Some people who drive cars need to know exactly how the engine is made up in order to feel comfortable with the experience. Knut Hamsun needed to know exactly how life works for the same reason. Is it remarkable that I see my own experience in the set of questions he needed to answer? Perhaps we all see ourselves in his writing, and that is why he is a great author. I feel that the more I read, the more glimpses I am allowed of the true nature of truth and beauty.
The volume published in English as "The Wanderer" is made up of two short novels concerning mostly the same characters and locations: The Wanderer Under an Autumn Star (100 pages) and The Wanderer on Muted Strings (150 pages).
Under an Autumn Star is an abortive masterpiece. It feels unfinished, both in terms of the scope of the plot and revisions. I feel that further work on this would have produced something to rival Hunger or Growth of the Soil, and Hamsun probably did too, hence the sequel.
It is a work about class. In it we get to see a more realistic portrayal of the side of Hamsun presented in Hunger. Rather than starving because he has tied his head in knots, here he travels the countryside asking for manual work because he prefers it to living as a gentleman. Several times in this novel he resorts to his savings when it feels appropriate to him, but this does not diminish the effect in the same way as Jack Kerouac buying a train ticket across America in Big Sur. Here he has clear motivations (to experience work, to pursue women) whereas in Hunger it was harder to understand why he was doing what he was doing. Here there are characters other than the protagonist. Here he is a sympathetic figure, there the picture is more complex. If Hunger is a great work of art, this perhaps could have been a great short novel.
On Muted Strings is more mature, and shines less brightly. The protagonist returns to one of the scenes of Under an Autumn Star, and resolves the issues established there. We get to see many of the characters we came to know in the first novel again. It is readable, informed and still contains valuable insights, but it suffers the typical faults of being a sequel.
29 Jan 2011
Comments about Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil"
This is a work in which a man and a woman go into the wilds of Norway and carve out a farm. It discusses the nature and virtues of different modes of employment, prefering honest farming to mining, shopkeeping, service, working as a clerk etc.
My first reaction to this was to grow despondent about my own writing. This book had so many similarities with my own DIftW that I felt as though I had unconsciously plagiarised it somehow. Perhaps I had seen it as a film and forgotten about it? One of the things that Growth of the Soil shares with my own attempts is the sense of pace and its relationship with time: in both, time is expressed through changes in the seasons and the progress of natural events. The settings of both are an isolated farm in the woods, and both treat the idea of "town" in the same way. Both seek to instill moral judgements by presenting raw data and leaving it for the reader to transform it into information. I was ready to throw my work away when I realised that the two shared the same inciting incident: infanticide. But I will go on, I have a different flavour to offer, and would be greatly flattered if anyone ever considered my writing to be as scandinavian as Growth of the Soil.
Is Growth of the Soil a novel? There is very little structure to the work, and it trots along in a very naturalistic way with one event coming after another. It would be lazy to describe it as saga-like, but it does share a quality with the sagas in that there is a structure at work which completely disrespects the greek-derived idea of writing in acts. Growth of the Soil has an introduction of a page, and, arguably, an ending of a single, brilliant sentence: "Then comes the evening." I was so relieved when it ended like that because I had grown so emotionally attached to the faultless yet human Isak that I dreaded seeing him get old and die. Leave him in the woods working his farm.
I read the W. Worster translation, which I was somewhat wary of in comparison to the recent Sverre Lyngstad version. Should I wait and get a copy of that before reading the Worster? There was a smattering of unnecessary archaisms, although perhaps that is appropriate for an author like Hamsun, who is so tied up in the development of written Norwegian. At any rate, the Worster translation read easily. "Ho!"
Later in life, Hamsun supported Quisling's Nazi government in Norway and eulogised Hitler at the end of the war. I was on the look out whilst reading this, trying to assess whether there was anything right-wing or nationalistic about it. There is, but it is subtle and moderate, and at no point did I find anything as disturbing as, for a contemporary example, H.G. Well's occasional "nigger". The whole book is a work describing the relationship between people and land, but there is little "blood" to accompany the "soil". It might be possible, if you were insistant upon it, to denounce Hamsun through his portrayal of Sami people. At one point he describes them as lazy and keen to avoid the town, and he portrays them as beggars and, through the hare incident, a vector for immorality. I do not think it is reasonable to ascribe this to racism, as he treats the sami way of life as he viewed it in the same way he treats many other cultural modes within the book. If Hamsun had died in the 1930s we would not even be talking about it.
Growth of the Soil sits easily in the top 1% of books. If it has a flaw it is that it need not be so long: everything of value is communicated in the first hundred pages, and the rest is just reiteration and detailing. However, I was completely engrossed by it and loved every page. The emotional dips are so poignant that I was greatly relieved each time Hamsun reprieved his characters. This is a delicacy of a book, and to gorge on the full 450 pages has been one of the great delights of my life.
My first reaction to this was to grow despondent about my own writing. This book had so many similarities with my own DIftW that I felt as though I had unconsciously plagiarised it somehow. Perhaps I had seen it as a film and forgotten about it? One of the things that Growth of the Soil shares with my own attempts is the sense of pace and its relationship with time: in both, time is expressed through changes in the seasons and the progress of natural events. The settings of both are an isolated farm in the woods, and both treat the idea of "town" in the same way. Both seek to instill moral judgements by presenting raw data and leaving it for the reader to transform it into information. I was ready to throw my work away when I realised that the two shared the same inciting incident: infanticide. But I will go on, I have a different flavour to offer, and would be greatly flattered if anyone ever considered my writing to be as scandinavian as Growth of the Soil.
Is Growth of the Soil a novel? There is very little structure to the work, and it trots along in a very naturalistic way with one event coming after another. It would be lazy to describe it as saga-like, but it does share a quality with the sagas in that there is a structure at work which completely disrespects the greek-derived idea of writing in acts. Growth of the Soil has an introduction of a page, and, arguably, an ending of a single, brilliant sentence: "Then comes the evening." I was so relieved when it ended like that because I had grown so emotionally attached to the faultless yet human Isak that I dreaded seeing him get old and die. Leave him in the woods working his farm.
