Replacement

by Tor Ulven, Kerri A. Pierce (translator), Silje Mari Lundal (Translator)

Replacement, his only novel, published two years before Ulven’s suicide, is a miniature symphony, wherein the perspectives of fifteen unrelated characters are united into what seems a single narrative voice: each personality, having reached a point of stasis in their lives, directing the book in turn. These people reminisce, dream, reflect, observe, and talk to themselves; each stuck in their respective traps, each fantasizing about how their lives might have turned out differently. A masterpiece of compression and confession, Replacement dramatizes the tension between the concrete realities we think we cannot alter, and our interior lives, where we feel anything might still be possible.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Scandinavian Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction, European Literature, Roman

152 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Tor Ulven (1953–1995) was a Norwegian poet. He is considered one of the major poets of the Norwegian post-war era, and he won several major literary prizes in Norwegian literature.

His early works, consisting of traditional modernist verse poetry, were heavily influenced by André Breton and the surrealist movement. As the 1980s progressed he developed a more independent voice, both stylistically and thematically. The later part of his work consists mainly of prose. He committed suicide in 1995 in Oslo, the city where he was born.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

'What you’ve got to understand is that meaning can be found in meaninglessness, and that these meaningless words hold all that you need to know.'

Every moment, we are moving forward on a collision course with death. Everyone and everything ‘will eventually disappear on it’s own, not partially, not selectively, but completely and all inclusively disappear,’ a grim fact that we must all come to terms with. Tor Ulven’s only novel, Replacement, addresses the difficult facts of life, not only that we must all come to an end, but that we must make peace with the time spent while alive. Ulven pits the reader toward the feeling of sorrow felt looking back at a life that is ‘ empty of all the basic necessities, or, to put it another way, it’s full, full of everything but the one thing it should be full of’. Embracing and garnishing the human condition in a robe of intensely emotive figurative language, Ulven dives into the dark recesses of troubled consciousness and resurfaces with pearls of wisdom and hope.

Often cited as one of Norway’s greatest poets, Tor Ulven (1953-1995) left behind an impressive poetic body of work. Replacement, written just two years before Ulven’s suicide, is difficult to analyze without tripping up into an Intentional Fallacy as the narrative probes the hard issues of life, death, and acceptance of our fate. However, the ultimate, hopeful conclusion of the novel transcends Ulven’s own tragic conclusion, and it is his career as a poet that is unshakeable from the readers mind as they light upon each breathtaking combination of words. Written through short fragments of consciousness orchestrated together to express a full, condensed lifespan, Replacement reads much like a collection of prose poems collected together by a common narrative thread. Any paragraph could be broken up into a traditional poetic form (I highly recommend feeding the desire to do so within the margins, this book is pure poetry) with every idea being illuminated through brilliant poetic language and long, flowing metaphors that run wild, branching out, evolving and flowering into an expression of thought much greater than the original idea. He exploits small details of life, unpacking a vast horizon of meaning and imagery from each thought. There are seemingly endless examples:

’perhaps that’s the best of all stages when you’re falling in love, the stage, that is, where everything is still a cascade of unrealized potential, like when you’re standing outside an enormous amusement park of silence (just the distant sound of an orchestra tuning their instruments from somewhere beyond the trees) and you close your eyes and sigh in expectation, standing there before the main gate, where lightbulbs gleam brightly against the dark before you go inside, where the few attractions will just become noisier and noisier, more and more vulgar, as the jostling crowd grows even larger, the hawkers bolder, the entertainment simpler….until your reaction becomes a nightmare, as though these fancy, traditional firework displays were going off inside a prison cell… Finally, the gleaming lightbulbs and the fantastic displays go out, one by one, until the miraculous wonderland lies empty and abandoned, and the leaves begin to fall, suddenly it’s autumn, then the frost comes, it’s winter now, it’s snowing, the amusement park is buried in snow, covered in darkness and buried in snow, until the snow is the only thing left gleaming.’

Each fantastic image resonates with an impression of life’s progress towards some inevitable conclusion. As the novel progresses down the lifeline, the reader experiences a consciousness forever grappling with the implications of death. Each stage of life is marked by a reflection on what lies beyond the wall of death with an accruing acceptance of our fate. Initially, what the character believes in is pushed aside by thoughts of what the character rejects, finding ideas of predeterminism to be offensive (‘life, strictly speaking, was just a superfluous, symptomatic demonstration of what had already been decided and would remain so from eternity to eternity; in which case, you think, earthly life might as well be declared null and void.’), and completely dismissing the notion of a soul, at least in the sense of heaven and hell. ‘[T]he most absurd, most meaningless thing a person can dream up is that there is an immortal soul and that soul can go to hell’, he thinks, terrified by the notion that someone he loves would be made to endure eternal torment. Ulven pushes towards a cyclical lifeline as opposed to a linear one - circles, wheels and pond ripples being a major motif upon which the narrative builds – and constructs the novel in such a fashion that the first few pages and final few pages meet up, with the events of youth and late life being a strange thematic reflection of each other. One of the earliest scenes on the lifeline is of a late-night lovers rendezvous in which he steals away in the night down winding roads, whereas the elderly man near the conclusion embarks on an epic (by elderly standards) walk down the road to call an old lover on a payphone.

The cyclical nature causes past and present to bleed together, much like watching a drop of ice cream on a bike wheel eventually turn into a blur as the rotation speeds up: ‘the spots of ice cream documented the wheel’s circumference, though each spot grew smaller and fainter with each rotation, smaller and fainter, until at last there was only a grayish white smudge, then nothing.' Past, present and future, and the many binaries found in the book, are carefully blended in the novel, through phrases like ‘the grave as a cradle’, 'ringing silence'¹ or his expression of having a nostalgia for the future. Ulven enjoys exposes the ironies in our lives, mocking existence. Such as the way the young, with a seemingly inextinguishable number of days to burn through, destructively seek the future, while the old are painfully aware of their limited heartbeats and reflect back on the past. It is this irony that makes life so heartbreaking and cruel. Take the youthful perspective:

’[T]hose are the people who are going to build their hopes in the Future; a future, oddly enough, that they regard in nostalgic terms, because it’s something they yearn for, they yearn and yearn, it’s something they’re actively working to produce, in a pleasant, large, though not overly large, happiness factory…therefore there’s no point in looking back, there’s just a compost heap of bygone days, days which to them are nothing but junk, rubbish, shit, good for nothing but fertilizing the ground from which their glorious future will spring.’

Compared to the elderly panic at looking back:

’It’s not the thought of death. No, that’s not the reason you ache in the springtime…it’s not an ache either, but a sorrow, a stab of worry…over life unlived; not the anger and angst about the fact that in the near future you won’t be experiencing anything at all (your fear of death actually decreases as you get older), but the nagging feeling that you haven’t experienced enough, that you’ve never really lived life, and even worse, that it’s to late to experience anything more, that the experiences you’ve had weren’t the experience you were meant to have, that somewhere along the way you took a wrong turn, and now it’s too late and as a result your life has in one sense been wasted.’

The ache of a life mislead is shown as the great existential dilemma, greater even than the acceptance of our own demise. The great question then is, what now? He both urges us to use our time wisely, but also asks if the emptiness we feel, the sorrow, can be filled even after our time for experience and adventure has gone by. The true tragedy is that every experience we have, every moment of life, is gone by the time it reaches us. The second an event occurs, it is gone, lost forever from the present, only to be looked back upon in our collected past. We cannot choose the events that befall us, only the paths that take us there. ‘the extraordinary implications a few chance words can have, how a brief succession of syllables can become the slender strand of spider web holding up a whole theater, a theater, namely, with an empty stage, where soon you’ll both appear, each from your own wing, pause, and look each other in the eye’. In a sense, life is an elaborate game of chance; each moment is a spin of the roulette wheel. Gambling imagery frequents each key moment in the novels timeline, reminding us we are victims to chance. Or, if time is circular, are we actually predetermined? Can we change our destinies? Or is that the beauty in life, how we spin forever, like the ice cream spot, onward into oblivion. The most peaceful, or ‘tranquil’ to use Ulven’s terminology, moments in the novel are scenes of silence in a world blanketed in snow. The moments we remember most are the ones that ‘appeared out of the nothingness of falling snow’, that standout from the blur of reality. These are the things to cling to; these are the moments we live for.

It is debatable if the novel follows one man through his life, or multiple characters linked through vague similarities. Being unable to pin the reflections and memories onto one, solid character allows the ideas to take on a universal quality as opposed to a more focused, singular one. The ideas are able to seep into all of us, and the way Ulven switches from initially addressing a ‘he’ to a ‘you’, allows him to address both the character and reader at the same time. The subtle method of the prose correcting itself, or commenting upon itself (especially with regard to word choice), gives the impression that the book may be just as much about words as it is about life. The creation process is wedded with the motion of the present. Being able to make sense out of the collection of memories, to put them into poetic fashion, may be the method of accepting the past and the future. Ulven reminds us how great meaning can be found in meaninglessness.

Tor Ulven has created a powerful work on the human condition, addressing loneliness, regret, yearning, and the inevitable death we all face. While the novel is short, a whole lifetime of ideas and musings is tightly packed in sweeping prose. Starting off a bit slow, Replacement quickly builds into a moving reflection on the fears that plague us all, and the mindsets we must take, the acceptance we must reach, if we want to shatter our fears and live fully free. While taking the reader down several dark paths, this novel reaches a conclusion that is as bittersweet as it is hopeful. Ulven offers philosophical conundrums that have been tackled before, but rarely in such shimmering prose.
4/5

¹ Ulven plays with several binaries in this novel, with light and noise being a symbol of life, whereas death is symbolized by darkness and silence. He makes great use of these symbols, such as during the scene where the elderly man feels sorrow for life gone wrong, he is confined to a bed and the light switch is out of his reach.

‘creek beds being cut soundlessly into the surface of her face by an endless spring flowing right beneath her skin, as if time were a perpetual trickle of groundwater, or rather as if the old face with its thousand wrinkles had been there from the beginning, complete down to the smallest detail, as if it had simply been hidden beneath the deceptive mask of youth...'

[Praj · Rating 5 out of 5]

The mid-afternoon breeze lingers over the traces of burnt up lavender oil. As the heady scent fans out the pleasing Camille Saint-Saëns symphony swirling on a loop nearby; my heart slowly awakens to the thought of an early spring , the currency of which now seems to be a piece of fiction amid this dreary winter. The flaky skin on my forehead smoothens with a dash of coldcream, the lonely curl tucked back in my bundled hair. The looking glass pondering of a time when the opulence of a soft skin , the raven-tint coiffure, render into becoming another pipe dream , the supple visage resigning to its eventual cascading fate. "Take an apple, for example, or any other fruit or vegetable that rots, that withers, shrivels, and wrinkles, as human bodies wither, shrivel, and wrinkle more and more as they age, so that rotting can be considered the lowest common multiple of all fruits (or vegetables), just as people too are only really revealed in decline……."; the recurrent words of Ulven putting me in a trance. In the descent of a living soul, lay bare the gospel truth of years gone by, magnifying every infinitesimal detail of a quavering time stamp that seem to be hidden beneath the illusive youthful mirage, perpetually trickling down to a forgotten interlude that seem to have dissolved in the passage of life. The fading confines of fact and fiction searching for a glimmer of memory or a dream to legitimize the practicalities of the living shrouded amid surrealistic assimilations of a poignant reflection. The genuine face revealed in the midst of a stimulated sham.


…….an artist hanging a row of bananas from a rack along the wall, how all the bananas were painted white, so they all looked identical, and how they were all artificial, except for one, and how once the exhibition opened, one banana, the real one, of course, began to rot, thereby revealing its true face, while the others, the artificial ones, of course, stayed white and pristine.


The deceptive façade falling off exposing the tiniest irregular disparities, the forgotten interlude of time now manifests in the peculiar image that is no longer a familiar companion. The implicit fantasy set on the explicit world stage breaks down in a meaningless hiatus , the nagging feeling of misplaced opportunity, the process of self-realization that is not too late to hold onto the transience immediacy of time, the need to express the raw pain of this very thought as the precision of reality remains. Oceans slowly turning into sand, the foetus leisurely growing in the womb, youth being substituted by old age , the sense to see, to think , to imagine, the strategies of equal and opposites, the precision of the surroundings embracing the ambiguity of life. Replacement becomes a linguistic ode to placing the living at equilibrium with the existing milieu, the existence personified by everything real, everything unreal. The attempt to challenge stereotypes being the greatest stereotype of all.


….he imagines a blind man with a rattling box for a stomach, who constantly feeds himself coins just to buy himself a few more minutes of sight, though when the river of change dries up, he’s blind until he can fish up some new coin....


We are indebted to our cognitive skills. We indebted to our vision, our ability to speak, to hear, we are answerable to every act that our minds and hands commit. Ask a blind man what would he give to see a speck of crimson floating in the morning sky, ask those who are bed-ridden what would they give just to be able to sit at the dinner table. The trembling fingers who battle with every button that needs to be keyed in a shirt, the delirium that gradually erases the sweet nostalgia of your first kiss, the warmth of a lover’s naked body, the crumpled sheets that no longer carry the scent of your beloved, sobriety being taunted by a reclusive beer bottle, the forlorn heart that fraternize with a half-lit cigarette ,sounds of a chimney evaporating in vacuity along the waning years; emptiness builds sanctuaries , you get used to the burgeoning darkness and yet, darkness is never still. Ulven writes, “Whenever you want. Nothing is physically stopping you, nothing, that is, but the prohibition itself.” Reading Ulven’s celebrated words, make me ponder on how we humans take things for granted. How we in our luxuriate narcissism bring an illusion of invincibility to our mortality. The crimes we commit against each other, the ignorance that mushrooms in neglect, how we bloated with pride disregard the lives we throw in oblivion, the very lives who could one day save us from our own nullity.


Someone is standing motionless on the footbridge. As you get closer you see that it’s a middle-aged woman in a gray coat, and that she’s thrown something, it’s impossible to say what, over the rail, and that now she’s following it with her eyes. Afterward, she turns around and walks toward you. As you pass one another, you seem to see a secret smile of forbidden pleasure playing across her face. ………..


The phenomenon of death points the issue in permanence of physical departures and deliberations over the plausibility of an afterlife. Ulven fields an inquiry in the correlated subject matter of legitimacy of a soul. The rationalities of death and dying make an emphatic paradox debating the religious dogma of a heaven and hell. The contemplating abstractions of mortal v/s immortal soul characterised as the anecdotal sum and substance of biological continuity v/s spiritual reliance. Death is perceived either as a relief or consolation, the boundaries of consciousness disappearing in a deafening cry. Ulven’s outlook on how we don’t possess the exclusivity of joie de vivre, accentuated Ulven’s own personal turmoil. The candid dialogue on suicide… “you remember what the psychiatrist said, how when someone finally convinces themselves to do it, they get excited, cheerful, they seem happy, energetic, and everyone thinks they’re getting better, but in fact they’re not getting better, they’re just grimly, morbidly happy because they’ve finally decided to do it…”, comes to be a prophetic writing on the wall underlining Ulven’s own impending suicide couple years later. (Tor Ulven killed himself in 1995).


