I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE KIDS-“Forelska i lærer’n” & “Norske Jenter” (1980).

The Kids are a Norwegian band that was mentioned in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s story yesterday.  He is pretty disparaging of them as they were hugely popular when he was in school (and he liked other bands).  They sing in Norwegian and are quite poppy.

“Norske jenter” is the poppier of the two.  It’s pretty synthy, with a super catchy melody and chorus.  It seems just shy of being a sleek pop hit, but I can imagine that a band singing in your native tongue would fair well even without super slick packaging.

Of course, having said that, “Forelska i lærer’n” is nothing if not slick–check out these guys with their super blond hair.  Actually the video is pretty funny and with a name like “In love with the teacher,” it is quite a different subject than I expected).  I love the way they designed the teacher.  And that wink is fantastic.  If only the lead singer could act a little better.  The song is kind of a heavy classic rock sound–maybe a poppier version of Thin Lizzy (those guitar solos are very Thin Lizzy).  I’m of course very curious what the lyrics are.

I found two videos on YouTube (and apparently there are some more recent live songs)

Norske jenter: There’s no visuals in this video, just music:

But the video for “Forelska i lærer’n” is here in all of its glory–it looks much more modern than 1980.  The self pogoing at the end is fantastic.

[READ: June 15, 2014] Replacement

I found out about this book from Karl Ove Knausgaard, who claims that it is the best Norwegian novel ever written (he also has a quote on the back of the book).  I had never heard of Tor Ulven before.  It turns out that he has written mostly poetry.  And then he wrote a few prose-like poems and then this novel called Avløsning in Norwegian.  And then he killed himself.

This book was translated by Kerri A. Pierce and it has an afterword by Stig Sæterbakken.  And literally that is all I can tell you about the book for certain.

Why?  Because the back of the book and the afterword actually differ about what they say is happening in the story.  To a pretty intense degree.  The back of the book says that “the perspectives of unrelated characters are united into what seems a single narrative voice: each personality directing the book in turn.”  Whereas Stig makes the case that the book is all one narrator at different points in his life.

And why can’t you tell?  Because there seems to be different perspectives (all by men), and yet no one is named.  And then there’s the fact that some of the book is written in second person, while the rest is in the third person–this suggest at least two narrators, and yet it could also be a flashback.  There are at least four different time settings and seemingly different people.  There’s an old man in a wheelchair, there’s a security guard, there’s a taxi driver (I think).  There’s a guy who likes to list things, there’s another guy who thinks parenthetical thoughts.  And there’s an intense obsession with “her,” a woman who doesn’t seem fictional but is certainly mythical.

And what happens?  Well, nothing.

The point of the story is the flatness of existence (I think).  Everything gets as much importance and focused detail as everything else.  In the way that Karl Ove is obsessed with details, so is Tor Ulven.

The book opens with a man in bed, getting ready to remove his shirt in the near darkness of his room.  And then the book switches to second person, where it is also dark and we are in the man’s head wondering what it would be like to be blind.  Then he thinks about the woman he was with (and his own squeaky voice).  “You” has an obsessive compulsive nature, counting telephone poles, despising couch potatoes and those not in perfect shape.

Then there is a the cigarette sequence (both finding it and lighting it) and the beer sequence (imagining that there should still be in the fridge and then finding one in an unlikely place.  Then there’s night watchman duties an thoughts about a drummer in a band who hits so hard he imagines him grinding his bones to dust.

All of these details seem to lead towards the contemplation of the inevitability of loneliness and death.  In one sequence the 55-year-old man is examining X-rays of his 20-year-old self.  The man in the wheelchair wakes to find himself completely alone (where is “she”?).  His wheelchair is across the room.  And he needs to pee. He ponders at length what tools he could use to turn on the light (a blowgun and peas?  or steel balls?).  He also ponders the fly that is buzzing around his light.

There’s also the scene where a woman goes on a hike with the man.  They seem to have a good time until she asks what his wife would think if they kissed.  And a tired old carnival.  And finally a rock where beloved dog Garm has been buried for some time.  The end of the book returns to third person.  Is the entire book one long thought process about a man’s life?  It’s very hard to know.  And it’s not even clear that it matters.

Ulven has set out to write very specific type of novel and he has achieved it–the kind that many people will throw against the wall and that others will become engrossed in.  I found myself engrossed from time to time, but I also knew that I had to return it to the library quickly so I did not devote as much attention to it as I should have.  The book is short enough (143 pages) that I may have to check it out again and try to really get absorbed in the story where there may be more clues to parse out.

I really liked Stig Sæterbakken’s take on the story and I found it quite helpful in terms of coming to grips with what I had just read.  And holy shit I just read that Sæterbakken committed suicide on January 24, 2012, aged 46.  This afterword must have been the last thing he wrote.  Creepy.  Lighten up Norway!

For ease of searching I include: Stig Saeterbakken, Avlosning.