I read the W. Worster translation, which I was somewhat wary of in comparison to the recent Sverre Lyngstad version. Should I wait and get a copy of that before reading the Worster? There was a smattering of unnecessary archaisms, although perhaps that is appropriate for an author like Hamsun, who is so tied up in the development of written Norwegian. At any rate, the Worster translation read easily. "Ho!"
Later in life, Hamsun supported Quisling's Nazi government in Norway and eulogised Hitler at the end of the war. I was on the look out whilst reading this, trying to assess whether there was anything right-wing or nationalistic about it. There is, but it is subtle and moderate, and at no point did I find anything as disturbing as, for a contemporary example, H.G. Well's occasional "nigger". The whole book is a work describing the relationship between people and land, but there is little "blood" to accompany the "soil". It might be possible, if you were insistant upon it, to denounce Hamsun through his portrayal of Sami people. At one point he describes them as lazy and keen to avoid the town, and he portrays them as beggars and, through the hare incident, a vector for immorality. I do not think it is reasonable to ascribe this to racism, as he treats the sami way of life as he viewed it in the same way he treats many other cultural modes within the book. If Hamsun had died in the 1930s we would not even be talking about it.
Growth of the Soil sits easily in the top 1% of books. If it has a flaw it is that it need not be so long: everything of value is communicated in the first hundred pages, and the rest is just reiteration and detailing. However, I was completely engrossed by it and loved every page. The emotional dips are so poignant that I was greatly relieved each time Hamsun reprieved his characters. This is a delicacy of a book, and to gorge on the full 450 pages has been one of the great delights of my life.
18 Jan 2011
Review of Knut Hamsun's "Hunger"
Just a quick one; I'm reading Growth of the Soil at the minute and have loads to say about it, but I read Hunger first and just want to sketch down a few things about that before they're gone from my mind.
This book was a gift, and I had not heard of it and knew nothing about the author except for his name and a vague recollection that he had something to do with the codification of written Norwegian. I was taken aback when I received it and did not quite know what to do with this object that was in my hands.
It is a book about an unemployed middle class character who struggles to acquire food in Victorian Oslo.
After reading a few pages I was completely hooked. At first I did not enjoy it; I was fully rapt but it was more a grotesque appeal than pleasure that I was experiencing. In the anonymous narrator (almost the only character in the book) I saw a mirror of myself, showing me my own madness in uncomfortable detail. At first, I understood this work as an extremely sophisticated portrayal of the realities of a certain class of mental illness (though I would not try and categorise it). Later, I came to see how shockingly innovative it is. I am still struggling to accept that this novel was written as early as 1888: if it were a new novel published today I expect people would still be astonished by its artfulness.
I find myself still meditating on it, and doubtless I'll come to understand it better in time. Already, however, I have repeatedly caught myself acting out weaker versions of the hero's oddities of behaviour and have come to understand myself and others a little better than I had before I read this work. It is as if I have been granted a few additional algorithms for understanding life. My universe is slightly more complex, yet better understood than it was before. Truly this is a valuable book.
I read the recent Sverre Lyngstad translation, which was excellent.
One more thing I would like to jot down is the way in which, towards the end of the book, the author very gently shows how the narrator had got himself into this state. It is so subtley delivered that a thoughtful reading is required to bring it out, but it is objectively there. Sympathy for this mad character turned into empathy, and in doing so the insanity is no longer some alien other, but a different facet of us.
This book was a gift, and I had not heard of it and knew nothing about the author except for his name and a vague recollection that he had something to do with the codification of written Norwegian. I was taken aback when I received it and did not quite know what to do with this object that was in my hands.
It is a book about an unemployed middle class character who struggles to acquire food in Victorian Oslo.
After reading a few pages I was completely hooked. At first I did not enjoy it; I was fully rapt but it was more a grotesque appeal than pleasure that I was experiencing. In the anonymous narrator (almost the only character in the book) I saw a mirror of myself, showing me my own madness in uncomfortable detail. At first, I understood this work as an extremely sophisticated portrayal of the realities of a certain class of mental illness (though I would not try and categorise it). Later, I came to see how shockingly innovative it is. I am still struggling to accept that this novel was written as early as 1888: if it were a new novel published today I expect people would still be astonished by its artfulness.
I find myself still meditating on it, and doubtless I'll come to understand it better in time. Already, however, I have repeatedly caught myself acting out weaker versions of the hero's oddities of behaviour and have come to understand myself and others a little better than I had before I read this work. It is as if I have been granted a few additional algorithms for understanding life. My universe is slightly more complex, yet better understood than it was before. Truly this is a valuable book.
I read the recent Sverre Lyngstad translation, which was excellent.
One more thing I would like to jot down is the way in which, towards the end of the book, the author very gently shows how the narrator had got himself into this state. It is so subtley delivered that a thoughtful reading is required to bring it out, but it is objectively there. Sympathy for this mad character turned into empathy, and in doing so the insanity is no longer some alien other, but a different facet of us.
13 Dec 2010
A Nightmare
Last night I had the worst nightmare I can remember ever having. I woke up terrified and shaking at 6:00am, and was still agitated at around 7:45am as I watched the dawn.
The nightmare took place in the third person; I was not part of events but rather just watched them happen. At times I saw events through the eyes of those involved, but I always felt as though it was other people this was happening to.
I grew up near a certain wood, Knott Wood, and as a young child I did not know what was on the far side of it. I had been told there was a river down there somewhere but had not seen it. In my dreams I filled in the landscape beyond the wood with creative recombinations of aspects of places I was familiar with. This fictional landscape is still available to me in my dreams and I visit it at least once every few months. It is a place of great comfort, a nostalgic expression of lost childhood, of idealised England, and of a perfect past before the hand of mankind interfered with nature. There is an almost autistic absence of other people.
