It’s maybe four o’clock when Trygve and I go out to the old barn. My grandfather built this barn but now it’s falling apart, the unpainted planks in the walls are rotting away, there are holes in the wall you can see through in some places and a couple of roof tiles lying in the nettles, three more sticking out of a mud puddle. A rusty hook is hanging from the door-frame. The door is hanging from the door-frame too, attached with hay-baling cord, swinging crookedly. A warm summer day, afternoon.
Snippets, fragments, glimpses, snapshots, call them what you will, Scenes From a Childhood is littered with such memories, grounded in real life events but fictionalised for effect. Somewhere on the spectrum between autofiction and autobiographical fiction. The anecdotes include memories of first kisses, playing in the snow, tuning a guitar, arguments with parents, teenage hiking trips and the birth of a sibling.
Jon Fosse (pronounced yoon FAW seh) wrote in the 2017 edition that his goal had been to write about his childhood, ‘the way things really happened.’ But,
that turned out to be impossible for me. What I wrote was similar to my own experience in some ways, but not a single one of these pieces ended up being entirely accurate. I cannot help writing fiction. That said, I do, for instance have a younger sister close to my age, and I did once have to play a guitar at a local dance with only five strings on my guitar. Nothing in these stories is made up.
My Fitzcarraldo Editions 2018 publication also includes several of Fosse’s other short stories, bringing them together around the idea of childhood. They are quite different in form and style, which makes this particular edition a great way to get a taste of his writing style and themes to see if you like them or not.
It turns out I do.
The pieces are not presented chronologically, but starts with Scenes From a Childhood (1994). These brief stories are easy to read, presented as they are almost like diary entries.
The next story is barely four pages long. Det var då det byrja (1987) was translated by Damion Searls as How It Started in 2013 and tells of a teenage gathering after an organised youth group meeting with the local pastor’s wife, where a Norwegian version of spin the bottle (Touch, Hug, Kiss) takes place. Uncertain teenage angst and disappointed love is the (usual) result.
Steindroymt (2013) or Dreamt in Stone was translated in 2015. It’s another short story which you can also read on the Granta website. From my limited understanding of Fosse’s writing, these two short stories seem to be moving us closer to the style of writing that he is most famous for.
The stones sing and they don’t sing. Even when the fog is gone the stones lie there, leaning against each other, they lie there so nicely, as though they have been put together by a wonderfully dexterous stonemason, they lay there like that after the avalanche too.
Stream of consciousness, dream-like, unhurried musings that circle around ideas and feelings. One is not quite sure if the protagonist is drugged or drunk or just in that weird stage before dropping off into deep sleep. They are introspective in nature; an enigmatic soul peering out at the world, trying to make sense of their reality.
At this particular point in the book I was happy to continue but still waiting to see what all the Nobel Prize fuss was about. Why did they praise Fosse so highly ‘for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable….his radical reduction of language and dramatic action…[his]… ability to evoke man’s loss of orientation…[his]…great warmth and humour…and…naïve vulnerability’ ?
And then I read Og så kan hunden komme (1991), translated by Searls in 1993 as And Then My Dog Will Come Back To Me .
The dog is in the living room looking up at me. He starts running in circles around me, restless, whimpering a little. I can tell he wants to go out. I open the living room door and the dog dashes out into the hall, wagging his tail.
Here, finally, are the long passages of stream of consciousness which I have come to associate with Fosse’s writing (and one of the reasons I was a little nervous about reading him). I need not have worried. I was mesmerised as this story took a dark and unexpected turn. Rage overwhelms our protagonist, fuelling a crazed midnight excursion that is stunning in its simplicity and complexity. The results are tragic. I read these fifty-odd pages in breathless awe, shocked, disconcerted by the inconsistencies that occur in the narrative the longer it goes on. Did this really happen? or not? is it a dream? is he mad? what really happened here?
If this is what the rest of Fosse’s books are like, I’m in!
The final piece, Søster (2000), Little Sister was first published as a children’s book. Over about ten pages, several vignettes describe a young boy (4yrs old) and his 3yr old sister as they push the boundaries of their known world and parental rules – sleeping outside in the long grass at night, walking down to the shore to pick strawberries without any adults, a childish tantrum.
After the dark, immersive, almost hypnotic dog story, this simpler style was almost jarring. It is my only quibble with the book – the dog story should have been saved for last, given how different it is from the other pieces.
Scenes From A Childhood is a fabulous introduction to Fosse’s writing, although the dog story is clearly the best. The other stories may fail to dazzle, but they are easy to read and they gave me a sense of Fosse’s recurring themes and preoccupations, his interiority and the way he layers and circles around ideas, building them up and getting closer to a version of reality before pulling it all down again.
You can read some of the snippets here. Asymptote is an online site for ‘world literature in translation’ and the winner of the 2015 London Book Fair’s International Literary Translation Initaive Award. It’s a site I plan to explore.
Original Title: Prosa frå ein oppvekst
ISBN: 9781910695531
Translator: Damion Searles
Imprint: Fitcarraldo Editions
Published: 2018 (originally published 1994)
Format: Paperback with French flaps
Pages: 156
Dates Read: 17th - 19th October 2024
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