[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] conversations with Tyler is produced by the mercada center at George Mason University Bridging the Gap between academic ideas and real world problems learn more at arcades.in conversations withth tyler.com hello I'm here today with call PA U canel scort one of the great writers of our civilization and he also has a new book coming out which I enjoyed very much called so much longing in so little
space the art of Edvard mun Carl thank you for coming thank you for inviting me you know in book six of my struggle you mention Renee Gerard and that mimesis is a useful concept for understanding human behavior how do you think about who or what you're trying to copy who I am trying to copy yes if you believe believe in Mimis that was a tough first question I have to say how can I hook on to that I
think there several level you could reply that you know that question first level would be whatever is related to literature to the art of fiction how to tell a story uh which is something you learn through Reading and you have to have that for writing there are just several ways to tell a story several ways to enter a a scene several ways to to write realistic pros and and for me almost all
reading I've done has I think subconsciously sunk into me in my own in my own world and in my own writing so when I for instance read Marcel post for the first time I you know I absolutely loved it and I read it like you know like I was drinking water or something and and but I wasn't aware of me socking it up at all and I couldn't write at that time 2 years later I wrote a novel it is incredibly many similarities with
Marcel PR but I wasn't aware of it it was just something that happened that's one level of of mimesis the other level is the opposite is unlearning everything you know to be able to access what I like to think of as the world the world we live in because sometimes fiction can be um so mechanical it is so locked into certain ways to look at the world that it's more like you look into literature than than
to the world and that was what I was struggling with in my struggle trying to find a language for my experience of the world you know not I didn't I wasn't interested in writing a novel I was interested in trying to get a language from my experience of the world and I think that is the key to Edward monk what he did as a painter very much so because he grew up in Norway at the end of 19th century um in a kind of a certain pictorial
language which was realism which was naturalism and which was um a national Romanticism you know the glossy image of of you know mountains and Fs and that kind of things that was what he had available when he started he wanted to paint that was what he had available and he described his art as an act of confession as you know is that true of yours are you fundamentally in the confessional tradition
yeah I think so but what monk wanted I think what monk had was uh some experiences very strong experiences he lost his mother when he was very young and then he lost his older sister which was even harder for him and I think he what he lacked when he started to paint was a language to express that couldn't do that through glossy National Romanticism you know so he tried he had to break down everything he knew about
painting to try to get that through what he had experienced and that's the same thing with writing that's what you want to do get that personal experience that the thing that only you feel the thing that only you see the thing that you know get that through and if you do that you realize no that's how everyone sees it that's how everyone feels but that's kind of the thing you have to try to
reach to tap into and when I started to write my struggle I didn't know that existed I just wanted to do it for my own sake you know more or less and yeah it was confessional it was I reread a lot of your work in the last few months and what struck me more is what I in a sense conservative writer you are at first I thought of you as a radical but if you think of this long-standing phistic religious tradition of
self-scrutiny you know you have rousel Gerta even swedenborg AUST strinberg I I I now see you as very much in in that tradition that you're the next Nordic confessional and quite religious as a writer in a way would you accept that characterization ptic I will accept and and a part of that Nordic tradition I will very much accept uh religious that's a bit more difficult to relate to you wrote a whole book about angels and
it's striking swedenborg swenberg they were obsessed with angels true you're obsessed with angels why the combination of Angel Obsession and confessional from the nordics including you what's the unity there is that um uh the obvious thing in regard to that is that you know an aartistic Christianity and and is um is a very personal relation to God very intimate relation to God much more than
a collective you know play like religion as Catholicism would be much more internal than external and as a novelist that's that's yeah that's the confessional path so to speak but these things you don't think about these things you just do and if you born into a culture that culture comes part of you that language becomes part of you and something of that you have to challenge something of that you are not aware of
you just it's just part of part of you but I have you know there's certain writers I do really love and I think that is part of my culture and and I think I you know I'm similar to them because of many different things but these things you are talking about is is kind of more a cultural deep layered things you know theism these are not things you think about this is things that just happens I think
it's very unmodern that's true it's very old fashioned that's true exactly yeah Arnold Weinstein has a book on Nordic culture and he argues that the sacrifice of the child is a recurring theme it's in kir guard's fear and trembling it's in a number of ibson plays Bergman movies has that influenced you or are you a rejection of that are you like Edward MCH but with children and that's the big difference between you and mon
the painter I told you we ask different questions yeah yeah you didn't say you said different you didn't said difficult yeah because there was a lot of grouping together here you had K and the sacrifice of of isach yes the biblical story which basically is a a story about faith and what it is to believe in God and what it demands to believe in God the completely irrational level it takes to believe in God uh I'm very the
leap out in the unknown which you have to take it's an interesting thing going on in that essay which is a wonderful essay about Abraham U sacrificing Isaac is that it also has some small parts about breastfeeding in between which is incredibly strange and and I was thinking I've been thinking a lot about that what is that but it's it's it's moving away from something it's it's it's you know it's it's going from a mother into society
and the leap of religion is going from the society and into the unknown into the the things we don't really know about the things we don't have language for there is another very interesting noic poet called in Christensen uh she brought a collection of ss which is really brilliant and she talks about those kind of Border areas is is is a is a matter of language what we can express and what we not can
express and those in in science those are you know the the string theories or it's it's that's the things we don't know that's unknown and the the border is the language we don't have language for it we can't really and she also said that like a letter in a book cannot read what's around it cannot read the book we are the same in the world you know we cannot read the world we're part of it
uh but that's that was U that was K and I don't yeah I find it hard to connect Kor in regard of children the sacrifice of children and bman mhm bman is a completely different some children are abandoned both in his life and in the movies I know there is a uh bugman's uh workbooks just came out in Sweden so it's not his Diaries and it's not his is you know his place but it's kind of in between State all notes it took when he
was working with things it's incredibly interesting because you can see how a film surface from almost nothing and just become a film and you see all his struggles and you see all of that but in in one particular uh passage he wrote about the film he wants to make and then he said uh today my grand child died and that was it you know just a just a little passage like it really didn't care in a
normal person would have filled that person completely and then that little episode turns up in his next film uh that the child is drowning and there is another episode from bergman's life that when his uh son was lying on his deathbed he refused to have his father to come there and that's a very very strong statement sure so you have this almost archetypical artist putting his art before his uh his children before
his family before before everything and as yeah you have also Doris lesing did the same abandon her children to to move to London and to write and I've been kind of confronted with that as a writer and I think everyone do because writing is so time consuming and so demanding and when I got children I had this idea that writing was a solitary thing I mean I could go out to small Islands in the sea could go to ligh
houses live there try to write in complete you know be completely solitary and alone so when I got children that was an obstruction you know for my writing I thought but it wasn't it was the other way around I I've never written as much as I have after I gotten children after I started to write at home after I kind of I established writing in the middle of life it was a crawling life everywhere and and what
happened was that writing become less important it become less precious become more ordinary it become you know less um religious or less sacred it becomes something ordinary and that was incredibly important for me because that was eventually where I wanted to go into the ordinary in mundane even and and and try to connect to what was going on in life you know life isn't sacred life isn't you know uplifted it is ordinary
and boring and and all the things we know so that you have these myths and they work for some they don't work for some it's it's like it's but you can relate to them I have a friend he's he's a brilliant writer and he always says yeah this is the when you want to create something you have certain uh I don't know the English word you have certain um uh things that's fixated uh what do you what we would
call them premises or assumptions or axioms yeah you just have to accept them and work inside of them that's the only way so if if you can't write that's the Bas then you have to start to write out from that fact you know and and and and I think I think that's the best advice I ever got to accept everything that happen so if you have many children is a good thing if you don't have children
it's a good thing you know it's like you have to embrace it because that's your life that's where you are and writing should be connected to that or painting or whatever it is your focus on Nazi history in part of volume six of my struggle is that a kind of confessional for Norway and new hamson or the parts of Norway that were attracted to Nazism how is that connected to the fact that you wrote a confessional about your own
life yeah clearly you have no sympathies for a Nazi regime at all but there's a connection from your culture history yeah it's it's uh it's many connections um one would be that when my grandmother died we found M comp in the chest in the living room you know what was that book doing there you know did had had they read it and I realized it was kind of common thing in order to have that book
uh it was kind of common thing to cooperate with with the NASA regime um when I grew up in Norway the story we were told at school was the heroic one you know the resistance and and and how every evil civilian resisted and but the fact is that no way was know to do whe were were rolling and and the society was working and and it has to be a lot of cooperation with with with the NIS and and my other grandfather he he
befriended a Austrian officer that was posted where where he lived um and when I grew up there was um reminiscence from from the War uh like bunkers where we were playing at and it was like war was in one sense incredibly distant but when I start to think about it it incredibly close it was my grandparents uh parents world really but that wasn't the reason why I started to write the reason was coincidental
basically because I called my book my struggle which is the English translation of of man and then I had to read it and then I realized Hitler's book is uh kind of he's writing about his own self uh I'm writing about my own self this the same title uh I started to read him uh and I and I got incredibly intrigued by what I read because there was so much not that he was lying but it was so much that was unsaid so much that you know he he
twisted his his his life into something completely different couldn't be true and I and I just dived into that and started to read more about it and and Tred to find out what kind of man he was and and how it could this could all this could happen well it started out like it start in the book it's it's a reflection about names because I couldn't use my father's name in the book that was you know my family forbid me that uh so I
started to to be interested in and and look around what names really are what a signify and then I stumbled across a German a Romanian poet wrote in German called Paul Salan uh he was um his parents died in Holocaust and he was uh Jewish and he wrote postwar in the language of the Nazis best poet of the 20th century perhaps yeah yeah yeah and there is this maybe no I think pelan yeah maybe but anyway he wrote this uh
incredibly incredibly incredibly intriguing poem where almost nothing can be named there's no names and and it's like it's it's it's like it's almost impossible to say anything it's like the language is completely completely broken so there's no connection between the element in the language and I read that and and I wrote about it and I realized this is the the and it's about Holocaust of course and this is the end of what
was started with my my struggle and then that was the moment in the book and that was the moment in you know in because Hitler also wrote in German and he also wrote you could read it you know it's it's it's bad but you could say whatever you want but the fact that you could actually read him is intriguing and you can see you can see everything he wants to do is in the book so I wanted to to
describe that path from Hitler to salon and it's only part in the book that's not about me but it is of course about me but uh and it's the only part that's not about our time it's about it's about the past so it's kind of a place kind of a dark mirror in the book where where where you could see everything being you know get a perspective to to everything and it's the only part I I I found really you know pleasure in writing
because it was so much I discovered during writing that and and it wasn't about me which is a burden to do but that was different it's about the generation the generation that grew up with the first world war and made second world war happen so many great Norwegian writers Ipson SE unet new hamson there's nationalism in their work yet today liberals tend to think of nationalism as a kind of unspeakable
evil of sorts so how do we Square this with the evolution of Norwegian writing and if one thinks of your own career arguably it's your extreme popularity in Norway at first that drove your later Fame what's the connection of your own work to Norwegian nationalism are you the first non-nationalist great Norwegian writer is that plausible or is there some deeper connection I think so much writing is done out of a
feeling of not belonging if you read K Thompson he was an N it was I mean it was a full-blooded Nazi we have to be honest about that his best book might be his Nazi book right he wrote and he was what 90 on overground paths to me it's much more interesting than the novels which are a kind of artifice that has an Ed so well yeah but you read on overgrown paths you feel like you're there yeah it's about
self-deception it's true it's a wonderful book but but I I think Hon's theme his subject is ruthlessness it's a kind of a in a very rooted Society you know in a rural Society in a in a family oriented Society like like Nova has been in a small Society he was like a very ruthless very Urban writer uh he went to America and and he hated America but he was America you know he had he had that
in him uh he was there in in um late 19th century and he wrote a book about it which is a terrible book but but still he was there and and and he had he had that modernity in him and he he he never wrote about his parents never wrote about where he came from you know all his characters just appears you know and and and then then something happens with them but there's no past there's no and I found that incredibly intriguing
just because he become the Nazi he become the farmer he become the the the one who sang the song about you know growth the the what do you call it Marin SC yeah exactly and it's it's like it's it's he fighting himself doing doing that he's not your National nationalist he's he's incredibly complex and and and the interesting thing is that you can see that struggle in his writing is your own American travel log a revision of
new hamson in some way like well Norway is going to get it right this time no but I I do actually have thought about doing that going his footsteps because he was there for for quite long time he he drive tram in Chicago did a lot of things and it's an exciting story really but but anyway the thing with writing in his case is that he's he's he's getting so close to the world and to the people
in his writing is so complex that he's not a he's not a n in his writing but in his essays and in his speeches there's a big distance there is a NY and that what literature can do is to get you so close that these things like nationalism just disappears because they don't exist on that particular level you know it's you have to move away away from the world to be able have a establish a distance to
be able to you know talk about these things at all so but I no way is a nationalistic country it's a but it's it's not in um I don't think it's in a in any bad way at all really uh it's uh it's a very innocent no it's a very innocent country what's the worst thing about living here in London the worst thing the worst thing I think it's to me being an outsider it's it's both the worst and and and the most interesting
and that's the that's a huge difference between the classes it's the in extreme poverty and then you just you know you walk up a hill and it's incredibly rich and it's also very very much um it's not only a matter of of classes but it's you know in the area I live the poor there a PO rather poor area uh it's a black area and then you go up the hill and it's a white area and it's those kind of things
are I think it's kind of hopelessness really to be here because you can't do anything about it it's it's in the structure in the society but then also it makes it incredibly V the variation incredibly and the richness incredible and and so it's it's a very much an alive City being coming from Norway it's it's it's very different you know it's like all kind of things going on simultaneously which is incredibly interesting and and
and and nice to at least I'm not a part of it but to see and to be you know around but it has that backside with with uh the privilege being you know going around and around and around and around in the same kind of class and under privilege the same and there's no kind of way they connect you can't move from one to the another that's scandan society is much more egalitarian in that sense as you well know Haner was a
seminal influence on Edward Munch and you can think of him as a highly intellectual cynical nihilist Munch you knew him in his early years has there been a hanser figure in your life who's a formative influence it doesn't come through in your books you mean personally or or true reading who's your hanser I don't have a hanser but I have this uh this writer I really admire and he's he's uh really something who's that
he that is called T Eric LUN he's not translated into English he's is very wild wild as a person wild as a writer he's like he has inspired me a lot and and you know shown me what's possible to do in in writing and it's but he's so particularly that is is hard to translate him but I you know it could be like if he had been writing in English he would have been I guess the level of you know Thomas pinin or whoever is that
good but he so idiosyncratic that it's hard to translate him yeah but he's he's not my h but he's uh he's an influence Edward M he was known for beating his paintings abusing them not treating them very well have you ever done the same with your books uh yeah I'm a kind of a careless person so I've have uh and I don't you know don't take backups and and um I have you know window open it's
raining on my computer I've lost a computer down on the tracks with trains and I've have lost them and you know it's it's but it always turns out well but it's uh that's that's not the same but I I don't care about how the book A book look I don't deal with that part of it at all and when I'm done with a book there hardly no editing I just leave it and and publish it and I want to to move
on because it's a process of doing this that interests me not not the result and I I really hate it when a book is done because then I know it will take a few years before I will be get into something something else so and that I can you know recognize monkey he hardly finished the pain in his life he just you know and and he and he and he was very Reckless with his paintings and and it is a certain aesthetic in that as
well it's the like I'm been writing that book is like the difference between dosi and tolto dovi really didn't care he could just you know didn't have to describe it fully just a few sentences done with that and go on and go on and go on looking for something um like a flame or something burning or something you know something the intensity of of something he was looking for TL you know he wrote about everything and and
painted it fully and and and did so wonderfully but it's completely different Aesthetics and and I reach completely different places and when I was young I thought dovi was the primary the one that had you know reached the Far now I'm older it's it's tster really Edward Mo he stuck with Doki as an influence very much so I I realized he uh the day he died and afternoon the day he died he read uh dovi and then he died so he was
followed him throughout his life uh and I think I think I think dovi was part of his uh forming his uh identity as a painter exactly what's unfinished is the scream a self-portrait of M and is he wearing a mask or a death mask yeah the scream is based upon an experience he had walking up the hill outside of Oso seeing what you see in that painting hearing the nature scream so it's in a way it's a self biographical painting
and it and yeah the ra radicality of that painting it's hard to to get a grip on now I think we're very much used to that kind of distorted ways of of depicting the world but what it it's yeah it's a long story about I've read a lot about it in in the book because it was fun because that's a painting that you know everyone knows and everybody has a thought about and and I was I tried to you know tried to
write about it aesh what what is this what what what did it do and and I can talk about it if you like but U it's a long it's a long and complicated story I don't know if I can do ask you about between the clock and the bed so Jasper John's paintings are often mysterious but he chose to redo between the clock and the bed and what is John's on about what is munch on about in that painting I don't
know about the J but John is using the pattern on the bed isn't he right yes yeah mon made some remarkable self-portraits I think he did so throughout his life and he started in 18 19 and they all all very differently and I think they all all very good and this is one of the very last one and the the thing with this is is it's so incredibly simple it's just a man standing there and it's like his his he's showing us
that this is it it's you know it's um there's no posing there's no um it's like it's there's no defense and mon was a man full of defense and I think painting was a way for him to get under the defense and and and and reconnect with the world and in this painting that's what it do it's like the God is down this is this is what it is is autobiography a kind of defense or protective strategy for you a
way in which life cannot be a disappointment there's always something happening you can write about in that sense your portfolio so to speak is very Diversified yeah it is a place to hide that's that's that it is I mean that's that's obvious there was a wonderful sentence in a V vital gich polish writer who wrote um his um Diaries are I'm thinking among a a masterpiece of the last century it's really is brilliant but
he's he published his own Diaries when he was alive and when there were published he said you know I just have to take one step Retreat one step inside myself and that's what you what you do when you when you reveal so much about yourself it's it's like you can just take a step back and and it's all right I mean it's it's not even connected to you if you do that it's like okay I'd never think about what people know about
me or it's it's it's um the act of writing is like for me a place I can go to and and and where I am protected somehow publishing books is a different thing of course but if I try to um disconnect from that don't think about it is the the publication of it so what I want to do is to be in the space where I'm writing uh and it's also a way of me to understand what's going on to see things that I normally don't see because
I'm very much enclosed in myself and in my own space and I don't really notice things and and what and I'm coming close off to the world so writing is a way of opening up also there's a lot of things but I've been writing for so long now that is it feels like a place I can go to go into that place and sit down and and I will be at peace as long as I am there even though I write about terrible
and and heartbreaking things it still is a place of of peace and I do find reading the same thing and I always done that I think that was why I read so much when I was little and when I grew up and I think I became a writer the moment I realized that that space is the same the reading space and the writing space is basically the same and you do the same things there uh in those spaces why does Munch have so many mediocre paintings
some might even say bad paintings I think he he he didn't really care I think he wanted to capture something and if he didn't do that at first in instant he moved on but he kept all the bad paintings too I found that also very interesting is that a model to emulate or a cautionary tail for you I saw I was curating an monkey exhibition in Oslo at the monkey Museum so they gave me access to the magazine in the basement and I was
shocked because it was you know you pulled out these enormous uh kind of walls and it was like maybe 10 paintings or five paintings or seven paintings or 15 paintings on them and it was a completely mix up with masterpieces terrible paintings sketches mediocre things old things new things and it was like you know being in a work of progress if you go to museum you see see it's everything finished everything is
almost stylish then it's everything is you know art this was completely different this was entering into a pro process because the painting they have is the painting SM had when he died everything he kept everything he didn't sell you know and when I did that exhibition I I thought that as opportunity to try because in in no way at least you can't really see because youve seen it he's so big and you see
all the paintings so many times that you can't really experience them so I tried to use the other paintings to give a new access to to mon what he was doing uh and amongst them was was about paintings you you've bought a Munch right head of a woman yeah why buy only one why not buy a second what is your thinking on the matter that was you enjoy it right they're they're they're Capital assets you can resell it someday
your airs I know I I really it was hard for me to buy that one so I I uh uh I mean having a a monkey in always very buas and and very you know you're very settled when you do that and but I I thought my excuse was that I got a fee for the creation of the exhibition and I thought I could use the fee for buying a a monk so that's what what I got and it's not a you know it's just a just a drawing it's just um yeah so it's uh
it's nothing really but it's incredibly nice to see and the thing with a good work of art is that you can't you can see it every day and you don't get tired it's like it's gives endlessly and it's very simple simple uh extremely simple but it still it comes something from it every day actually uh which is what you want from pie of Hearts you showed up 7 minutes early for this interview do you
think of yourself as ultimately a defender or a Critic of bgea culture and bgea virtue I have um when I was um when I was a teenager I was very much in opposition to it and and but that's the typical pattern of someone up right but but I you know I I don't really care that's true you know I'm I'm too busy raising children and too busy trying to survive that I I can't really afford I mean think in those terms uh I
remember when I got my first daughter I thought you know when I and I was full-time with her I thought I was you know this is very unmasculine and this is you know taking away my my identity and and and then I had three children and and then four children and who cares I mean you just deal with them and try to be good and and and go on and and it's the same now it's it's uh it's um it's about that I mean if that's Bas if
that's what it is I don't care I mean you you've written in great detail about raising your children but looking back what is it you feel you understand now that you didn't then if you were to add in a footnote oh because retrospective memory is quite different from experience in the moment that's hard I mean there's so many things I did that I wish I hadn't done but that's you know that's that's
most of matter right yeah yeah but that's life that's how it is and you can't undo it and you do have to experience thing and learn thing and and and you can't you know I can't tell a young father what to do what not to do you know you have to you have to find out yourself and the thing about the book which I'm happy about is that it covers a process and I wasn't aware of that really but a very short period of
time really I wrote it in in 2 years and as you say have I forgotten everything now in my head but is in the book is captured in the book you see how I was thinking you see yeah you know what mistakes I did or not did or whatever but it's still it's like a slice of life that's in those books is it possible at all to enjoy your works on audio book or is the use of voices different from yours too discordant for stories that
are so personal that are so you so confessional no that's um I don't you know I don't read my books and I don't listen to them so but I have in Germany they have readings very different from here uh it's readings so you have like an interview with the writer for maybe 5 minutes and then it's this like uh 1 hour of reading and I have when it's a foreign writer they have actor reading and that has been
some incredibly nice experiences if there is a good actor reading it's like it's it's like he makes the book into has nothing to is it better than you yeah yeah yeah but you know it's like then becomes storytelling it becomes becomes literature you know and that's that's very strange to to witness but also very nice you're obviously very fluent in English what do you feel the English language reader loses in the
translation from the Norwegian I think the translations are excellent Donald Bartlet he translated five and a half of the six books Martin Atkin the last part of book six he asked me in the beginning if I wanted to you know how how hands on I wanted to be the translation and I I said I don't want you know you can do whatever you want to I don't want to have anything to do with it and then I remember getting book five
in in the mail and and almost accidentally I started to read you know and and I just kept on reading because it is it was so well done and it was an English it was kind of removed from me but still I recognized everything and and I think his his his it's a world class translator Donald butlet but the interesting thing in that regard is that I have another translator from my other books she's a poet she's half Norwegian
half American called engil berki and she translates my language completely different it's said completely different feeling of her language and his language both are brilliant but in very different ways he's much more translated it into an English novel and she's much more translating into a Norwegian feeling uh English and and she she's much more close to my language and he's much more
above but so and both comes from the same writing very different both very good but you see the one yeah they have different qualities so to speak why do we put dead bodies in the basement rather than the attic yeah good question you asked it yourself and book yeah that was a long time ago to pursue your father's question how many people in Solo car accidents are actually suicides yeah exactly are all sweds crazy not all not
all which inar Bergman film has influenced you the most and why sitting here with you I can't really think of any my bman film um you once said wild strawberries was your favorite but favorite may not be the same as influence no I think sins from a marriage is an incredibly good TV series the best movie ever made if you watch the whole thing through I think yeah yeah I yeah I think that's his richest
and and best and and yeah I think so I love Persona um and I do actually even I know last f i hat sit I do like um Fel Alexander also mhm such a yeah it's such a fairy tale touch to it which I like but not since from Marriage I think I like Smiles of a summer night very much the mardian feeli Shakespeare connection it's a very alive movie for me yeah Peter hka what kind of influ uence have
his novels had on you that's hard I'm discussing him and his influence in book six actually because he is a writer I absolutely admire and and I and I think my writing is you know this doesn't reach up to his knce his writing SES but my year in the No Man's Bay is a book that I read it must have been in the '90s when it when it came out before being a right to myself or was it exactly that the moment I started to be
a writer I think and that was very influential and his writing you know about um the things that not belong in a story and the things that really don't belong in a landscape you know the the areas between the city and and outside of the city know the railway tracks the grass the the fences the those the kind of the world as it is outside of the story I think and he's yeah he's just a I can't I don't now but but I always and
the book about his mother is is absolutely fantastic I think is Elena fante the main Contender for having bested your achievement if we're handing out lifetime achievement awards for contemporary serious fiction I've only read one front the book and that was days of Abandonment yes and I would have you know cut off my left arm to write that book I think it was so absolutely brilliant so try the Neapolitan I know I
know I know I know is the same I have problem with things I know very good to to enter it because I'm I'm not a jealous type but I feel you know I will in the end but that book days of Abandonment was was was really really outstanding good and luckily there there's no competition here so there's nothing to I mean I do what I can do and then you have incredibly good writers everywhere in every country so and when
I'm know outside of a novel I I just look at them and I think it feel so hopeless you know how how how how are they doing this you know how they're managing to do this and if you think like that you can't really write it has to come you know has to be personal has to come from the inside has to be within something uh without looking out and and what you're talking about is that's outside of books and then you can start
and be jealous and oh you know or or why did you know he get that ground and I not and why did I get so bad reviews and stuff that's worthless it's completely worthless and and and and I try to stay away from M as much as I can and but we know Ipson was obsessed with medals and honors right yeah was was that a character flaw it was very funny a very funny flaw I think also I don't share that no but he had
also you know a mirror in his hat so he could he could take out his hat and look himself which is also very funny and he was very little very little man loving medals and having a mirror in his hat that's funny from another literary tradition take calino Bor SC desar are they in view your view in some ways overrated and is your objection to them ultimately a political one no they're running away from Life in a way correct
no no I I I feel um quite a contr B I think he Superior I think he's uh he's he's a master really a master uh and one a writer I've learned a lot from not in ways of telling the story but what the story tells you about the world uh he has been very influential in my worldview basically especially one called Clon Akbar it's a short story I think this the best short story i' ever written I think uh I we agree on that
actually I think it's it's you know calino is less uh calino had yeah Kari is also very good but his bz I think and and calino I love I mean I the the the baron in the tree or what it's called is is one of my favorite books so and I you know if I could write like them I would but I can't I have every time I have something fantastic not try I mean in in that sense something that really could happen
I try to write it I can't make it work just don't have it in me has to be some sort of realism I have to believe in it myself and and the magic with B is that you believe it completely he makes it completely believable and his essays are you know absolutely wonderful and in every little ESS every short story almost you could pull something out and of of value so his know he's absolutely one of my favorites is Magnus Carlson
going to withdraw from the World Chess Championship cycle chess is not my world has liberalism exhausted itself uh maybe not liberalism maybe capitalism there's something about the aesthetic people in the early 20th century hamson included seemed to think that a vital sense of the aesthetic maybe it didn't quite have to be fascist but it had to move the artist somewhat in a direction which we
today would mostly consider unpleasant do you think a strong notion of the aesthetic and liberalism are totally compatible good question TS Elliot would be another example of someone who moved in an quite unsavory Direction yeah I don't know really I wonder if you know if fist literature if that's even possible I can't it's like those are you know those two concepts are not able to but liberalism in literature is also
tricky so you take Roman Roland who was a great classical liberal he wrote books that everyone read at the time but they're they're mostly forgotten they're seen as a little flat yeah I don't know what what what do you mean by liberalism in in this in this of a particular neutrality across values which government then enforces by having impartial laws and people believe strongly in some underlying notion of
neutrality doesn't that clash with the aesthetic impulse at some level yeah of course yeah that's what meant yeah yeah and your own thought how do you reconcile those two things what I'm striving for in my writing is what I call literary freedom and it's a space where I can be free in every sense where I can see say whatever go wherever I want to for me literature is almost the only place you could think of that that
that is a possibility and my fear is that that space is come closing down and you're closing it down yourself and and becoming more afraid for what you're saying can I say this can I do this that was and these powers are so strong you know it's so hard to to go somewhere you know now this is this is wrong or this is you know it I mean I did it with my struggle because I wrote about my family
and I knew of course I shouldn't do this and I really it is immoral to do this and then I did it because I wanted to say what I wanted to say and I wanted to be free and and to talk about to write about my own life in a in a complete and in a free way that's also why I admire writers like you know pet we had a had a the Yugoslavia controversy around him and and we have a lot of controversies around him but what
he does is he he is there he's he's his hardcore saying what he thinks and and and stands for it no matter how ugly it looks from the outside and that's what you can do in literature no other place I think this is an internal struggle in every writer I think and and it goes in almost all levels of society I find it hardest to go the private the private places that is belong to my family and my life but you have all other you know
political topics you have a lot of things you can think of but it's good that it's a struggle and it's good that there a Arena where we can have these fights and and yeah but the notion that literature should be good I mean in a in a moral sense or that that I find you know ridiculous it's that's useless as a boy which were your favorite comic books you've written that you loved comic books growing up yeah when I was little
it was the Lea Fox Phantom he was that was really big in in Norway a bit older I was modesty BL but I I read absolutely everything and what what are the politics of those comic books that young boys tend to read the PO the PO Politics the implicit politics then in the 70s it was uh it was very it was very sexist very racist and and all kind of things so my mother discovered what I actually
was reading so she said if she forbid me to read Comics which was uh very harsh punishment is felt at that time but made me start to read books so it was a good thing in the end but she was completely shocked by what I was reading and it was Comming but that was the 70s I think it has changed maybe I don't know now you spent some time in a creative writing program is that correct yeah did you
learn much there or was it just a waste of your time I learned a lot what can I say I was like running into a wall was running full speed in into a wall and I fell down and I lay down for like six seven years I couldn't write after that I was completely I was so young when I started I had all this illusion about myself and about literature and what I could do and I couldn't do anything and I felt like they were ridiculous
ridiculing me and and and they were actually and and then it took many years and then I could write and what I learned I met you know the world literature there yes and I met also a writer that his his um yes he's now his best writer is called Yun fos and he was 29 at the time and he was a teacher there his notion of quality is his is is absolute and and he was very very important to me just because he showed
me where the level should be you know um I haven't reached that level but but I'm I'm I'm above where I was when I was 20 at least and it was very good to know that this is literature this is what literature can do but I it was completely terrible for me at the time and and many years afterwards because I couldn't I had no self-confidence that took away all my self-confidence I couldn't right the the creative writing
program took away your self-confidence yeah and that was a good thing in the end it was a very good thing yeah how did you get your self-confidence back I haven't got it back haven't got it back no but I have helpers to help me so I the one who picked me up from nothing uh and he is still my editor I really couldn't write when he saw something I written and and believed in me he still Believes In Me and he have to tell me
that every week that what I'm doing is interesting what I'm doing is good and and that he believes in me and he has done so for years now without him I wouldn't have been a writer and I also friends who do the same thing said okay this is good don't give up keep on writing I need it because if not I wouldn't have the strength to to do it maybe I would but but uh it it makes my writing life much easier to have helpers
your first book in English but I think your second book overall a time for everything why did you write a whole book about angels I really don't know I was I've always been interesting interested in the physicality of man the matter the brain itself the physicality of the brain the way we are you know animals the way we eat and the way we have take the world in and the primitiveness of us and then you
know the heaven above all the things we dream we dream of and and when I read the Bible something that occurred to me was the physicality of the Angels that's such a wonderful image and I and I thought okay they were they eating in the Bible and they're walking you know with God in the Bible and I thought what if I read the Bible from that perspective what happened to the angels where are they because they saw angels