In my dream, the men and company of the Dangerous Ideas wood were holding a summer celebration with a bonfire in Knott Wood. Three teenage boys were trying to organise to take a girl swimming in the river beyond the wood (this felt like William Morris' "beyond the world"). She was a real person I used to know. It got later and later and the swimming trip turned to a camping trip and the girl dropped out but the boys were determined to continue. Eventually they got permission from one of their fathers, but he was drunk and not from the area. Anyone else would have forbidden them from doing so.
So they went down to the river, and to their surprise they found an abandoned hamlet built along the river. I had never visited this location in my dreams before, being slightly upstream of where I had explored before this point. I have a vague recollection of not being able to explore in this direction perhaps fifteen or twenty years ago and of there being something vaguely sinister about it. The three boys were a little disturbed that the first abandoned house they came to had been broken into, but had not been looted or touched in any way despite containing valuable and useful items. Nonetheless, there was a pleasant grassy sward outside which was flatter than any other available spot, and they decided to lie there in their sleeping bags. I think this location was inspired by a house in the alps whose driveway I turned around in once.
As darkness fell, a dog appeared and one of the boys began to make a fuss over it. For the rest of the night the other two boys were unable to get him to do anything but play with the dog.
Then the narrative changed to one of the boys reading back what he had written in a book he had taken from the house. It was a two-page form printed in the front of a book, to be filled in to record the details of the location and registrar filling in the book. The boy had filled it in with a plain childish account of their camping expedition, ignoring the prompts on the form. Then he turned to the next page and each page contained a filled-in record of secret mass burials that had occured in the parish. Two of the dates were 1932 and March 1935. I felt that the present in the dream was the late 50s or early 60s.
This was the third boy who was occupied with the book, the first having the dog. The second boy was asleep but was being irritated by something in the dark. It was just irritating enough for him to wish it would stop but not irritating enough for him to get up and investigate. What was happening was that he was being gently poked in the feet with two sharp implements. I have shivers running all over my body writing this.
Then a second "dog" came to the third boy, who was by now also half-asleep. He was aware that this wasn't really a dog and that something was badly wrong. I feel utterly terrified recounting this; I am shivering and have to pause frequently. I do not want to go on; I will not proof-read this. The boy could not bring himself to recognise that it was not a dog, because it would be too terrible to acknowledge the truth. And so he played with it, half-asleep, as though it were a dog. Slowly he came round as far as he could allow himself to: he could not acknowledge the truth, it must remain a dog for the time being in order to preserve his sanity, but he could accept that something was wrong and that he had to get the three of them together to leave that place.
He looked at the first boy, and all of this was written over his face. He had been trapped for some time, not brave enough to bring himself as far as the point the third boy had reached. They looked at the second boy, but were unable to allow themselves to take in what they saw, so they just grabbed him and pulled him with them.
They walked together up the slope back to the main party of adults, but when they were almost there they realised that what they were dragging was not the second boy, but was something else they could not acknowledge. They had left him asleep and alone down there. With heavy hearts they turned and went back for him, knowing that they likely did not have enough willpower to succeed.
The narrative changed to the next day. A few parents were in a helicopter searching for the boys. The helicopter swept over the forest, and closed in on the river. One of the boys was in the river. At first he appeared to be a floating corpse, but then it became clear he was struggling. Underneath him were - two sheep? - two inflated sacks providing buoyancy. He was using the sacks to keep himself apart from something that was underneath the water, trying to drown whatever was there.
Then it surfaced, the face of a man, or something very similar, three times the size of a man and much flatter and more cartoony. The face was surrounded by thick dark-brown matted hair and the expression was one of manic friendship. The long tongue hung out like a dog's, and it seemed to be playing with the boy, making the boy think there was a chance of drowning the fiend, but all the time the monster was in complete control. The thing rolled around the bottom of the sacks and came up, showing himself to be hairy all over, looking like a wild brown version of Sulley from Monsters Inc. It had two horns like Desperate Dan had on his cow pie, which had been tickling the second boy the previous night. It sounds ridiculous but it was most real and terrifying and I am scared now writing.
The helicopter pilot recoiled and flew away as fast as he could. He would forever be a broken man, and the parents would not argue that this terror was too large to be faced, even at whatever the cost to their sons would be. There was a sense that the boys were far beyond help, and that the best anyone could do would be to get as far away as possible.
And then I woke up.
The nightmare took place in the third person; I was not part of events but rather just watched them happen. At times I saw events through the eyes of those involved, but I always felt as though it was other people this was happening to.
I grew up near a certain wood, Knott Wood, and as a young child I did not know what was on the far side of it. I had been told there was a river down there somewhere but had not seen it. In my dreams I filled in the landscape beyond the wood with creative recombinations of aspects of places I was familiar with. This fictional landscape is still available to me in my dreams and I visit it at least once every few months. It is a place of great comfort, a nostalgic expression of lost childhood, of idealised England, and of a perfect past before the hand of mankind interfered with nature. There is an almost autistic absence of other people.
In my dream, the men and company of the Dangerous Ideas wood were holding a summer celebration with a bonfire in Knott Wood. Three teenage boys were trying to organise to take a girl swimming in the river beyond the wood (this felt like William Morris' "beyond the world"). She was a real person I used to know. It got later and later and the swimming trip turned to a camping trip and the girl dropped out but the boys were determined to continue. Eventually they got permission from one of their fathers, but he was drunk and not from the area. Anyone else would have forbidden them from doing so.
