A Nordic tale transplanted on Superior’s shore

Peter Geye in The Lighthouse Road has successfully captured, perhaps immigrated, the chill reality of Nordic life found in such stories as Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil and Ib Michael’s Prince bringing them to new life in the New World.

Geye tells tales set against wilderness and sea (Lake Superior), fraught with willful living and near-sinfulness. Twined in a hidden fixating past are Odd Eide’s beginnings—orphaned near birth and raised side by side with his future lover/sister, the much older Rebekah—and his bondage to Hosea Grimm his adoptive, overbearing father (and Rebekah’s as well).

If Odd’s story is about breaking away, it is as much about making a way to live under dire and difficult circumstances. His life is both baneful and desolate. He loses an eye to a hibernating she-bear to prove to himself he is not a coward. Odd dissembles against his employer-father, taking what he will of Hosea’s ungenerous wealth, and insists on the impossible: to provide for his own son a loving mother. His undaunted skill and hardihood match the unforgiving spirit of water and wilderness but are no match for twisted spirit of human want and wantonness.

The story is haunted by the same unworldliness Ib Michael brings us to on the Titanic in Prince and the same earthiness grounding all of Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil. Geye’s hard edged telling is as merciless as a Lake Superior storm, and as powerful too.

Another rose: New Finnish Grammar

“a rose by any other name:” New Finnish Grammar, by Diego Marani translated from Italian to English by Judith Landry

This book tickled my interest in all things Finnish, in language and its acquisition, and in our conception of identity.

The Finnish part is of less interest to those who have no Finnish heritage, but New Finnish Grammar also tells a little known and compelling part of living between two strong nations, in this case Germany and Russia from 1900 to the end of World War II. And its lessons both inside Finland and from without are apt for Americans in this early 21^st Century. Perhaps we can capture a glimpse of the angst and hatred generated in people caught up in movement of great powers, America (its allies) and the Muslim world. The protagonists Dr. Petri Firari and his patient Sampo Karjalainen are men without country and men held fast by a foreign tongue (Firari is a Finnish expat who speaks German; Karjalainen an Italian learning Finnish after losing his memory).

The language part is fascinating. Diego Marani more than being a simple polyglot is a student of language, a professional linguist, who writes in Europanto (his invented language).   His insight into the importance of language to who we are and the processes we must employ to acquire our first and successive languages plays a central role in the plot. The Finnish stamp is upon Dr. Firari and though he can never live there he uses every means possible to stay current with the news and the language. Karjalainen on the other hand is no one; without a language he owns no identity and lives on the side lines listening, noting, studying.

Karjalainen’s identity—his name is early on told, Massimiliano Brodar—reforms behind the language and culture of Finland during the last years of World War II. He recovers his health after a nasty head injury. He slowly acquires Finnish as a “relearned” language. He even more slowly acquires a real Finnish identity: Sampo Karjalainen becomes a Finnish patriot facing the Russian army at Viipuri on the Karelian isthmus. Dr. Firari, telling the story from his own experience and from a manuscript Karjalainen left in the Helsinki hospital, is the unlucky man who must live a life in a dual identity (Finnish and German). Sampo Karjalainen gains a single, heroic identity, although it is the wrong one.

In a single word, the book is FASCINATING / Tämä kirja on KIEHTOVA.

 

A longer agony

[This text is the original but too long for posting to other book sites.]

 

One must wonder—tongue in cheek—how KOK finds the time to live a life to write about. His detail is so fine and often so mundane as noticing suddenly that the sun is setting and lighting up the sky over the five story apartment building going up across one arm of Lake Merritt. Yet once launched into the story as he tells it, you’re nearly shedding tears of thanks to him, letting you into his life, his pains, his loves, his hates, his fears, artistic musings, and philosophical flourishes. This book and the five of the same name that follow if are not for the faint-hearted, must-have-page-turner American reader. Since the translations run apace, though, there must be a market here and in Britain and in the English reading world as a whole.

It is a little early for me to prognosticate, but I see a big prize at the end of this tunnel, one with an N on its snout.

Want to get to know someone perhaps better than your best friend? No, perhaps better than a spouse, or maybe better than you know yourself? Well, dig in and be patient. You will get to know Karl Ove Knausgaard well, very well.

