Scan barcode
djkwm's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
hannah_go03's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
caiosc's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
fionnualalirsdottir's review against another edition
Yesterday I came across this quote from Ezra Pound: Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
I want to pause here to think about the serendipity of finding just the right quote to describe the experience of reading Jon Fosse's [b:The Other Name|46024004|The Other Name Septology I-II|Jon Fosse|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1558984578l/46024004._SY75_.jpg|72858854], because serendipity, or good-reading-luck as I like to think of it, is something that often follows me, the right quote pops up or I have a relevant dream or something else happens that throws light on the book I've just read and the often puzzling thoughts that it has left me with. All that is just to underline how appropriate I found Pound's quote about a book being like 'a ball of light in one's hand' because all the passages I'd marked in Fosse's puzzling and dark book concerned light, in particular the way light can be rendered in a painting. The light described was 'ball of light' bright and it illuminated the whole book for me.
The Other Name, subtitled Septology I-II, reads like a moment-by-moment account of two days in narrator Asle's life, two days in which he goes about his present-day activities in real time but lets his mind wander over episodes of what the reader presumes to be his past, and which he recounts in the third person.
Septology I is narrated over the course of a Monday in the darkest month of winter, beginning with the moment when Asle realises that a painting he has just created may be the best thing he's ever done.
Septology II begins early on the following morning when Asle wakes from a fitful sleep, and the episode plays out over the entire day until he lies down again for the night.
The first day, as described in Septology I, is extra dark because it's snowing and the sky is not visible at all, but there are many mentions of the kind of light that darkness can hold, how light can emerge out of darkness.
When the second day begins, the sky is clearer, and the moon and stars are visible in the early morning.
I'm currently reading Septology III and accompanying Asle through day three, and I'm looking forward to the other four days in the remaining four episodes of Septology (if Fosse sticks to the separate day format), and to seeing more of the world that Asle creates (or maybe destroys). And I'm anticipating the seventh day, and curious to see what 'rest' will mean for Asle (if he turns out to get any).
The quote by Ezra Pound with which I began this review states that readers should be intensely alive as they read. And I did read Fosse's book intensely, so intensely in fact that I noted every one of the many transitions from the present moment into the past and back again and from first-person narration to third and back again. Indeed, I paused often to admire the smoothness of those transitions which all happen from one word to the next—there are no full stops or breaks in the text. I noticed many repetitions too, and I thought I understood why they had to be there: our lives are full of repetitions and if we recorded ourselves moment-by-moment, and especially our communications with those around us, we would see the pattern clearly.
But even though I was intensely interested in the way the book was written, I was thinking about the surface of the story as well. Story is hardly the word to use as there is almost no plot to speak of, but I experienced moments of tension all the same although nothing particularly riveting was happening in the narrative. Because I was reading so intensely, my mind latched on to tiny details and I'd find myself wondering if the narrator would remember about them and come back to them. I worried that he wouldn't remember that the dog needed to be let out to pee, for example, or that he'd forget to give his friend Åsleik the bag of groceries he had bought for him. In fact I worried that his own groceries hadn't been put in the fridge—that's how much I was involved in this moment-to-moment narrative.
The result is that the painting with which the narrative begins and ends is clearly visible to my mind's eye, also the room where it is, the room with the round table by the window looking out towards the sea. I can see Asle's car clearly too, the place where he does so much of his remembering. The road from Dylgja to Bjørgvin which he drives back and forth on during the course of the two days is familiar to me, its twists and its turns, the houses and turnoffs along the way, the view of the fjord that appears and disappears.
Reader, I was there.
I want to pause here to think about the serendipity of finding just the right quote to describe the experience of reading Jon Fosse's [b:The Other Name|46024004|The Other Name Septology I-II|Jon Fosse|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1558984578l/46024004._SY75_.jpg|72858854], because serendipity, or good-reading-luck as I like to think of it, is something that often follows me, the right quote pops up or I have a relevant dream or something else happens that throws light on the book I've just read and the often puzzling thoughts that it has left me with. All that is just to underline how appropriate I found Pound's quote about a book being like 'a ball of light in one's hand' because all the passages I'd marked in Fosse's puzzling and dark book concerned light, in particular the way light can be rendered in a painting. The light described was 'ball of light' bright and it illuminated the whole book for me.
The Other Name, subtitled Septology I-II, reads like a moment-by-moment account of two days in narrator Asle's life, two days in which he goes about his present-day activities in real time but lets his mind wander over episodes of what the reader presumes to be his past, and which he recounts in the third person.
Septology I is narrated over the course of a Monday in the darkest month of winter, beginning with the moment when Asle realises that a painting he has just created may be the best thing he's ever done.
Septology II begins early on the following morning when Asle wakes from a fitful sleep, and the episode plays out over the entire day until he lies down again for the night.
The first day, as described in Septology I, is extra dark because it's snowing and the sky is not visible at all, but there are many mentions of the kind of light that darkness can hold, how light can emerge out of darkness.
When the second day begins, the sky is clearer, and the moon and stars are visible in the early morning.
I'm currently reading Septology III and accompanying Asle through day three, and I'm looking forward to the other four days in the remaining four episodes of Septology (if Fosse sticks to the separate day format), and to seeing more of the world that Asle creates (or maybe destroys). And I'm anticipating the seventh day, and curious to see what 'rest' will mean for Asle (if he turns out to get any).
The quote by Ezra Pound with which I began this review states that readers should be intensely alive as they read. And I did read Fosse's book intensely, so intensely in fact that I noted every one of the many transitions from the present moment into the past and back again and from first-person narration to third and back again. Indeed, I paused often to admire the smoothness of those transitions which all happen from one word to the next—there are no full stops or breaks in the text. I noticed many repetitions too, and I thought I understood why they had to be there: our lives are full of repetitions and if we recorded ourselves moment-by-moment, and especially our communications with those around us, we would see the pattern clearly.
But even though I was intensely interested in the way the book was written, I was thinking about the surface of the story as well. Story is hardly the word to use as there is almost no plot to speak of, but I experienced moments of tension all the same although nothing particularly riveting was happening in the narrative. Because I was reading so intensely, my mind latched on to tiny details and I'd find myself wondering if the narrator would remember about them and come back to them. I worried that he wouldn't remember that the dog needed to be let out to pee, for example, or that he'd forget to give his friend Åsleik the bag of groceries he had bought for him. In fact I worried that his own groceries hadn't been put in the fridge—that's how much I was involved in this moment-to-moment narrative.
The result is that the painting with which the narrative begins and ends is clearly visible to my mind's eye, also the room where it is, the room with the round table by the window looking out towards the sea. I can see Asle's car clearly too, the place where he does so much of his remembering. The road from Dylgja to Bjørgvin which he drives back and forth on during the course of the two days is familiar to me, its twists and its turns, the houses and turnoffs along the way, the view of the fjord that appears and disappears.
Reader, I was there.
marc129's review against another edition
2.0
Beckett meets Knausgard, meets Master Eckhart
As you can notice, this literally was a mixed bag for me. Disorientation is the first impression you get when you start this book, especially if you have not read any other work by the Norwegian writer Fosse before. The author offers an elongated stream of consciousness, with many repetitive elements and sentences without a period, 350 pages long. It is not clear who is speaking: the artist Asle or his friend/neighbor Asleik? Or are they one and the same person, or are there other characters with - coincidentally - the same name? I am by no means the first to suggest that Fosse seems very strongly inspired by Samuel Beckett, his influence is quite obvious.
What we can more or less distinguish is that the narrator drives a few times up and down between his house and the city, helps a friend with a serious alcohol problem (or maybe rather a depression?) and constantly muses about his last work of art, a painting with a horizontal and a vertical stripe, which he associates with intense religious experiences. The story is interrupted by long, banal conversations and trivial acts, and the description of a few touching scenes between a boy and girl, which may just be a flashback of the narrator to his first acquaintance with his recently deceased wife.
Fosse deliberately leaves a lot unclear, but the recurring musings of the main character about his paintings, stressing the light in dark scenes, to me seemed very reminiscent of Karl Ove Knausgard: they share the same obsession with the banal and the sublime in reality, with the light and dark in life. Perhaps this is something typical Scandinavian? ( in the meantime my Goodreads friend Katia kindly informed me Knausgard was - literally - a pupil of Fosse) ). At least with Fosse, there's also a very clear connection with religion: at times the musings of the protagonist in this novel had a clear aesthetic-mystical slant, hence my reference to Master Eckhart. This makes for an enticing read, and at times even resulting in great scenes, but on whole also rather opaque and thus frustrating.
I can understand that some people are absolutely crazy about this, but for me this was just a bit too cerebral, just a bit too much of a jumble of words leading nowhere, to really appeal. I'm not sure at this point whether I'll venture into the next installments of this trilogy. But I’m open to comments to make me change my mind!
As you can notice, this literally was a mixed bag for me. Disorientation is the first impression you get when you start this book, especially if you have not read any other work by the Norwegian writer Fosse before. The author offers an elongated stream of consciousness, with many repetitive elements and sentences without a period, 350 pages long. It is not clear who is speaking: the artist Asle or his friend/neighbor Asleik? Or are they one and the same person, or are there other characters with - coincidentally - the same name? I am by no means the first to suggest that Fosse seems very strongly inspired by Samuel Beckett, his influence is quite obvious.
What we can more or less distinguish is that the narrator drives a few times up and down between his house and the city, helps a friend with a serious alcohol problem (or maybe rather a depression?) and constantly muses about his last work of art, a painting with a horizontal and a vertical stripe, which he associates with intense religious experiences. The story is interrupted by long, banal conversations and trivial acts, and the description of a few touching scenes between a boy and girl, which may just be a flashback of the narrator to his first acquaintance with his recently deceased wife.
Fosse deliberately leaves a lot unclear, but the recurring musings of the main character about his paintings, stressing the light in dark scenes, to me seemed very reminiscent of Karl Ove Knausgard: they share the same obsession with the banal and the sublime in reality, with the light and dark in life. Perhaps this is something typical Scandinavian? ( in the meantime my Goodreads friend Katia kindly informed me Knausgard was - literally - a pupil of Fosse) ). At least with Fosse, there's also a very clear connection with religion: at times the musings of the protagonist in this novel had a clear aesthetic-mystical slant, hence my reference to Master Eckhart. This makes for an enticing read, and at times even resulting in great scenes, but on whole also rather opaque and thus frustrating.
I can understand that some people are absolutely crazy about this, but for me this was just a bit too cerebral, just a bit too much of a jumble of words leading nowhere, to really appeal. I'm not sure at this point whether I'll venture into the next installments of this trilogy. But I’m open to comments to make me change my mind!
glenncolerussell's review against another edition
CONGRATULATIONS TO JON FOSSE FOR WINNING THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
"I already have ten or so big paintings finished plus four or five small ones, something like that, fourteen paintings in all in two stacks next to each other by the kitchen door, since I'm about to have a show, most of the paintings are approximately square..."
So Asle tells us on the opening page of The Other Name.
Asle is a painter living alone on the southwest coast of Norway. I can imagine one of his paintings in the stacks might look something like the artwork above. Or, perhaps this bold diagonal brushstroke can be likened to a section of his largest canvas, the one Asle is working on now, the one on the easel in his studio, a large rectangular painting, wider than it is high, one thick diagonal line painted in brown, the other thick diagonal line painted in purple, the two thick dripping lines crossing in the middle.
Jon Fosse relates his daily schedule when writing this, his longest work: while living in an apartment outside Vienna in Austria, he would wake up at four in the afternoon, start writing at five and continuing through the night until nine the next morning (that's sixteen straight hours of writing!). As the Norwegian author acknowledges, it was a very strange experience. And since he always has written shorter novels, the length of Septology surprised him. Note: Septology is a 667-pager and contains seven parts in three volumes: I-II The Other Name, III-V I Is Another and VI-VII A New Name.