So they went down to the river, and to their surprise they found an abandoned hamlet built along the river. I had never visited this location in my dreams before, being slightly upstream of where I had explored before this point. I have a vague recollection of not being able to explore in this direction perhaps fifteen or twenty years ago and of there being something vaguely sinister about it. The three boys were a little disturbed that the first abandoned house they came to had been broken into, but had not been looted or touched in any way despite containing valuable and useful items. Nonetheless, there was a pleasant grassy sward outside which was flatter than any other available spot, and they decided to lie there in their sleeping bags. I think this location was inspired by a house in the alps whose driveway I turned around in once.
As darkness fell, a dog appeared and one of the boys began to make a fuss over it. For the rest of the night the other two boys were unable to get him to do anything but play with the dog.
Then the narrative changed to one of the boys reading back what he had written in a book he had taken from the house. It was a two-page form printed in the front of a book, to be filled in to record the details of the location and registrar filling in the book. The boy had filled it in with a plain childish account of their camping expedition, ignoring the prompts on the form. Then he turned to the next page and each page contained a filled-in record of secret mass burials that had occured in the parish. Two of the dates were 1932 and March 1935. I felt that the present in the dream was the late 50s or early 60s.
This was the third boy who was occupied with the book, the first having the dog. The second boy was asleep but was being irritated by something in the dark. It was just irritating enough for him to wish it would stop but not irritating enough for him to get up and investigate. What was happening was that he was being gently poked in the feet with two sharp implements. I have shivers running all over my body writing this.
Then a second "dog" came to the third boy, who was by now also half-asleep. He was aware that this wasn't really a dog and that something was badly wrong. I feel utterly terrified recounting this; I am shivering and have to pause frequently. I do not want to go on; I will not proof-read this. The boy could not bring himself to recognise that it was not a dog, because it would be too terrible to acknowledge the truth. And so he played with it, half-asleep, as though it were a dog. Slowly he came round as far as he could allow himself to: he could not acknowledge the truth, it must remain a dog for the time being in order to preserve his sanity, but he could accept that something was wrong and that he had to get the three of them together to leave that place.
He looked at the first boy, and all of this was written over his face. He had been trapped for some time, not brave enough to bring himself as far as the point the third boy had reached. They looked at the second boy, but were unable to allow themselves to take in what they saw, so they just grabbed him and pulled him with them.
They walked together up the slope back to the main party of adults, but when they were almost there they realised that what they were dragging was not the second boy, but was something else they could not acknowledge. They had left him asleep and alone down there. With heavy hearts they turned and went back for him, knowing that they likely did not have enough willpower to succeed.
The narrative changed to the next day. A few parents were in a helicopter searching for the boys. The helicopter swept over the forest, and closed in on the river. One of the boys was in the river. At first he appeared to be a floating corpse, but then it became clear he was struggling. Underneath him were - two sheep? - two inflated sacks providing buoyancy. He was using the sacks to keep himself apart from something that was underneath the water, trying to drown whatever was there.
Then it surfaced, the face of a man, or something very similar, three times the size of a man and much flatter and more cartoony. The face was surrounded by thick dark-brown matted hair and the expression was one of manic friendship. The long tongue hung out like a dog's, and it seemed to be playing with the boy, making the boy think there was a chance of drowning the fiend, but all the time the monster was in complete control. The thing rolled around the bottom of the sacks and came up, showing himself to be hairy all over, looking like a wild brown version of Sulley from Monsters Inc. It had two horns like Desperate Dan had on his cow pie, which had been tickling the second boy the previous night. It sounds ridiculous but it was most real and terrifying and I am scared now writing.
The helicopter pilot recoiled and flew away as fast as he could. He would forever be a broken man, and the parents would not argue that this terror was too large to be faced, even at whatever the cost to their sons would be. There was a sense that the boys were far beyond help, and that the best anyone could do would be to get as far away as possible.
And then I woke up.
1 Nov 2010
Review of Halldor Laxness' The Fish Can Sing
I have recently, very slowly, read nobel prize winning Icelandic author Halldor Laxness' novel The Fish Can Sing (Brekkukotsannáll). This was a very important experience for me, and I would like to document my reactions to it, if you will indulge me.
For a long while it has been my intention to read some of his work, but I had a strong sense that I should wait until the time was right. A few weeks ago my subconscious informed me that it was time. I selected The Fish Can Sing on the basis that it was the cheapest of his English translations available on Amazon, and was delighted to discover that it had been translated by (mastermind presenter) Magnus Magnusson. I have read a number of sagas translated by him and consider him to have done a very fine job of them.
At its best, the novel is beautifully written, with each phrase dripping with devastatingly understated emotional power. This work contains some of the very best prose poetry I have encountered: I found myself haunted by certain passages and sentences, particularly by the stoic humanity of the nostalgic Iceland presented as the foil to the tainted petty bourgeois present in the book. In this I was reminded very strongly of the Orcadian author George Mackay Brown, and I was ecstatic to be able to draw such strong comparisons across the Norwegian sea.
To a certain degree this book has a similar sentimentality for a lost past to Cider With Rosie, which was published in the same year (1959). That this book treats this idea at face value dated it somewhat for me. I need my cultural nostalgia to be a little more disguised.
It's hard to be certain working from the English translation, but at times the novel uses Icelandic, Danish, Nynorsk, French, German and Latin, all for different effects. This must have been a struggle to render for a language-illiterate english speakers. At times Magnusson has to resort to "...they prayed in Nynorsk" or "more in Danish than Icelandic", whereas presumably the original Icelandic assumes the reader can interpret the different languages used. The short French, German and Latin passages are left in their original forms, which is appropriate to their use in the novel to highlight certain character's naivety, both positively and negatively.
I enjoyed the Icelandic setting, which is a particular interest of mine, and picked up on a number of cultural references and nuances (undoubtedly I missed many more), such as unflagged references to sagas, that perhaps would be prohibitive rather than enhancing for a casual reader with no knowledge of the setting.