before we don't see them and then I thought okay maybe they have been tempted to be in the physical world too much and then kind of been almost centrifuged into the world and and being part of the world and can't escape and they're still here around us that was the thought and it's in a kind of a way it's a matter for what happened with religion why you know why we not many of us don't believe anymore why does not
heaven above us except you know commercials and and TV programs and stuff um what happened what happened with religion what happened with god what happened with heavens you know how come we are all down here now and and what's what's that about and that was not why I read it but that was the outcome of I write it but that was the outcome of the writing of that and why the fascination with the can and
abble story it's um right it's family struggle it's rivalry yeah it's true and it's only like think eight lines or something in the Bible it's almost nothing and it's so rich and it's like it's bottomless they have been discussing that and reading that for you know thousands of years and you can still say something new about it that simple story uh the brother killing another brother one yeah I'm just reading about
gnosticism now and and they take a liking some of them for kind which is they like to turn everything upside down so God is really the dead devil and this really is hell and kind is really the good one the one to to look into and you know it's it's just just an endlessly fascinating thing and it means so much so many layers of meaning in in in that simple simple story and that's the best part of the Bible those very
short stories incredibly rich and lay with meaning to close why don't we return to your new book again it's called so much longing in so little space and give us your take on Munch The Scream you referred to this earlier my take on scream that you know that's what happens when you when you're writing uh you just start I just sat down with a mon book okay write a book about monkey let's see where this goes and then you
just enter it and then com something back and then two months later you have a book and the scream is uh it's one of the most iconic paintings there is everyone I think have seen it uh it's so recognizable and it's so almost we have an intimate knowledge of it we see it you know but the painting is about the opposite it's about uh something very strange it's about something I hard to do this in English but it's about the
world being almost recognizable it's is seeing how strange the world is and we and we do this in that painting that we instantly recognize and it's a painting about anxiety and anxiety is incredibly painful so it is a painting about pain but we see you know we see a million dollar we see we see it Fame we don't see that but the interesting thing for me was when I wrote about it was what
kind of paintings m m had access to to and what kind of how they painted at that time because no matter how painful things were they were always taking place in a space in a room and having that space having that room you know that the events in that room will one day be over something new will take place there you know if if Madame bavari is very painful ending but you know that world will continue and there is a kind
of a comfort in that there isn't any acuteness in it you could you could see it you know it will pass and You observe it from the outside so you see it at a distance you know you see something painful so a sick girl at a distance and and and it's in in another room and and it will pass so there is a comfort in that but monk does that did in that painting is to remove that room to remove that space because
it this all the landscape is subdued to the person in the painting so it's his Landscapes so there's no room in it it's no neutrality it's it's when that person is gone the landscape is gone so there is no space and there is no time it's an in instantly painting it's acute it's like it's happening now and we share the space with with the painting and that in that is the radicality of the painting that there's
no and no no space and no Comfort it's an acute thing it's is instant and you have to relate to it you can't see that painting without relating to it no I mean when you saw it for the first time uh and the interesting thing now I think is that that's a fair description of the world how it is now it is an instant world we get access to painful things that happens when it happens I mean today there was a massacre in New
Zealand the minute it happens we know about it we relate to it we feel the pain we see the pictures that was UN that that didn't just happen that did didn't happen at Mon's time it was it was unheard of you know now that's the world we live in the world of scream there's no space between us and the world everything comes bombarding us you know so what the art has to do now is the opposite it is to create spaces it
is to recreate rooms and I was thinking about that and also writing in a book about I was in an exhibition with Anam Kei for her in London as white Cube it was absolutely magnificent but it was no people in it was only spaces only room and it was kind of my iCal rooms it was like it was giving space to events that wasn't even there back somehow and I think both ke and monk are great artists
but they have they live in different times and they had different missions and for monk it was very important to give access directly to the pain and to the distorted vision of the world and to give a more true account of of how it is to be I think he wanted to do and now it's the opposite because now now we need space and we need comfort and we need time and we need you know something I'm not sure if artists would
should do that but but that's that's that's what I thought when I when I start to write about another interesting thing is that exactly the same thing is going on in the literature at that time you know you have the the Epic Novel with all the characters all the rooms a tol stto is a very good example because that is a book about room rooms and then you have for instance then Thompson in hunger which is just one person and his
distorted version of the world that exists and when he dies the world disappears You Know Carl thank you very much for coming by thank you thanks for listening to conversations with Tyler you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes Stitcher or your favorite podcast app and if you like this podcast please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review this helps other people find the [Music] show