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A review by marc129
The Other Name: Septology I-II by Jon Fosse
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!