Swedish Literature

[Stiffelio]

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.

 

[Eric]

Talking of Swedish literature, Swedish PEN is quite active in drawing the attention of Swedish people to the plight of writers in less democratic countries.

Some quite big names are reading poetry this Friday in Swedish translation by authors that have been in some way censored or threatened:

H?kan Bravinger, Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril, Kerstin Ekman, Lars H?ger, Ann J?derlund, Stig Larsson, Jonas Modig, Maria Modig, Cilla Naumann och Niklas R?dstr?m will read texts by Svetlana Aleksijevitj, Salim Barakat, Faraj Bayrakdar, Bei Dao, Chenjerai Hove, Taslima Nasrin, Salman Rushdie, Yvonne Vera, Adam Zagajewski och Asiye G?zel Zeybek.

How active is the PEN club in your particular country? This varies a great deal from what I can judge. Some countries have regular events, some only a Writers in Prison committee and otherwise not very much. Sweden is one country where the PEN club has always been exceptionally active at all levels.

You may note the name Stig Larsson. This is not a return from the dead, but another author who was, in fact, already well-known in the 1980s until his quasi-namesake came along.

 

[hdw]

Re the last sentence, maybe that's why Lisbeth Salander's creator spelt his name Stieg, a spelling I've never seen before. The first time I saw it I thought it looked odd.

I used to be on the executive committee of Scottish PEN, which is very active in all kinds of ways, especially in Glasgow, where most members seem to be based. They do a lot of work with the writers in exile here in Scotland, many of them victims of torture and persecution, and many of whom have fetched up in Glasgow, and there are lots of literary events, poetry readings, translation workshops, work with schoolkids, etc., also publications and CDs.

Harry

 

[Johan]

Earlier this week I finished Lotta Lotass's Tredje Flykthastigheten(The Third Escape Velocity). What a great book.
It's about Yuri Gagarin and the early days of the Soviet space program, narrated by about a dozen of the people involved, mostly cosmonauts. The style alternates between deeply personal reflections and a sort of mock Soviet propaganda, with lots of titles and exclamation marks. Quite effective.

 

[Eric]

Yes, Harry, Scottish and Swedish PEN seem more active than some. The Dutch one, for instance, doesn't appear to really do anything beyond the core activity of the Writers in Prison Committee.

As for Lotass, I was rather put off when leafing through one book in paperback. It seemed to be the numbered description of a room or similar. But now that Academician Lotass has written about a Russian cosmonaut, maybe she's come into her own. One or two of her books are available in the railways kiosks and other paperback outlets. Do people buy, read, and appreciate them? Or are they curious what the eighteen people on the Nobel Committee have written? Or both?

 

[Johan]

Flykthastigheten is not her latest book, from 2004 according to wiki. I count 17 releases in 10 years, including web-only stuff. A little intimidating.

You must be talking about Den Svarta Solen, which seems to be her most difficult and strangely also most widely distributed work. I own it, but have only leafed through it so far.

 

[Eric]

I'm in two minds about Lotass. Part of me says that it is healthy to have an innovator amongst all the stofiler (aka doddery old men) sitting on many of the eighteen chairs of the Swedish Academy. But another little voice in my head wonders whether Lotass has not been coopted as a politically correct way of showing that Swedish women authors can actually be postmodernist. I also wonder whether some Swedish publishers want to make Sweden look super-intellectual by promoting Academician Lotass' stuff in paperback at railway kiosks. I would love to see the sales figures from the Pocket bookshops throughout Sweden showing how many Lotass books have been sold in cheap paperback editions to railway readers and other strollers.

 

[Johan]

You might have a point, but I'm not sure. If they really wanted to promote her they would get her translated, which has to my knowledge not happened yet, even though the type of literature she concocts is a lot more popular in the U.S.

