Most Useful Information November 2023

Something different, mystical realism, and literary dogs

On Thursday, October 5 Jon Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Usually the Nobel Prize goes to a writer I’ve either never heard of (Abdulrazak Gurnah) or merely have a passing familiarity with (Annie Ernaux). Jon Fosse, however, I know well. So rather than the usual Most Useful Information format, here are some more or less incoherent thoughts on Jon Fosse.

1

The first thing I ever read by Jon Fosse was a play about Henrik Ibsen’s wife. She stood at a window reflecting on her life, waiting for her husband to come home. I didn’t love it. I read the other plays in the collection, set it aside and didn’t think about Fosse for years. 

2

In July 2017 I quick visited Bloomington, Indiana. Went to a generally crap bookstore that somehow had Trilogy by Jon Fosse. I bought it and read the first book sitting outside Bloomingfoods. Reading it felt both difficult and easy. Repetition made it dense but hard to put down. I put it down and didn’t read parts two and three until months later. When I did I liked it a lot. 

It’s weird though. I’m not sure I loved the book. I found it difficult. What I liked was the way I felt, or the headspace I entered when reading. It wasn’t the book I loved but the experience of reading the book. 

3

Next Melancholy. I read it while traveling to Idaho and Richmond during the holidays. One morning in Richmond I got up at, like, 6AM to finish reading. This time I loved the book and the experience of the book.  

Melancholy is about Norwegian landscape painter Lars Hertervig. Three sections to the novel. Section one: Lars at art school in Germany when he has a mental breakdown. Section two: Lars in an institution. Runs away. Section three: Vidme, a writer, looks at a Lars Hertervig painting and sees something that makes him believe god might exist. Vidme meets with a priest. The priest insists Vidme should not start going to church. 

Melancholy remains one of the best novels I’ve ever read.

4

After Melancholy I read everything. Plays, essays, novels. Some novels I read twice. Until Septology everything was very short. Few of his books extend beyond 100 pages. Most Fosse books were read in a single sitting in an apartment in Morgantown, West Virginia. For some reason my wall was painted zebra stripes. Classes were canceled several days in a row because it was cold outside. I laid on the floor and read.

5

Everyone loves to point out Fosse calls his writing “mystical realism.” (here, here, here, and here for starters). As far as I can tell nobody has bothered to explain what that means. Let me try. Sorry if this is long/boring.

Morning and Evening is a book about the first and the last day of a fisherman’s life. On the last day of his life:

He thinks that everything is somehow what it is and at the same time different, all things are normal things but they have become somehow dignified, and golden, and heavy, as though they weighed much more than themselves and at the same time had no weight.

Things being the same and different, heavy and light is a motif throughout the novel. It’s also the defining characteristic of “mystical realism.” Realism: things are what they are. Mysticism: things are not what they are. 

An example of this appears near the beginning of Septology. Asle (the protag) is driving home from Bergen. He stops outside the city and observes a young couple in love in a park. A young man is pushing a young woman on a swing. The couple reminds Asle of him and his wife when they were young. They had lived near a park. The couple might be Asle and his wife, Ales. On a swing. Back. Forth. Up. Down.

and he doesn’t push as hard but he gives regular pushes, almost the same strength every time, even, regular, they are now in an even rhythm, up and down, she swings evenly back and forth and she shouts this is great, it’s wonderful, she feels a tickling in her stomach, he can’t stop, he needs to grab tight and pull her and push her away, perfect, so evenly back and forth, she says, a little faster now but still evenly, she says and now he has to pull as hard as he can once or twice, push her as hard as he can a few times, she shouts but she’s shouting in a way softly, she keeps shouting softly that it’s tickling, it’s scary, awful, horribly scary, but good too, incredibly great, she shouts softly, breathlessly

The couple move in rhythm with each other. Combined their movements create a tickle. The tickle cannot be seen. Only felt. It is scary, but it is good. In addition to their movements the couple speaks. Back and forth. Creating a rhythm. The prose creates a rhythm, so as a reader you move with the young couple. It doesn’t create a tickle, but it creates a difficult to pin down sensation—the headspace I mentioned with Trilogy.

From the outside, from Asle’s perspective, there is nothing unusual happening in the park. Nothing mystical. It’s a realistic scene. Two people in a park. Up and down. Back and forth. On a swing. From the perspective of the young couple there is something happening between them. There is a tickle in the young woman, but there’s more. The scene at the park is what it is and also something different. It is heavy and light. Like Asle, the couple can’t see what else is happening. But they feel it. As they go up, as they go down, something stirs between them. The connection is mystical. It’s there. They feel it. They know it. We feel it. But it can’t be seen, observed, studied, analyzed, whatever.

