Swedish Literature

[Eric]

I don't think one novel should put you off Strindberg. He did write an enormously wide range of things during his lifetime, including such late plays as "A Dream Play" where he is not at all misogynist, plus a Hebrew grammar, although people say he was an anti-Semite. He was a rotten painter, and dabbled in alchemy, but at the same time he appears to have been a sharp observer of his time in that series of novels also including "Black Banners" and one or two other ones.

Given the fact that Swedish literature sometimes runs the danger of being bland, I find Strindberg a fascinating figure. I would rather read him than Stridsberg's book which I read about today in Upsala Nya. Women writers who lecture us about the evils of pædophilia, and then proceed to cram a bit of the Lolita Complex (derivative of an old Russo-American father figure) into their books, are rather off-putting.

And then on the very next page of Upsala Nya, the dead Trot Stieg Larsson has been awarded a prize. And his ex, the one who didn't get as much of his money as she had hoped, is evidently standing there at the prize ceremony calling him a "modern leader". And the jury lectures us about why they gave Mr Politically Correct a posthumous boost: his "ability to present and describe societal questions such as violence to women, justice and the hatred of foreigners". Ugh. Note: I carefully translated "kvinnovåld" as "violence to women", as a more Strindbergian translator might have translated it "women's violence" implying that it was the women who perpetrated it.

Bring back Strindberg, all is forgiven!

Anyway, thanks Johan for pointing out that your grandmother said that Karin Boye was a bit weird. If a man had said that, we would have a flood of accusations that the person who said so was anti-lesbian and probably hated poetry.

[Bjorn]

Originally Posted by Eric

Given the fact that Swedish literature sometimes runs the danger of being bland, I find Strindberg a fascinating figure. I would rather read him than Stridsberg's book which I read about today in Upsala Nya. Women writers who lecture us about the evils of pædophilia, and then proceed to cram a bit of the Lolita Complex (derivative of an old Russo-American father figure) into their books, are rather off-putting.

Well, call me crazy, but I don't think she's trying to excite you, Eric. Personally I'm very much looking forward to it - I've read her previous books, and in fact consider Drömfakulteten one of the best Swedish books of the past decade. Her take on Nabokov should be interesting, and far from as simplistic as you present it. And she's certainly anything but bland.

In completely unrelated news, I can't help but love the trailer currently running for the book-themed talkshow Babel, where the host Daniel Sjölin interviews grand old man and Academy member Torgny Lindgren.

DS: Why did you become a writer?
TL: *puffs on pipe* For lack of anything better to do.
DS: You've been writing for 45 years now, is there anything you want to tell us?
TL: *puffs on pipe* I haven't learned a thing.
DS: ...
TL: Yet.

[waalkwriter]

Originally Posted by Bjorn

Well, call me crazy, but I don't think she's trying to excite you, Eric. Personally I'm very much looking forward to it - I've read her previous books, and in fact consider Drömfakulteten one of the best Swedish books of the past decade. Her take on Nabokov should be interesting, and far from as simplistic as you present it. And she's certainly anything but bland.

In completely unrelated news, I can't help but love the trailer currently running for the book-themed talkshow Babel, where the host Daniel Sjölin interviews grand old man and Academy member Torgny Lindgren.

Ah, the 80+ year old member of the Academy? I love it. It reminds me of something but I'm not sure what.

[Eric]

I haven't yet looked at "Darling River" (it's trendy to have an English title) but Erika Josefsson's review put me off Stridsberg totally. How many more novels do we need which are dreamlike tales of children's sexuality? Everything I read about Stridsberg suggests that, like Mr and Mrs Ahndoril, she wants to be in the public eye as much as possible. Everything about her seems to suggest manipulation of the media, hype, loudness, sensation. I am glad that Sweden is a quiet place to live (not too many cars were burnt around Christmas in Gottsunda...). But the negative aspect is that authors seem to write such noisy and splurgy books to épater les bourgeois. I'm glad that Stridsberg has actually had two children, so she does at least speak from experience.

There are talented authors in Sweden, such as Ajvide, and others I have not yet discovered. But this ridiculous första recensionsdagen cult in Sweden means that, for instance, Lars Jakobson's novel even has the same photo in SvD and DN (looking as if the author is crouching for a crap). "Vännerna" looked rather interesting, but as I happen to be learning Latvian, I wondered how the hell Jakobson managed to call his Lett Janis Rokka, which looks like someone trying to make things look a bit Baltic without actually knowing anything about average Baltic names. Like calling a Swede Anders Brostrøm. Nevertheless, the theme of "Vännerna" looks interesting.

[Bjorn]

Originally Posted by Eric

How many more novels do we need which are dreamlike tales of children's sexuality?

In a world where children are being sexualized? I'd say it's a relevant topic. No less so than when Nabokov tackled it.

Everything I read about Stridsberg suggests that, like Mr and Mrs Ahndoril, she wants to be in the public eye as much as possible. Everything about her seems to suggest manipulation of the media, hype, loudness, sensation.

Funny, that's the exact opposite of the impression I've gotten from reading and watching interviews with her - she seems very uncomfortable in the public light. But I can see why she'd upset you. Sweden's a small country; talented writers are big news, whether they want to be or not.

Now John Ajvide Lindqvist, on the other hand, there's someone who knows how to milk the media... Not that it should matter to the final product, and as horror writers go, he's good. His second novel, Handling The Undead, was recently released in English, btw. Recommended if you like zombies.

Originally Posted by waalkwriter

Ah, the 80+ year old member of the Academy? I love it. It reminds me of something but I'm not sure what.

Well, he's only in his early 70s, to be precise. But he looks like an old woodcutter who just stepped out of the deep forests for the first time in 60 years. And he writes sort of like that, too. I really need to dig up some of his older stuff...

[Stevie B]

Originally Posted by Bjorn

Well, he's only in his early 70s, to be precise. But he looks like an old woodcutter who just stepped out of the deep forests for the first time in 60 years. And he writes sort of like that, too. I really need to dig up some of his older stuff...

About ten years ago while teaching in Japan, I wrote to Torgny Lindgren and inquired whether any of his work had been translated into Japanese. Lindgren's response was brief and quirky, and it put a smile on my face. Here is his response in full:

Your letter made me very happy. It is some kind of mercy or favour to have a friend here or there in the world. As to your question, I am a very careless and unarranged person. I have no idea about the languages in which my books appear. About Japan, I know nothing (but the volcanoes there are very decorative).

Kindest regards,

Torgny Lindgren

[Eric]

Björn, taking your points one by one:

The sexualisation of children is something journalists discovered recently and will exploit so long as people will read their articles. Personally, I think things like clitorectomies and the way young girls are being married off before puberty in some countries and cultures is something these butterfly-brained literary and journalistic moralists could focus on more. They see a mother putting lipstick on a five-year old girl's lips (boys of that age tend not to be interested) and go into orgies of fantasy, as if the little girl is being sold to a brothel, or molested by her father. I wish these literary feminists and male fellow-travellers would look at the horrors of the real world instead of reworking Nabokov for stage effect.

To be fair to you and Ajvide, I'll read some more before I comment further. Maybe you're right; I hope not. But my first impression was that his writings had something.

You may wonder why I get so irritable. But there is so much commercialism and celebrity hype in literature nowadays. Critic Sebastian Johans, writing in Upsala Nya, irritated me recently by making fun of Paolo Coelho and of Norwegians in the same review. (Norwegians are always made out to be bumpkins, if Swedes want a "near abroad" country to make fun of. This Norwegian was evidently lying on the floor, refusing to acknowledge Johans' quite sensible suggestion that Coelho is crap.) The thought struck me, and I wrote this to Johans, that it might be much better if people shut up about that charlatan Coelho, instead of giving him free publicity.

[Eric]

Stevie B's comment in #127 is interesting. Quite a few significant authors (e.g. P.O. Enquist, Sara Lidman and, here, Torgny Lindgren) come from Västerbotten or nearby, which is very far north in that long thin country of Sweden. Somehow a brand has been created, long before Swedish crime novels came to the fore, of the noble peasant from up north who writes about the travails of those with a working class background, often oppressed by the Church, and so on. Sadly, these authors then make a career in the Social Democratic Party which, for many decades was the establishment of Sweden. And then, when foreigners write to them, they play the role of the slightly confused backwoodsman who can't really cope with foreign questions. This seems to me to be a clumsy pose.

