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A review by spenkevich
Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse
3.0
Jon Fosse, dubbed ‘the Becektt of the 21st Century’ by French newspaper Le Monde, has a staggeringly impressive career and output. The Norwegian novelist, poet, Ibsen Award-winning playwright has published over thirty books and twenty-eight plays, been named Chevalier to the French Ordre national du Mérite, been granted a lifetime stipend by the Norwegian government to pursue his craft, been published in over 40 languages and is the most produced living playwright in the world. Oh and he is also a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023. Fosse is an international success yet, here in America from which I am writing, he is all but unheard of. His novels are often abstract and ethereal, which may point towards the lack of commercial acceptance in an American culture and the limited English translations of his work available, but anyone who sails the river of his ever-flowing prose can’t deny the somber beauty carrying them forth. Morning and Evening (Morgen og Kveld), first released in the original Norwegian in 2000, has finally been beautifully rendered into English by translator Damion Searls. With this new edition from Dalkey Archive, who has previously published [b:Melancholy|118449|Melancholy|Jon Fosse|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348206514l/118449._SY75_.jpg|114030] I & II as well as [b:Aliss at the Fire|8238557|Aliss at the Fire|Jon Fosse|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1340647155l/8238557._SX50_.jpg|13085981], alongside a collection of Fosse’s essays, we are granted a greater glimpse into a brilliant and celebrated mind regrettably underappreciated by an English speaking audience.
There is a very theatrical feel to Fosse’s novels as if they could easily be converted to dramatic form. Despite being a rather internal novel, Morning and Evening is actually quite visual. Sparse and with few changes of setting, much of the book involves characters coming and going as if on a stage, and it is not a great stretch to imagine the novel performed by a theatre group. What would be lost, however, is the marvelous stream-of-conscious puzzlement and repetitious prose that take us into the human soul in a way that would be inaccessible through visuals alone.
Morning and Evening is simple on the surface. A man, Johannes, is born, and years later, the same man dies. Not much actually happens in the novel, yet somehow the entirety of a life lived crawls out from the small crack of novelistic space. Fosse has a unique style that creates quiet novels with a roaring fluidity marked by repetition and unhindered by traditional, or virtually any, punctuation. The lack of periods and new paragraphs beginning without capitalization emphasizes the way life moves in a continuous flow, and it is the bare, natural and quotidian aspects of life that Fosse best mines for universal understanding.
Morning and Evening shines by compressing a lifespan down to an utterly basic and mundane essence. Divided into two major sections, the first being the father witnessing Johannes’s birth and the second letting the reader walk hand-in-hand with Johannes on a seemingly normal day where everything around him feels intangibly different. As the second section unfolds, we are given fleeting glimpses at the key elements of Johannes’ life as they spiral together down a drain toward death. This compressed essence is like the thesis statement of a life’s ‘meaning’, and over the short novel Fosse examines the way we ascribe meaning on a world lacking inherent meaning. 'and everything is in a way heavy in itself, everything in a way announces itself and announces everything you do with it,' he writes. When we see objects, we understand them through our perception of what they mean to us through their use, their name, or even through association with past events containing the object. An object is forever drenched in the residue of our experiences with it, becoming a part of us whereas it would be meaningless without our perspective ruling over it.
Nietzsche wrote that ‘God is dead,' inviting us into a world of possibility with no objective morality. How weightless the set-pieces of our existence would be with no defined purpose to validate their being. Fosse employs frequent repetition of statements and ideas which function like a refrain in the melody of his prose to insert his messages in our heads like a musical hook. There are frequent moments when characters assert the belief that there is a 'lower god' which rules the world and not an 'all-powerful' God which would have created the world. Perhaps in a world where God has turned away, as Fosse reminds us time and again, we ourselves become the lesser gods. An individual gives meaning to the surrounding world in ways which spell out a personal story, giving individualized substance to the weightlessness of experience when assessing one’s own existence.
The image of death presented in the novel is especially reassuring considering the depiction of the world with all it’s 'darkness and all the terrible evil...' Olai considers the implications of bringing forth a child into this world 'starting out on his own life, out in the hard world, already you are connected to both God’s goodness and a lower god or devil…' If not for the lowly goodness we decide to find in the world, all we would be left with is fear and a void and death would be 'to be dissolved and turn back into nothing...from nothing to nothing, that’s the path of life…' It is this fear of the nothing and the evils of the world which makes us believe there must be meaning and a god of some sorts, something to pacify us into continuing in the dark, continuing our species. Most importantly, this belief embraces us into accepting the inevitable oblivion at the end of all our timelines.