When speaking of his own writing process, Jon Fosse notes he doesn't have a set plan when writing a novel. He just sits down and listens. The novel is fully formed somewhere in his subconscious, and all he has to do is write it down before it disappears – and the hearing happens as he's writing. For Jon, it's too boring to plan things out in advance; rather, it's all about the excitement of the journey into the unknown where something comes into existence that he didn't know before. That is to say, Jon would never write in an autobiographical way. Worth underscoring: Jon Fosse is not writing autofiction a la fellow Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgård or Kjersti Skomsvold.
The action of the novel is straightforward enough: Asle does things like speak with his neighbor Åsleik who clears his driveway when it snows, drives from his home in Dylgja to the small city of Bjørgvin, and, one time while in Bjørgvin, comes to the rescue of another painter by the name of Asle who collapsed dead drunk out in the snow. This second Asle brings up a key question: what is the narrator's relationship with his namesake and how close are their individual identities entwined? After all, both Asle and Asle are unmarried painters with long grey hair, are of similar age, have the same build, and have, or had, an issue with being an alcoholic.
Or, is their relationship more subtle? What's happening to the narrator, Asle? Is he imagining or dreaming or even hallucinating a second self? Or, more plausibly, the second Asle is actually the narrator in his past life, a time when he had way too much to drink, passed out in the snow and required hospitalization.
And the novel's language itself - hypnotic, repetitive, what Jon Fosse terms “slow prose” where he circles back in describing a simple happening or feeling or observation or reflection in ways that are reminiscent of classical music in minimalist mode played on piano or cello or xylophone. Speaking of Septology, Jon said, "I wanted to give each and every moment the time I felt it needed. I wanted the language to flow in a peaceful way."
It's time to shift to an aspect of Jon's novel that is critically important: mystical transformation via direct experience of the divine light. In an interview, Jon relates: “This mystic side has to do with when I was seven years old and close to dying. It was an accident. I saw myself from outside, in a kind of shimmering light, peaceful, a very happy state, and I’m quite sure that accident, that moment, that close-to-death experience formed me as a writer. Without that, I doubt I would have even been one. It’s very fundamental for me.” It's not for nothing that Åsleik says Asle strikes him as a Russian monk. Again, Jon is definitely not writing autofiction but there's an undeniable spiritual kinship between Jon the writer and Asle the painter, as per this snip of Asle's musing on art and life:
“...but in summer too I try to cover the windows and make it as dark as possible before looking at where and how much a picture is shining, yes, to tell the truth I always wait until after I've seen a picture in pitch blackness to be sure I'm done with it, because the eyes get used to the dark in a way and I can see the picture as light and darkness, and see if there's a light shining from the picture, and where, and how much, and it's always, always the darkest part of the picture that shines the most, and I think that that might be because it's in the hopelessness and despair, in the darkness, that God is closest to us...”
With Asle's vision here, the author's following words carry added power: “When I manage to write well, there is a second, silent language. This silent language says what it is all about. It’s not the story, but you can hear something behind it — a silent voice speaking.”
A silent voice speaking. Like Asle, Jon Fosse converted to Catholicism but we shouldn't think of religion in the conventional form. Not at all. Both men read Meister Eckhart and both men's reflections bring to mind not faith so much as a Gnostic knowing, particularly in terms of art and aesthetic experience as a revealer of light.
According to Jon Fosse, writing is a mystery, and painting is a mystery that can't be explained in words. Asle can't explain his paintings and he as author can't explain his writing. Thus, as readers, we are well to open ourselves to the language behind the language – the underlying music.
Coda: A special call-out to translator Damion Searls for rendering Jon Fosse into fluid, clear English.
Norwegian author Jon Fosse, born 1959
rbcp82's review against another edition
5.0
The first of the "Septology" trilogy.
The following sentence appears on page 309:
- Maybe I can come for Christmas with you and Sister this year, I say. -
Such a simple sentence, but the book leads in a way toward this moment that has such a heartrending impact on a reader.
I will write a lengthy review once I'm done with the trilogy, but reading this novel is unlike any other reading experience, for so many reasons. Yes, it creates its own narrative logic, the hypnotically long sentences twines around your head as you read, and yes, it tries to convey "unsayable," and "unwritable" but moreover...
