German Literature Book Prizes

I took note of the recent awards for the literature written in German. Only some of them are translated to English for now.

German Book Prize (Deutscher Buchpreis) [web]

Year Author Book (DE) Book (EN) Publisher
2022 Kim de l’Horizon Blutbuch DuMont Buchverlag
2021 Antje Rávik Strubel Blaue Frau S. Fischer Verlag
2020 Anne Weber Annette, ein Heldinnenepos Matthes & Seitz
2019 Saša Stanišić Herkunft Where You Come From Luchterhand Literaturverlag
2018 Inger-Maria Mahlke Archipel Rowohlt
2017 Robert Menasse Die Hauptstadt The Capital Suhrkamp
2016 Bodo Kirchhoff Widerfahrnis Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt

Leipzig Book Fair Prize – Fiction [web]

Year Author Book (DE) Book (EN) Publisher
2022 Tomer Gardi Eine runde Sache Literaturverlag Droschl
2021 Iris Hanika Echos Kammern Literaturverlag Droschl
2020 Lutz Seiler Stern 111 Suhrkamp
2019 Anke Stelling Schäfchen im Trockenen Higher Ground Verbrecher
2018 Esther Kinsky Hain. Geländeroman Suhrkamp
2017 Natascha Wodin Sie kam aus Mariupol Rowohlt
2016 Guntram Vesper Frohburg Schöffling & Co.

Swiss Book Prize [web]

Year Author Book (DE) Book (EN) Publisher
2021 Kim de l’Horizon Blutbuch DuMont Buchverlag
2020 Anna Stern das alles hier, jetzt Salis
2019 Sibylle Berg GRM. Brainfuck KiWi-Taschenbuch
2018 Peter Stamm Die sanfte Gleichgültigkeit der Welt FISCHER Taschenbuch
2017 Jonas Lüscher Kraft Beck C. H.
2016 Christian Kracht Die Toten The Dead FISCHER Taschenbuch
2015 Monique Schwitter Eins im Andern FISCHER Taschenbuch

The Georg Büchner Prize [web]

Year Author Praise
2022 Emine Sevgi Özdamar Ihre Theaterstücke, Erzählungen und Romane verleihen der deutschen Literatur durch die Intensität ihres Erzählens und ihre herausragende Sprachkraft eine neue poetische Weite.
deepl: Her plays, stories and novels give German literature a new poetic breadth through the intensity of her storytelling and her outstanding power of language.
2021 Clemens J. Setz Mit staunenswerter Vielseitigkeit, mit enzyklopädischem Wissen, mit einem Reichtum der poetischen und sprachschöpferischen Imagination demonstriert Clemens J. Setz eine radikale Zeitgenossenschaft…
deepl: With astonishing versatility, with encyclopaedic knowledge, with a wealth of poetic and linguistic imagination, Clemens J. Setz demonstrates a radical contemporan.
2020 Elke Erb Ihr gelingt es wie keiner anderen, die Freiheit und Wendigkeit der Gedanken in der Sprache zu verwirklichen…
deepl: She succeeds like no other in realizing the freedom and agility of thought in language….
2019 Lukas Bärfuss …der mit hoher Stilsicherheit und formalem Variationsreichtum stets neu und anders existentielle Grundsituationen des modernen Lebens erkundet.
deepl: …who, with a high degree of stylistic confidence and a wealth of formal variation, constantly explores the basic existential situations of modern life in new and different ways.
2018 Terézia Mora …ihre eminente Gegenwärtigkeit und lebendige Sprachkunst, die Alltagsidiom und Poesie, Drastik und Zartheit vereint.
deepl: …her eminent presence and lively linguistic art, which combines everyday idiom and poetry, drasticness and tenderness.
2017 Jan Wagner …dessen Gedichte spielerische Sprachfreude und meisterhafte Formbeherrschung vereinen.
deepl: …whose poems combine a playful joy of language and a masterful command of form.
2016 Marcel Beyer Seine Texte widmen sich der Vergegenwärtigung deutscher Vergangenheit mit derselben präzisen Hingabe, mit der sie dem Sound der Jetztzeit nachspüren.
deepl: His texts are dedicated to the visualization of the German past with the same precise devotion with which they trace the sound of the present.
2015 Rainald Goetz … der sich mit einzigartiger Intensität zum Chronisten der Gegenwart und ihrer Kultur gemacht hat. Er hat sie beschrieben, zur Anschauung gebracht und zu Wort kommen lassen, er hat sie gefeiert und verdammt und mit den Mitteln der Theorie analysiert.
deepl: … who with unique intensity has made himself a chronicler of the present and its culture. He has described it, brought it to view and made it speak, he has celebrated and condemned it and analyzed it with the means of theory.

