Dag Solstad

Solstad offers us the portrait of a man having a very very bad no good day. Elias is a man who values his dignity as a good schoolteacher, a reliable caring husband, stepfather and citizen. He sees himself as a 'good', conscientious, thoughtful person but he crosses a behavioural boundary he can't step back from given his personality and upbringing: passive shy, self-conscious, overly thoughtful to the point of being/appearing self-absorbed.

After finishing a lecture on The Wild Duck for bored uninterested senior high school students, he steps over that behavioral line, very publicly shaming himself in front of students and teachers. To most of us, his display of imperfection would not be so ruinous -- the point is, for him, it is catastrophic. Solstad alternates giving us Elias' past history along with the present and as I learned his story and character I was simultaneously sympathetic and also thinking, 'Jeez, dude, get over yourself and live.' Solstad is giving us a person crushed by character, circumstance, choices, unable to overcome and move on. Nothing feel good. I think it is a genuine attempt to explain why some people break, seemingly over nothing much.

I was least drawn in by the portrait of Eva, the abandoned wife of his former best friend who becomes Elias' wife. She is (over and over again) described as an indescribable beauty which just made me want to vomit. Also kick both of them hard. To him, (as she was to husband #1) she is not a person but an object to admire although now and then Elias makes a half-hearted attempt to view her a real person, he can't. In part because of her covetousness for nice things. Which brings us to the underlying critique of capitalist society and blablabla - but I don't buy that Eva is shallow and Elias is doomed because of it. He is who he is. She is a person who can't be judged as she gave up having a rich internal life for two men and her child when she was too young to know any better, although she has, in her forties begun to assert herself (which proves my point).

The ending is apparently open-ended, but to me it is implicit that Elias will act, definitively.

Karl Ove Knausgaard admires Solstad and he is one of the few contemporary Norwegian novelists in translation. And I have barely even mentioned the exegesis of The Wild Duck, the play Elias is teaching that fatal day! Might the best thing in what really is a superb but somehow very maddening novel. ****… (más)

Professor Pål Andersen had been living alone for the last few years and always doing what is expected from him. Including preparing and eating the usual foods at the time it is expected to eat them, a Christmas tree and even presents under it - even if he does not have anyone to share all that with.

We meet him at Christmas - after preparing and eating his meal, he looks through the window and sees something that looks like murder. Being the responsible man he is, he picks up the phone to call the police but then remembers the few drinks he had had and decides to leave that for the morning. The morning comes and he finds another excuse not to call - now worried that he will not be believed. And so it starts.

For the next few months, that decision eats at him - he keeps looking at the window and trying to decide what to do, reading the papers and waiting to hear something about the murder. At one point, he even meets the man he believes to be a killer.

For a story centered around a murder, there is very little about the murder itself in it. It happens (or may have happened) and it sends the Professor on his anguished journey through his own memories and thoughts but seems like that was its only purpose. The novel is really about what happens when someone who is always proper and right does something unexpected - and then have to live with the choice.

The end comes almost unexpectedly. In some ways Professor Andersen makes a full circle - he finds an equilibrium of a type. On the other, that murder that kicked off everything feels incomplete. But then this is part of the point I suspect - you learn to live with things, even when you are uncomfortable with them.

I am still not sure if I liked this novel or not - it still feels incomplete to me. But I am not sorry to have read it.… (más)

Elképzelek egy húszéves érettségi találkozót, ahol az egykori diákok nosztalgiázásba merülnek.
- Gizi nénire emlékeztek? Fú, mekkora forma volt!
- Ja. És Szűcs tanár úr megvan? Azta, milyen meggybora volt neki, még mindig feljön tőle a savam!
- Igen, igen. És Rukla tanár úr?
- ...?
- Tudjátok, aki irodalmat tanított.
- Nem földrajzot?
- Nem, irodalmat.
- Persze, rémlik. De nem jut eszembe róla semmi.
- Igazából nekem se.

Rukla tanár úr statiszta mások életében. Ha eszébe is jut egykori diákjainak, csak homályos pacaként materializálódik, akihez nem is tudnak arcot rendelni. Ő a mellékszereplő, aki rendre kimarad a nagyjelenetekből, a forgatókönyv-írók pedig a gyengébb mondatokat adják neki. A háttérben kolbászol, a cselekmény akkor zajlik, ha ő nincs ott. Revelációi senkit sem érdekelnek, a légüres térbe potyognak és visszhang nélkül halnak el. Amikor pedig mégis fel tudja hívni magára a kozmikus rendező figyelmét, amikor egy pillanatra saját történetének főszereplőjeként tud megjelenni, ennek az ára alkalmasint az, hogy egy tragédia súlyát vonja magára.

Megj.: Nehéz elvonatkoztatni a magyar címtől, ami - azt gondolom - jobb, mint az eredeti. (Ami kb.: "Szégyenlősség és méltóság".) Ami érdekes kérdést vet fel: találhat ki jobbat a fordító, mint az eredeti? Azt gondolom, nem. Egyszerűen nem erre szerződött. Kertész Judit címmagyarítása ugyanis olyan erővel hívott elő egy olvasatot, hogy attól nem is tudtam függetleníteni magam.… (más)