Peter, best friend to Johannes, is the comforting face sent to usher him down the path of acceptance. A fisherman with long, unkempt hair and a calm demeanor, his character is sure to invoke Christ-like comparisons. A pivotal scene finds Johannes and Peter out fishing and Johannes' bait is unable to sink below the surface.
While Morning and Evening has an obvious biblical undercurrent, the book benefits from Fosse’s message which may be read as a non-denominational, philosophical inquiry into meaning that uses biblical principles as pre-existing guideposts rather than religious dogma. 'God does exist,' insists Johannes’ father, Olai, 'but far far away and very very close...he shows himself, both in the individual person and in the world.' While the book can be read at face value as individuals being agents of God in an evil world, the novel also works metaphorically as a solipsistic investigation of the inescapable, internal consciousness making us each gods of our own realm of reality within the void of shared reality. Fosse’s works are open to interpretation, and this is as much their source joy as their attempts at universality. The novel’s stream-of-conscious style is only broken up by a period in one particular place:
Fosse slowly and steadily twists the screws in his work, increasing tension and awe so gradually that it is hardly noticeable until the reader is practically overcome by it at the conclusion. The novel progresses down a path which is, admittedly, predictable though Fosse’s goal is not to shock readers with a cheap trick dropping the floor from under them. The effect is there, however the novel does slog and feel flat from all the humdrum ideas and predictability. He shows his authorial hand throughout so readers may focus on the internal human tragedy rather than the plot, and the novel is all the better for it. Fosse’s prose lives up to his message and is imbued with a heavy weightlessness. Morning and Evening is a brief work in a minor key sung in hushed tones and is certainly one worth experiencing despite feeling like an overused chord progression. With the help of Dalkey Archive and Damion Searls’ crisp translation, Fosse’s voice will reverberate within a new audience.
3.5/5
There is a very theatrical feel to Fosse’s novels as if they could easily be converted to dramatic form. Despite being a rather internal novel, Morning and Evening is actually quite visual. Sparse and with few changes of setting, much of the book involves characters coming and going as if on a stage, and it is not a great stretch to imagine the novel performed by a theatre group. What would be lost, however, is the marvelous stream-of-conscious puzzlement and repetitious prose that take us into the human soul in a way that would be inaccessible through visuals alone.
Morning and Evening is simple on the surface. A man, Johannes, is born, and years later, the same man dies. Not much actually happens in the novel, yet somehow the entirety of a life lived crawls out from the small crack of novelistic space. Fosse has a unique style that creates quiet novels with a roaring fluidity marked by repetition and unhindered by traditional, or virtually any, punctuation. The lack of periods and new paragraphs beginning without capitalization emphasizes the way life moves in a continuous flow, and it is the bare, natural and quotidian aspects of life that Fosse best mines for universal understanding.
Morning and Evening shines by compressing a lifespan down to an utterly basic and mundane essence. Divided into two major sections, the first being the father witnessing Johannes’s birth and the second letting the reader walk hand-in-hand with Johannes on a seemingly normal day where everything around him feels intangibly different. As the second section unfolds, we are given fleeting glimpses at the key elements of Johannes’ life as they spiral together down a drain toward death. This compressed essence is like the thesis statement of a life’s ‘meaning’, and over the short novel Fosse examines the way we ascribe meaning on a world lacking inherent meaning. 'and everything is in a way heavy in itself, everything in a way announces itself and announces everything you do with it,' he writes. When we see objects, we understand them through our perception of what they mean to us through their use, their name, or even through association with past events containing the object. An object is forever drenched in the residue of our experiences with it, becoming a part of us whereas it would be meaningless without our perspective ruling over it.