Some Article Abstracts on Houellebecq’s Serotonin

It’s been some time since I read Houellebecq’s earlier novels. A week ago, I read Serotonin (2019) with bewilderment and discomfort. While trying to gather my senses, I thought I can store some ideas about his literature here, maybe to come back in the future. His interview after the publication of the novel in Denmark was also interesting. I was unable to notice the weight of the agricultural crisis in France in the novel before encountering the interview. Also, the story of the initial disappearance from one’s own life overlapped with the villain of the documentary I recently watched, Don’t F**K with Cats: Hunting An Internet Killer (2019).

Random keywords: depression, sexuality, capitalism, agriculture, commodification, memory, Europe


Article: Gut feelings: depression as an embodied and affective phenomenon in Houellebecq’s Serotonin
Author(s): Jenny Slatman, Inge van de Ven
Abstract:
Current debates about the possible causes of depression reinforce the age-old body–mind dualism: while some claim that depression is caused by psychological or societal stress, others underline that it results from a shortage of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the central nervous system. This paper shows that Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel Serotonin can be read as an account of depression that goes beyond this body–mind dualism. Moreover, we will argue that his way of narrating invites us to reconsider the restorative power of narrative in ‘pathography,’ a genre that is a primary focus within medical humanities. The first section of the paper discusses, while drawing on Wilson’s work on new materialism, that although the title of the novel Serotonin may suggest that Houellebecq takes sides with those who believe that depression is a brain disease, the protagonist of the novel suffers mainly from his gut feelings, which affects his entire embodied existence. Against the background of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, the second section specifies this existential disruption in terms of an embodied ‘I cannot.’ In the third section, we make clear how Houellebecq’s way of narrating—plotless and episodic—reinforces these embodied feelings of incapacity. The final section, then, traces how Houellebecq, by means of his style of writing and his choice of themes, succeeds in transferring gut feelings onto the reader. If illness narratives aim at sharing experiences of illness, the ‘narrative’ of depression, so we argue, had better take the form of an anti-narrative or a chaos story. Indeed, Houellebecq’s anti-narrative succeeds in passing on to the reader the experience of a debilitating gut feeling, and a gradual loss of grip that manifests itself as a temporal and spatial disorientation.

Article: À la recherche de l’amour perdu : Sérotonine de Michel Houellebecq
Author(s): Eva Voldřichová Beránková
Abstract: Serotonin (2019) undoubtedly represents Michel Houellebecq’s most “Proustian” novel. His narrator, a forty-six-year-old agricultural engineer, who became desperately impotent by a regular absorption of “new-generation anti-depressants”, scrutinizes his “phallocentric memory” to revisit all his missed appointments with the great Romantic Love that could have saved him. Our analysis proves that Serotonin is not just a “prefiguration of the Yellow vests movement”, an “illustration of European agricultural crisis” or a “conservative flirt with Christianism” (which commentators are accustomed to identify in Houellebecq’s work) but also a somewhat astonishing reflection on the functioning of memory and the mechanisms of love.

Article: Sérotonine ou la quête du bonheur selon Michel Houellebecq
Author(s): Ruth Amar
Abstract: In this article I will analyze the quest of happiness in Serotonin, the latest book by Michel Houellebecq. But first, it will be necessary to consider the aspects of happiness as they appear in his work. Being an avid and intellectual reader, Houellebecq summons many authors in his novels, which he quotes more or less literally. Two of them, namely Auguste Comte, the father of positivism, and Schopenhauer, the spiritual master of Houellebecq, are seemingly the major influences of the conception of happiness in the work. Apparently, these two philosophers have nothing in common, but it is possible to identify some similarities in relation with the idea of happiness expressed in Houellebecq’s novels. In his latest book Serotonin, the interest in happiness is even more precise, but this time, it is no longer a question of philosophy: the scientific title emerges in the form of a hormone: a neurotransmitter influencing our mood, used in antidepressants for better mental health. Does this mean that Houellebecq has given up? Or is it, on the contrary, a new effort of resistance? In this article I will try to answer the question and understand if the quest for happiness persists in his latest novel.

