Septology I-II by Jon Fosse

 

In a way that is similar to the photograph I took of this bird and its reflection in the water, Fosse gives us a reflection of two men; one may be real, and the other a shadow. One may be transformed from the other into the person he has now become. Whatever the case, I have been intoxicated by the story of Asle. And, Asle.

The first is a painter, who begins his narration by telling us of the painting he has just finished. It is one wide line of purple, and one wide line of brown, crossing each other like a St. Andrew’s Cross. Like the photograph above; two images intersecting into one.

Asle goes into town, stopping at a park where he sees a man wearing a long black coat just like his. The man pushes the woman in a swing, and Asle hears their entire conversation which he transcribes for us. (Is he seeing this interaction, or remembering it?)

When he continues on his way, he thinks he must stop at Sailor’s Cove to see Asle, who is shaking and trembling from too much drink. Again, Asle (the narrator) gives us specific details about Asle (the drunk) shaking in his apartment, looking at his dog, Bragi, as he pours himself another drink.

But, Asle carries on into town, where he buys canvas, wood from the hardware store, and an open face, ground beef sandwich for lunch.

After he has unloaded his supplies at home, he realizes he really must go back and check on Asle in Sailor’s Cove. And so, tired as he is, he drives into town for the second time. 

Lo and behold, he finds Asle in the street! Lying in the snow, outside of The Lane, quite unaware and unable to get up. Asle helps Asle to stand, and takes him to a diner for dinner. For warmth. But, it is clear that the drunk Asle is very, very ill, and after taking him to The Clinic in a taxi, Asle is then admitted to the hospital.

I will stop retelling the story here, for soon you may not find a reason to read it yourself.  But, I can’t emphasize the beauty of the writing enough; it’s as though I know Fosse, or better yet, Fosse knows me.

This can’t be just because I’m (part) Norwegian too, can it? How can a person write of one’s past, one’s thoughts, one’s career, with such relevance to my own? I am not a painter, by any means, yet his words resonant with who I am. Like this:

“…tomorrow the same as every other day, yes, since he was maybe twelve years old, somewhere around there anyway, there hasn’t been a single day when he didn’t either paint or draw, it just happens by itself, that’s how it is, like it’s him in a way, painting is like a continuation of himself…” (p. 47)

This is exactly how I am concerning my need to write in my notebooks…and, there’s this:

“…I always tend to think I’m not allowed to do things, that’s why I always do the same things over and over…” (p. 49)

Or, this:

“…I like driving as long as I don’t have to drive in the cities, I don’t like that at all, I get anxious and confused and I avoid city driving as much as I can…” (p. 61)

Or, this:

“…and as for anything to do with maths I can’t do it, that’s for sure, and nothing with writing either, or, well, actually to tell the truth it’s pretty easy for me to write…” (p. 210)

Or, this:

“…it’s in the silence that God can be heard, and it’s in the invisible that He can be seen…” (p. 212)

And finally this:

“…it’s not often I pray in my own words, and when I do it’s for intercession…if I pray for something that has to do with me then it has to be let me good for someone else, and if it specifically has to do with me then I pray that it should be God’s will that it happens…”

The Other Name is written in a contemplative, dreamlike stream of consciousness, relating a deep introspection…there seems to be a deep sorrow just beyond reach, as if he is trying to define it. Or, explain it. We wonder, as we close the final pages, are the two Asles namesakes? Relatives? Old friends? 

Or, as is my personal belief, is one redeemed and the other not?

The Other Name Septology I-II by Jon Fosse (the first 100 pages) for Norway In November

 

‘And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written, which no one knows except him who receives it.’ — Revelation

One of the things that immediately draws me in to this contemplative, deeply introspective, novel is the way that Fosse speaks of faith.

From the epigraph on, faith is a recurring theme. We read the quote from Revelation (above), and then open to the very first page where Asle has painted a picture “with the two lines that cross in the middle, one purple line, one brown line…and I’m thinking this isn’t a picture but suddenly the picture is the way it’s supposed to be…” (p. 12)

I carry blithely on in my reading, marking more passages pertaining to faith such as this one:

“…it’s always, always the darkest part of the picture that shines the most, and I think that that might be because it’s in the hopelessness and despair, in the darkness, that God is closest to us.” (p. 96)

and this:

“…I say that no thing, no person, creates itself because it’s God who makes it possible for things to exist at all, without God there’s nothing, I say…since nothing can exist without God sustaining it, without God having made it exist, given it being  as they put it, then it’s He who is, it’s He that everything has in common, yes, God says Himself, about what we should call Him, that His name is I AM, I say…” (p. 99)

And then suddenly, a thought begins to crystallize in my mind about Asle, the one who is a painter in Dylgja sharing his thoughts with us, and Asle, the one who is shaking from drinking too much in Sailor’s Cove. These are the points I want to talk about in future posts.

I do hope you have a chance to read this with me. There’s so much I want to discuss…

Welcome to Norway in November (and Review Site)

 

I am so excited to begin Norway in November. Long have I been selecting the choices, from which I will read, and anticipating the reread of The Other Name: Septology I-II by Jon Fosse. Pictured above you will find:

Kristin Lavransdattar by Sigrid Undset

Ti Amo by Hanne Orstavik

Trilogy by Jon Fosse (comprised of three novellas, this work received the Nordic Council’s Prize for Literature in 2015, and could be read for Novellas in November, too, hosted by 746 Books and Bookish Beck)

Septology: The Other Name I-II by Jon Fosse

and The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad (which is not in the photograph because I have temporarily misplaced it). This book is nonfiction, which could be read for Nonfiction November, for whom one of the hosts is Readerbuzz.

These are books most fiercely calling my name, and from which I will be reading and reviewing this month. Oh, that November was longer!

Please join in my reading anything translated from Norwegian this month, and leave the link to your review for us to enjoy below: