Een schitterend wit

by Jon Fosse, Marianne Molenaar (Translator)

Een man rijdt in zijn auto zonder te weten waar hij heen gaat. Hij slaat afwisselend linksaf en rechtsaf en komt ten slotte in een bos op een weg met diepe sporen. Hij stopt pas als de auto vast komt te zitten in de modder en niet meer voor- of achteruit kan. Het begint te sneeuwen, het wordt donker en koud, maar in plaats van hulp te halen, loopt de man een pad in het bos af – ook al is het zo donker geworden dat hij tussen de bomen nauwelijks iets meer kan zien; ook al weet hij dat het dwaas is om te doen.

Een schitterend wit is een briljant verhaal over de grens tussen leven en dood.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Nobel Prize, Literature, Audiobook, Novella, Literary Fiction

77 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Jon Olav Fosse was born in Haugesund, Norway and currently lives in Bergen. He debuted in 1983 with the novel Raudt, svart (Red, black). His first play, Og aldri skal vi skiljast, was performed and published in 1994. Jon Fosse has written novels, short stories, poetry, children's books, essays and plays. His works have been translated into more than forty languages. He is widely considered as one of the world's greatest contemporary playwrights. Fosse was made a chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France in 2007. Fosse also has been ranked number 83 on the list of the Top 100 living geniuses by The Daily Telegraph.

He was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023 "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable".

Since 2011, Fosse has been granted the Grotten, an honorary residence owned by the Norwegian state and located on the premises of the Royal Palace in the city centre of Oslo. The Grotten is given as a permanent residence to a person specifically bestowed this honour by the King of Norway for their contributions to Norwegian arts and culture.

Reviews

[Jack Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

first half: what the f*ck (derogatory)
second half: what the f*ck (complimentary)

This is one of those stories you just have to stick with, starting off as a string of monosyllabic, punchy sentences (I was ready to give up at this point), and then developing into something really spectacular and moving. It's atmospheric and chilling, and the isolation of our central protagonist in a cold forest is incredibly immersive.

Unfortunately, however, the "shining" the title alludes to is a shining figure in the forest that just slightly too closely resembles Mr Burns in that one episode of The Simpsons, and I just couldn't shake that mental image.

[Gaurav Sagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

What starts with snippets of information, just simple sentences without more than single clauses rises from the boundaries of normality to the outrageous possibility of long, beguiling sentences simmering with beauty whose rhythm we could feel as if a musical note is stimulating our ears and eyes of imagination, of course. We find ourselves among endless thoughts from the past or present, wherein the various possible outcomes have been endlessly contemplated upon, but only to eventually realize that perhaps nothing could be confirmed, and such is the beauty of prose of Jon Fosse, the Beckett of 21st century.


We watch with bated breath the endless rumination of the narrator, whose world is haunting but dreamlike, through self-contemplation about various possibilities which might have been missed during his seemingly senseless (at the outset) journey to the unknown and dark territory of the omnipresent forest, which might be leading the ways to paths unknown. The narrator encounters variegated thoughts jumping up in his head through negation to logically deduce the one he finally wants to move with, however, to his utter dismay, the reasonably selected thought proves to be unreasonable one, and the process goes on and on as if he is stuck in a bottomless pit. The author uses the literary technique of repetition to impart the effect of unsettling musings of the narrator with a careful and considerate touch of a literary master.



link: source


Though it starts as an uninhibited and random sojourn behind the wheel of an automobile to kill off the eternal boredom, which we keep on falling prey to, but transforms into a profound emptiness which we watch with a sense of anxiety as the narrator sits in his automobile staring into dark void of nothingness. The nihilistic thoughts which often knock at our consciousness in such deep and penetrating nothingness also nab the narrator’s and he finds himself surrounded with disturbing and unnerving questions about death, as if death may be the savior to release a human soul from such a profound and incomprehensible custody. However, the narrator finds an unexpected and uncommon savior in the form of an energy, a feeling or a thing- a shining, luminous in its whiteness, shining from within.


The tale makes us wonder about the deafening silence, we may feel while being in an endless forest which seems to be a grand universe itself, we can’t move out of, the silence which may speak to us to convey something profound which may not attract the casual eyes. The words which perhaps we listen to, may keep hanging in thin air and possibly the silence, after the words gets dissolved into the endless but frightening quiescence, may speak to us with aftershock of those words as if they are echoing through the limitless and continuous confines of the forest, such is the impact of prose of Fosse- he makes us hallucinate with the narrator. The silence could be originated due to some out of the world reality, or perhaps of divine nature (something like human but not human- a shining) in which the voice of God may be heard, or an allegory and parable, or a truly frightening nightmare or perhaps a Beckettian interior monologue (reminds me of How It Is by Samuel Beckett) or more than anything else- just a terrifying imagination full of existential angst. The probing eyes of these multitude of possibilities cause one extreme unease and underline the eternal loneliness of human existence.


The tale may be read as a treatise on human condition since the narrator keeps wandering around in the limitless, incessant forest under the unclear sky of snow, the perpetual darkness arises out of such unnerving surroundings laughs menacingly at our eternal condition of loneliness. For we are essentially alone just as the narrator of this unsettling tale is, the voices which keep dancing around him and his consciousness, though may be part of a vision, hallucination or a dismaying reality which is far too outrageous to be comprehended, however, these voices come as soothing companion (though may be unreal) to the narrator’s eternal loneliness. Our narrator is time and again robbed off the (though may be inauthentic) comfort (or horror) the voices might be providing as they keep on disappearing into the eternal darkness of the forest and the narrator finds himself alone in the darkness. I hear a voice say: I’m here, I’m here always, I’m always here – which startles me, because this time there was no doubt that I’d heard a voice and it was a thin and weak voice, and yet it’s like the voice had a kind of deep warm fullness in it, yes, it was almost, yes, as if there was something you might call love in the voice.


The prose of Jon Fosse is hallucinating, it engulfs our consciousness by mesmerizingly pulling us, to immerse ourselves in it to feel as if we are meditating by receiving an anxious serenity. As we dissolve ourself in the universe of Fosse to become one with it, the pulsating sentences of him inevitably make us feel the touch of another literary giant-Samuel Beckett, however, the world of Fosse does not appear to be as dry that of Beckett and has got a tinge of poetic quivering.



link: source



Words and more words. And now I’m alone, all alone, deep in the dark woods. Or am I alone, no, I can’t be, because I was just talking to someone or something and I say: are you there- I get no answer, and I say: is anybody there- and I feel something like despair come over me and I say answer me, can’t you answer me, I’m talking to you, and we were talking to each other not that long ago, it was just now-and I turn around and I look all around and I don’t see anyone, only trees and more trees, the snow-covered branches there in the moonlight, in the light of the enormous round yellow moon, the endless numbers of twinkling stars, and then not right under the trees but in some places between the trees there’s snow-covered ground, the snow-covered earth that I’m standing on.

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

**Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature**
‘...it’s like the silence is speaking to me.’

There’s something incredibly comforting about a dense woods all soft and white in the snow. My parents come from Michigan’s Upper Penninsula so we would spend holidays and summers there and walking through the forest at night during a big snow is such a specific feeling lodged in my heart, one that Jon Fosse’s A Silence managed to probe and enlarge the vague emotion with an incredible tenderness. Everything is muffled and soft, even the crunch of your footsteps, and while it may be frightening it is ‘a fear without anxiety’ as our narrator here describes his journey while lost through the forest. This is the tone that permeates all of A Silence, a story following the stream-of-consciousness of a man who, after getting his car stuck after aimlessly driving, has now gotten lost in the woods at night under falling snow. But he is not totally alone and the things he witnesses seem to defy tidy understanding. The same can be said for this book, which is practically more a short story than a novella, and likely drawing on his work as a playwright, almost feels like a one-act play with the narrator's mind as a stage just as much as the singular setting of the forest. It is a story that slowly seeps into your consciousness, calming you in the face of vague sadness and loss with its staccato prose, and sends you on a Dantean exploration for the divine in the spaces between the words much like the figures who arrive in the spaces between the trees.

Fosse, dubbed the Samuel Beckett of the 21st century and recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in literature, has a gift for sparseness and thoughtful ambiguity and was recognized by the Nobel Committee for his ability to ‘give voice to the unsayable.’ Fosse makes the unsayable just as loud as any fine-tuned and powerful sentence here, quieting the reader and the setting under the hush of falling snow where the narrator often wonders ‘But a silence can’t speak, can it.’ However, ‘Yes, silence can speak in its way, and the voice you hear when it does, yes, whose voice is it.’ Who—and even what—the narrator encounters in the woods drift through the story with little explanation yet leave behind a metaphysical trail of thought to follow along. After first realizing he is lost, the narrator sees a glowing white outline coming towards him, becoming more a shining and inexplicable ‘presence’ that seems to guide him on this brief journey as a sort of wilderness Virgil. In fact, the opening of this story seems to mirror that of Dante’s first Canto of The Divine Comedy. Dante wrote:

‘In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there.’

While death is never mentioned directly, the reader will naturally gravitate towards that. The story remains vague and is open to interpretation because it exists beyond words, ‘it's not something that can be understood either, it's something else, maybe it's something that's only experienced.’ Simple death feels too tidy of an explanation to carry the quiet enormity of feelings being touched upon here, and isn’t the subject that Fosse tends to aim towards. In an interview with Music & Literature in 2019, he said:

‘I don’t worry about dying; there is a lot of pain in life. And in me there is a lot of sorrow. As Ibsen said: “I received the gift of sorrow, and then I became a poet.” Pain, sorrow, melancholia, and depression are a gift too. You can make something good out of them.’

There is a prevailing melancholia throughout much of Fosse’s works, notably Melancholy and Melancholy II, and ideas of meaning in life surround death are explored in other novels like the equally quiet Morning & Evening. Fosse often succeeds without drawing direct connections though and leaving the novel wide open to interpretation.

‘ yes, it’s like everything is without meaning, and like meanings, yes, meanings don’t exist any more, because everything just sort of is, everything is meaning.’

This interpretability is accomplished by packing any sense of meaning into the unsayable, into space between words, in the ‘quiet that it's like you can reach out and touch the silence.’ But what purpose does this serve. For Fosse, he says this is often a search for peace. Fosse had previously been a heavy drinker until, in 2012, he collapsed from severe delirium and alcohol poisoning and gave up drinking entirely. That summer he would convert to Catholicism and we find a search for the divine in many of his works, though he doesn’t like to outwardly state it. In a interview with LA Review of Books, he was asked about his statement that he tries to ‘overcome language, move beyond it’ and if the absence of language is how one approaches the divine. Fosse responds:

‘I’m very afraid of using the word “God.” I rarely do it and never when talking about my own writing. God is far too much for me to talk about. When I manage to write well, there is a second, silent language. This silent language says what it is all about. It’s not the story, but you can hear something behind it — a silent voice speaking. It’s this that makes literature work well for me.’

This silent language is everywhere in A Shining, and we also see how language gets stripped away to better hear it. The narrator often casts aside phrases as mere ‘figures of speech’ that have no inherent meaning, moving deeper into silence as he moves deeper into the forest and always, always listening.

‘I want to listen to the silence. Because it’s in the silence that God can be heard…when I listen I hear nothing i hear if the nothing can be heard, if thats not just a figure of speech, just something people say, I think, yes, the nothing, not any thing, not in any case the voice of God, whatever that is. But I’ll leave that for other people to decide.’

What he does hear—occassionally—are the voices of his parents or another, nameless voice that sounds much like his own walking beside him and saying ‘I’m here, I’m here always, I’m always here.’ What these figures serve I’ll leave up to you to decide, but it makes for a very powerful story wrapped in a small book. We also see how ‘you can’t just say yes’ and give in, it is a path you must choose to go.

‘embracing everything that exists, but its like nothing exists…’

This is an odd but moving little book. At first it feels a bit tedious, and the narrator’s assertion that ‘boredom had taken hold of me—usually i was never bored but now i had fallen prey to it,’ may take hold of you as well in the beginning. The story builds through the narrator’s thoughts, which are rather circoitus and seem to build on each other like building blocks of ideas being assembled and there is a nearly excessive use of repetition. It’s all for effect, and the story does eventually lull you into it, but for a story under 70pgs it was a bit of a barrier to break into. Still, Fosse has a brilliant mind and A Shining makes for a very ponderous story ripe with meaning that seems always just out of reach. This is an excellent representation, however, of the Nobel Committee’s praise for Fosse for being able to ‘give voice to the unsayable.’

3.5/5

‘The forest is big. It’s as big as a whole world of its own. And now I’m in this world.’

[Adina · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5* rounded up

Why do I keep reading Jon Fosse? This would be my third and I am not even sure what I feel about his work. It is interesting, but do I like it? Unclear, just as this slim novel, or his work in general.

What is this book about? An old guy wonders into the woods during a snow storm. Reckless or he goes there in order to die? Some ghosts from the past might also appear.

[Lee Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dear chatGPT, in the prose style of latter Beckett, create a 74-page single-paragraph first-person enigmatic humorless novella with mystical spiritual overtones set in the snowy Norwegian woods involving a car stuck in the mud, a path leading into the woods, a big stone, a shimmering whiteness, a mysterious couple who are the narrator’s parents, and a barefoot dude in a black suit. Also include a single summarizing self-referential/reflective line about ten pages from end as a sort of climax: “Everything is sort of beyond the limits, it’s like being locked into a closed room in a forest, trapped, but at the same time it’s like the room is unbounded.”

After the Nobel I thought I’d try Fosse again but vague admiration is all I can really muster for the unbounded tightness of his restricted, repetitive, stating and negating and re-stating, wide-open, derivative, spiritual consciousness systems. At least this is short. Probably won’t try again. AI will have no trouble generating work like this. Feels programmatic. And easily satirized. For example, as an early Norwegian review on here mentions, the shimmering whiteness in the woods is probably actually Montgomery Burns lost in the woods, a-glow after a nuclear reactor accident, saying "I bring you love."

[Erin Myler · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was not enjoying reading this book. I looked up goodreads reviews. All of them were good. How could this be. Was I reading a different book. But no, that can't be. Of course it was the same book. But maybe it was my translation that was different. And look. But look, look at the back, yes there, yes, yes, at the back of the book. This is the same translator for eight of this author's books. Perhaps I was reading a different book. But that can't be because it has good reviews. Yes, I must have been reading a different book. But how can it be a different book if the author is a national book award finalist and won the nobel prize in 2023. Of course its right here on the cover. And then again, there is also a lot of praise on the back cover. But this is all for a book other than this one. Perhaps I should read that book. But is it anything like getting lost in the woods during a winter snow and seeing a shining figure and then seeing your parents and then seeing a faceless man in a black suit and then dying after getting lost in the woods during a winter snow.

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

SELVA OSCURA



L’io-narrante guida distrattamente. O meglio, più che distratto, guida senza una metà, neppure una direzione, prendendo le svolte come capita, senza seguire un percorso ma il capriccio dell’attimo.
Finisce in un bosco con la macchina bloccata che non va né avanti né indietro. E comincia a nevicare.
Ha bisogno d’aiuto, deve cercare qualcuno, qualcuno che l’aiuti a liberare la sua macchina. Prende il sentiero del bosco. Fa freddo. Scende il buio molto presto. Fa ancora più freddo.
Ci vuole poco a dire che si è perso. In quella che viene tradotta come “selva oscura”. E quindi “la diritta via era smarrita”.



Ci vuole poco a capire che il viaggio, breve o lungo, è più interiore che esterno, più immaginato che reale. Non per altro l’io-narrante, guidatore sbadato, vede entità luminose, incontra mamma e papà, che sono nel bosco a piedi nudi proprio per cercare lui, il figlio smarrito – e sempre a piedi nudi è anche una figura, probabilmente maschile, che indossa un abito nero, una camicia bianca e una cravatta nera, il cui viso è indistinguibile, sfocato, quasi non esistesse.
L’io-narrante racconta in un flusso mentale, che include sia i suoi pensieri, le sue sensazioni ed emozioni, sia anche lo scarno dialogo che ha con i suoi genitori, o con l’entità luminosa.



Perché è nel silenzio che si può sentire Dio. O almeno lo ha detto qualcuno, eppure non riesco a sentire nessuna voce di Dio, l’unica cosa che riesco a sentire, sì, è il nulla. Quando rimango in ascolto del nulla, lo sento, ammesso che si possa sentire il nulla, ammesso che non sia solo un modo di dire, tanto per dire, penso, sì, lo sento, sì, il nulla, non sento alcunché, e comunque non la voce di Dio, qualunque cosa sia.

[Helga · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stand totally silent. I want it to be totally silent, I want to listen to the silence. Because it’s in silence that God can be heard. Someone said that, anyway, or something like that, but in any case I can’t hear any voice of God, the only thing I can hear is, yes, nothing. When I listen to the nothing, I hear if the nothing can be heard…yes, I hear, yes, the nothing, not any thing, not in any case the voice of God, whatever that is.

I am driving. It is nice to be driving. It feels good to be moving. I don’t know where I’m going. I keep driving. Now I am driving on a forest road. And now the car is stuck; it won’t move. I can’t reverse it. An urge made me to drive the car; A feeling akin to boredom. Now I am sitting in the car. And now I feel empty. As if the boredom has turned into emptiness. And what am I doing on a forest road? It starts to snow. It is dark. And I am sitting alone in the car waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for whom? No one knows I am here on this forest road. I should get out of this car. I’ll just have to walk. I should keep walking until I find help. And now I am walking. I don’t know which direction to go in. It doesn’t matter. I walk. I am walking and the snow has stopped. I am tired. I need to stop. I need rest. I need help. If a miracle doesn’t happen, I will freeze to death. And maybe that is exactly why I walked into the forest. Because I wanted to freeze to death. But I don’t want to die. Do I? Why would I want to die? Why? It is dark. The darkness scares me. I’m scared. I look into the impenetrable darkness. And I see the darkness change. And now I see something is coming towards me. Something shining. A shining outline. Something that illuminates the way. But is this a vision or the reality? I close my eyes. I open them. I am deep in the dark woods, and it’s cold, and I’m freezing. And I see a shining presence right in front of me. Coming towards me…What is happening here in the middle of the forest, in the black darkness of the trees?

[Talkincloud · Rating 4 out of 5]

To było świetne. Fosse ma swój (nieco repetatywny) styl. Dużo tu pola do interpretacji. Opowiada o momencie przejścia. O spotkaniu ze śmiercią, choć nie wprost. Godzimy się wraz z bohaterem z życiem i z je powoli porzucamy: wszystko przestaje mieć znaczenie i staje się samym znaczeniem. Podczas czytania wyobraziłem sobie wykaz fal/szumu życia, który na końcu zamienił się w prostą linię. I aż mnie przeszły ciarki. Piękne.

[Hux · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of a pamphlet than a book which, in theory, ought to have made my second attempt at reading Fosse an easier experience than that of the monotonous droning and repetition of Melancholy. But no, it's just more of the same where, in a brilliant twist of literary genius, Fosse replaces the full stop (also known as the period) with the word 'yes' or the word 'and' (but mostly yes) until he develops that unique style of his which, in truth, isn't very beautiful or enjoyable to read at all but, quite effectively, distracts you enough to make you believe that you've been reading something meaningful and profound.

You haven't.

What you've actually been reading is that episode of the Simpsons where people think a drugged up and radioactive Mr Burns is some kind of magical Will-o'-the-Wisp creature floating about the forest. Because that's essentially what happens here. A man driving nowhere in particular gets lost and stuck on a country road then wanders into the woods where he encounters 'a shining' presence (Boo Urns), and then his doddering parents, and then a man in a black suit with a white tie. And it is snowing and it is dark. Yes, it is snowing and it is dark.

The book does its best to be as blurry as possible and allow the reader to infuse as many pretentious and heart rending interpretations as they please (to their heart's content) and while I'm all in favour of that sort of thing (fruity indulgent nonsense is a delight after all) the fact remains that while I'm kidding myself that there are significant things being said about the human condition of eternal loneliness and isolation, or the bleak torment of fragile emotional connection, or the horror of ongoing existence itself, or, to be more practical, the outrageous lack of good quality signage on country roads for pedestrians and drivers alike, the book is written in a style where I am yet to find anything of worth. I mean it's completely fine and everything (almost a pleasant little ghost story) but if you're going to hand out Nobel prizes for this sort of thing then you can be damn sure I'm going to have an opinion about it. A strong opinion.