While we must of course admire a Swedish writer for being able to reply in a foreign language, whilst most Brits and Yanks remain staunchly monolingual, I find the response of Torgny to Stevie does reek a little of false modesty. Even then, Lindgren must have realised that he was one of the few big literary names in Sweden. So it hardly becomes such an author to write to Stevie as he did, in a kind of poor incomprehanding yokel manner. I suspect that a response amounting to "how interesting that you ask this question!" would have been more comprehensible to foreigners like Stevie.

[Bjorn]

Originally Posted by Eric

You may wonder why I get so irritable.

Not really. You're remarkably consistent in the things that upset you and your knowledge of them.

Originally Posted by Eric

The thought struck me, and I wrote this to Johans, that it might be much better if people shut up about that charlatan Coelho, instead of giving him free publicity.

You've written how many posts about Stieg Larsson now?

Originally Posted by Eric

To be fair to you and Ajvide, I'll read some more before I comment further. Maybe you're right; I hope not. But my first impression was that his writings had something.

Oh, I'm not denying that he's a good writer. I've read just about everything he's released so far, and that's not something I do for a lot of writers. What he's done is quite interesting; he's essentially taken the good old Swedish social democratic kitchen sink realism, every novel written by working- or middle-class people born in Sweden after 1960 or so, and pointed out the monsters that always lurked in them. It's not unique, but it's very effective, and I'm looking forward to his new one, Lilla stjärna.

I just thought it was strange that you would dismiss Stridsberg for "manipulation of the media, hype, loudness, sensation" for... what? Doing an interview in a major newspaper in connection with a highly anticipated book? while you praise Ajvide Lindqvist*, a bestseller horror writer who does all the talk shows, does stand-up comedy and conjuring tricks at his readings, writes short stories for just about any paper or magazine who asks him, releases trailers for his books... not to mention that he already has one internationally successful film under his belt, is working on a second, and is getting his debut novel filmed by a major Hollywood studio. Not that any of this changes the quality of his work in the slightest, but if you want to talk media hype... Of course, the small (and very leftist) publisher he still sticks to can probably use the money, so no complaints from me.

* John Ajvide Lindqvist is the horror writer; Mia Ajvide is his poet wife; yes, he took her name when they married.

As for Lindgren, I really liked his reply to Stevie. He's hardly the first writer ever to go "Eh, I've been translated into dozens of languages, some might be out of print, I dunno; my agent handles that stuff", but at least he wrote a proper (and funny) letter back.

[Eric]

If you're called John Lindquist, Lindqvist, or any other version, nobody will be able to pick you out from a thousand and one Swedes. If however you're called Ajvide (I presume his wife's name is not fake, like Ahndoril) people will remember you. A sensible move.

I was reading an interesting essay in the pub yesterday by Ulf Eriksson. And today, I opened Upsala Nya and found something about his new novel, whose title sounds like a quote from Procul Harem. The essay I read yesterday was one of Eriksson's from the 1980s, and really encourages you to read Walter Ljungquist, who looks to be a genuinely interesting author, but whose books are fewer in number in the bookshops than those of his widow Gerda Antti. I think that the word "anthroposophy" has put some people off Ljungquist, despite the fact that cults like New Age are still all the rage. What do you think? Ljungquist strikes me as a real author, not a product of the media.

I don't like the idea of writers who cannot keep up with their translations. They can't of course read most of them, but the tankspridd bondsk geni pose is not very cultured. A writer cannot possibly answer every bit of fan mail. But a little more interest in where your books are read surely becomes a writer.

[Johan]

Originally Posted by Bjorn

In completely unrelated news, I can't help but love the trailer currently running for the book-themed talkshow Babel, where the host Daniel Sjölin interviews grand old man and Academy member Torgny Lindgren.

I just saw it, Lindgren stole the show.

Babel | SVT Play

(In Swedish)

[Eric]

As both Swedes here appear to be male, what does Swedish male opinion say about Sara Stridsberg and her soiled underwear? All three "first day review" reviewers (all women) seemed to drool over Stridsberg, though it looks as if her novel is a derivative product of Nabokov's "Lolita".

A linked topic: I also see from the culture pages of the daily Upsala Nya Tidning yesterday (Saturday 27th March 2010) that Swedish intellectual women have finally discovered menstruation. How could they not have noticed before?

[Bjorn]

I've already said what I think of Stridsberg, and as far as I can tell, the consensus about her abilities as a novelist among those who've read her aren't divided along gender lines, no.