Replacement swarms with the quotidian of the lowest possible decimal of organic existence. Elementary trivialities are elevated on a visionary pedestal, entwining the reticence of beauty with the complex realism. With beauty comes suffering. Germination is chased by decay. Ulven’s amorphous metaphorical world may seem as clear as the mud, yet the celebrated verses flow into multifaceted passage that at times equate to serene banality of a pond; the silent waters a chimeric humeral veil to the chaotic world thriving beneath brimming with stones, aquatic fauna and flora, each embracing the frictions of splendour and degeneration. Akin to silhouettes meeting in secrecy , Ulven’s voices rise and fall throughout the solemn narrative fluently switching from the meditative musings of a nonagenarian protagonist to the assorted individual dispositions of multiple characters bracing the aesthetics of a life beyond and within the parameters of beauty and suffering. Steadily, as the reader immerses in these soul-stirring reflexions resonating in the queries of resounding silence, the flow of words animating the numerous articulations amalgamate into a single resonating conscious , the assumed mind trip eventually residing within you, the reader, the humble self locked up in the precariousness of time.


…..what you’ve got to understand is that meaning can be found in meaninglessness, and that these meaningless words hold all you need to know.


All is connected, all is replaced. Change is inevitable. You find yourself standing alone with your reflection, a tranquillity steadily sets in, you keep gazing into the identical likeliness until the image blurs your rationalities, the chill in the air no longer affecting your bare skin, the last whiff of the lavender fetching in the elusive epiphanies of the Ulvenesque aura that everything matters, every tiny bit of it creating intelligent and unintelligent life. Insignificant beads strung together transforming into pearls of wisdom, the interlacing circulatory sequence edifying with every drop of fluid sagacity. So, readers like myself who whine about facets of life getting in the way of my undertaken readings, need to take a step back pausing all the juvenile tantrums and appreciate the dealings of life in its entirety no matter how tough or easy things might seem, respect it much as you respect your beloved things , value it as much as you value the words you read in a book, maybe even more , for as every single letter is as precious as the word composed ,remarkably in some of the most meaningless things lies the profundity of a lifelong meaning.

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Malas Tierras no es que no edite un libro malo, es que no he leído (Quin, Gallardo, Stahl) nada que no esté entre mis favoritos. "Reemplazo" de Tor Ulven es uno de esos libros originales y brillantes, inquietantes y perturbadores que tanto me gusta leer. Esos libros crueles que te alteran la percepción de las cosas. Escrito de forma fragmentaria a través de monólogos de quince personajes diferentes que, la verdad, no siempre se diferencian pero que da absolutamente igual. Porque las piezas encajan formando un inventario de pensamientos y observaciones, quizás soñados o vividos, donde la soledad y el extrañamiento pesan en la monótona cotidianeidad. Como miraba Ulven no parece de este mundo. No extraña que acabara con su vida en 1995 cuando contaba 41 años. Abisal.

"¿Por qué jamás se hace lo que se quiere? ¿Porque uno es normal? Uno no es normal, piensas. Uno carga en su interior un gran grito de aquello que debería haberse dicho pero que jamás se dice, piensas."
(Pág. 56)

"Era como si todo el peso de la desaparición y la muerte que cada vez iba haciéndose más probable reposase sobre un papel de lija que iba reduciéndose a la nada."
(Pág. 67)

"La luz es solo dolor, la oscuridad es un consuelo, la oscuridad de la ignorancia, que jamás debería propagarse, sabes demasiado a pesar de saber poco."
(pág 109)

"Careces de talento para abandonar toda esperanza."
(Pág. 129)

[Ben Winch · Rating 5 out of 5]

From time to time I’ll have the argument about why I don’t stay ‘up to date’ with ‘developments’ in fiction. Some bewildered fellow reader will wave the latest water-cooler talking-point at me and act offended when I don’t promise to read it straight away. I’ll counter that I read mostly older books (20th century, let’s say), that I like to ‘wait for the dust to settle’ before taking these hits and runaway sensations too seriously and that (if the book in question is by an Anglo writer, which it almost invariably is) in any case I prefer to read in translation. Why? Because those other, popular, Anglo titles (the ones that ‘everybody’ reads) I’ll absorb by osmosis anyway. I don’t need to read them. I don’t need to adopt or even pay much attention to the official Anglo history of literature; I’d rather help engender an alternate history. And if I miss something, never mind, if it’s one of those popular sensations then it’ll be floating around for years to come.

Cue Tor Ulven’s Replacement. Judging by the afterword (and the quality of the book bears it out), in Norway this is, already, canonical. Not only that, but if (as those readers with their water-cooler recommendations assure me) it’s important to ‘keep up’, this is a book worth keeping up with. A significant bending/warping/refining of the novel form. And (thanks to translator Kerri A. Pierce) a step forward in prose-style too: informal yet precise, immediate yet expansive, heir to an exactitude-bordering-on-its-own-parody straight out of Beckett, but not archaic (as Beckett couldn’t refrain from being, even as he mocked himself for being so), thrillingly ‘now’ – if ‘now’ is the indefinite-but-familiar, 3-dimensional, tangible immediate and not a series of sly nods to current technologies, fads or political crises. Here I’ll confess: I’ve misrepresented those well-meaning readers by the water-cooler; it’s not just ‘developments in fiction’ they entreat me to keep up with, but something else. The world. Affairs. Current affairs. As if a novelist were a newsreader! A commentator!! I mean, fuck that!!!

Tor Ulven is very far from a newsreader. Yes, his world is recognisably modern, but nowhere is there mention of country, city, time-period, political situation. It could (apart from a few trivial details) be 1960 or 2010. In fact, Replacement was published in 1993. Think on that. Twenty years, it took, for this ‘significant development in the novel form’ to surface in English. I mean, whatever. On one level I don’t care. It’s ridiculous, all this chasing after innovation in an artform that’s been widely practised for almost five centuries! I don’t read for innovation in a linear sense; for me, it’s enough that the artist feels him/herself to be innovating – that the journey, for the journeyer, is new. But if it’s new developments you’re after, doesn’t it make sense to read books from other cultures? Cultures in which most of what is read is in translation, in which writers therefore have the benefit of seeing the products of our culture as well as their own, and others. The ‘bigger picture’.

Back to Ulven. Incidentally, he fulfills both conditions: he develops the form and journeys into his own unknown. He’s mind-expanding. What is this form he’s hit upon? Replacement unfolds so naturally, so instinctively, that it hardly seems intellectualised at all. It’s all a blur – a river – though like some intermittent desert-stream it’s collected into pools, strung out through emptiness, with here and there rivulets of flow. Telegrammatic paragraphs tell the ‘story’. And unlike so many ‘story-less’ stories, this one’s immediate, concerned with the here-and-now, given to flights of philosophy only rarely and even then filtered through intense, often angry voice and perception. It’s human – achingly so. And yet at times, with its free-roaming-through-the-minds-of-men (and they are all men) structure, it’s almost cartoonish. A graphic novel (because it is so graphic, so visual, with zooms and dissolves and sudden, deftly illustrated flights of fancy) involving a roaming spirit, which occupies men’s minds with a sinister at-one-remove mode of perception, spying on them, assimilating them perhaps, for reasons unknown. Yet it’s also like some hyper-modern Whitman, singing a song for and out of the multitude. All in a prose that’s less Bernhard (as has been suggested) than Peter Handke turned up to 11 – and, improbably, all the better for it. (Who would have thought that Handke hadn’t gone far enough – into pure description, into minutiae, into the concrete?)

A note on the title. Maybe it refers to a cast of characters each ‘replacing’ the last? Maybe. But as I turned the page to yet another old man, again handicapped, again bitterly nostalgic, it struck me: what if Ulven – who would kill himself two years after publishing Replacement – were writing these older male voices (I think they’re all older than forty, Ulven’s age when he wrote this) as ‘replacements’ for himself, to fill the gap he would leave behind? And when one isn’t right he tries another, another. Is he looking for a reason to live? Almost resigned to the fact that there is none, but scoping around one last time just in case. Just a thought.

The trolley was black, and it looked like it had been through a fire or an explosion or maybe both, a wreck with no real route, but with a red cross on the door, and then the doors opened (the red cross had folded back and disappeared) and out had stepped a short, stocky, bareheaded (and bald) little man dressed in a shabby overcoat; his fingers sparkled with large rings showcasing various small gems. You thought he looked threatening, and you tensed yourself for a fight, but upon closer inspection, you decided that his face was actually warm, gentle and a little sad. Rings sparkling, he’d approached you and asked in an encouraging tone, Are you looking for someone? and, suddenly uncertain, you answered, Yes, but she’s not here, there must have been some misunderstanding, I don’t think either the clock or her heart works at night (it was suddenly night) and he said, Don’t worry about that, that’s not the reason you’re here, that was just an excuse; no, what you’ve got to understand is that meaning can be found in meaninglessness, and that these meaningless words hold all you need to know. Then he turned and vomited all over the platform. After that, he climbed back into the disfigured trolley, the doors closed (you noticed the red cross was now a skull), and the trolley had descended toward the city and disappeared.

For a novel so rooted in the concrete, Replacement is gloriously otherworldly. Whether describing a dream (as above), a flight of the imagination or the most mundane of daily rituals, Ulven plumbs the mysteries of soul and being like few formal innovators before him. I don’t claim to understand what drives him, but his prose has a polished, brutal intensity matched only by the masters. This book is so obviously laboured over, so much a product of love and superb craftsmanship (on the part of both its author and its translator) that it’s impossible (for me, at least) not to admire it. The Molloy of the nineties. A classic.

[Lee Klein]

Read this because of a mention in "Oslo August 31," a highly recommended recent Norwegian film (that mentions Proust!) currently streaming on Netflix. Put down on page 86, more than midway through. Wrong book, wrong time. Too elusive, too recursive (too many parenthenticals (and parentheticals within parentheticals offset by parentheses instead of brackets [I prefer brackets!])).

[Tomás ☁️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

«la luz es solo dolor, la oscuridad es un consuelo»

unsettling

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is built around a bold formal conceit: the unity of character, as well as the usual "unities" of time, place and action, appear to be in a continuous state of flux. It is very difficult to say whether the character perspective shifts across numerous disparate people or a few or one separated by time and circumstance. There are no chapter breaks, but rather a series of long paragraphs of fairly constant length. From one paragraph to the next, the scene may shift abruptly, or the scene and subject remain constant but the contours of character appear to shift. As a result, at the most basic level, most readers will find that this novel frustrates their expectations and simply is not worth the effort. Fair enough! Life is short (one of the novel's core themes). I liked the novel overall, and even I found my mind wandering and losing its connection to the task of reading at many points. So why is it worth the effort?

I think Ulven gets some traction here on a thought that I have often had but which is necessarily very difficult to express. It is the thought that despite our obvious and vital weaving of all life experiences into a unified narrative of individual identity, our lives are also incoherent patchworks. Each of us is a jumble of disconnected experiences and memories that do not add up to a satisfying whole. Indeed, how much of our psychological need for fiction arises from the need for "templates" on which to model our own fictional life narratives? To help us give the appearance of coherence to that godawful mess of fragments that make up our actual storehouse of memories.

No such comfort here. "Replacement" is a sort of anatomy of the discomfort of one's memories not adding up to a human life. Or at least nothing like one imagined to be one's life.

Here's one of Ulven's many beautiful paragraphs that expresses the theme (contemplating aging while looking at the aging face of a partner):

"But what really eats at you, as you stand there looking at a face that's no longer young, a face that's smiling (boldly, bashfully) up at you in the half-dark, isn't actually the fact that her beauty's fading (if she was even attractive to begin with), no, it's the realization that the very same processes are at work in your own face (though in you're case they're much more advanced), though it's not the fact that you're no longer so easy on the eye that bothers you, not at all, instead it's the nagging feeling that something important has been left undone, something it's too late to do anything about, something (you've got no idea what) it's too late to do over, something for which it's just too late in general: a dreamlike scene is playing in your head, you're walking down the main street of a small town, and as you're passing by, each shop on the street locks its doors, one by one they lock their doors, close their shutters, and bar their windows, and after you've passed by each one you remember something that you needed, something that it was absolutely necessary to pick up, and it'll take forever to reach the next corner store, and as you're standing in the middle of an empty, windswept street on the far side of town, you realize you're lacking everything, no, not everything, but the most important things, you lack the most important things. However, the allegorical distance of that dream image or parable can't begin to express the raw pain you feel at this thought."

Ulven depicts the experience of each of us constantly being replaced by subsequent states of awareness, in relation to which the preceding actions and experiences of our lives were not quite right. By definition, this makes for an unsatisfying narrative, but therein lies the peculiar satisfaction of Ulven's novel.

[Antonio Jiménez · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡Qué maravilla de escritura! 🎇👌🏼

Tor Ulven, de estilo originalísimo, un existencialismo cargado de detalles, poeta melancólico y analista minucioso y poliédrico. Ulven fue un lector voraz del Pato Donald, amante de las canciones tristes, traductor de Samuel Beckett, René Char y Claude Simon (con quienes compartió inquietudes y rasgos estilísticos).

«Ahora, en el momento en que escuchas el estallido de los truenos fuera de la casa, mientras dejas de lado la radiografía y te frotas los ojos, piensas en lo que podría haber pasado, o más bien no pasado, si tú, por algún motivo absurdo, no hubieses tenido el coraje de soltar aquella mentira, de repetirla con voz más firme: simplemente jamás habrías llegado a conocerla; tendrías otra vida, ni más ni menos; y te estremeces, un escalofrío mezclado con una alegría amarga y peculiar, a causa de la tremenda dimensión que pueden alcanzar a veces unas pocas palabras, por cómo una breve ristra de fonemas resultan ser una fina telaraña que, aún así, mantiene en pie el teatro entero, el teatro en el escenario vacío, o sea, el lugar que en breve entraréis cada uno desde vuestro respectivo extremo, os detendréis y os observaréis el uno al otro».

[Johan Kronquist]

Tor Ulven – Avlösning, Flo förlag 2018
.
Mellan en man med ett vapen ”inom räckhåll från sängen, som vanligt, skarpladdat, som vanligt” och en man med geväret ”intill sängen” (”Han är förberedd”) utspelar sig denna författarens enda utgivna regelrätta roman.

Tor Ulven är mest känd för sin lyrik, men efter debuten 1977 med ” Skyggen av urfuglen” och fyra lyriksamlingar till övergick han till prosa, fast med undantag för just ”Avløsning” titulerades böckerna då ”historia”, ”memorabilia” eller ”prosastykker”.

Ulven, som tog livet av sig, 41 år gammal 1995, har ofta kallats efterkrigstidens viktigaste/väsentligaste/bästa norska författare. Personligen tycker jag det är en underdrift.