Except in glimmers. Asle, as he watches the young couple thinks:

it’s like a light is coming from them, standing there so close together, as if they were one, standing as if two people were one, yes they’re so close as it gets dark…and the darker it gets the more light is coming from them, yes, a kind of light is coming off them, I can see it, even if the light is maybe invisible it’s still visible because light can come from people too, especially from eyes, mostly in glimmers, an invisible shining light…

The light is invisible but visible. Heavy but light. What it is but different. The locus of mystical experience for Fosse is in the gap between invisible and visible, heavy and light, dark and light. The only way to access the gap is by paying deep attention to everyday interactions with others. Nothing special about a young couple in a park. Until an old man stops and watches them and sees flashes, glimmers of something special. 

It works on multiple levels. The action of the plot is a man stopping and paying attention to an ordinary event and finding something mystical. The story also pauses. The narrative focuses on the couple for pages and pages. It describes their actions. Playing on a swing set. It describes their conversation. Don’t push so hard. It tickles. Push harder. There is nothing remarkable about their actions. Nothing remarkable about their speech. Still, the time spent on the scene fills it with feeling. At first it might be dull, but when Asle says he sees glimmers of light, we see them too. Fosse focuses our attention so in flashes the invisible is visible too.

Repetition helps. We are reading repetitive sentences and the couple is using repetitive language, and their bodies are moving in repetitive motions and we are lulled into a meditative state where without noticing a mundane scene shines with significance.

By stopping the car and looking at a young couple in a park Asle is able to notice the magic of the mundane and feel the excitement and confusion of young love in his old age. Mysticism exists in a realistic world. Attention is required to find it. 

A similar occurrence at the end of Melancholy. 

Most Melancholy follows Lars Hertervig. He sees glimmers of light, like Asle, and paints them. Some people can’t see the light Hertervig sees, so painting offers others the opportunity to see light.

In the final section a writer, Vidme, sees a glimmer of light when looking at a Hertervig painting. It causes a crisis of faith in reverse. Vidme has left the Norwegian Church and doesn’t believe in god, but seeing the glimmer of light in a painting sends Vidme to a priest. Does he believe in god? Should he rejoin the church? The priest convinces him no. 

Vidme has a hard time understanding how anyone can be so certain about something, the way pastors in the Norwegian Church are, because to believe is really not to be certain, it is to be uncertain, it is to live in a state of wonder, where you see glimmers of light, where there’s something you don’t understand. It is a wonder and a light you don’t understand.

Life is full of light but to see it one must acquiesce to a state of wonder and uncertainty. Something the church doesn’t allow. Mystical realism is existing in the world as it is, but remaining uncertain and open to the possibility of light.

6

People talk about Septology as Fosse’s masterpiece. It’s really similar to Melancholy. In both a painter sees glimmers of light and paints them for others to see. A painter is mentally ill and dies. Personally, I prefer Melancholy. 

7

Vidme doesn’t like the uncertainty he found himself in. He doesn’t like seeing glimmers of the divine. I quoted a section above. The next sentences are, “Vidme is there. And he doesn’t want to be there.” It’s like the mysticism of everyday life forced itself on Vidme and he hates it. Vidme leaves the priest in a hurry and goes home to write. The priest says Vidme can call her if he ever needs to talk to someone. Like the priest thinks Vidme might do something to himseslf. Vidme knows he’ll never call the priest. He just needs to write. He hopes he’s able to when he gets home. It doesn’t sound good.

Melancholy is dedicated to the memory of Tor Ulven. A contemporary of Fosse. A poet and novelist. His one novel Replacement is amazing. Ulven ended his life in 1995. The year Melancholy was published. I’ve always thought that Vidme stood for Ulven. Couldn’t handle the wonder and uncertainty. 

Tor Ulven is name dropped in Joachim Trier’s movie Reprise and is allegedly inspiration for the character Sten Egil Dahl.

I’ve often thought if I inherited a shit ton of money I’d publish translations of Tor Ulven’s poetry. Only his novel has made it to English. I want more. 

8

Back to rhythm and repetition.

Norwegian has two forms: Bokmål and Nynorsk. Bokmål is cosmopolitan. Nynorsk is provincial. Roughly speaking. Elsewhere people have said writing in Nynorsk is a political and aesthetic choice. 

I don’t know anything about politics. Especially Norwegian.

For the aesthetic, an aunt told me that I should learn Norwegian. I should start with Bokmål because it’s the most common form. Movies and tv would be in Bokmål. Books would likely be in Bokmål. A practical suggestion. Once I learned Bokmål, though, she encouraged me to learn Nynorsk because the sound of it was, according to her, truly beautiful. 

Fosse writes in a repetitive prose. Everyone talks about it. Everyone says it is hypnotic. Meditative. Taking what my aunt said, I can only believe that writing in Nynorsk contributes to the sound and repetition and overall effect.