At times I felt physically stunned by cunning revelations in the structure of the threads running through the book. But I also felt little compulsion to carry on reading. These were characters that I related to, but that I felt perhaps deserved respect and privacy. The sympathetic characters were not the sort of people who would naturally have placed themselves in the spotlight and I felt presumptuous demanding and explanation of their world. The novel is almost entirely devoid of plot (plenty of fate, but little causality) and I did not feel like there was any question I wanted answered or any narrative idea to see through to the conclusion. In this respect it was like a long description interspersed with discourse. Each morsel was as rich as a five-aurar cake, but nothing beyond gluttony and work ethic drove me on.
Another strong criticism I have is that the writing standard was very variable. Chapter 15 was a sophisticated maelstrom of poetry and ideas, but Chapter 16 read like something written by a self-important university student on a wet afternoon. I found it hard to believe it was the same writer. The last third of the book read like it had been written before the earlier passages, as things which were already introduced were reintroduced and other subtle changes occurred without explanation.
This is a great book that I highly recommend. But had I written it myself, I would have seen only its shortcomings. There are glorious, heart-stopping moments, but it does perhaps add up to less than the sum of its parts. I'll read more Laxness in the future, but Mackay Brown's Greenvoe is possibly a better example of this class of novel.
For a long while it has been my intention to read some of his work, but I had a strong sense that I should wait until the time was right. A few weeks ago my subconscious informed me that it was time. I selected The Fish Can Sing on the basis that it was the cheapest of his English translations available on Amazon, and was delighted to discover that it had been translated by (mastermind presenter) Magnus Magnusson. I have read a number of sagas translated by him and consider him to have done a very fine job of them.
At its best, the novel is beautifully written, with each phrase dripping with devastatingly understated emotional power. This work contains some of the very best prose poetry I have encountered: I found myself haunted by certain passages and sentences, particularly by the stoic humanity of the nostalgic Iceland presented as the foil to the tainted petty bourgeois present in the book. In this I was reminded very strongly of the Orcadian author George Mackay Brown, and I was ecstatic to be able to draw such strong comparisons across the Norwegian sea.
To a certain degree this book has a similar sentimentality for a lost past to Cider With Rosie, which was published in the same year (1959). That this book treats this idea at face value dated it somewhat for me. I need my cultural nostalgia to be a little more disguised.
It's hard to be certain working from the English translation, but at times the novel uses Icelandic, Danish, Nynorsk, French, German and Latin, all for different effects. This must have been a struggle to render for a language-illiterate english speakers. At times Magnusson has to resort to "...they prayed in Nynorsk" or "more in Danish than Icelandic", whereas presumably the original Icelandic assumes the reader can interpret the different languages used. The short French, German and Latin passages are left in their original forms, which is appropriate to their use in the novel to highlight certain character's naivety, both positively and negatively.
I enjoyed the Icelandic setting, which is a particular interest of mine, and picked up on a number of cultural references and nuances (undoubtedly I missed many more), such as unflagged references to sagas, that perhaps would be prohibitive rather than enhancing for a casual reader with no knowledge of the setting.
At times I felt physically stunned by cunning revelations in the structure of the threads running through the book. But I also felt little compulsion to carry on reading. These were characters that I related to, but that I felt perhaps deserved respect and privacy. The sympathetic characters were not the sort of people who would naturally have placed themselves in the spotlight and I felt presumptuous demanding and explanation of their world. The novel is almost entirely devoid of plot (plenty of fate, but little causality) and I did not feel like there was any question I wanted answered or any narrative idea to see through to the conclusion. In this respect it was like a long description interspersed with discourse. Each morsel was as rich as a five-aurar cake, but nothing beyond gluttony and work ethic drove me on.
Another strong criticism I have is that the writing standard was very variable. Chapter 15 was a sophisticated maelstrom of poetry and ideas, but Chapter 16 read like something written by a self-important university student on a wet afternoon. I found it hard to believe it was the same writer. The last third of the book read like it had been written before the earlier passages, as things which were already introduced were reintroduced and other subtle changes occurred without explanation.
This is a great book that I highly recommend. But had I written it myself, I would have seen only its shortcomings. There are glorious, heart-stopping moments, but it does perhaps add up to less than the sum of its parts. I'll read more Laxness in the future, but Mackay Brown's Greenvoe is possibly a better example of this class of novel.
26 Sept 2010
Space
Once again, I have been asking myself "what is to be done?" In 2006 I set myself a complex agenda which is now 100% complete and achieved. From time to time I added various small goals and extensions to that plan, and sometimes succeeded in kidding myself that I had a new set of goals and had reached a new stage in my life. With the Isle Martin Plan and its modifications complete, I have been once again asking myself "what is to be done?"
Whilst I am very happy where I currently live in the short term, what I would most like to do is inhabit a space where I would not be disturbed by the rules and expectations of those around me. Just as moving out of my parent's house was liberating when I was 18, I would like to move beyond the confines of 20-something shared housing into a world where I can define the parameters more freely. I do not wish to replace these rules with another set of rules, such as "living on a council estate", "living in a commune" or enforced nomadism.
Recently, I have found myself deeply regretting not being able to take various dead animals (roadkill fox and badger, two ravens) home and process them. I would like to spend a winter sleeping on a mattress of rotting bracken. I would like to be able to fill my attic with straw without anyone saying "planning permission" or "housing code". I would like to collect plants into a garden, and no, I am not at all interested in most of the plants you keep in yours. I would like to be able to dig a hole when I feel like it, and leave an open pit around for people to fall into. I would like to build furniture in ways no one but Syd Barrett would approve of. I would like to leave a brick on a synthesizer turned up loud for several hours whilst I cook meals you would not eat. I would like to be able to mess up the mains electrics and I would like to paint and texture things in ways that would reveal your aesthetic conservatism.
These are my goals. I believe that to achieve them I have to take control of a unit of geography. This seems vile to me, an affront to nature and a denial of "love thy neighbour". But in the cost/benefit analysis, it becomes clear that I must make myself look big and threaten trespassers with violence.