Article: Get Hard or Die Trying: Impotence and the Displacement of the White Male in Michel Houellebecq’s Sérotonine
Author(s): André Pettman
Abstract: Taking up Paul Preciado’s theories in his book Testo Junkie (2013) concerning contemporary biocapitalism, this essay argues that Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel, Sérotonine (2019), represents a radical move away from the hegemony of the white cis-male, heterosexual body depicted in his earlier literary corpus. The narrator of Sérotonine is stripped of his sexual capacity by an antidepressant that makes him impotent. Once unable to escape the stimuli and commodities designed to incite pleasure, thus leaving the body in a constant state of arousal, Houellebecq’s male subject is now unequivocally portrayed as being flaccid. Rather than disclose a sense of reconciliation or resignation with the market, the novel reveals an expulsion from it entirely. The narrator’s futile attempts to reinstate his male dominance further demonstrate the totalizing presence of sex, pleasure, and pharmaceutical drugs in Houellebecq’s novels and attest to the notion that the once-hegemonic male body of his literary universe is now simply hanging on to life itself as contemporary biocapitalism careens forward on its never-ending quest to maximize pleasure and desire.

Article: A Matter of Life and Death: Michel Houellebecq’s Vibrant Materialism
Author(s): Gai Farchi
Abstract: Michel Houellebecq’s fiction is often perceived as essentially materialistic, in the sense that it follows the decline of humanity in the loss of transcendence, while every human interaction, including love and sex, is reduced to the logic of the capitalist market. Taking on a new materialistic approach, this article aims to challenge this presumption with readings that emphasize the vibrant, subversive nature of materiality in Houellebecq’s fiction, particularly in the novels La carte et le territoire and Sérotonine. Drawing on recent new materialistic thought, I show that the shared destiny Houellebecq ascribes to both humans and objects under the logic of late capitalism makes, at times, this interdependence challenging to political economy. Vibrant matter, or the ex-nihilo rise of the “thing” from within the “object”, becomes the ultimate rescue of both the human and the non-human in his novels. This perspective enables us to conceive of Houellebecq not merely as a pessimistic voice lamenting the decline of the human, but one that presents affirmative posthuman ethics, undermining the circulation of commodities, and of people as commodities, from the margins of the system itself.

Another Day in Cinema

So I went to a cinema the second time after the pandemic. The city should be small or the cinemas are concentrated in definitive areas because this cinema was almost in the same street as the first cinema I went to. The first was Neues Off, this one is called Rollberg, one of the cinemas that are known for showing films in the original language, iiuc. A bit further in Hermanstraße in the Tempelhof direction, and then on the left, on Rollbergstraße. As in my previous visit, I went early and spent some time in Hasenhaide before the film, reading a book and watching the bubble soccer people.

Matthias & Maxime (2019) was shown with its original language that is Quebec French with German subtitles. I was thinking that I can understand more with faith in the trans-national language of the film. I recall Jim Jarmusch watching Asian films, without understanding, maybe even directing one (?). The film has a universal language, I thought. But that didn’t go as I expected. I was unable to catch the details of the dialogues despite being able to follow the plot. Were there jokes about Jacques Rivette, other references to the filmmaking?

The film had the signature scenes of Dolan, music video-like moments where the emotions and desires pile up, mommy issues, and a youngster realizing oneself. The ending wasn’t clear for me and I kept it unclear, didn’t do any readings on it. Maybe I didn’t get a key dialogue towards the end. Both the struggles about speaking English and the widely adapted attitude of looking down on the language were entertaining and instructive. I didn’t know that these tensions exist in the Quebec community.

The facial scar was an inventive device that Dolan utilized throughout the film. As a human being with several skin diseases, I found it relatable. Who knows, maybe those will disappear in a magical moment – probably a transitory one. I couldn’t understand the contract with the aunt (?) due to my lack of understanding of the vocabulary. The tension at the farewell party was intense and the parents’ excessive joy and enthusiasm during the film screening were exciting.

 

Back to the Film Theater, Fabian

Today, I returned to a film theater after more than a year and a half, probably the longest break since I was seven. I have been to some nice open-air cinemas lately, but those are not film theaters in terms of the audio-visual, historical, psychological, etc., qualities. The films I’ve seen in these open-air cinemas also weren’t that impressive -maybe Druk (2020) would have more impact in a closed space with its emphasis on the joy of music. One (ok boomer) needs to go deep in the dark and confined space. My chance was that it was a decent, or beautiful and a relevant film for me, Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde, by Dominik Graf, adapted from Erich Kästner’s novel, taking place in the late Weimar era. I had been thrillingly onboarded to this period with Berlin Alexanderplatz and Babylon Berlin. This was the cherry on the cake, in a tragic sense.

I’ve been seeking the last film I’ve seen in the theater before the lockdowns, but I’m not sure yet. When I was working as a flexible freelancer, I was mostly focusing on and getting prepared for ‘what to do next’ and not consuming much cultural content as I did before. Maybe it was Om det oändliga (2019) that I watched in late February or early March. Roy Andersson and shutting people up in small rooms, how coincidental.

So I watched Fabian in Neues Off Kino, a Yorck cinema. Yorck is an arthouse film theater chain that I have wanted to discover since day one. There should probably be more alternative spaces for arthouse cinema in Berlin, but Yorck seems the most popular one. Neues Off Kino was the only one I found an English subtitled version of the film, so I’m grateful. Even though I found the audio volume a bit low initially, the middle-sized salon, the atmosphere, and the pre-film content were really nice -no irrelevant and noisy ads, I appreciate it. I was almost crying with the first blue lights hitting on the screen after the curtains are open. That “Europa Cinemas” trailer showing the cities with cinemas belonging to the network and ending by giving numbers about the thousands of cities and hundreds of cinemas there, was a blast. It’s a recurring video that spans my theater rituals since my university years. I have been encountering this trailer in the majority of the films I’ve seen in Ankara (Büyülü Fener) and İstanbul (Beyoğlu Sineması). Seeing the same publicity in a cinema with seven or eight audiences inside made me feel that even the cities or the country change, these moviegoers and the non-mainstream cinema atmosphere may stay the same. A sense of continuity, even if it is in the dawn of the death of cinema.

I haven’t read the novel yet, but I will -pity that I haven’t encountered the author before. It was published in 1931, under the title Fabian: Die Geschichte eines Moralisten (Fabian: The Story of a Moralist). The film also takes place largely in that year, even though IMDB says it’s the 1920s, Berlin. The protagonist is a man in his early thirties, trying to be an author, working -until fired- as an ad writer in an agency promoting cigarettes, tuneful with the era and the smoky films about it. As in many classical stories, he meets the girl, and it goes. I always think that I’m not too fond of stories that take the classical love stories to the center until I encounter one of them, then that judgment is transformed instinctively for some time.

Unemployment, unclear future, PTSD after the Great War, the rise of the Nazis, gay subculture, patriarchy, nightlife, prostitution, interest in cinema, literature (Lessing), and art are some undercurrents in the love story. Undine (2020) was one of the last films that I felt the lovers’ desire is touchingly depicted in the film; this was a sensual follow-up in that sense. Some early moments depict the dynamic rave atmosphere with experimental cinematography that you can find in a multi-window editing software or playing multiple videos on the same screen, which I found too simplistic. The framing was the Academy Ratio, 1.37:1, as often used in period films. I loved how the curtains were closed to that distance while the film was starting. The film opens with a long take that evidently sways in a metro station today, but as it climbs up the stairs, there we travel in time. Intertwining the archival footage with the story was another idea that worked well in the film and blended concise memory images into the scenes.