Book 1 of My Struggle focuses on KOK’s father: how he feared and hated him in adolescence. How he evaded and avoided dad, usually without much success since KOK carried dad with him everywhere he went and in every enterprise he attempted. That’s not unusual for a son, or for a son with a dominant father and absent or semi-absent mother such as KOK seems—so he indicates—to have had. She was nice, loving, but not around a great deal.

As he grows older, KOK declares more independence and eventually after high school leaves town to return only for his father’s funeral. Often the narrative is intense and interesting: KOK spends 35 pages getting ready to drink to drunkenness on his 14^th new years eve; he spills ink over five pages of discussion of the role science has played in our conception and expectations of art, painting mostly, and a full third of the book relates the preparations Ingve, KOK’s brother and sometime hero and nemesis, and he perform in advance of the funeral. And, hey, we never (at least in Book 1) get to the funeral, or near the funeral, or getting ready for the actual funeral, for, first, the brothers must clean the house of their deceased, alcoholic, secretive father and who commandeered his own mother’s house (it isn’t even his) in which to devolve, disintegrate, and die. KOK’s grandmother is in the sorriest state of affairs. That is what must be dealt with.

Oh, what a mess. Oh, what a tragedy. And through it all the author is open, plain spoken, truthful, and compelling without pulling sentimental punches or taking unfair advantage.

Knausgaard earns his reader’s respect, wins it fairly with Norwegian hard work and a keen eye for minutae which tells the story so well. It is as if he continuously tells us—were he Californian or American—where he was, what he was doing, who he was with, and what he was thinking when Oakland burned, when the Bay Bridge collapsed, or when the Trade Towers fell. Knausgaard’s fire, earthquake, and terror attack are personal, but that does not mean that we, all of us, haven’t suffered the same.

And that commonality is what Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle exalts.

A life, a story, an agony: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle

One must wonder how Karl Ove Knausgaard finds the time to live a life to write about. His detail is so fine and so often mundane as noticing suddenly that the sun is setting and lighting up the sky over the fjord. Yet launching into the story as he tells it, you’re nearly shedding tears of thanks to him, letting you into his life, his pains, his fears, artistic musings, and philosophical flourishes. This book and the five that follow it are not for the faint-hearted reader.

It is early for me to prognosticate, but I see a big prize at the end of this tunnel, one with an N on its snout.

Want to get to know someone perhaps better than your best friend? No, perhaps better than a spouse, or maybe better than you know yourself? Well, dig in and be patient. You will get to know Karl Ove Knausgaard well, very well.

Book 1 of My Struggle focuses on KOK’s father: how he feared and hated him in adolescence. How he evaded dad usually without success since KOK carried dad with him everywhere in every enterprise he attempted. That’s not unusual for a son, or for a son with a dominant father and absent or semi-absent mother such as KOK seems to have had. She was nice, but not around a great deal.

As he grows older, KOK declares more independence and after high school leaves town to return only for his father’s funeral. Often the narrative is intense: KOK spends 35 pages getting ready to drink to drunkenness on his 14^th New Year’s Eve; he spills ink over five pages discussing the role science has played in our conception and expectations of art, and writes a third of the book on preparations Ingve, KOK’s brother, and he perform in advance of the funeral. And, hey, we never (at least in Book 1) get to the funeral, or ready for the funeral, for, first, the brothers must clean the house of their secretive, alcoholic, and now deceased father who commandeered his own mother’s house in which to devolve, disintegrate, and die. KOK’s grandmother is left in the sorriest state of affairs. That is what we must deal with.

What a mess. What a tragedy. And through it all, the author is open, plain-spoken, truthful, and compelling without pulling sentimental punches or taking unfair advantage.

Knausgaard earns his reader’s respect, wins it fairly with Norwegian hard work and a keen eye for minutiae which tell the story so well. It is as if he continuously tells us—were he Californian or American—where he was, what he was doing, who he was with, and what he was thinking when Oakland burned, when the Bay Bridge collapsed, or when the Trade Towers fell. Knausgaard’s fire, earthquake, and terror attack are personal, but that does not mean that all of us haven’t suffered the same.

And that commonality is what Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle exalts.