I just don't like this crap. 'Yes and the stone was cold and it was dark and yes, it was dark and the stone was large and it was cold and yes it was the word yes again and it was yes, and it was a stone and it was yes, yes she said, yes.'

Maybe it's a translation issue. I doubt it. I think this is just what people who have spent decades reading easily digestible mediocrity have concluded is great literature because they don't know any better. I dunno. This is just where we are. Deal with it. Whatever.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I started A SHINING, I was warned by a few people that “it ain’t no SEPTOLOGY.” And they’re very correct about that, but this teeny-tiny book managed to get another rapturous reaction out of me just the same.

A man mindlessly takes a drive because he is “bored” and ends up getting stuck at the end of a forest road. It’s snowing. It’s cold. It’s deserted. No one knows where he is. He foolishly goes into the forest to look for “help.” And finds himself lost and afraid. As we remain in the frantic mind of this man, we start to wonder if all of these acts are a cry for help. Or is it a possible suicide attempt or is it just a man who did one foolish thing after another? We don’t really know and Fosse wants us to feel like that. Then as the man starts to understand the gravity of the situation, he sees a light, “a shining.” Is this source of light coming from another person? Is it a presence? Is it God? Or mere hallucination?

And as this light becomes more and more abstract, ominous, and illuminating, this is when I broke down. I didn’t even see my breakdown coming. It just happened and the emotions were unfiltered.

It seems like I can’t help viewing particular books with a different lens after my dad’s passing. Where I’m unable to tell if the book would’ve impacted me in such an impassioned way if my dad was still alive (had a similar experience with WESTERN LANE by Chetna Maroo). All I know is that when the book finally snuck up on me, I lost control. I cried very hard; so hard that I had to stop reading because I couldn’t see the words through my tears.

I do believe I would’ve wholeheartedly loved this even without the context of my father’s death (then again, I can’t swear to that). The way it is written is deceptively simplistic; same when it comes to the manner Fosse handles his themes: Death, grief, loneliness. The novella could be read as a parable, a quietly devastating meditation; a sobering existential experience.

Fosse cemented his place as one of my all-time fave writers with this one. When I read SEPTOLOGY, my dad hadn’t passed yet; he wasn’t even sick. I was in a completely different place mentally then, but that book still had me asking raw questions about myself: who I wanted to be and who I would never become. But now as I move forward into this life post-father's death, I realize that Fosse’s work is going to take on a much richer emotional response with me. And I look forward to my evolution. I’m grateful for what’s to come.

[Jessaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I see this book on my kindle and wonder where it came from. I don't remember buying it. It is only 56 pages, and I am curious, so I will read it. It is about a man who is driving in the country and he takes this road through the forest. Why he is doing this I don't know. He drives for a long time, And then the road ends. It ends at a path. And now his car is stuck. He talks to himself a lot and says the same things over and over again I am bored, but I can't stop reading it. He is a nobel prize winner. I don't get it. It starts to snow so he turns on the car heater. But he has to know that the gas will run out and the heat will go off. My own electricity goes out. We are having an ice storm. Last time the electricity was out for almost 2 weeks. I get out my down comforter and pull it over me. But my house is getting colder and if I get up to walk around I am freezing. I put on my down jacket. I find my bomber hat, the 1 that is for lined. I put on my quilted army surplus pants, the ones I bought at an army surplus store they will keep Me warm. But now it is my FEET. I remember. I did not give away my down slippers. The man gets out of his car to walk up the path. Maybe someone lives up that way. He is scared. I am scared too. Not just for him, but for me. I pick up my phone. But it does not work

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, what can you say about this novella of our latest Nobel Prize Winner? A short read that is both very strange and extremely hilarious. There is hardly a story: an old man gets bored, drives around in his car, gets stuck, walks in a forest and then starts to see all kinds of apparitions, such as a brilliant white figure, and to hear voices. All the while he is thinking about what to do and what those strange appearances are. He conducts a dialogue with himself, in fits and starts, both amusing and pathetic. “What is real?”, he eventually asks himself, arriving at an epiphany: “yes, it is as if everything is without meaning, and meaning, yes, the meaning no longer seems to exist, because everything is, as it were, just there, everything is meaning.”
It are clichés when it comes to Fosse, I know, but Beckett and Eckhart (and a bit of Dante) are clearly present again in this little novella. I previously ventured into the first books of Fosse's Septology cycle, and initially this novella certainly differs stylistically due to the very short sentences. But that continuous, hesitant introspection of the narrator, the mystical keynote, and especially that final message about the wonder of being, were absolutely recognizable. So, after all, vintage Fosse, then?

[To-The-Point Reviews · Rating 2 out of 5]

Man meets some wispy glowing shapes in the woods. Fosse repeats the same sentence over and over and over and over.

Nobel prizes aren't what they used to be.