As a common trope in the stories of poverty, there are rich friends and patrons -or abusers. Fabian’s rich friend Stephan is a wealthy but tragic character who loses the woman he loves and is rejected by academia due to dirty political tricks. Cornelia, on the other hand, as far as the audience knows, is a law student working in a production company to be an actress, and she becomes one, a successful one, only after moving into the producer’s house. She keeps her life a secret from Fabian for some time until she can not. Her way of expressing her emotions is an unparalleled one. I recall a scene where she slaps Fabian in one scene since he doesn’t remember exactly how many days they were together.

Fabian, the moralist. Comparing this film to Babylon Berlin reveals the obvious shifts in the political point-of-view about the era. While BB had a balanced narrative in terms of the male and female protagonists, this one is a male story, as we might expect from a novel from the era by a good chance. This storytelling is also inherent to the conversations between Fabian and Cornelia. The author is always the subject, prospect, and a wise man; meanwhile, Cornelia is trying to survive. It was disturbing to listen to how Fabian meticulously analyzed and estimated the future of Cornelia based on her decision to throw herself on the film producer. Ah, know-it-all Fabian, the idiot.

When Fabian is fired from the ad agency, he’s offered extra 20 marks for his contributions to the advertisement, but he gets some wage cut instead since he was late to work many times. I loved how the accountant/secretary said goodbye with heavy bodily gestures. The calculations he planned didn’t work out at that moment. There was a focus on calculation in another scene. After her mother’s visit, Fabian left 20 marks in her bag. Meanwhile, she was putting 20 marks inside a goodbye letter after she visited Berlin. The narrator said something like, “although it was mathematically an equal trade, after all, it was morally more than that.” Similar math works when Cornelia says, “I love you more and more, you love me less and less, that makes an equilibrium.”

Some reviews: Screen Daily, Indiewire, and The Hollywood Reporter.

Notlar: T. Singer | Dag Solstad

T. Singer’ın ilk adı romanda geçiyor muydu, hatırlamıyorum. Onun adı bilinse de bilinmese de roman otuzlarının ortalarında kütüphaneci olup Notodden kasabasına taşınan T. Singer’la açılıyor. Notodden’in nüfusu 1960’lardan kitabın yazıldığı döneme kadar pek dalgalanmamış, genelde 12-13 bin civarındaymış. Belki romandan sonra buraya göçen birkaç başka kütüphaneci olmuştur.

Böylesi bir romanla karşılaşan ve birkaç Bernhard kitabı okumuş herkes benzer şeyi hemen düşünür herhalde, bana biraz kolaycılık gibi de geliyor ama bir şekilde bu yazma biçiminin temelini atmış olarak bildiğimden -onun devraldığı miras varsa bilmiyorum-, özellikle açılıştaki bölümler Thomas Bernhard’ın yazım tarzını hatırlatıyor hemen. Camille Bordas bu Bernhard benzetmelerinden şikayet ediyordu: “Bu sıra Amerika’da pek çok genç yazar Thomas Bernhard’la kıyaslanıyor mesela, ben de büyük bir Bernhard hayranıyım, her seferinde buna düşüp bahis konusu kitapları heyecanla okuyor, sonrasında da aradaki bağlantıyı görmekte zorlanıyorum”. T. Singer’da da biraz ilerledikçe bu durum kırılıyor ve tekrar bu üsluba geri dönmüyor anlatıcı. Bu açıdan parça parça bir roman diye düşündüm. Açılışta T. Singer çocukluğunda yaşadığı utanç dolu bir anı hatırlıyor ve bunu kafasında çeşitli yerlerden dönüp dolaşarak tekrar tekrar kat ediyor. Benzer bir sarmalı romancı olmayı düşleyip bir cümle etrafında dönerken de yaşıyor. Fakat sonradan yaşadığı hiçbir deneyimde bu denli kılı kırk yaran sorgulamalara girişmiyor. O arada ne oluyor acaba… Yetişkin olmak diyebilir miyiz? Bu Bernhard’ın karakterlerini yetişkin olamayış girdabına çeker. Tabi buradaki yetişkinlik, genel geçer yetişkinlik. Neyse, böyle bir tarzdan başka tarza kolayca yol alabilen romanlar okuduğumda romancının kitabı bir bütün olarak tasarlayıp her parçayı yerli yerine oturttuğunu değil, bir noktadan başlayıp esinlenmelerle yol aldığını düşünüyorum. Belki de bu gözlem bir bütünü kavrama sorunudır.

