#jon fosse

[amicus-noctis]

“For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops.”― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle 1

Painting: "The Patient" by Vasily Polenov

[crucifiedlovers]

Everything is sort of beyond the limits, it’s like being locked into a closed room in the forest, trapped, but at the same time it’s like the room is unbounded.

Jon Fosse, A Shining (trans. Damion Searls)

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: June Wrap-Up.

Okay, y'all have Convinced Me--I'm going to start doing little wrap up posts! Behold: a shelf of what I read in June (not pictured: the bookmark at page 466 of ORDINARY MONSTERS, because despite having read two (2) books worth of book so far, I'm still not quite done with that one).

June was kind of a slow reading month for me (I did a LOT of writing, looking back--nice). I wanted to take OTHER TERRORS and THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE a bite at a time so the horrors and figures of rhetoric (respectively) didn't all run together. Both of those, much like A SHINING, turned out to be pleasantly leisurely wanders, whereas MONSTERS is kind of a plod.

I already did bigger write-ups for TERRORS and SHINING, linked in the bullets below.

OTHER TERRORS - ★★★★ Great bite-sized horror anthology with a really inclusive mix, as promised! I enjoyed most of these (always nice in an anthology!)

A SHINING - ★★★★ Weird fucked up heavy little book in translation, lit-fic flavored, but very approachable, I thought. Tiny enough to swallow in a sitting, but also kind of exhausting to do it that way? I'll definitely reread this one in the future.

THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE - ★★★ Fun romp through rhetoric! The examples were fun, and I appreciated the humor, but I also find myself still uncertain what a bunch of the figures actually ARE, definitions-wise, despite having read a book full of so many of them (I did just buy his recommended A HANDLIST OF RHETORICAL TERMS to help with that, at least, which is. almost entirely. definitions by volume). Neat thing to have on my references shelf, but it wasn't as excellent as I was hoping it'd be.

ORDINARY MONSTERS - 466/658 pages read; will report back later (but it's not looking good, folks).

[tendersnake]

In My Secret Life - Leonard Cohen // Album cover of Pulp's Different Class // Living secretly - Jon Fosse // I Keep Mine Hidden - The Smiths

[hiyutekivigil]

[x]

[lady--vixen]

Melancholia, Jon Fosse

"Perché lui, Vidme, un uomo sui trent'anni fatti, ma già con qualche capello grigio, ritiene di aver scoperto qualcosa di importante che gli cambierà a vita, ha capito che si è addentrato in qualcosa di importante attraverso la sua attività di scrittore, qualcosa con cui deve fare i conti se vuole continuare la sua vita, e per questo Vidme cammina nella pioggia e nel vento pensando che già molti anni di lavoro come scrittore gli hanno man mano insegnato qualcosa di importante, qualcosa di cui pochi sono a conoscenza, lui ha visto qualcosa che non così tanti hanno visto, pensa Vidme, mentre cammina nella pioggia e nel vento, infatti, se uno si concentra abbastanza, lavora con sufficiente profondità e concentrazione, a capofitto in qualcosa, se uno vuole, se solo arriva dentro abbastanza, se si immerge abbastanza, arriva a vedere qualcosa che gli altri non hanno visto e quello che lui ha visto, pensa Vidme, mentre cammina nella pioggia e nel vento, è la cosa più importante che ha ricavato di tanti anni in cui praticamente ogni santo giorno ha scritto."

un solo periodo, un solo punto finale per buttare lì un pensiero fondamentale sulla scrittura ciapa lì

[justforbooks]

The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to 64-year-old Norwegian author Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”. His works include the Septology series of novels, Aliss at the Fire, Melancholy and A Shining.

“His huge oeuvre, spanning a variety of genres, comprises about 40 plays and a wealth of novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations,” said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel committee for literature. “Fosse blends a rootedness in the language and nature of his Norwegian background with artistic techniques in the wake of modernism.”