Vad vi får i Avlösning är fragment. Den som väntar sig en berättelse, narrativ med start och mål eller en drivande ”story” väntar förgäves. Tor Ulven skriver ingen underhållningslitteratur, ingen prosa som ”får tiden att gå”. Han svettas fragment av liv, någonstans mellan frustration och hopplöshet, som snarare visar på tidens meningslösa gång och livets absurdism. Där är mörkret inte hotet (tvärtom: ”mörkret är en tröst”), och ljuset är istället ”skräckens evigt brinnande ljus”. Handlingen är egentligen sekundär: en ung mans trevande kärleksaffärer, en äldre mans längtan efter någon annan (något annat) och den gamle mannens bittra blick tillbaka på det liv som aldrig blev som det skulle. En säng, flugor surrande runt lampan, en ödslig industrilokal, en söderhavsö, en trött cirkus.

Prosan kan kallas experimentell. Den är aldrig svår, fast krävande ändå. På ett bra sätt. Du måste stanna upp och läsa igen (för säkerhets skull), och texten äter sig stadigt in i ditt medvetande, vare sig du vill eller inte (vilket måste vara själva kännetecknet på en bra bok?). Romanen är uppbyggd i korta stycken, med ibland (till synes) ändlösa meningar och en uppsjö parenteser (som jag smittas av här i min recension), fyllda med ett närmast maniskt, nästan autistiskt noterande av detaljer (en freudiansk terapeuts dröm) och en man — eller flera — som oupphörligen tänker, grubblar, reflekterar och dessutom, till råga, hela tiden ifrågasätter (med förbehåll, alternativ och korrigeringar) sina egna tankar – in absurdum.

Det låter tungt och allvarligt, och det är det också, men knappast utan humor; ibland rent absurdistisk sådan, ren slapstick. Skrattet är avgrundens väktare. Jag frestas att citera hela tiden, men tvingas, av utrymmesskäl, lägga band på mig.
Släktskapen med Samuel Beckett och modernismens ”stream of consciousness” är självklar, men jag kan också känna igen en Willy Granqvistsk ömhet och besatthet vid detaljer. Och att Knausgård är ett stort fan är ingen större överraskning.

Stig Sæterbakken skriver i efterordet till den engelska översättningen (”Replacement”, Dalkey Archive Press 2012) att estetiken här handlar om en individ reducerad till ren observatör, och hänvisar till pessimisten Schopenhauers ”pure knowing subject, the clear eye of the world”. Och det är, som sagt, ett oupphörligt noterande av detaljer det handlar om. Ett detaljarbete som inte minst översättaren Nils Sundberg bör äras för. För det är tack vare honom, och nystartade Flo förlag som vi nu äntligen har ännu en bok (det finns tidigare ett litet urval dikter, ”Du droppar och blir borta”, Heidruns förlag 2001) av Tor Ulven, inte en av Norges, utan världens bästa moderna författare på svenska.

[La Central · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Los relatos que forman Reemplazo nos dan a conocer a uno de los autores más desconocidos y sorprendentes de la literatura nórdica; aunque con más precisión deberíamos hablar de fragmentos. La obra se compone de quince monólogos, cuya separación obliga al lector a una lectura atenta y minuciosa para darse cuenta de que pasamos a otro protagonista, a otro escenario o a otro tiempo. Toda esta amalgama de personajes y ambientes configuran el universo de Tor Ulven, donde todo es importante y al mismo tiempo insignificante en su relación con un todo global. Actos cotidianos tan aparentemente simples como buscar una zapatilla debajo de la cama, o una cerveza en la nevera, o la llegada a la playa de un trozo de madera, se convierten en el centro de su narración; detalles que pueden pasar desapercibidos se transforman en literatura. Así pues, todo pasa por la lente detallista del narrador, que se convierte en un observador privilegiado de los acontecimientos. Tal vez el hecho de que el propio Ulven pasara sus últimos años encerrado en su habitación sin poder salir por problemas de salud, influya de forma decisiva en su obra y en su forma de narrar; su contacto principal con el exterior era la ventana de su habitación y las escasas pero interminables conversaciones telefónicas con conocidos. La luz que se filtra a través de las cortinas de su ventana es lo único que configura el espejo de la realidad. El otro elemento que nos hace pensar que hay vida es el lenguaje: Estas en la cama y a tu alcance solo hay palabras, fragmentos de palabras." Luis de Dios

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Karl Ove Knausgaard has done nothing else for me, he's helped me find some interesting looking North European writers. The hipper hipsters probably didn't need KoK's help finding Tor Ulven, who's apparently very well respected in Norway. But this is the only work of his in English so far.

Replacement was precisely what I needed when I started to read it, so keep that in mind when considering my recommendation. But this is really freaking good, despite sounding really boring (apparently the Norwegians specialize in "sounds really boring but isn't" kind of books). To begin with, we're in the head of a lonely old man, at night, thinking about his past. Then, with no obvious signposts, we're no longer in his head, but in the head of a younger man. And so it goes for the rest of the text. Each man (all men) do something fairly unimportant, and reflect on their almost uniformly sad lives. This should be awful. It's the kind of thing I hate. But here, it works perfectly. The form is the most interesting thing going on, but there's also a surprising amount of emotional heft, as if Ulven really wanted to make sure we saw every possible minute variation of the blues: regret and nostalgia; fear of the future and delusions of grandeur based there; loneliness and agoraphobia.

Again, usually this would go straight on the trade-in pile, but Ulven (and his translator, Kerri A. Pierce) pull it off thanks to the sentences, paragraphs, and small variations. In that way, it's a bit like the minimalist-theist composers that are so popular (I mean popular among a very small group of people) right now.

But because it fit my mood just a bit too well, I'm knocking off a star. Because I'm objective like that.

[marcela]

«y tú separaste los dedos y dejaste que la sombra de tu mano se moviese hacia la sombra de aquella cruz en la ventana, desde la dirección contraria, por diversión, de manera que las sombras de las dos manos se encontrasen y desapareciesen en la cruz del travesaño, como si se viesen a escondidas, y algo que desconocías de ti mismo se encontró con algo que ella desconocía de sí misma, en un lugar, un escondite o un punto de encuentro que ninguno de vosotros conocíais»

este libro es: uno) el libro que emocionó al rubius (tenía que decirlo o reventaba) y dos) un evento por partida doble en mi historial reciente. porque es, adrede, mi libro número ochocientos marcado como leído en esta red social, y porque tengo una relación medio extraña sentimental con él, no solo con su lectura sino con su existencia en el mundo. como que empezó algo en mí a partir de él hace tiempo de una forma complicada y luego ha vuelto y me ha mirado en varios momentos desde la estantería. me da un poco de pena no haber entendido, o sentir, más bien, que algo se escapa siempre a los ojos, pero también hay una sensación que prevalece. me lo esperaba más triste, por otra parte, algo más devastador, pero hay mucha belleza admirada contenida ahí dentro. pensando en alto (o en escrito, es medio paradójico usar esa expresión aquí, me hace hasta gracia), me gusta ser capaz de aceptar esa distancia en la comprensión, aquello que se escapa, a la vez que de encontrar algún tipo de reflejo de un momento y un sentimiento concretos, de una comunicación dentro y a través de él.
(libro para leer en una mañana de domingo un poco peculiar, supongo)

[julucha · Rating 3 out of 5]

[1993] Narrado en segunda persona, me sentí totalmente apelado en el miedo a la oscuridad que llena todos los fragmentos y un estado vital donde todo es ausencia en las múltiples voces que narran pero que mayormente parecen una sola.