[Joachim Stoop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ik kan me niet heugen dat ik een boek twee keer na mekaar heb gelezen om een recensie volledig te herschrijven (inclusief oordeel), omdat de gezamenlijke stem van de protagonist en de schrijver steeds maar luider en overtuigender kwam spoken. "Denkt gij dat ge even een kersverse Nobelprijswinnaar kunt dwarsliggen, gij Stoopke. Ge hebt ons niet begrepen."

Bij deze, geachte heer Fosse, of mag ik Jon zeggen, mijn herboren bespreking.
Vergeef me alsnog dat ik het woord 'bloedirritant' heb behouden.

4 sterren.

'Op het midden van onze levensweg bevond ik me in een donker woud, omdat ik van de rechte weg was afgedwaald.’ De eerste zin van Dantes ‘Goddelijke komedie’ vormt zeven eeuwen later het uitgangspunt van Jon Fosses nieuwste boek. Maar wees gerust: ‘Een schitterend wit’ is geen ellenlange allegorische afdaling in de hel. De novelle van de kersverse Nobelprijswinnaar telt amper tachtig bladzijden, de temperatuur hangt rond het nulpunt en de sfeer is verstild en verre van vlammend. Het danteske karakter schuilt alleen in de eenzame dwaaltocht en de confrontatie met sterfelijkheid en goddelijkheid.

Een naamloze man verdwaalt met zijn auto op een bospad en rijdt zich vast in de sneeuw. Een moedwillige daad of pure verstrooidheid? Druppelsgewijs groeit het besef dat hij de auto moet achterlaten om hulp te zoeken. Onderweg ziet hij in de bewolkte nacht plots een lichtgevende mensvormige gedaante op hem afkomen. Wie of wat is dat? Waarom ziet hij vervolgens zijn eigen ouders opdoemen?
De lezer vertoeft uitsluitend in het hoofd van de protagonist. Je hoort alleen zijn interne monoloog boordevol herhaling, vertwijfeling en verwarring, en het blijft dus bij gissen wat er precies gebeurt en waarom. De schemerzone waarin de man zich bevindt, verblindt en bevreemdt ook de lezer. De Noorse schrijver doet vorm en inhoud volstrekt samenvallen: de karige taal accordeert met het kale decor, je volgt in real time de waarnemingen van het hoofdpersonage en zijn gedachtenkronkels over wat hij doet en hoort te doen lijken zich alleen maar dieper in zijn hoofd vast te graven, als de banden van zijn wagen in de sneeuw. Authenticiteit troef dus, maar schept dat ook altijd werve(le)nd proza? ‘Het kan goed zijn dat het hier was. Ja, ik geloof bijna dat het hier was. Het was hier. Nu weet ik het zeker. Het was hier. Nergens anders. Niet daar, maar hier. Alleen hier. Niet daar, maar hier. Daar hier.’ Wellicht doet Fosse hier exact waarvoor de Nobelprijsjury hem prees: een stem geven aan het onzegbare. Natuurlijk kunnen wirwargedachten hypnotiseren, maar bij een dergelijke overdaad die ervoor zorgt dat de stream of consciousness eigenlijk niet stroomt, kunnen ze weleens bloedirritant worden. In ‘Septologie’, zijn terecht gelauwerde magnum opus dat eveneens bij uitgeverij Oevers werd uitgebracht, hanteert Fosse de bewustzijnsstroom volstrekt anders: met meanderende zinnen zonder één enkel punt rijgt hij dagdagelijkse beslommeringen aaneen met mijmeringen over kunst, religie en liefde. Je kunt je er lustig laven aan vrije associaties en je pelt er naar hartenlust de lagen van de vertelling weg.

Gaandeweg raak je de zonderlinge schrijftrant van ‘Een schitterend wit’ gewoon en neemt het aantal fonkelende zinnen toe, tot je steeds helderder ziet waar het de opvolger van Annie Ernaux om gaat. Je cirkelt pal boven een verloren man die in nood en eenzaamheid zichzelf en zijn verleden tegenkomt. De theatrale enscenering doet mythisch en mystiek aan, maar wordt nergens esoterisch. Zo brengt hij zijn knappe contemplatie over leven en dood, leegte en God alsnog tot een glansrijk einde.

https://www.humo.be/achter-het-nieuws...

[Glenn Russell]

There you are, isolated in a forest as dusk turns into night, and there's just been a snowfall. Your car is stuck many miles from the nearest house. You try walking along a path and now you're so lost, you'll never even find your car. It's been two days since your last meal and you didn't bring a heavy jacket. You're hungry, freezing, tired, and realize this is it - you're going to die.

A Shinning is Norwegian author Jon Fosse's novella about a man coming face to face with his own death. Then, out in the forest, in the darkness of night, all alone, this man, this unnamed narrator, sees something separate from the darkness and come toward him.

"Now I see it clearly. Something coming toward me, and maybe it's a person. Or what. Yes, it probably has to be a person. But it can't be a person. It's just not possible that I'm seeing a person , not here, not now. But what is it then. I see the outline of something, and it looks like a person. Because it can't very well be anything else, can it. I stand totally still. I stand like I don't dare move. Now it's really as dark as it can get and there in front of me I see the outline of something that looks like a person. A shining outline, getting clearer and closer."