“I am overwhelmed, and somewhat frightened. I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations,” Fosse said in a statement.

He also told the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that he was “surprised but also not” to have won. “I’ve been part of the discussion for 10 years and have more and less tentatively prepared myself that this could happen,” he said.

Jacques Testard, Fosse’s fiction publisher, said on hearing the news: “He is an exceptional writer, who has managed to find a totally unique way of writing fiction. As his Norwegian editor Cecilie Seiness put it recently in an interview: if you open any book by Jon and read a couple of lines, it couldn’t be written by anyone else.

“His fiction is incantatory, mystical, and rooted in the landscape of the western fjords where he grew up,” Testard added. “It’s very important to remember that he writes in Nynorsk or New Norwegian, a minority language in Norway, a political act in itself. He’s also an exceptional playwright and poet. He’s an incredible mind, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.”

The Norwegian writer’s English translator Damion Searls said he is thrilled Fosse’s work will now find an even wider audience. “I first brought Fosse’s fiction into English almost 20 years ago. I read Melancholy in German and immediately felt that the work was brilliant and needed to be translated. I found an American publisher and a co-translator, and started learning Norwegian”, he told the Guardian. “I have since translated around 10 books of his, depending on how you count them, including a libretto, a play and a forthcoming children’s book.”

Though the author and translator mostly communicate via email and hadn’t met in person until the 2022 International Booker prize events in London, Searls considers Fosse a friend. “He is the same kind, wise, modest, friendly, supportive person over email as you would expect from his novels, and corresponding with him has always brought me the same kind of peace and serenity his novels so magically impart.”

Born in 1959 in Haugesund on the west coast of Norway, Fosse grew up in Strandebarm. Aged seven, he nearly died in an accident, which he said was “the most important experience” of his childhood and one that “created” him as an artist. In his adolescence, he aspired to be a rock guitarist, before turning his ambitions to writing.

His debut novel, Raudt, svart (Red, Black), was published in 1983. His first play to be performed, Og aldri skal vi skiljast (And Never Shall We Part), was staged at the National Theater in Bergen in 1994. Yet, the first play he wrote, Nokon kjem til å komme (Someone Is Going to Come), would lead to his breakthrough in 1999 when French director Claude Régy staged it in Nanterre.

Fosse went on to become the most-performed Norwegian playwright after Henrik Ibsen. He has written more than 30 plays, including Namnet (The Name), Vinter (Winter) and Ein sommars dag (A Summer’s Day). His longer works include the Septology trilogy, the third volume of which was shortlisted for the international Booker prize in 2022.

Septology, which Fosse started during a pause from playwriting and after converting to Catholicism in 2013, is about an ageing painter, Asle, living alone on the south-west coast of Norway and reflecting on his life. There in Bjørgvin lives another Asle, who is also a painter but struggles with alcohol. The doppelgangers are consumed by the same existential questions about death, faith and love.

In 1989, the same year that Fosse’s novel Naustet (“Boathouse”) came out, the writer taught the fellow Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård, who was a student at the Academy of Writing in Hordaland. “Fosse’s voice is unmistakable in whatever he writes, and is never anything if not present,” wrote Knausgård in 2019.

Fosse’s UK publisher is Fitzcarraldo Editions, which also publishes Annie Ernaux, the winner of the 2022 Nobel prize in literature. Fosse’s win marks the London-based independent publisher’s third win in five years: Olga Tokarczuk was made laureate in 2018. The prize was postponed and awarded in 2019 instead due to a sexual assault scandal involving the husband of one of the academy’s former members which led to several members resigning.

Fosse resides between Austria and Norway. He will receive the prize at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December. He will receive 11m SEK (£821,209), up from 10m SEK awarded last year.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[natreads]

Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Fosse won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature!