For some months now, I have been looking at houses for sale. They seem ill equipped for my needs. What I would like is a large garden with a shed in it. Whilst I take my responsibilities seriously with regard to eutrophication in an overcrowded world, there are very few parts of a "house" that I am interested in retaining. Roofs seem useful. But what is the boiler for, other than the socially-dictated generation of debt?
One solution would be to acquire a ruin and live in a shed in the garden. I do not know how to achieve this. Another would be to get a wood and hide in it. Here I am vexed by availability.
It is clear to me that the price of a house is dependent upon the availability of land. Bricks and mortar are cheap, and anyway I'm not bothered if they're all there (although you seem to need me to be concerned, and I suspect will force me to be so). Land is highly available in areas where the hand of the king is weak. The more slummy an area is, the less invested both the inhabitants and the authorities are, and the cheaper land becomes. A lack of investment leads to a weakening and diversification of polities (modelled continuously), and a greater concern for defining the boundaries and setting the rules I wish to escape. Or, in short, I would not go down very well on a council estate.
Secondly, the things you value in a house, the heuristic you call "well presented" has no value to me. "Well presented" is a burden, and entanglement of denial and a demand disguised as a duty to curate somebody else's ideological subjectivism. It is a threat against John Stuart Mill's property, and I bet there's magnolia in there somewhere.
I am spoilt by the freedoms of a rural middle class youth. It occurred to me only months ago that I was waiting for the large suburban house everyone around me had had growing up to fall into my lap. Unknown consciously, I had an expectation that I was due such a thing and that it was only a matter of time before I was burdened with such. The slow lumbering approach of home ownership felt like an unavoidable onerous task, something moderately irritating like having to clean your teeth or waiting for a train, coming towards me immalleably through the semi-accessible mists of the future. Now I have identified this misconception, perhaps it will allow me to move on.
I want to slip through the holes in the fabric of your social paradigm. I don't want to cheat or take shortcuts, I just have different expectations and have a closer relationship with fate than you do. The whole tangled ball of this system is only tenable because each of us sees only a few facets, distracted as we are with our egotisms and opiates. For better or for worse, the parts I am looking at don't add up. There is great narrative truth in several million small agents working selfishly, but in order to sustain the journeys we are on, we require a million small fibs and unnecessary regulations and abstractions.
I suppose what I want is to be left alone, to select what elements of culture and humanity I come into contact with. When feeding my ego, I would describe this desire as a true, pure liberalism. But it is truer to say that I don't want my million small fibs to be challenged any more than you do.
This is why I am living in my friend's attic.
Whilst I am very happy where I currently live in the short term, what I would most like to do is inhabit a space where I would not be disturbed by the rules and expectations of those around me. Just as moving out of my parent's house was liberating when I was 18, I would like to move beyond the confines of 20-something shared housing into a world where I can define the parameters more freely. I do not wish to replace these rules with another set of rules, such as "living on a council estate", "living in a commune" or enforced nomadism.
Recently, I have found myself deeply regretting not being able to take various dead animals (roadkill fox and badger, two ravens) home and process them. I would like to spend a winter sleeping on a mattress of rotting bracken. I would like to be able to fill my attic with straw without anyone saying "planning permission" or "housing code". I would like to collect plants into a garden, and no, I am not at all interested in most of the plants you keep in yours. I would like to be able to dig a hole when I feel like it, and leave an open pit around for people to fall into. I would like to build furniture in ways no one but Syd Barrett would approve of. I would like to leave a brick on a synthesizer turned up loud for several hours whilst I cook meals you would not eat. I would like to be able to mess up the mains electrics and I would like to paint and texture things in ways that would reveal your aesthetic conservatism.
These are my goals. I believe that to achieve them I have to take control of a unit of geography. This seems vile to me, an affront to nature and a denial of "love thy neighbour". But in the cost/benefit analysis, it becomes clear that I must make myself look big and threaten trespassers with violence.
For some months now, I have been looking at houses for sale. They seem ill equipped for my needs. What I would like is a large garden with a shed in it. Whilst I take my responsibilities seriously with regard to eutrophication in an overcrowded world, there are very few parts of a "house" that I am interested in retaining. Roofs seem useful. But what is the boiler for, other than the socially-dictated generation of debt?
One solution would be to acquire a ruin and live in a shed in the garden. I do not know how to achieve this. Another would be to get a wood and hide in it. Here I am vexed by availability.
It is clear to me that the price of a house is dependent upon the availability of land. Bricks and mortar are cheap, and anyway I'm not bothered if they're all there (although you seem to need me to be concerned, and I suspect will force me to be so). Land is highly available in areas where the hand of the king is weak. The more slummy an area is, the less invested both the inhabitants and the authorities are, and the cheaper land becomes. A lack of investment leads to a weakening and diversification of polities (modelled continuously), and a greater concern for defining the boundaries and setting the rules I wish to escape. Or, in short, I would not go down very well on a council estate.
Secondly, the things you value in a house, the heuristic you call "well presented" has no value to me. "Well presented" is a burden, and entanglement of denial and a demand disguised as a duty to curate somebody else's ideological subjectivism. It is a threat against John Stuart Mill's property, and I bet there's magnolia in there somewhere.
I am spoilt by the freedoms of a rural middle class youth. It occurred to me only months ago that I was waiting for the large suburban house everyone around me had had growing up to fall into my lap. Unknown consciously, I had an expectation that I was due such a thing and that it was only a matter of time before I was burdened with such. The slow lumbering approach of home ownership felt like an unavoidable onerous task, something moderately irritating like having to clean your teeth or waiting for a train, coming towards me immalleably through the semi-accessible mists of the future. Now I have identified this misconception, perhaps it will allow me to move on.