What happens from this point forward? I urge anybody interested in the ultimate questions we face as humans to take an hour or two to read this short fiction by Jon Fosse. One thing of note: the narrator's visions and experience do not take on anything that can be identified with a specific religion. I could include words of wisdom from any of the spiritual traditions, from Christianity to Islam, from Taoism to Buddhism; however, I'd suggest you read and reflect on this compelling tale with the following quotes in mind, quotes taken from the Rhineland mystics, including Meister Eckhart, a writer central to both Jon Fosse himself and the artist/narrator of his Septology, an artist who could very well also be the narrator of A Shining.


"Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us." ― Meister Eckhart


“Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.” ― Meister Eckhart


"The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge." ― Meister Eckhart


"I have often repented of having spoken. I have never repented of silence." ― Henry Suso


"Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying." ― Johannes Tauler


Norwegian author Jon Fosse, born 1959

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

By itself, this short book pales in comparison to anything else I have read by Fosse. Curse of the first post-Nobel work? However, something about this “shining” energy encountered by the narrator reminds me of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, where Antonius begs for some more time to live by challenging Death to a chess match, as well as the Danse Macabre. The funereal vibes are immaculate.

[M. Sarki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jon Fosse is a literary treasure. Hard to read and sometimes exasperating, but a treasure nonetheless. This particular book landed on me at a time when my older brother had just succumbed to a diabolical cancer. It is still shocking to me that he has died. And so quickly. And it appeared he was not prepared for it either and he still held out hope that he would be healed up until just a couple days before his death. And just as Fosse’s character had no idea why he was on that forest road, my brother thought the very same.
Please read the rest of my review here:
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/a-...

[Aimee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Direct quote
“Something’s coming toward me and maybe it’s a person. Or what, yes probably has to be a person. But it can’t be a person. It’s just not possible that I’m seeing a person, not here, not now. But what is it then, I see the outline of something, and it looks like a person. But it can’t very well be anything else, can it. I stand very still. I stand like I don’t dare move. Now it’s really as dark as it can get and there in front of me I see the outline of something that looks like a person”

like ??!!!
The copy I received was unreadable and I blame the translation. I feel like I’m tripping balls reading this and not in a good way.

[TheBookWarren · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 ⭐️ — Fosse is quickly becoming an absolute must/read, and whisky I’m still working through his Septology toure-de-force, this Novella was a bit more easily digestable & boy, what a wonderful piece of writing it is. Fosse is a talent I wish I could read in his native tongue, but he’s got as good a translator as one is likely to get in Searls. The result is simply divine, moorish & yet somewhat elusive.

In this evocative narrative of disorientation and yearning, crafted by the recent Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, we follow a man stranded on a secluded forest road. As he delves into the depths of the trees, encounters unfold—an interplay of stars, darkness, a luminous figure, and a barefoot man in a suit. Amidst this enigmatic encounter, his parents feature prominently, caught in a dynamic marked by reprimand and withdrawal.

Fosse masterfully weaves fleeting allusions to a world beyond the narrator's grasp, delving into humanity's most difficult to capture pursuits, such as certainty and inviolability. Through his bright yet starkly lucid prose, the story's ambiguities take on a profound, both revelatory and familiar, quality. The narrator's assertion, "Everything you experience is real, yes, in a way, yes," adds a layer of contemplation, inviting readers to grapple with the complexities of reality and understanding.

Essential reading in one staunch session, I couldn’t possibly recommend this one more, especially those whom enjoy the whimsical with an element of broody-barrenness where you must take a leap of faith & put your entire experience in the hands of a truly gifted writer, and just go with it. A lengthy cogitation-inducing novella, that’s oozing humanity.

[Léa · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
This was such an odd little book and I feel simultaneously let down by it and pleasantly surprised?!

Having never read from Jon Fosse before but knowing he won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, I've been eager to read one of his works for a while. Despite this being just over 40 pages, it had a charm that I don't always recognize in novellas and for that, I loved it. I also adore stream of consciousness narratives and this may have been the most stream of consciousness book I have ever read... for better or for worse (it was slightly repetitive at times). For a book this short, it was full of intrigue, atmosphere and is perfect to binge read in one sitting!

[Os Livros da Lena · Rating 1 out of 5]

Parece que foi escrito por um miúdo do 5° ano obrigado a fazer uma composição.

[jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

boredom had taken hold of me—usually i was never bored but now i had fallen prey to it.

rare to find a book that presages the readerly exprience on its own first page.

jon fosse's a shining (kvitleik) is a repetitive, yet mercifully short work about a man stranded in a forest (due to his own unexplained ennui and evident stupidity) whose poor decision-making is worsened by wandering aimlessly deeper into the dark and snowy woods. less an allegory about the male inability to pull over and ask for directions ("i just kept driving, until the car got totally stuck") and seemingly more a vague tale about the presentiment of death (or would it be suicide?), a shining leans too heavily on its staccato sentences and uninspired amalgam of ambiguity and anxiety.

*translated from the norwegian by damion searls (rilke, uwe johnson, ugrešić, modiano, stanišić, walser, mann, et al.)

[Dax · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice little novella from the recent Nobel Prize winner. After reading his Septology series and now this, it is clear that Fosse loves a good inner monologue and ambiguity. The reader will quickly gravitate towards death and religion here, as I believe Fosse intends. It can actually be quite moving, but for the most part this is just a pretty but minor work from a great writer. Fosse newbies should not start here.