 

[Bjorn]

I liked Tredje flykthastigheten enough to write a review on it:

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com...508-lotta-lotass-tredje-flykthastigheten.html

Personally, given the current crunch in the publishing business, some people might disagree but I consider it a good thing that Swedish publishers aren't just putting bestselling crime novels out in paperback editions; the Swedish paperback market (both publishers and buyers) has always been surprisingly generous to not-obviously-mainstream authors. As for translating her, surely that's up to the US/UK publishers rather than the Swedish ones?

 

[Johan]

Good review, I should have done a search before I posted. One tiny complaint: you claim that she exaggerates Gagarin's flight by extending it from 1 to 14 orbits. As I understood it the latter feat was accomplished(and attributed to by Lotass) by Gherman Titov, the second man in space.

But do publishers from different countries not talk and recommend each other works for translation? Anyway.

 

[Eric]

What Johan says in #148 does make you wonder about that eternal love-hate relationship between the USA and Sweden. Sweden has often drooled when it comes to the Yanks, but then, when Uncle Olof Palme told Swedes that the Yanks were bastards as they were murdering the Vietcong, Sweden suddenly became anti-Yank. Now that they've got Barack "Healthcare" Obama, Sweden is again regarding the Yanks as kosher.

Sucking up to the Yanks simply because they have Pynchon (and publish that Estonian postmodernist Mati Unt in my translation...) is not a healthy sign. The Swedes (vad s?ger du nu?) should try to write their own books, not always peep at what the Yanks are doing, in the way that Gustav III tried to turn Sweden into a country of culture by copying the French in the 18th century. That is why I admired that Manifesto published some months ago and now reproduced in the Swedish Book Review in English translation, which suggested that maybe people want to read books with plots, rather than ones which are really written to show everyone how quasi-American and postmodernistical Swedish intellectuals (except working class hero Johan Greider) are.

So are they going to get Lynx Paw translated into English or not? I shall try to get hold of a copy of the Gagarin book as soon as possible, but I still wonder about why a Swedish writer, too young and foreign to really know the inside workings of Soviet reality, has chosen Yuri "14 Flights" Gagarin as the subject of her novel. There are so many Soviet and ex-Soviet novels worth translating. And yet Sofi Oksanen got the West to read about Estonia when they were indifferent to that country before. So maybe Lotass can provide something new about Gagarin (who did put the gaga in Gagarin?). Unless she is just playing about with names and identities in an apolitical way.

As she is now, behind the scenes, a powerful woman at the Swedish Academy, I'm waiting to see how Lotass expresses herself in the press about vital literary issues and debates. I still haven't got a clear idea about what Lotass stands for. Whether she is the Joan of Arc who will lead the Swedish Academy whither that saintly Frenchwoman led her troops.

*

Anyone read anything by Yerterborry author, now living in the once working class, now chic, Stockholm suburb of S?der, called Stephan Mendel-Enk?

 

[Johan]

Pynchon bores me and I'm not a big fan of Obama, but you have a point. On the other hand I think all European countries, except maybe France and Spain, constantly compare themselves to the U.S. It's natural, nothing to be ashamed of.

I found the manifesto a sad non-event, a bunch of self-pitying young writers lashing out at real or perceived oppressors. And I don't think plot ever went away.

Johan Greider? Don't you mean G?ran, the unkempt and affable editor of Dala-Demokraten?

As for young Lotass' motives I really can't say, unless you want me to do a physiognomical analysis(more herbivorous than lynxish in this amateurs opinion) based on the handful of times I've spotted her at the university.

She might have found him natural sequel material, since her previous book, which I haven't read, is about the early days of regular flight.

 

[Eric]

Personally, I don't think that so many European countries put all their life energy into comparing themselves or their literature with the United States. Many countries (including, of course, Sweden) do have a literature of their own which is only compared now and again with the USA. But obviously such a huge country cannot be entirely ignored.

Unlike Johan, I thought the Manifesto was a brave attempt to say stop writing a number of rather journalistic things and let's return to books with plots. It may very well end up as another hot-air debate, but I felt the tendency was in the right direction.