I want to slip through the holes in the fabric of your social paradigm. I don't want to cheat or take shortcuts, I just have different expectations and have a closer relationship with fate than you do. The whole tangled ball of this system is only tenable because each of us sees only a few facets, distracted as we are with our egotisms and opiates. For better or for worse, the parts I am looking at don't add up. There is great narrative truth in several million small agents working selfishly, but in order to sustain the journeys we are on, we require a million small fibs and unnecessary regulations and abstractions.
I suppose what I want is to be left alone, to select what elements of culture and humanity I come into contact with. When feeding my ego, I would describe this desire as a true, pure liberalism. But it is truer to say that I don't want my million small fibs to be challenged any more than you do.
This is why I am living in my friend's attic.
24 Aug 2010
Cheese Experiments
Thought I'd give cheesemaking a go. I've ordered some proper cultures and rennet off of the webnet but for now here's some small experiments. I've been using live yoghurt as the culture and spirit vinegar in the place of rennet. The yoghurt in question contains three bacterial cultures, including the Streptococcus used in cheesemaking as well as the two normally found in yoghurt. No idea why the cheese culture is in there, but I've seen it a few times so must be fairly standard practice?
Experiment 1
Three tablespoons of live yoghurt were gently heated. Three capfuls of vinegar were gradually added stepwise. The yoghurt became thinner. No curds were formed. The experiment was halted and the ingredients thrown away.
Experiment 2
A small quantity of ordinary homogenised semi-skimmed milk was gently heated. A capful and a half of vinegar was added stepwise. A couple of tablespoons of curds precipitated, but only fully after the stated quantity of vinegar was used. The whey tasted strongly of vinegar and was discarded. The curds were drained, and tasted noticeably of vinegar. They were washed with cold water, reducing the vinegar flavour, although the taint remained. Eaten with salt.
Experiment 3
A tablespoon of live yoghurt was added to a small quantity of ordinary semi-skimmed milk, and the mixture left to stand at room temperature for thirty minutes. After this time the mixture tasted noticeably "cultured". It was gently heated and only half a cap of vinegar was needed to precipitate the curds. The whey remained pleasant and was retained for experiment 4. The curds were washed in cold water, yet retained a very slight vinegar taint. Eaten with salt. Yield was similar to experiment 2. This method is similar to the normal recipe for mexican Queso Blanco.
Experiment 4
A teaspoon of live yoghurt was added to the hot whey and left to stand for a couple of hours. The whey was then reheated and a tiny amount of vinegar added. A very slight precipitate formed, which when collected in a muslin cloth and washed with cold water. A further yield of a tablespoon of curds was recovered. Ricotta is an example of a whey cheese made by methods similar to this.
The curds produced in Experiment 2-4 were indistinguishable to my uneducated mouth.
Experiment 1
Three tablespoons of live yoghurt were gently heated. Three capfuls of vinegar were gradually added stepwise. The yoghurt became thinner. No curds were formed. The experiment was halted and the ingredients thrown away.
Experiment 2
A small quantity of ordinary homogenised semi-skimmed milk was gently heated. A capful and a half of vinegar was added stepwise. A couple of tablespoons of curds precipitated, but only fully after the stated quantity of vinegar was used. The whey tasted strongly of vinegar and was discarded. The curds were drained, and tasted noticeably of vinegar. They were washed with cold water, reducing the vinegar flavour, although the taint remained. Eaten with salt.
Experiment 3
A tablespoon of live yoghurt was added to a small quantity of ordinary semi-skimmed milk, and the mixture left to stand at room temperature for thirty minutes. After this time the mixture tasted noticeably "cultured". It was gently heated and only half a cap of vinegar was needed to precipitate the curds. The whey remained pleasant and was retained for experiment 4. The curds were washed in cold water, yet retained a very slight vinegar taint. Eaten with salt. Yield was similar to experiment 2. This method is similar to the normal recipe for mexican Queso Blanco.
Experiment 4
A teaspoon of live yoghurt was added to the hot whey and left to stand for a couple of hours. The whey was then reheated and a tiny amount of vinegar added. A very slight precipitate formed, which when collected in a muslin cloth and washed with cold water. A further yield of a tablespoon of curds was recovered. Ricotta is an example of a whey cheese made by methods similar to this.
The curds produced in Experiment 2-4 were indistinguishable to my uneducated mouth.
25 May 2010
Glimpses
My mind is still milling over the DIftW. I'm not even sure it's made of words any more. Every now and again I catch glimpses of how I felt about the world when I wrote them. It's just below the surface, this feeling that I can't communicate, but I can't access it reliably. I have narratives - sophisticated joyful understandings in flow and rhythm - but it is the craft of turning them into something communicable that I do not care for.
I caught a glimpse looking at a workman today as he threw bricks and swore, his arm tattooed with his daughter's name and his eyes desperate: there is nothing slight or passing in the tautology that the world is created in the image of the world. I heard it last night as we walked by the Salvation Army hall and the distant buzzing of the brass switched on my mind. There was the celestial music again, the quest object, the sound more beautiful than anything external could ever be. I have heard music more beautiful than anyone has ever been able to describe. But it is not enough that it is so; it is my unshoulderable duty to externalise it, to codify the colour of creation. This is why I could not make small talk when you were drunk.
I have been dead for six months, maybe more. This winter was an impossible struggle against seemingly nothing. I had to numb myself against the weight. Now I can allow myself to scratch again at it, and I find the colour occasionally under my fingernails. Today and tomorrow I must be as I am now, but today I can once again hope for the day after tomorrow.
It would be easy to fall into hatred for the banality of it all, but I am too calm and too patient for that. So much is rotten.
I guess this attempt proves that it's too early to try to write again.