Nietzsche wrote that ‘God is dead,' inviting us into a world of possibility with no objective morality. How weightless the set-pieces of our existence would be with no defined purpose to validate their being. Fosse employs frequent repetition of statements and ideas which function like a refrain in the melody of his prose to insert his messages in our heads like a musical hook. There are frequent moments when characters assert the belief that there is a 'lower god' which rules the world and not an 'all-powerful' God which would have created the world. Perhaps in a world where God has turned away, as Fosse reminds us time and again, we ourselves become the lesser gods. An individual gives meaning to the surrounding world in ways which spell out a personal story, giving individualized substance to the weightlessness of experience when assessing one’s own existence.
ll the things are normal things but they have become somehow dignified, and golden, and heavy as though they weighed much much more than themselves and at the same time had no weightWe read the tremors of a self-authored set of purpose and meaning as they wane to reveal a weightless reality upon which they were built. Fosse’s tone is not one of sorrow or fear but of simple freedom. 'he has a feeling that he will never see all of this again,' Fosse writes, 'but that it will stay in him, as what he is, as a sound…' Death takes the world from Johannes, but he also takes the world with him by carrying it in his eternal memories. It creates a comforting vision of death and Johannes revisits the standardly expected places, friends and family that is most dear to him before venturing from this world.
The image of death presented in the novel is especially reassuring considering the depiction of the world with all it’s 'darkness and all the terrible evil...' Olai considers the implications of bringing forth a child into this world 'starting out on his own life, out in the hard world, already you are connected to both God’s goodness and a lower god or devil…' If not for the lowly goodness we decide to find in the world, all we would be left with is fear and a void and death would be 'to be dissolved and turn back into nothing...from nothing to nothing, that’s the path of life…' It is this fear of the nothing and the evils of the world which makes us believe there must be meaning and a god of some sorts, something to pacify us into continuing in the dark, continuing our species. Most importantly, this belief embraces us into accepting the inevitable oblivion at the end of all our timelines.
Peter, best friend to Johannes, is the comforting face sent to usher him down the path of acceptance. A fisherman with long, unkempt hair and a calm demeanor, his character is sure to invoke Christ-like comparisons. A pivotal scene finds Johannes and Peter out fishing and Johannes' bait is unable to sink below the surface.
The sea doesn’t want you, he saysThe scene recalls the biblical moment of fishermen John and Simon Peter being called by Jesus as he walks across the water and reflects Peter’s calling Johannes into death. The unknown beneath the surface is gone, all that’s left is the earth and it’s previously known wonders locked in Johannes’ memory.
and Peter wipes the tears away
Now all that’s left is earth, Peter says
While Morning and Evening has an obvious biblical undercurrent, the book benefits from Fosse’s message which may be read as a non-denominational, philosophical inquiry into meaning that uses biblical principles as pre-existing guideposts rather than religious dogma. 'God does exist,' insists Johannes’ father, Olai, 'but far far away and very very close...he shows himself, both in the individual person and in the world.' While the book can be read at face value as individuals being agents of God in an evil world, the novel also works metaphorically as a solipsistic investigation of the inescapable, internal consciousness making us each gods of our own realm of reality within the void of shared reality. Fosse’s works are open to interpretation, and this is as much their source joy as their attempts at universality. The novel’s stream-of-conscious style is only broken up by a period in one particular place:
[Olai] will be the father of a little fellow who will also be named Johannes, after his father. There is a God, yet, Olai thinks. But he is far away, and he is very close. And he is not all-knowing and not all-powerful. And it is not this God who rules over the world and humankind…From here the novel progresses uninterrupted. Fosse stops the flow to punctuate the importance of the Father, both God and human fathers. Life stops at God and only begins from him. Similarly, Olai and his wife Marta are also creationary forces, the lesser gods that rule not from on high but from within the world. Beginning the novel with Olai witnessing the birth of the character who dominates the rest of the novel shows the endless flow of life from one being into another.
Fosse slowly and steadily twists the screws in his work, increasing tension and awe so gradually that it is hardly noticeable until the reader is practically overcome by it at the conclusion. The novel progresses down a path which is, admittedly, predictable though Fosse’s goal is not to shock readers with a cheap trick dropping the floor from under them. The effect is there, however the novel does slog and feel flat from all the humdrum ideas and predictability. He shows his authorial hand throughout so readers may focus on the internal human tragedy rather than the plot, and the novel is all the better for it. Fosse’s prose lives up to his message and is imbued with a heavy weightlessness. Morning and Evening is a brief work in a minor key sung in hushed tones and is certainly one worth experiencing despite feeling like an overused chord progression. With the help of Dalkey Archive and Damion Searls’ crisp translation, Fosse’s voice will reverberate within a new audience.
3.5/5