I remember Greider from Ofvandahls caf? from the mid-1980s. I hope he has become more affable, because I found him rather bolshie then. But there is little chance of my meeting him again as I have no reason to travel to Dalarna (or Dalecarlia, as we're supposed to call it in English).

I may one day bump into Lotass, in which case I will judge for myself. But Johan's zoological gestalt hint is interesting.

 

[Eric]

I read an interesting article on the train today about how two publishing groups, centred around the two dominant publishing houses Bonniers and Norstedts, are turning Sweden into a "stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap" paradise for greedy capitalists who know little about the book world except that it can make a profit for tough players. The article was written by Per I Gedin, who was an editor at Bonniers, Wahlstr?m & Widstrand and Gedins, all three well-known publishing houses in Sweden. And Gedin was also the Chairman at one time of the Swedish Publishers' Association.

So this attack on commercialism is not coming from all those ex-Communists who are now eager to sell their souls and crime novels to commercialist philistine capitalism, but by a man who has been in the thick of it himself. And what should shock the Left even more is that this counterblast was published in the centre-right quality daily Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), rather than the centre-left quality daily Dagens Nyheter.

SvD also had an interesting article last Tuesday, also one you would have expected in a more left-wing newspaper. Here, the journalist Gunilla von Hall writes about how Swedish literature is being promoted at the Geneva Book Fair by pretty dodgy oil interests, including a company where the Russians are involved.

I'm glad to see that there are voices in Sweden which are not wholly supine when it comes to selling the country for profit-without-culture. I am, at the same time, reading the interesting novel "Svarta fanor" (Black Banners), written in the late 19th century by one August Strindberg. Whatever Bj?rn may say about my writing "shit" about Sara Stridsberg, I am glad that Swedish authors have not all sold themselves to sensationalist commercialism (two ounces of p?dophilia, one rape or swede, a few stabbings, and a bit of murder, stir like hell and sell, sell, sell). Bring back irascible misogynist, anti-Semitic boor of working class origin Johan August Strindberg as quickly as possible. We shall not say "all is forgiven" because surely not everyone held Strindberg's "rants" (thank-you Mirabell) as the ravings of a madman. He did go a bit nuts now and again, but presumably because of the insufferable hypocrites and sycophants surrounding him.

 

[Johan]

You must be talking about this: En fartblind bokbransch | Kulturnyheter | SvD

A depressing read, but nothing I didn't already know. As long as Swedes keep buying crime "novels" and cook books in droves I don't see any changes taking place in the foreseeable future.

 

[Eric]

Yes indeed, Johan, that was the article. I suppressed (censored) the title as it could cause the gigglers amongst us to be distracted from the issue by the magical word "fartblind" which does, of course, mean "fj?rtblind" or "fisblind" if translated back into Swedish.

But the issue itself is no laughing matter. And I am very happy that a member of the Swedish book establishment such as Per Gedin, has shot a broadside across the bows of the Ship of Greed. But as he points out, this is an international phenomenon, albeit a little worse in certain countries.

The man who would have written the best polemic in this sphere died in 1912. I am shocked that Sweden is so philistine not to pay a lot of Kulturr?det or F?rfattarfonden money into the project of commemorating the death of Sweden's perhaps most famous author in international terms, Johan August Strindberg. Is it really possible that Sweden is going to shoot itself in the foot to that extent? If money can be found to turn the Blue Tower into a rather attractive verdegris-yellow-gold edifice looming above Drottninggatan street, the cultural ?lite of Sweden can surely scrape together a few kronor to make a big splash in 2012.

Then we can all get pissed in Rydberg's, the restaurant mentioned in the 1890s Strindberg novel "Svarta fanor" (Black Banners), which I am reading with relish. That restaurant still exists today, despite the architectural carnage wreaked upon Stockholm in the 1960s.

I hope, in general, that the noises that are being heard in the newspapers right now will lead to a much healthier book climate in Sweden. Let's hope.