Fosse’s books take place in rural Norway. On the west coast. In places where people speak Nynorsk. Nynorsk is the realistic choice. Verisimilitude. 

Also, there is a literary tradition. One of Norway’s greatest and most beloved writers (and obvious precursor to Fosse) Tarjei Vesaas wrote in Nynorsk. Fosse has been compared to Vesaas. By writing in Nynorsk Fosse is placing himself in a tradition with Vesaas.

As far as the Nobel Prize goes. Four million people speak Norwegian. 15% of Norwegians are taught Nynorsk in school. Can’t help but think it’s cool a small language won such a big prize.

9

Fosse’s first play was called Someone Is Going To Come, an allusion to Waiting for Godot. Stylistically Beckett’s Trilogy, especially The Unnamed, flows like a Fosse novel. Fosse, like Beckett, has three books published in a single volume called Trilogy. Everyone compares Fosse to Beckett. Including Fosse. In an essay he traces the lineage of influence from Henrik Ibsen to James Joyce to Samuel Beckett to Jon Fosse. 

10

Jon Fosse has an essay about Thomas Bernhard. Since the announcement of the Nobel Prize I’m surprised more folks haven’t connected them. As far as I can tell Bernhard is the writer most similar to Fosse.  

Apparently Fosse didn’t read Bernhard until he’d already developed his style. After Boathouse was published someone said, “I love you’re influenced by Thomas Bernhard.” Fosse hadn’t heard of Bernhard. Went and read all his books and felt kinship. They both have a father in Samuel Beckett. 

Bernhard is so grumpy and Fosse so gracious. Stylistically they might be similar but their temperaments aren’t. But also are. In Bernhard’s Woodcutters a narrator sits in an armchair at a party waiting for a popular actor to arrive. The actor was in a production of The Wild Duck (Ibsen!). The narrator observes everyone around him and hates them all. At the end when everyone is leaving the party the narrator says goodbye to the host and thinks about how empty and alone he would be if it weren’t for parties like these. He might hate them but they are what he has and having them makes it worthwhile. 

Similarly Fosse’s characters have lonely lives peppered with small interactions between neighbors. The world Fosse’s characters live in is just as sad and miserable as Bernhard’s and they all find solace in the same place. Fosse’s characters just don’t seem as bothered by it all. Fosse’s characters have the benefit of wonder. Bernhard’s don’t.

11

There’s a British novelist named Amy Arnold. She writes in a very Fosse style. Her first book, Slip of a Fish, alludes to Fosse’s book Aliss at the Fire. Earlier this year she published a second novel that doesn’t allude to Fosse directly but is the most like Jon Fosse a book can be without being Jon Fosse. She’s also her own thing and very, very good. Read her books.

12

Until a few years ago people only knew of Jon Fosse as a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize. It was understood he was a bigger deal outside the English speaking world. A few years ago Karl Ove Knausgaard published the fifth volume of My Struggle. Karl Ove attends writing school in Bergen. Jon Fosse is his teacher. Karl Ove buys a copy of Boathouse and reads it. Fosse tells Karl Ove to stop writing about himself. He says a story (or maybe a poem? Can’t remember) only has one good word in it (widescreen sky). Nobody writes about Jon Fosse without mentioning these anecdotes. It’s boring.

13

Also boring, every Fosse book has a blurb by Knausgaard stating, “Jon Fosse is a major European writer.” Apparently the Nobel Prize read that blurb. 

14

Let’s further beat the boring, dead horse of Knausgaard’s relationship to Fosse. 

A few years ago Knausgaard wrote a brief essay on his dislike of dogs. He not only dislike dogs, but thinks that they are antithetical to serious literature. No good writer has ever owned a dog. Except for Faulkner. And Virginia Woolf.

Knausgaard posits rethinking Faulkner’s canonical status since he owns a dog. Virginia Woolf owned lap dogs. They don’t count. Knausgaard attributes his inability to write for several years to owning a dog. 

A lot of people got upset about this essay. Countless (one, two, three, four) articles on the wrongness of Knausgaard. None consider the possibility he wasn’t serious. Knausgaard shouldn’t be taken so seriously. He makes jokes. 

Who knows if Jon Fosse owns dogs, but he writes about them a lot. In the 90s he wrote three short stories about dogs that were recently collected in The Dog Manuscripts. He has a play called The Dead Dogs. In his collection of short stories Scenes from a Childhood, the longest story is about a dog (basically a prose retelling of The Dead Dogs). These dog owners are literally willing to kill for their dogs. Septology’s translator, Damion Searls, called Asle’s dog, Bragi, one of the great dogs of literature.

If we take Knausgaard’s blurb seriously we can’t take his dog hot take seriously. 

Fosse’s Nobel win is a win for all dogs. Among so much else Fosse is a writer for dog people.