[sprachgitter]

Each single work I have written has, so to speak, its own fictional universe, its own world. A world that is new for each play, for each novel. But a good poem, because I have also written a great deal of poetry, is also its own universe – it relates mainly to itself. And then someone who reads it can enter the universe that is the poem – yes, it’s more like a kind of communion than a communication.

Jon Fosse, Nobel lecture tr. Damion Searls

[davidlavieri]

...everyone has a deep longing inside them, we always always long for something and we believe that what we long for is this or that, this person or that person, this thing or that thing, but actually we’re longing for God, because the human being is a continuous prayer, a person is a prayer through his or her longing...

Jon Fosse, Septology

[zaratheystra]

Light and ghosts

- Abbey, Mitski - Fleeted Happenings, Andrew Lyman - A Shining, Jon Fosse -

[apesoformythoughts]

“…and it was absolutely overwhelming all the things he showed us and told us, every work of art was a masterpiece, one after another, to tell the truth, and if I hadn't understood it before I learned then how little I myself had to work with, but not nothing, I had something too, something all my own, because there was something in my pictures that wasn't in any other picture I was shown, I saw that, and even if it wasn't all that much it was something, I could do something, I knew something, I saw something that you couldn't see in anything Professor Christie showed us, something different, with its own light in it, but was that good enough? could someone be an artist and consider himself an artist just because he had something all his own in the pictures he painted? doesn't a person need more than that? yes, that's how I used to think and I started doubting I could paint pictures that were worth anything, maybe I should just give it up, I was just barely what you could call an artist, I knew that, and I had something that no one else had but it was probably too little, so maybe I should just, yes, well, what else should I do? was there anything else I was good at? was there anything else I had a talent for? anything else I had a gift for, as they say? no, what would happen?”

[crucifiedlovers]

And then I stand there and listen to the silence. And it’s like the silence is speaking to me. But a silence can’t speak, can it. Yes, silence can speak in its way...

Jon Fosse, A Shining (trans. Damion Searls)

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

hello fellow denizens of our beloved hellsite, please help me select my next book to read based on ZERO propaganda, only titles and cover vibes. here are The Options:

and here they are, all lined up and waiting:

help me, button-pressing site, you're my only hope!!

[rooftopvibes]

Books I read in February

Jon Fosse / Morning and Evening🎣

A child is born, a man dies, that’s the cycle of life. Fosse gives us an insight in the metaphysical world of a man who is dying and the magic of a child being born surrounded by the calming atmosphere of the Norwegian landscape.

I loved the beginning of the novel, it was my favorite part. It reads like a work of classical music, the music starts softly and gets louder and louder always interrupted by soft tunes in between which seem to sneak around the room. It’s a very smooth book to read. By the 2nd part I was a little confused since I didn’t know what it was about and I thought the protagonist is just hallucinating. Overall it’s a nice book to read and very smooth.

Dostoevsky / The double 🎭

On a mysterious night Golyadkin meets his double on a bridge. They become friends, they fight, Golyadkin‘s identity gets stolen. It’s an endless search of the real identity and the question remains „Who am I?“ We do not know for sure if Golyadkin is going insane but he seems to be very paranoid and insecure which are his main traits, so seeing a double of himself who is liked by others brings him into rage.

I couldn’t get into the story, I couldn’t focus, my mind was wandering off the whole time and I don’t know if that was because I couldn’t focus in general or the story didn’t catch me. I think both play a role. So I was confused the most time and didn’t know where the people were and what is going on but maybe that also represents Golyadkin‘s state of mind. To me it really came through how the weather reflects the inner state of the main character in this novel. Also I felt like there was, despite the very unfortunate situation, a lot of humor in the novel. I also think the topic of identity is very interesting so maybe it’s just how it is being told which kind of bored me because the story itself sounds interesting. I liked the beginning since it’s very mysterious and we don’t know what is going to happen but then the novel lost me. I personally didn’t find it too interesting since it’s a lot about the main character‘s work place and to me the other characters weren’t as lively as I am used to when reading Dostoevsky. I might give it a try some time again since, like I said, focusing was very hard at the time I read it. But it’s totally normal and can happen sometimes that you read a book and your mind wanders to different places and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just happens.