 

[Eric]

How Swedish is Swedish? How Finnish is Finnish?

When you read about both the well-received Mare Kandre (Sweden) and her Finnish counterpart Sofi Oksanen, you soon come across a sentence somewhere which reminds you that their mums came from Estonia, i.e. abroad. Although one of their parents was foreign, they have both made their mark on their respective literatures.

But when you read about the Stockholm author Per Anders Fogelstr?m, you tend to get the impression that he is the Swedishest of Swedish authors, a depicter of his home island of S?dermalm (OK, he wasn't born there, but still), plus of the rest of the capital of Sweden Stockholm. As Swedish as surstr?mming (stinky fish in a bloated can) and kn?ckebr?d (bread so hard you break your teeth on it).

Today I was reading an interesting review in the Swedish daily SvD written by Mats Gellerfelt about this same Fogelstr?m. So, hang on a minute: Fogelstr?m was less of a Swede than Kandre (or Oksanen a Finn)! Both his parents fled the Revolution in Russia (were they Swedish or Russian?), which probably explains his birth in the fateful year of 1917.

When you take a quick look on the internet and at the Wikipedia entries, you get the same vague information about how his parents fled the Revolution, and how his dad skedaddled to the USA, and mum brought up the kids. But who the parents were as individuals you hear very little about. His dad worked for a Swedish company in Russia; that's it.

In the days when Sweden was Social Democratic, and the establishment had marched under that banner for a few decades, Fogelstr?m, the son of immigrants (?), was harnessed by the Social Democrats (the equivalent of New Labour, considering the Baltic baronial provenance of their leader Olof Palme, i.e. a bloody foreigner by descendance) as a kind of workers' writer. But wasn't he really a d?class? bourgeois kid who happened to fall on hard times and have the talent to describe his surroundings far better than the families who had lived there for generations?

Hurrah (as the upper classes say) for the outsider-observer-describer!

 

[hdw]

That was a blast from the past for me. I read Fogelstr?m's quintet of novels about Stockholm, Stad (City), many many years ago. Only two of the five books have been translated into English.

I Wiki'd him to check my memory, and discovered that he was also the author of the novel Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika) which was made into a film by Ingmar Bergman, starring the delightful Harriet Andersson (not to be confused with Bibi Andersson, although they sometimes acted together). My girlfriend in Sweden in the 70s was called Monika, and shared Andersson's dark good looks, and she said that film had haunted her all through her life.

Wiki says it was ground-breaking or taboo-breaking or some such, and certainly there was plenty of bare flesh on display. And stripping down to your knickers then taking off to camera was unusual even in Swedish films at the time. Unfortunately the film was in black and white. But a great advertisement for Stockholms sk?rg?rd (the Stockholm archipelago).

Harry

 

[Eric]

I've started a thread on Fogelstr?m, which may be a little presumptuous as, unlike Harry, I've never read anything by him. But Gellerfelt's plug did make him seem interesting and, above all, genuine.

I wonder whether Fogelstr?m is alive in the minds of the Brits. I very much doubt it, because when there are five novels and only two get translated, it would suggest that there were no profitable sales and that the publisher's mind wandered elsewhere.

As for Monika, I do have a vague recollection of her exposure on screen. Harriet Andersson looked nice in those days - her face, I mean.

 

[Johan]

This makes me sad: Billigaste l?sfesten - DN.se

In short, it's a real stores v.s online stores price test in Dagens Nyheter, a generally decent daily owned by Bonnier, a publishing giant. They found the cheapest alternative to be Adlibris.com, also owned by Bonnier. About half of the books used in the test are published by Bonnier. None of these quite pertinent facts are mentioned in the article. I and several others posted comments pointing this out, these comments were swiftly deleted. What is this, Italy?

Unrelated: has anyone read poet Sara Hallstr?m? I'm not sure why, but the reviews of her most recent book Torg, Korg, eko raised my interest.