Tor Ulven puso fin a su terrible existencia en Oslo suicidándose a la edad de 41 años, tras años de aislamiento y enfermedad, el colmo de la desesperanza. Irónicamente, sus cortinas cerradas por donde entra algo de luz se quedarán grabadas en mi mente en el lugar donde guardo “lacónicas imágenes de esperanza”

[WillemC · Rating 4 out of 5]

In deze onconventionele roman - de enige van Ulven trouwens - vloeien enkele fragmenten in elkaar over; elk vertegenwoordigen ze een ander perspectief: een nachtwaker die zijn ronde doet, een oude sporter die dikke zwakkelingen haat, een man die na een museumbezoek naar de kermis gaat, ... Het is als geheel nogal wazig en schimmig, maar het werkt eigenlijk wel. Alhoewel ik af en toe echt niet wist wat ik aan het lezen was, zijn de gedachten en situaties over het algemeen banaal maar boeiend genoeg om verder te gaan. 3.75/5

"De entree machtig als een kerkportaal: het lijkt alsof hij de verhevenheid van de wetenschap moet onderstrepen."

"Het hele huis is gevuld met een suizende stilte waardoor het twee keer zo groot lijkt."

"Alsof de elektriciteit van de bliksem de röntgenfoto tot leven zou kunnen wekken."

[M. Sarki · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have absolutely no idea what the fuss is about this book. I gave it a good try, but I must give up. A book, for me, totally devoid of feeling. The words hollow as any I have ever read. I got nothing, nothing at all, from reading any of this. Nothing. A complete waste of time.

[Guillermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

«¿Por qué no ibas a hacerlo? ¿Por qué jamás se hace lo que se quiere? ¿Porque uno es normal? Uno no es normal, piensas. Uno carga en su interior un gran grito de aquello que debería haberse dicho pero que jamás se dice, piensas».

[Mohit · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poetic depiction of ephemeral truth and beauty. One of the most beautiful books I have read this year. Highly highly recommend...

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

"... en niemand (alle anderen, dat wil zeggen: degenen die nu gelukkig zijn, of die nooit gelukkig zijn geweest, gelukkig noch ongelukkig?) komt ook maar op de gedachte dat het misschien wel zo is dat je ooit (een kort moment) gelukkig was en het nu niet meer bent, de gedachte komt niet in ze op, want dit is de zonde die ze, als ze kerkvaders waren geweest (wat ze op hun manier misschien ook wel zijn), als achtste aan de zeven doodzonden zouden hebben toegevoegd, naast IJdelheid, Afgunst, Woede, Luiheid, Hebzucht, Vraatzucht en Wellust: de Nostalgie; waarschijnlijk, denk je (bij jezelf, steeds bij jezelf), omdat dit de mensen zijn die aan de Toekomst bouwen, een toekomst wat ze zich vreemd genoeg nostalgisch toe lijken te verhouden, ze blijven maar verlangen, ze moeten hun grote toekomst produceren in een door en door comfortabele, grote maar niet al te grote geluksfabriek, en de machine draait al op volle toeren, dus je kunt niet achterom kijken, daar ligt alleen de composthoop van de voorbije dagen, drek en stront die alleen kan dienen als mest voor de toekomst. De toekomst. Alles wat goed is ligt per definitie in de toekomst, want als je in de toekomst niet gelukkig kunt worden, maar het alleen in het verleden zou zijn geweest, wat zou de machinerie dan in beweging moeten houden? wat zou je dan hebben om naar te streven? hoe zou je je dan met een glimlach op je gezicht het zweet op de rug kunnen werken? ervan overtuigd dat je je eigen geluk nu aan het maken bent? wat zou er overblijven van de effectiviteit, de vrolijke, bruisende effectiviteit van het toekomstig geluk? Die zou door de plee gespoeld worden. Maar zolang je erover zwijgt kun je aan het verleden blijven denken en de woorden bij jezelf herhalen, maar alleen bij jezelf."

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

To quote Stig Saeterbakken, "No symbols where none intended. In Ulven's texts, all phenomena, whether dead or alive, have the same meaning, the same weight, if you will. Everything is equally real, equally meaningful, or just the opposite: equally meaningless. It's Ulven's strategy for placing himself on the same level as his surroundings. He's always equally precise, equally accurate, no matter what catches his eye or occupies his thoughts. In short, this linguistic precision represents in itself an embrace of the world. To describe this hand, this heart, this rock, this grass, this leaf in the grass, these dew drops on this leaf in this grass in this garden, to precisely express the existence of it all, is the true literary feat."

[Imre Bertelsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Alleen de pijn en het leed en de vertwijfeling en het verdriet en de angst zijn overtuigend, maar ze komen nooit tot uitdrukking, denk je, ze houden zich in ieder mens verborgen als een zwerm opgezette gieren die steeds als niemand naar ze kijkt (dat wil zeggen: naar de gieren) tot leven komen, of misschien op de zeldzame en korte momenten dat degene die lijdt vergeet naar zichzelf te kijken."

Ik was dit boek op het spoor gekomen via Knausgard die in zijn studententijd groot fan was van deze schrijver, dan kan je eigenlijk al verwachten dat het geen vrolijke bedoening gaat worden. Mooie poëtische taal, maar net iets te abstract voor mij om het echt tot me te kunnen laten doordringen.

[Joe Loftus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost definitely worth the full five but as it's a book of complex stories from different stages of life it will require a dire reread. Until then, four it is.

[Magnus Trætteberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liten og enorm, så mye å ta tak i, men ikke mange sider, noe som ikke gjør noe. Det er en mørk roman der handling spiller liten rolle, men full av lyrikk og poesi på sin måte, en sjelden og unik leseropplevelse.

[Nikita Velichko · Rating 5 out of 5]

нужно ли менять лампочку

[Katrinka]

I've truly no clear feelings about this one. Although Stig Saeterbakken alleged in the afterword that there's humor in Ulven's work, this one just felt almost entirely negative, at times just angry. And yes, that's all quite legitimate and sometimes justified—but I get the sense that to speak to the author of the possibility, much less the validity, of even a sliver of happiness, would have been sneered at as a childish delusion and/or idiotic romanticism.

(Update: I brought the book into an essay on anger and/vs comedy: https://walkingthewire.substack.com/p...)

[Tessa Kerre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Als een dichter een roman schrijft, dan is elke zin een pareltje. Vlot leest het niet, maar dat zorgt voor vertraging, en dat heb ik soms nodig. Het vergt inspanning om te weten wie spreekt, van de vele hoofdpersonages, maar is dat eigenlijk belangrijk?

[Ronald Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tor Ulven was, primarily, a poet, though he transitioned into prose – mostly short stories and essays – later in his life. Replacement, written in 1993 – two year prior to his suicide – was his only novel.

It’s difficult to really nail down a decent description of this book – I think even the back cover does it poorly (even, possibly, incorrectly) – though the afterward, written by Stig Sæterbakken, does a decent job of illuminating some of the connecting strands that hold the work together. If you believe the back of the book then what you’re presented with here is a stream of successive unconnected narrators, “in a chain leading nowhere”. The book itself – in some of its recurring motifs and repeated details and syntactic structures – doesn’t really appear to support this, or, if it does, it does so weakly with a stronger interpretation being supported. The afterward appears to recognize the possibility that the voices are all connected as they all (or most) belong to the primary protagonist. And that, the story then becomes one of endless searching for an early lover, and that each successive woman in the book are merely replacements for her, and that all is held together through this thread. The final perspective shifts in the book seem to allow for this.