Dostoevsky / The gentle one 🎀

In „The gentle one“ we get a look into a pawnboker’s mind moments after his wife’s suicide. Everything starts out very chaotic since his wife is still lying in the apartment and it is no wonder that it is difficult to think in such a situation. Throughout the novel we get a clearer view on the situation, like the narrator says, he wants to tell the truth. Soon we realize that his mind is clouded and didn’t see moments like they were. So it’s the readers task to look through his words and see how the situation actually is, which isn’t always easy. Keeping in mind that the pawnbroker is much much older and his wife is a young girl in need, having nearly no money, we can assume the power this man has over his wife and the fear she must have felt. But the narrator tells the story in a whole different tone, almost like he was the victim.

Albert Camus / A Happy Death 🌌

„And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence— they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved.“

As the title says, the main question of the novel is „How to die happily?“ There are two parts in this novel. The first part is about Mersault‘s „ordinary“ life. He doesn’t have enough time or money, he isn’t living he is rather just existing. In the 2nd part Camus shows us how it can look like to be happy. We see Mersault freeing himself of all these circumstances that made it difficult to be happy. In the novel we can find many connections to his other work The Stranger, even though there are also many differences, but I see it going together since it is said that The Stranger grew out of this novel.

A happy death is my favorite novel by Camus, i love the atmosphere and it gets rid of my fear when I read it. I read it around two years ago for the first time and it changed the way I think and feel about certain aspects in life. It helped me to get out of the state of existing and start living and feeling (even though I have to mention that by only reading the novel, it won’t do that for you but it definitely helps). It can teach to live no matter the circumstances, it can teach be to feel happy (but not joyful) even if you feel miserable. To take every every bit of nature into your body. And it teaches how you don’t need to be successful, how you don’t need anything to be happy. It gave me a different view on happiness but it was only the base. This book has such a great impact on my because of what I made out of the knowledge. I enjoyed the chapters where Mersault was just walking around and living his life because it had something so relatable. My favorite parts are the ones in the house above the sea because it seems so nice there and I also want to live there! Of course the last chapter is also my favorite since it makes me feel calm. When I think about death I (no longer) think about fear, I think about peace.

Stefan Zweig / The Heart‘s Impatience 🫀

„For the first time I began to perceive that true sympathy cannot be switched on and off like an electric current, that anyone that identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent of his own freedom.“

The heart‘s impatience is the longest novel of Stefan Zweig. Hofmiller, a young lieutenant visits a wealthy family who‘s daughter is paralyzed. His main motivation for visiting them is the feeling of compassion. Condor a doctor treats the daughter and reveals some interesting facts about medicine like the treatments are mostly there to motivate the patient, not to cure the illness. Everything ends in a tragedy since Edith, the paralyzed girl is in love with Hofmiller which turns into an obsession (Zweig‘s common topic in his novels).

I have to admit that I expected more from this novel. I found it not so interesting, only the last few pages really got me. The doctor is a very interesting character and I also liked Edith but I wish that Zweig would have gotten deeper into those characters. Also it made me question the feeling of compassion a lot and that it might not always be the best thing to show to people, maybe the harsh truth is better and would have avoided the tragedy. It has some good lines and the topic is interesting but the story itself and how it is being told didn’t catch me.

[nostalgicalice03]

“ E Vidme si è immaginato tutte quelle persone confuse che hanno cercato un senso alla propria vita dicendo che è il volere di Dio e che succederà questo e quello, perché il buio è stato pesante, il vento forte, l’amore è stato, come sempre, a metà tra uccidere l’altro e preoccuparsi per l’altro, il mare è stato troppo duro, i parti ancora più duri e sopra tutto quanto c’era un enorme cielo.”

- Melancholia I-II, Jon Fosse