I caught a glimpse looking at a workman today as he threw bricks and swore, his arm tattooed with his daughter's name and his eyes desperate: there is nothing slight or passing in the tautology that the world is created in the image of the world. I heard it last night as we walked by the Salvation Army hall and the distant buzzing of the brass switched on my mind. There was the celestial music again, the quest object, the sound more beautiful than anything external could ever be. I have heard music more beautiful than anyone has ever been able to describe. But it is not enough that it is so; it is my unshoulderable duty to externalise it, to codify the colour of creation. This is why I could not make small talk when you were drunk.
I have been dead for six months, maybe more. This winter was an impossible struggle against seemingly nothing. I had to numb myself against the weight. Now I can allow myself to scratch again at it, and I find the colour occasionally under my fingernails. Today and tomorrow I must be as I am now, but today I can once again hope for the day after tomorrow.
It would be easy to fall into hatred for the banality of it all, but I am too calm and too patient for that. So much is rotten.
I guess this attempt proves that it's too early to try to write again.
25 Apr 2010
List 2
Ozone and hydrocarbons when a mattock hits industrial slag.
The certainty and precision of technical drawings.
A lungfull of cement dust.
Builders.
Silence at lunchtime when the machines stop.
Talking all day, more exhausting than shovelling.
Sheet-metal buildings felled, revealing pristine green slopes behind.
Evening vegetation.
A day in the office, a day wasted.
A picnic by the sheaf.
Celandine, anenome, every plant a friend.
A carrier bag full of ramsons and ground elder.
Every glance a potential meal: how could you ever starve here?
Bicycling against time, patience exhausted.
A tour of secret art galleries.
Pathetic expressions of privilege and wasted opportunities.
A room full of pure magic.
St. George's day on Devonshire Green: a perfection of blandness.
Waiting, waiting, waiting in a bar.
Reaching exhaustion behind a drum set.
Too little sleep.
The smell of rain at dawn.
Bicycling empty 6am sunday morning city arteries.
Hull.
Mud further than the eye can see.
Mist over spurn head, the end of the world, the threshold. (Song for Our Ancestors)
Plastic pollution in the seas.
The certainty and precision of technical drawings.
A lungfull of cement dust.
Builders.
Silence at lunchtime when the machines stop.
Talking all day, more exhausting than shovelling.
Sheet-metal buildings felled, revealing pristine green slopes behind.
Evening vegetation.
A day in the office, a day wasted.
A picnic by the sheaf.
Celandine, anenome, every plant a friend.
A carrier bag full of ramsons and ground elder.
Every glance a potential meal: how could you ever starve here?
Bicycling against time, patience exhausted.
A tour of secret art galleries.
Pathetic expressions of privilege and wasted opportunities.
A room full of pure magic.
St. George's day on Devonshire Green: a perfection of blandness.
Waiting, waiting, waiting in a bar.
Reaching exhaustion behind a drum set.
Too little sleep.
The smell of rain at dawn.
Bicycling empty 6am sunday morning city arteries.
Hull.
Mud further than the eye can see.
Mist over spurn head, the end of the world, the threshold. (Song for Our Ancestors)
Plastic pollution in the seas.
18 Apr 2010
Eating Dock
I heard that dock leaves were edible if cooked twice. So, when collecting ground elder to eat (highly recommended) I picked some fresh spring dock leaves to experiment with. There seems to be a lack of reliable information on this subject, so I present my results here. I am not an expert when it comes to the complex Rumex genus so no identification to species level was attempted. However, this specimen seems like a fairly standard English dock to my country eyes.
Raw, the leaves were acceptable, bland, and slightly acidic.
I chopped the leaves into approx. 7mm strips and boiled them in water in a small saucepan on a hob for about 5 minutes.
The resulting liquid was green, pungent and reminiscent of stinging nettle juice (these two plants are often considered to have some sort of affinity, growing in similar habitats. The dock is considered in folklore to be the antidote to the nettle). The liquid tasted acidic, bitter and dangerous. Adding dock to a sauce would make the sauce unpleasantly bitter and acid, and possibly introduce harmful chemicals (I do not know if there is anything harmful in dock) so I recommend firmly against doing this.
After pressing the cooking juice out of the leaves, they were tasted and found to be bland and unremarkable. All traces of acidity were removed to the taste: in fact, all traces of taste were removed entirely. The structure and thickness of the leaf had also been destroyed, and the remnants brought to mind thin seaweed in terms of appearance and texture. These leaves could be used as a spinach substitute, but as it is likely that most of the vitamins have gone down the sink and due to the availability of many tastier alternatives in the English countryside (not least of which nettles), I do not think dock worthwhile eating.
On final comment, the famous Lancashire dish of "dock pudding" is made using bistort, Persicaria bistorta, which, whilst closely related to the true docks, is a different plant.
Raw, the leaves were acceptable, bland, and slightly acidic.
I chopped the leaves into approx. 7mm strips and boiled them in water in a small saucepan on a hob for about 5 minutes.
The resulting liquid was green, pungent and reminiscent of stinging nettle juice (these two plants are often considered to have some sort of affinity, growing in similar habitats. The dock is considered in folklore to be the antidote to the nettle). The liquid tasted acidic, bitter and dangerous. Adding dock to a sauce would make the sauce unpleasantly bitter and acid, and possibly introduce harmful chemicals (I do not know if there is anything harmful in dock) so I recommend firmly against doing this.
After pressing the cooking juice out of the leaves, they were tasted and found to be bland and unremarkable. All traces of acidity were removed to the taste: in fact, all traces of taste were removed entirely. The structure and thickness of the leaf had also been destroyed, and the remnants brought to mind thin seaweed in terms of appearance and texture. These leaves could be used as a spinach substitute, but as it is likely that most of the vitamins have gone down the sink and due to the availability of many tastier alternatives in the English countryside (not least of which nettles), I do not think dock worthwhile eating.
On final comment, the famous Lancashire dish of "dock pudding" is made using bistort, Persicaria bistorta, which, whilst closely related to the true docks, is a different plant.
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