It is a story of a doppelgänger, the book jacket says as much. The narrator's name is Asle, his wife's name Ales, his neighbor's name, Asleik, and yes, his long-time friend who lives in the nearby city is named Asle.
Repetition is of a different kind than that from Bernhard's novels. I thought the repetition here in Fosse's novel was a bit too much, but if it dares to replicate to its utmost minutiae the working of someone's sprawling thought process (both willed and unwilled), then I guess it makes sense how Fosse uses the repetition.
The book is foremostly about a kind of light that resides in oneself, what the narrator called "shining darkness." About "invisible in the visible."
The narrative, who is a painter, says that any painting he creates that is without shining darkness is useless.
Oh, a lot of about one's relationship to "God."
The following excerpt from page 57 will give you a taste of this novel.
---------------------------------
... but that's because of her too, because of Ales, without her I never would have been able to stop needing to drink, I think, and now Ales is waiting for me, she and our child, and I need to get home to them, to my wife, to our child, but what am I thinking? I live alone there, I'm going home to my old house in Dylgja where I used to live with Ales but she's gone now, she's with God now, in a way I can feel so clearly inside me, because she's there inside me too, she isn't walking around on earth any more but I can still talk to her whenever I want to, yes, it's strange, there's no big difference or distance between life and death, between the living and the dead, even though the difference can seem insurmountable it isn't, because, it's true, I talk with Ales every single day, yes, most of the time that's what I'm doing, and we most often talk to each other without words, almost always, just wordlessly, and of course I miss her but since we're still so close and since it won't be long before the time comes when I myself will go over to where she is, yes, I manage just fine, but it's painful, yes, being without her was like being without everything in life, it almost finished me off, and we never had children, there were just the two of us, so why am I thinking that I'm driving home to my wife and child?
The following sentence appears on page 309:
- Maybe I can come for Christmas with you and Sister this year, I say. -
Such a simple sentence, but the book leads in a way toward this moment that has such a heartrending impact on a reader.
I will write a lengthy review once I'm done with the trilogy, but reading this novel is unlike any other reading experience, for so many reasons. Yes, it creates its own narrative logic, the hypnotically long sentences twines around your head as you read, and yes, it tries to convey "unsayable," and "unwritable" but moreover...
It is a story of a doppelgänger, the book jacket says as much. The narrator's name is Asle, his wife's name Ales, his neighbor's name, Asleik, and yes, his long-time friend who lives in the nearby city is named Asle.
Repetition is of a different kind than that from Bernhard's novels. I thought the repetition here in Fosse's novel was a bit too much, but if it dares to replicate to its utmost minutiae the working of someone's sprawling thought process (both willed and unwilled), then I guess it makes sense how Fosse uses the repetition.
The book is foremostly about a kind of light that resides in oneself, what the narrator called "shining darkness." About "invisible in the visible."
The narrative, who is a painter, says that any painting he creates that is without shining darkness is useless.
Oh, a lot of about one's relationship to "God."
The following excerpt from page 57 will give you a taste of this novel.
---------------------------------
... but that's because of her too, because of Ales, without her I never would have been able to stop needing to drink, I think, and now Ales is waiting for me, she and our child, and I need to get home to them, to my wife, to our child, but what am I thinking? I live alone there, I'm going home to my old house in Dylgja where I used to live with Ales but she's gone now, she's with God now, in a way I can feel so clearly inside me, because she's there inside me too, she isn't walking around on earth any more but I can still talk to her whenever I want to, yes, it's strange, there's no big difference or distance between life and death, between the living and the dead, even though the difference can seem insurmountable it isn't, because, it's true, I talk with Ales every single day, yes, most of the time that's what I'm doing, and we most often talk to each other without words, almost always, just wordlessly, and of course I miss her but since we're still so close and since it won't be long before the time comes when I myself will go over to where she is, yes, I manage just fine, but it's painful, yes, being without her was like being without everything in life, it almost finished me off, and we never had children, there were just the two of us, so why am I thinking that I'm driving home to my wife and child?
jayrinehart's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
marilenakarra26's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.5