The Susanne

I sur­render. When I first picked up Min Kamp (yes people, this novel does indeed have a chillingly famil­iar name, but we Nor­we­gi­ans are all used to it by now and find other aspects of the work much more inter­est­ing, tan­tal­ising, excit­ing, annoy­ing, etc. etc.) it was out of a sense of oblig­a­tion, mostly. I was (and still am) con­vinced that as a post­gradu­ate stu­dent of lit­er­at­ure at the time this work comes out it would be simply inex­cus­able for me not to read it. I’m usu­ally not much of an oblig­a­tion reader but this I felt so strongly that I only needed just over a month from receiv­ing your book for Christ­mas before I picked it up and sat down to read. Well, to be per­fectly honest I did flip through a few pages during the Christ­mas hol­i­days – but oh, play­ing out­side in the massive amounts of snow that kept fall­ing was such an allur­ing thought!  …I’m sure you can guess which won in the end.

But I did finally tire of the snow and the cold, and did at last pick up your book again and start to really read it. At first I was not con­vinced. I was made a scep­tic by all the media atten­tion, all the unwaver­ingly pos­it­ive cri­ti­cism and the fact that every­one seemed to me to have fallen for all your tricks. I was determ­ined not to be impressed, but at the same time I was quite curi­ous about what I’d find inside your Pandora’s box of a novel. After all, how many months has it been since a news­pa­per came out in which there was no men­tion of either 1) the indis­put­able great­ness of your work, 2) whether or not/ in which degree the novel is auto­bi­o­graph­ical, or 3) (and this is definitely the most common lately) someone or other men­tioned in your book who feels persecuted/harrassed/wants to refute the ‘charges’ laid against them by the Karl Ove of Min Kamp.

I must say I’m not a little non­plussed at how Min Kamp has been received. Or, wait, let me reph­rase that: I’m not so much non­plussed as curi­ous. How is it that so many read­ers – and the abso­lute major­ity of crit­ics – don’t seem to even con­sider the fact that the truth of the matter is that the truth is really com­pletely imma­ter­ial (and let’s not forget, sub­ject­ive!)? Of course, I real­ise what is hap­pen­ing here; people are swal­low­ing all your tricks whole. But the sense of myth­o­poeism going on, that this is all part of a ploy, a spider’s web in which you try – and succeed - to cap­ture your audi­ences, is not likely to leave me any time soon.

To me, more or less all that mat­ters is the fact that a work of lit­er­at­ure evokes emo­tion in me. I have to feel some­thing, be it sym­pathy, empathy, sad­ness, mirth; as long as there is an emo­tional con­nec­tion I will enjoy the work and regard it as ‘good’. When I’m read­ing a work of fic­tion and feel that recog­ni­tion, that sense that this could be writ­ten about me, des­pite the fact that I am so com­pletely dif­fer­ent from the person being portrayed… that will never cease to enthral me.

So why have I sur­rendered, why am I waving my white flag high in the air with no shame, com­pletely unabashed?

To para­phrase Geir in Min Kamp 2: ‘You can write twenty pages about one visit to the loo and have your readers’ eyes water.’

Old and New…

Today star­ted out lovely and sunny and then took a nasty turn some time between 9 am and 4 pm. Never mind that awful weather (or the head­ache, or the tired­ness), thought I, and stopped by the wine mono­poly on my way home to check out their News-​shelf. Just a minute later, I left there feel­ing happy and bright, car­ry­ing two bottles of Punk IPA from the amaz­ing Brew Dog brew­ery. Having opened a bottle and tasted it, I’m now even hap­pier – as it’s abso­lutely deli­cious. Ser­i­ously. Yey Brew Dog! Oh and the reason I picked it up in the first place is of course that I remem­ber it from an epis­ode of Oz and James Drink to Bri­tain; they both seemed to like it and the Brew Dog guys were so Scot­tishly sexy I just knew I’d love the beer. And I did!

Punk IPA from Brew­Dog on Vimeo.

Find our more at www.​brew​dog.com You can invest in Brew­Dog at www.​equity​for​punks.com

Last night I had my friend and newly con­ver­ted Austen addict Nat­alia over for dinner and P&P (Pride & Pre­ju­dice for those not in on the Austen lingo). It was a fine night – the unbeat­able com­bin­a­tion of deli­cious food (shrimp with garlic and chilli, scal­lops and cauliflower purée), deli­cious wine and deli­cious Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth of course) – really left little to be desired. And then Nat­alia showed up with the pret­ti­est bou­quet of flowers I’ve seen in ever so long! And they do look lovely on my bed­side table, don’t they. Espe­cially on this beau­ti­ful, sunny day…

As it turns out, work­ing steady hours and get­ting into a daily routine really agrees with me! I am revert­ing back into my ‘original state’ as a morn­ing person, early bird, call it what you like but I’m there, I’m up at six and I’m not bothered by it (except on the [not so very rare] occa­sions that I’ve been out the night before, but even then I’m up early com­pared to how late I’ve been out). I’ve also star­ted being able to get to sleep incred­ibly early; ten or even nine in the even­ing – and still I’m not bothered! I actu­ally love being up before the sun and being able to watch the sun­rise from my 5th storey window. And having my usual scrambled eggs (and cured ham on spe­cial days) whilst read­ing the morn­ing paper and not having to worry about get­ting to work on time because I’m up so early I’ve oceans of time! Per­haps it’s all due to the fact that I’m loving my intern­ship so much and I’m loving the courses I’m taking this semester so much and – actu­ally, I’m pretty cer­tain people will start find­ing me quite obnox­ious from all this talk of ‘Look at me! Look at how happy I am! Look at how great my life is!’… but, oh well. What do I care? I’ll just be happy and self-​absorbed, or per­haps hap­pily self-​absorbed, or per­haps both?

Ps, this is what I feel like. Every day:

photo: http://​scra​petv.com/