E' il tema della morte che Gustafsson affronta in questo romanzo toccante e intenso. Lars Lennart Westin è un insegnante in pensione che ha deciso di fare a meno del mondo. L'allevamento delle api riempie la sua esistenza semplice e solitaria, ma la malattia che sopraggiunge all'improvviso e il dolore lo costringono ad un confronto con se stesso e a ripercorrere gli anni vissuti per scoprire alla fine di essere stato felice.
La figura di Lars, l'apicoltore, rimanda in un certo modo al protagonista del film "Il volo" di Theodoros Angelopoulos, in cui Spyros, un maestro in pensione, si ritira con le sue api in un villaggio sonnacchioso e isolato. ( )

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/133078643623/the-death-of-a-beekeeper-by-lars-gust...

Last night I finished my reading of The Death of a Beekeeper. Its potential was off the charts, and I initially resisted my reading of this book because I thought it would be gut wrenching and hit too close to home for me. Plus I did not want to somehow invite my own new set of pain and disease to enter my consciousness, or my body. I want my death be kept at bay. At least for the time being. But ultimately the book disappointed me as it failed to disturb me in any way. I did like the ending, and was glad he shaped it that way. In addition, I was put off by the character's fiction included as another notebook. I was not stirred or connected to it in any way. The book was hard for me to follow at times, and that made me irritable. I own two other books by Gustafson and will attempt in my reading of them to find something redeemable in his writing. It goes to show how hard it is to write and how important it is to stay focused on the object from start to finish. I felt the author rambled, and I do like digression, but Gustafson failed to connect the dots for me. Too often the entries in his journal that included his fictions seemed foreign to the basic ideas behind his main text. I do enjoy an unrelenting supersaturation absent of repentance. In the second season, for example, the award-winning TV show The Newsroom veered off the path for me. Instead of staying put and keeping our gaze focused on the general vicinity of the newsroom set, the political and romantic tensions, too many of the main characters in the show have in this season taken different assignments and separated themselves from the up-close jeopardy of working together in such close quarters. It feels as if the show’s producers have backed away from the intensity so prevalent in the first season. Though the show is still of top quality, I think it fails in what it could have been. And is probably the reason behind its only lasting a total of three seasons. Lars Gustafson’s The Death of the Beekeeper could, as well, have remained constantly focused on his character’s cancer, its pain and discomfort, his living with it on a daily basis, and what his life had become for him now as he looked back into what he had made of his past instead of the other unnecessary and often silly narratives.
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bookshelves: translation, sweden, published-1978, paper-read, one-penny-wonder, under-500-ratings, plague-disease, dog-steals-the-show
Read from November 28 to 30, 2013


Translated by Janet K Swaffar and Guntram H Weber

Opening quote:

"Dogs! Hangmen's servants!
Royal torture masters
Haven't you understood?
You there, heating tongs over a coal fire!
I'm actually a donkey!
With the heart of a donkey and the bray of a donkey!
I never give up!"

- Varma rum och kalla Lars Gustafsson ©1972

Opening: Kind readers. Strange readers. We begin again. We never give up. It is early spring 1975, the story begins in the middle of a thaw. The location is North Västermanland.

Well I have them mixed up when it comes to taste according to the reviews on grrrrramazon. Much preferred The Tiler's Afternoon, a bleak tale told wry. This Death of a BeeKeeper was a hotchpotch of homilies and poor man's philosophy, random thoughts and conjured up notebook snatches. A couple of ideals made me stop and think them through but overall, notsomuch.

2.5* Death of a Beekeeper
3.5* A Tiler's Afternoon ( )

« On recommence. On ne se rend pas. »> Cette petite phrase prononcée par Lars Gustafsson et reprise par son héros tout au long du livre apparaît comme le leitmotiv essentiel de La Mort d'un apiculteur. Plus qu'une incantation ou une injonction magique, cette sentence scandée à intervalle régulier distille une unité, une morale, une règle de vie, un thème majeur, presque musical, au roman de l'écrivain suédois. Un homme va mourir. Il a tout quitté et tous l'ont quitté. Il a pris sa retraite anticipée d'instituteur pour vivre en solitaire dans une ferme au bord d'un lac, dans la seule compagnie de ses abeilles (et encore lui arrive-t-il de négliger l'entretien des ruches) et de la nature aride qui l'entoure... A quarante ans, il souffre d'un cancer de la rate avec métastases. Le verdict? II ne veut pas le connaître et brûle la lettre du laboratoire sans en prendre connaissance. Ce geste dérisoire et symbolique est pour lui le seul moyen d'écarter la mort, du moins de ne pas s'en mêler, et aussi de ne pas abdiquer. Nous sommes au printemps 1975. Avant l'automne prochain, Lars Lennart Westin, l'apiculteur, aura disparu. Pour rendre plus crédible encore, plus humaine et plus poignante sa narration, Lars Gustafsson utilise le procédé des écrits retrouvés. Il feint d'avoir découvert trois carnets laissés par l'apiculteur après sa mort, et il les publie in extenso. Cette structure romanesque lui permet d'installer une sorte de •

I first discovered the writing of Lars Gustafsson several years ago when I found his novel, Bernard Foy's Third Castling, in a neighborhood bookstore. It was such a quirky, interesting and arresting book that I have sought out other works by Gustafsson over the years. One of these is The Death of a Beekeeper which opens with what Lars Gustafsson calls a “prelude” in which he says good-bye to the readers of this, the last part of his five-volume novel sequence. He presents himself as merely the editor of notes left behind on Lars Lennart Westin’s death, telling the reader that the speaker to whom he now hands over the narrative suffers from cancer of the spleen. Told in the form a journal or diary it tells the story of a man who was a schoolteacher, but now is dying; a man who is a beekeeper, and a man who is very human. We first read that he has received a letter from a local hospital, probably containing test results and the diagnosis of his ailment. He burns the letter. This brief, quiet novel speaks with a courageous voice. Refusing to die with his life unclarified, unexamined, he rejects the sterile confines of a hospital and, for the few months left to him, retreats to the isolated Swedish countryside to work among his bees, to endure the progression of pain, and to record his accompanying, disquieting insights. It is his humanity and the way he faces life that makes his story touching and gives meaning to what might otherwise be seen as mundane everyday events. Gustafsson, by juxtaposing the beekeeper's notes on his inner life, feelings, and memories, and his notes on his outer life, the daily running of the apiary, suggests by the inquiring, seemingly spontaneous entries the deep relatedness of life, death, and hope. ( )