Blog’a kopyaladığım gözlemci pasajında da bir giriş yapıldığı gibi, T. Singer hayatta faillikten çok seyirciliğiyle var olmaya çalışan karakterler soyundan. Otuzlarının ortasına kadar ne yapacağına karar veremiyor, geçici işlerle ve süründürdüğü eğitimiyle var oluyor. Çok matah olmasa da bir karar diyebileceğimiz bir sıçramayla birden bir kasabaya taşınıp orada kütüphanecilik yapmaya başlıyor. Ara ara ekonomik olarak hayatta kalmanın bu denli es geçilebilir ve tali bir şey olarak anılmasına şaşıyordum okurken ama hemen sonra bir Kuzey Avrupa romancısıyla baş başa olduğumu fark ediyor, bu kişisel beklenti ve kaygılarımı başka romancılara biriktirerek saklamaya karar veriyordum. Son yıllarda Türkiye’de de iyiden iyiye çevrilmeye ve okunmaya başlanan Norveç romancılarını derli toplu çalışan birilerini bulursam okuyacağım. Gerçi yarısının kendi kitaplarını henüz okumamışım: Knausgård, Solstad, Petterson, Loe, Fosse.

Hatırımda kalan ya da okurken altını çizdiğim fakat sonra geri dönünce neden çizdiğimi hatırlamadığım birkaç sayfayı not alayım sadece. Sonra da baktığım değerlendirme yazılarından kopyaladığım alıntıları bu yazının ucuna eklerim. Olur bana pastiş.

“Hem kendisini hem de başkalarını, kendi yerinin tam bir sıradanlık olduğuna inandırmıştı, orada rahat ediyordu ve orada başkalarıyla eşit düzlemde buluşabiliyordu.” (s. 19)

T. Singer gençliğinde bir dönem yazar olmaya heves ediyor. Yazarlık ilgisi ve çabası tek bir cümle etrafında dönüyor: “Güzel bir günde, unutulmaz bir tabloyla göz göze geldi”. Kahramanın bu cümleyle verdiği mücadele bize epeyce kitap yazmış başarılı bir yazarın kurguladığı bir anlatıcının ağzından anlatıldığı için pek incelikli. Sonuçta T. Singer yazar olamıyor. Bir cümleyle böylesine uzun bir mücadele veren birisi yazar olamaz mı yoksa zaten başarılı bir yazar bu mücadeleyi anlatırken aslında yazar olabilmiş birinin gözünden mü görür? Yani bir yazar yazar olamayışı anlatırken ne derece başarılı olabilir? Başarısı bir yana, bu cümlenin etrafında dönen sorular bir cümle yazmaya dair güzel bir yakın okuma çalışması. Incığını cıncığına kadar soruyor ve çeşitliyor güzel günü, unutulmazlığı ve tabloyu. Pamuk’un meşhur açılış cümlesi de bu tablonun kitap versiyonu gibiydi. Fakat T. Singer’in hayatı bu tablo fikriyle değişmiyor, cümlenin etrafında dolaşırken “amaçsız bir genç adam olarak başkalarının ‘en zengin yılları’ diye nitelendirdiği zamanını harcayıp dur[uyor]”. (s. 31) Zamanın geçtiğini fark etmiyor.

Kütüphaneci olarak çalışmaya başlayacağı Notodden’e trenle gidiyor. Yıllarca harcamalarına özen göstermiş olsa da birden o trenin yemekli vagonunda rahatça oturmaya ve sandviç yiyip kahve içmeye karar veriyor. İnsan böyle kararlar verdiğinde karşılaşmalara açılıyor. Orada zor zamanların yöneticisi, Norsk Hydro’nun müdürü Adam Eyde’yle tanışıyor ve okurlara 20. yüzyılın başlangıcından sonuna bir Notodden tarihinin kapısı aralanıyor.

Böyle sayfa sayfa gidip aldığım notları blog’a aktarmak beklediğim deneyimi yaratmadı. Burada kesip, daha önce kestiğim alıntıları yapıştırayım. Daha T. Singer kütüphanede hayatının aşkını bulacak, Oslo’ya taşınacak.