[Stiffelio]

Originally Posted by Eric

As both Swedes here appear to be male, what does Swedish male opinion say about Sara Stridsberg and her soiled underwear? All three "first day review" reviewers (all women) seemed to drool over Stridsberg, though it looks as if her novel is a derivative product of Nabokov's "Lolita".

A linked topic: I also see from the culture pages of the daily Upsala Nya Tidning yesterday (Saturday 27th March 2010) that Swedish intellectual women have finally discovered menstruation. How could they not have noticed before?

Did you just move, Eric? I thought you lived in Holland.

[Eric]

Stiffelio, yes, as I am not a ghost floating over continents and oceans, dissolving with the mists and solidifying with ice, and other such rhetorical conceits and nonsense, I have indeed shifted my regular location some seven or eight hundred kilometres. You get the prize for being the first to notice. But in truth I cannot say I would immediately notice if, say, Saliotthomas moved to Greenland, Mirabell to Murmansk, or Stewart to Patagonia. As long as the WLF continued undisturbed.

[Liam]

Originally Posted by Eric

I have indeed shifted my regular location some seven or eight hundred kilometres.

This reminds me: I'm going to Long Island for the weekend, .

Eric, I also notice that you're translating a new Jaan Kross novel: plz say more on the Estonian Lit thread, if you can?


L.

[Eric]

We in Europe only have to travel a few hundred kilometres or so to be in a different mind-space, language-space. For seven or eight hundred, you have quite a luxury of choices. I you swing a circle on a map from where I used to live in Holland, you could (fairly roughly) reach the Western Isles of Scotland, Dublin, Les Landes in France, Northern Italy, Austria, Poland, and Sweden. Iceland is a little further away. If you describe the same circle from where I live now, you will include a few more remote parts of northern Norway and Sweden, but also Finland, the Baltic countries, Poland again, northern Germany and Denmark. Maybe even Belarus and the other Rus. The focus has changed, but not the variety.

Think of the gamut of literatures and writers within that compass!

*

As for the "new" Kross novel, it's from 1987 and already exists in French, Swedish, Finnish, etc. But the English language is lamentably slow off the mark. It ain't Swedish literature, but I most certainly want to translate a few authors from that language too. As there is a respectable and sophisticated literature written in Swedish in two countries, I will have no difficulty finding novels to translate. But English-language publishers could prove a greater challenge...

Because I don't want to translate all those trendy novels that set out to épater les bourgeois, such as a recent drooled-over one by an ambitious Swede who ropes in Nabokov and his Lolly girl to appear literary. How many more novels by young women placing themselves in a Lolly position do we need? If old men are so sexist and pervy, why do young women authors keep on worshipping them? Bestseller money, I suppose.

In terms of serious literature, would prefer to translate real, solid authors of decades' standing and with a literary style that is their own. Or even young ones, as long as they stick to their style.

[Stiffelio]

Originally Posted by Eric

As for the "new" Kross novel, it's from 1987 and already exists in French, Swedish, Finnish, etc. But the English language is lamentably slow off the mark. It ain't Swedish literature, but I most certainly want to translate a few authors from that language too. As there is a respectable and sophisticated literature written in Swedish in two countries, I will have no difficulty finding novels to translate. But English-language publishers could prove a greater challenge...

Publishers and distributors are problematic in English translation. The Kross novels that already exist in English (including those translated by you) are hard to obtain. Run a check on Amazon and in most cases you'll only find used copies at atronomic prices.

[Eric]

Actually, I was wondering whether, where you are Stiffelio, Swedish books in translation are as hard to get hold of in translation as those by Kross. I am not talking about Mankell and Larsson, but general novels, not crime ones.

[Stiffelio]

Originally Posted by Eric

Actually, I was wondering whether, where you are Stiffelio, Swedish books in translation are as hard to get hold of in translation as those by Kross. I am not talking about Mankell and Larsson, but general novels, not crime ones.

You mean Swedish literature in Spanish translation? You see, unfortunately my knowledge of Swedish authors is rather poor. So I'm not very aware of whom to search for. Of course Mankell and Stieg Larsson are ominpresent and best sellers. I've also seen the other Larsson (Asa) in bookstores. But further than that...nil.

Please, give me a short list of authors that would be most representative and I'd be happy to run a check for them locally.