Where this book succeeds is in transition. I basically didn’t even notice the early transition from third-person omniscient narration to pure second-person – there was a “was this originally in second-person?” thought that had me flipping back to the beginning. But the real success is the perspective shifts, as each happens subtly – through overlapping details (mostly plays on light and shadow, or hidden presences about to be revealed) – to the point that the reader must constantly be on their guard, lest they find themselves wondering how they got from a bed to a warehouse (and weren’t they walking on a road in winter somewhere in there as well?). It’s really well done, and rarely have I seen so well accomplished literary sleight of hand, missable even when one is looking for it.

Even with its strengths the book does drag a bit (there is very little plot to speak of) which is a shame as it’s only like 160 pages long. But the writing is strong – Ulven’s poetic background serves him well in this – and the book is short. As always, Dalkey brings something – at the least – interesting to the table here. Worth reading.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his afterword Stig Sæterbakke lists the three authors he feels influenced Ulven the most: René Char, Claude Simon and Samuel Beckett. Interesting they all wrote (at one time or another at least) in French. I know nothing of Char, little of Simon but the influence of Beckett is unmistakable in this text at least. Sæterbakke goes on to compare the bedridden protagonist in Replacement to the dying old man in Beckett’s Stirrings Still but, for me, the more obvious touchstones would be Malone Dies and Krapp’s Last Tape:

From Beckett he gets the linguistic precision, the down-to-the-millimetre exactness, the brilliant pessimism, and last but certainly not least, the humour (which is often overlooked in Ulven’s texts, just as it’s often overlooked in Beckett’s, reverently shoved aside in favour of a form of awe for the gloom and doom that supposedly characterize them both, despite history’s overwhelming evidence to the contrary, namely, that the greatest pessimists are also the greatest humourists (and what else is there in life to laugh at than misery, tragedy, and suffering?)).

This novel (for want of a better word) is far from being a poor man’s Beckett though. Indeed, at the end of his afterword, Sæterbakke expresses the hope that, like Kafkaesque (the best-known example), the term Ulvenesque becomes commonplace granting its namesake what he calls “adjectival status.” Having only read this one text I’m in no position to list off the necessary criteria to identify any text as Ulvenesque but maybe I’m not the best judge.

The sometime narrator in Replacement is a man in his late nineties. We never learn his name. A gun sits on his bedside table. So, like Ulven who committed suicide at the age of forty-one two years after completing this book, it looks like the old man’s thinking about killing himself even though he maintains he’s no intention of firing the thing. Likely having the option, knowing he could end his life any time he chooses, must be of some comfort despite his assertion the gun’s presence brings him no pleasure; it’s clear the familiar odour of gun oil still sooths him.

Like Beckett’s Malone the bedridden man has little to keep himself entertained bar his thoughts. The room is bare and he describes what little there’s in it but most of it, including his wheelchair, is out of reach. We know there’s a woman somewhere in the house but, apart from being inattentive and possibly uncaring, we learn little about her. Is she the “her” that often creeps into the narrative? It’s hard to say. His mind drifts through the years without any consideration for the poor reader trying to keep up. Certainly there have been women in his life and, like Krapp, he finds himself drawn to try to wring something out of happier times. For example:

He watched the board in the water ten years ago. Or seventy-three years ago. On the beach. His hand on her thigh, up her skirt, and so on, no, not that, he thinks, but he could see flecks of light thrown from a sailboat as it drifted past a tangle of branches and leaves, disappearing and reappearing again, unbearably slow, and he could smell the acrid scent of roasted hotdogs coming from the bonfire up the beach (though by then the fire had burned down to a glowing, reddish-orange tangle that occasionally sent a shower of bright sparks gyrating upward with a snap), and he’s glad those days are past.

His memories (and fantasies) bleed into each other. One minute he’s a love-struck young man climbing up a drainpipe to meet his girl and the next paragraph, without any warning, he’s a watchman in a factory. Assuming it’s the same man. He begins as a “he,” who eventually becomes a “you,” and then later a “he” again. My preference was to assume the old man’s mind is wandering and is entertaining itself as best it can. He goes from twenty-five to thirty-nine to forty-two to fifty to seventy-one and many points in-between. Like Krapp he wants to wallow in what might have been:

[Y]ou haven’t seen her for almost forty years, she’ll be old and ugly (like you). This argument isn’t entirely convincing, there’s something else there, and you realize, as the ungainly young man hands a stuffed animal (a plague-ridden one) to an older, well-dressed woman (who smiles happily), that you don’t want her now, you wanted her back then, you wanted her almost forty years ago, because if you got her now, it’d be too late, you’d only be getting the scraps, the leavings, the leftovers, the sweepings, the last remains of a life together, the so-called twilight years, during which you’d just sit and wait for the other to die…

Others take a different view, that the fifteen or so characters in the book are distinct individuals who’ve reached a point of stasis in their lives. And why not? Maybe I’m trying too hard to unify the text. That’s the problem when you start comparing authors. It’s hard not to see echoes of The Unnamable here (“I can't go on, I'll go on.”) or Worstward Ho (“Fail again. Fail better.”):

No, even at seventy-one years of age you haven’t given up, you want to use up every bit of the cloying, mouldy remains of love (if it’s got anything to do with that at all) left at the bottom of your life; you completely lack the ability to let hope die. You’ve often wished you could just give up entirely, but that’s an inhuman task, you think, you’ve got to be a god, or at least a holy man, to simply give up, to resign yourself to the meagre pleasures afforded by the daily grind, though even those pleasures are few and fading, swiftly fading until they’re almost out of sight, while you drool—and will most likely go on drooling all the rest of your days—over the last sorry scraps of time, of experience, of life, whatever the hell that means.

It doesn’t really matter. Like Beckett at his best Ulven here examines what it means to be human and, as with Beckett, what we see is often disappointing. So many missed or mishandled opportunities and yet “what you’ve got to understand is that meaning can be found in meaninglessness, and that these meaningless words hold all you need to know.”

What I would say is you need to set time aside to read this. And you need to be fully awake. Much of the book is comprised of exceedingly long and convoluted sentences and it is so easy to get lost in them. It’s also hard to know when to put the thing down because it’s not as if there are any chapter headings or anything and, as I mentioned earlier, one second you’re climbing up a drainpipe, the next you’re wandering round a factory and then we’re back to the old man in bed.

This seems to be the only book of his available in English. There is a short story collection out there but God alone knows when we’ll ever see it. There doesn’t even seem to be that much of his poetry available despite his stature as a major poet of the post-war era. In fact there’s not that much about him online period (at least not in English) but this short article in The Bangalore Review is worth a read.

[Guille · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quién le importa si este texto fragmentado, bello, críptico, desesperado, es o no una novela, ¿alguien sabe qué es una novela?

A quién le importa determinar si la novela, considerémosla así, es polifónica o tiene un único protagonista sin nombre (y por tanto, tan individual como general) que se nos presenta en series de fragmentos (que empiezan con un «él» para pasar al «tú» y volver en sus párrafos finales al «él») que recogen distintos momentos de su vida (diversas versiones de sí mismo o diversas voces que se van reemplazando a lo largo de toda la obra) entre luces que se encienden y sombras que aparecen, sin respetar orden temporal alguno y que, guardando relación (aunque solo sea porque en todos aparece la misma voz, aunque solo sea porque en todos se observa el mismo tono entre resignado y furioso) funcionan con cierta autonomía.

“… por principios, me interesa escribir libros hostiles. Libros que molesten, tal vez atormenten al lector. Lo admito. Hay tantos lugares donde conseguir bálsamo y alivio para todos nuestros sufrimientos. Prefiero insistir en la miseria de la existencia en mis escritos. Ya hay suficiente morfina por ahí”

A quién le importan si todo lo aquí dicho ya lo hemos leído mil veces.