“Sloshing back vast quantities of booze, Singer listens as the boss delivers an epic lecture on the history of his company, the region and the relationship between philosophy and industry.”  [guardian]

Drifter characters – “Singer is very similar to Solstad’s other narrators and protagonists who drift through the novels” [guardian]

“Wherever they start, Solstad’s characters find a way to establish themselves in a low-key, middle-aged life in which melancholy and contentment are almost indistinguishable.” [guardian]

“The Solstadian long sentence feeds back into itself, meandering with the aimless inevitability of a river heading towards the sea.” [guardian]

Bernhard’ı latif bir yazar olarak görmeyiz, fakat Solstad’ta bu var. Tarzı bu kadar benzerken onu Bernhard’tan ayıran nokta nerede? Kitabın açılışı oldukça Bernhard-vari iken ilerledikçe o etki kayboluyor, süreksiz de olsa kendine has bir ritim buluyor. Sorgulayışlar azalıyor, yaşama kendini bırakma baskın hale geliyor.

İnsan temelde birkaç sorunu olan bir varlık mıdır? Bunu kendi üzerimden de anlamaya çalışıyorum. Yaşam binbir çeşitlilikle sürüp gidiyor, eninde sonunda yaşamdan geriye belirleyici güç olarak birkaç şey mi kalıyor yoksa bu insan yaşamını birkaç yüz sayfada anlatmaya çalışan romanın mecburen indirgemek zorunda kaldığı kümeden kaynaklanan bir illüzyon mu? Yine de insanların birkaç temel meseleyle uğraşarak bir ömür geçirmeleri fikrini trajik ve estetik buluyorum.

“At one point Singer notices how a certain couple “shared the same perception of reality”. Solstad’s construction of reality is uniquely his own. That may be why the writer Lydia Davis taught herself Norwegian solely by reading his work.” [guardian]

“Thus it is not surprising that in his book he tilts the question from “What makes a good writer?” to a different one: “What makes a good hero for a novel?” How can the account of the “man without qualities” be updated for a new generation?” [worldliteraturetoday]

“Solstad’s style of writing is deceptively simple and can best be described as “honest”: winding clauses of sentences, decidedly minimalistic in their vocabulary and devoid of any metaphoric digressions, designed solely to explain, as clearly as possible, the mechanisms of the strange and yet deeply human workings of Singer’s mind.” [worldliteraturetoday]

“To be sure, in this novel, the twenty-first century appears to be still light-years away.” [worldliteraturetoday]

Solstad repeatedly mentions this case but the reviewer only mentions a single instance: “Solstad breaks the fourth wall to tell us that he’s not going to tell us much more about Merete: “She is not the main character in this novel; it’s doubtful that she could have been the main character in any novel of a certain quality.” [kirkus]

Coping with life: “Singer is, let us say, not adept at coping; as Solstad writes, it’s hard to imagine that he, too, “can be the main character in any novel at all, regardless of quality.” [kirkus]

Protagonist’ self description – what would be the difference if the author wrote this: “As a stepfather, the trials he endures are wrestled with, at great length. Says Singer: ‘It’s certainly not easy being me.” [eurolitnetwork]

“Characteristically, Solstad gets hold of an idea and worries it like a dog with a bone…” [eurolitnetwork]

“This relaxed feeling – ‘he has air’, Peter Handke has said – is equally evident when Solstad the narrator wanders into postmodern territory.” [eurolitnetwork]

Handke & Davis likes Solstad: “Little wonder Peter Handke and Lydia Davis – tellingly, two authors whose own creations reward the reader for savouring and reading slowly, rather than succumbing to page-turning – have declared themselves enamoured with the books of Dag Solstad. I’d like to join them.” [eurolitnetwork]

Nonengagement – Bartleby: Also”Solstad’s unusual, entertaining novel of restrained humor follows its protagonist, T Singer, over a lifetime of nonengagement. Singer is something of a Bartleby whose neuroses compel him to retreat from life …” [publishersweekly]

“The novel brilliantly shows the humor and pain of obsessiveness, and the anxious, analytic Singer emerges as an enduring creation.” [publishersweekly]

“Passages are important to Solstad in this novel: he details travel-routes and possible alternative ones. There’s rarely just one way of getting there (wherever), and each possible route — from Oslo to Notodden; from Singer’s home to to his workplace; through the streets of Oslo; travelling by rail or road or foot — present alternatives, paths (and, implicitly also destinies) not taken, even if the apparent destination remains the same.” [complete-review]

“His life is straightforward and fairly bland, his major concerns limited to things like avoiding some of the library’s patrons who particularly appreciate his assistance, and figuring out how to ensure that he can catch the movies he wants at the local cinema.” [complete-review]

“In an interview with The Paris Review, Solstad stated that this novel had perfected the form he had been aiming for with the three previous novels, marking an end to that phase of his writing career. Although that in turn freed him to write different works, notably Armand V (2006), ‘Declaring that I was finished made me feel like I could do whatever I damn well pleased, which again opened up entirely new ways of thinking.'” [mookse and the gripes]

“And yet as the novel ends it is as if Singer has come full circle. He finds himself obsessively worried about a minor incident involving cinema tickets, an incident that the colleague involved likely didn’t even notice or remember, and he plans in detail the hypothetical conversation they might have the next day:” [mookse and the gripes]

“DAG SOLSTAD — After I had written T SINGER it struck me that I couldn’t write any better than that, and if I wanted to, I could write a book like that every year. And that I didn’t want.” [the-white-review]

“DAG SOLSTAD — Yes. See my earlier answer in which I said that I dignify the main character with the same pronoun that I have reserved for myself and only for myself. I’m careful to treat my main characters with respect, after all they are left to my ruthless power, and they do, one must admit, some quite questionable things.” [the-white-review]

“Solstad, who was born in 1941 in Sandefjord, is not a practicioner of Scandi-noir, as you might expect – he is rather the heir in some fashion to his illustrious countrymen, Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun, teasing out a moral, observing human behaviour that in some ways looks fated or doomed.” [rte]

“It’s not just a slice of Norwegian life, and it would be indeed glib to suggest that T Singer was a novel that was just about skewering bourgeois pretensions, or portraying the fragility of man who wears masks to make himself feel right with the world.” [rte]

“Singer simply submits to the personality onslaught. It’s not that he takes it in his stride, exactly, but he hardly says a word, except (librarian that he is) to correct an anachronistic reference to Oslo in the time when the city was called Kristiania.” [lrb]

“Solstad’s protagonist is outwardly unremarkable, not even receiving a full name (and the ‘T’ appears only in the book’s title). Singer feels that “his place was to be found in total anonymity”; indeed that’s where he ‘thrives’.” [davids-book-world]

“In due course, Singer falls in love with and marries a ceramicist named Merete Særthe, moving in with her and her daughter Isabella. Even this does not disrupt Singer’s sense of self, because the role of the family man is what completes his anonymity.” [davids-book-world]

“Yet T Singer goes far beyond the typical, Camus-like portrait of existential alienation that clings to every corner of global literature like the odor of cigarette smoke in a supposedly clean hotel room. Solstad creates a truly singular character whose existence feels like nothing more than the sum of indentations left on him by the world. Except, this description implies that there are things Singer would call his own, when in reality there is a creeping sensation all throughout Singer’s life that nothing at all is really his. It is this fundamental sense of dispossession and anonymity that makes Singer incapable of ascribing meaning to any particular incident in his life—he is a man who endlessly broods without ever gaining any traction. He passes his time by simply pondering the incomprehensible texture of his life, never managing to figure out anything, and the pathos of Singer’s story comes from the many instances when he must confront the irrelevance of his brooding. He is a contemporary variant of the superfluous man, an individual for whom the consumer economy holds no joy or purpose, a person who performs the various familial and economic duties the world requires of him, but who feels that none of these roles pertain to who he is.” [lithub]

At the end of the novel, Singer is left wondering how he’ll respond to a colleague if she catches him loitering in a theater lobby with no intention of seeing a movie. He formulates a contingency plan, which unfolds in a single, 246-word sentence that closes the book.” [dissent-magazine]