“… los intentos de desafiar los estereotipos son igual de estereotípicos que los estereotipos en sí”

La novela se inicia con un hombre nonagenario y solitario que hace más de cuatro meses que no sale de casa. Es la caída de la tarde y está tumbado en su cama, tiene una escopeta cargada a su alcance… y piensa.

“En principio, solo hay que abrir la puerta y empezar a caminar para hallarlo todo, absolutamente todo”

A quién le importa si su puerta es el recuerdo o la imaginación, quizás siempre van juntas, o los sueños. El o los personajes van describiendo actos e imágenes cotidianas, hacen reflexiones filosóficas o exclaman gritos de rabia o auxilio, todo al mismo nivel de relevancia o irrelevancia, sensaciones que experimentan o que alguna vez experimentaron y que en su situación, si el protagonista es siempre el nonagenario anónimo, adquieren una importancia especial que la falta actual de actividad les confiere. La soledad, la falta de amor, el deterioro físico en los años finales son temas importantes en la obra, también la cruel constatación del paso intrascendente por una vida apenas vivida…

“Quizá ni siquiera sea dolor, sino pesar, desesperación… por la vida no vivida; tampoco disgusto o angustia por el hecho de que en breve ya no vayas a vivir nada más (la muerte te horroriza menos cuanto mayor te haces), sino la sensación desasosegante de no haber vivido nada, de no haber tenido una vida real y, peor aún, de que ya es tarde para vivir algo, o quizá más bien de que lo que deberías haber vivido era algo diferente a lo que viviste en realidad, de que te has perdido algo…”

… y la triste conclusión de que no hubiera podido ser de otra manera.

“… lo peor quizá sea, piensas, la terrible sensación de que no podría, de ninguna forma sustancial haber sido de otra manera, de que no te habría ayudado tomar otras decisiones, relacionarte con otras personas, vivir en otros lugares, ejercer otra profesión, ser marido y viudo de otra mujer, etcétera…”

Y sin embargo, nos viene a decir, no podemos dejar de experimentar momentos felices que pueden estar en lo más nimio, en una luz que entra a través de una cortina ligeramente descorrida, en la penumbra que permite ver lo que no se puede ver de otra manera, en la llegada de la primavera…

“… en realidad, detestas el invierno y te gusta la primera, y por lo tanto eres feliz cuando llega. ¿Cómo puede ser?”

… porque no podemos rendirnos, va contra una naturaleza, la nuestra, la de todos, que persiste hasta el final sobreponiéndose al deterioro imparable y cruel.

“¿Cuántas veces has deseado ser capaz de rendirte?, pero ese es un arte sobrehumano, piensas, hay que ser divino, un santo, para rendirse, aceptar las alegrías ordinarias del sopor cotidiano, esas que se ven enormemente disminuidas, disminuidas hasta resultar casi invisibles, mientras babeas, y lo más seguro es que sigas babeando mientras te mantengas con vida, por esos despreciables restos de los restos del tiempo, de las vivencias, de la vida, o lo que sea que eso signifique”

Y ello pese a saber lo insustancial que es todo, que solo es cuestión de tiempo que todo desaparezca sin dejar rastro y sin que al universo le importe lo más mínimo, que solo el ser humano se empeña en dotar de sentido a lo que no lo tiene, en ver una cara en las sombras de la luna.

“La vida humana no es más que un espectáculo superfluo”

Ya ven, nada nuevo y, ya ven, no nos engañaba el autor cuando nos confesaba su inclinación a escribir solo libros hostiles. Pero el lector reconoce la grandeza en la forma en que es comunicada esa hostilidad, reconoce su arte, lo que bien puede ser una de las pocas salidas que le queda al ser humano (aunque seamos conscientes de que “El arte es y será cebo en una rueda de ardilla”. Otra salida, quizás la mejor, es el amor, pero este no dura, ella muere o nos deja y se termina convirtiendo en una presencia ausente que duele y que ninguna otra ella puede curar). Como dijo el autor en una entrevista:

“Quizás parte del secreto del arte resida en el hecho de que, sin que realmente lo sepamos, nos recuerda la imposibilidad de satisfacer una necesidad infinita, y que en esta misma imposibilidad murmura una amarga alegría: estamos separados de todo lo que podríamos haber tenido o sido, pero podemos pensar en ello”

En fin, a quién le importa lo que yo diga, léanla y me dicen.

[Geoff Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply affecting, diverse, uncompromising and beautiful.

[Reece · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fra dag til natt, drømmer til virkelighet, og “hallo” til “ha det bra”. Ulven moves between identities, death and life, trivialities, and the like in something that appears to be a dreamworld during a ninety-nine year old man’s evening. Tracking lost love(s), past occupations, experiences and observations, and finally circling back to a question of life and death before turning the light off and voiding the present into a state of slumber. Every word is equal, everything described a newborn existence – he employs a style that I myself obsess over in that he does not give the same object any two same descriptions. I will be citing from Sæterbakken’s analysis in saying that Ulven’s work is imbued with the sentiment that: “[I]t’s not the absence of meaning that is the problem of Modern Man. The problem is that there’s too much. There’s far too much” (151). Replacement seemingly rejects the notion that the shifting pronouns – from he to you to he – is something to obsess over, but instead just a natural, normal fact. The details are clearly expressed as though they are that of a novel and certainly not the precise transcriptions of a man’s thoughts, but the sentiment is still communicative that this is no reaction to the fetishization of meaning with a similar fetishization of non-meaning, and although there are ruminations on meaning and meaninglessness sprinkled throughout, the ultimatum expressed here is no fetishization but instead an acceptance. Atop this metaphysics is another layer, that whereby the past is all entirely equal – the moments of twenty frolicking with those of fifty-five, all interlaced in a beautiful symphony of memories devoid of hierarchy. With an equalized past, the present is nothing more than a time delay before it can be reflected upon in the past tense. The future only contracts, the heartbeats remaining in one’s life slowly draining out of a vat while the adjacent container, containing those heartbeats which have passed, is growing until the rhythm of the heart ceases into silence.

The influence of Beckett is something I picked up nearly instantly here, with negations and digressions abounding (and a tragicomic style that gets too much flak for being too much of the former and never enough of the latter by folks with a sensitive sense of humor); Sæterbakken’s afterword only confirmed my suspicions – and Beckett is among my holy trio of prose stylists so no excess of such an approach should ever be distasteful in my opinion. I can also perhaps glean how this style bleeds into Knausgård’s, with the apparent rejection of symbolic fetishism that abounds in so much other literature. The destruction of motif in favor of describing every object in a singular frame satisfies the Wittgensteinian in me as well.

The afterword provided by Stig Sæterbakken provides something of both a review for Replacement as well as a brief insight into Ulven’s life outside of this novel – something that the English-speaker will desperately thank Sæterbakken for given that we are without any other portals into Ulven’s literature.

The translation feels awkward. I will be avoiding Kerri A. Pierce’s works going forward as a result, with awkward translations about and consistent typos (I mean seriously, was this not proofread by a soul before publication? Not even Pierce herself?). I look forward to one day getting my hands on the original novel in Norwegian in some years to get a true taste of Ulven’s taste, because Pierce’s work makes it feel as though the translation creates a gap between itself and the original that gets in the way of an authentic experience.

In total, I’m confident that under Pierce’s mistreatment is a masterpiece, but the brick wall of English words certainly make such a full picture inaccessible.