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 5 out of 5]

Da li je ovo novela, (unutrašnji) monolog ili priča o duhovima, manje je bitno od toga da je ovo vrhunski, hipnotišući tekst o krajnjim granicama, o krhkosti života. Deluje da se Fose vraća uvek istom, ali ono daje različite plodove, zato što se i sama tišina popunjava na različite načine. A tišina je kod Fosea sve – u neizrečenosti se nalazi ono što je presudno. Čak i kad se priča, priča se da bi se došlo do neizgovorljivog, do nerečja. Ipak, u ovom delu pronalazi se, još na samom početku, nešto otrežnjujuće konkretno. Pronalazi se prisustvo. Početna situacija naizgled besciljne vožnje je to – obećanje da smo ranjivi i ogoljeni i da ne znamo kuda put može da ide, iako je odredište jasno.

[Gastón V. A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pequeño comentario más que reseña. Creo que hay que comprometerse de lleno con las palabras para la lectura de esta obra (y de tantas otras también).
Podría haberla leído de forma silenciosa, y habría sido una buena lectura, pero no mucho más.
Decidí leerla en voz alta, con una cadencia que, interpreto, pide el texto. Una fluidez que hipnotiza, que hace que nos volvamos el protagonista que narra. Que nos introduce en el bosque que, a medida que avanzamos en la lectura, comprendemos que ya no es un bosque.
De repente, leyendo, pasando páginas y páginas, las palabras se vuelven sensaciones. Como una música que va más allá de los significados.
Vienen emociones, momentos de incertidumbre, de algún humor leve o absurdo, emoción que en general nos lleva hacia la nada y también hacia una tristeza profunda.
Y al llegar al punto final, solo queda admirar la escritura de Fosse, y pensar en lo fascinante del poder de las palabras, en cómo nos atraviesan porque somos palabras o cuerpos que hablan y sienten a través de ellas. Y que la falta de palabras, el silencio, también es una forma de vida.
La blancura, la soledad, el silencio, la luz, la oscuridad, la incomunicación, la tristeza y el dolor; todas estas palabras recorren esta obra que permanece en el cuerpo, una vez finalizada.

[Óscar Moreno (OscarBooker) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro es simplemente brillante. No hay más que decir. Está perfectamente balanceado y no sobra, ni falta, ninguna palabra.

Terminé el libro y no puedo dejar de pensar en las múltiples interpretaciones de la historia. Muchos autores podrían aprender de la maestría de Fosse para sintetizar con concepto tan brutal como lo es el que se incluye en este libro.

Ahondaría más en la interpretación del libro pero no quiero arruinar su experiencia.

Jon Fosse es sin duda de lo mejor que he leído.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a Jon Fosse newbie, which is why this tiny little book caught my eye. I currently have far too many massive tomes in my backlog for me to consider myself anywhere close to starting Septology, but I still wanted to see something of what the Fosse fuss is all about.

As a quick introduction to a new author, this short story served its purpose well. It was an incredibly engaging one-sitting read — a little haunting, a little strange. As another example of a “lost in the snowy woods” story, it, at first, reminded me a bit of Tolstoy’s gorgeous Master & Man (and associated Sopranos episode, Pine Barrens); however, where Tolstoy is always understandable on the literal level of analysis, A Shining falls into a more dreamy, metaphorical category. Its meandering and repetitive style pulls you into a hypnotised, transcendental state. You begin to wonder whether any of the events written on the page are truly happening in any tangible sense, or whether the whole story is really taking place in the narrator’s imagination or some other more luminous space. Perhaps it is all one analogy for being lost on the road of life, alone in the darkness, consoled only by the outline of a few souls who can pierce through the lonely canopy?

I found the stranded quality of Fosse’s writing, stuck in its aimless cycles, reminiscent of the strange “going nowhere” vibes of the work of another spectre-like “apparition from the Nordic woods”, Jean Sibelius, whose oddest and bleakest symphony, his 4th, I was (by coincidence) listening to this morning just before I decided to stick my nose into this book. In his 4th, Sibelius seems lost in a kind of wandering and dispassionate despair, just like the hero of Fosse’s book, perhaps hoping to simply melt away into the shining light.

As a Fosse entry point, I recommend this little book. I’m impressed, to be honest. Septology has jumped forward in my queue by several places.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure this even counts as a novella, more a longish short story - it's one paragraph, detailing the odd, dreamlike happenings of a man deciding to start out in a car aimlessly, getting lost in a snowy forest and encountering a shining essence, his own two parents, and a faceless man in a black suit. This is all, of course, either terribly profound and moving - or utterly ridiculous, depending upon one's own frame of mind and how susceptible you are to enigmatic quasi-spiritual musings. On another day, I might have fallen into the latter divide, but this caught me at the right time to side with those who say there is something to all this - even if I'm unable to articulate what exactly.

[henrydavid · Rating 1 out of 5]

there’s a kernel of a good story hidden behind the endless rambling and repeating of inane facts. i am writing this review, yes, i am writing this review, could i be writing this review? i am here writing this review, so it’s impossible that i couldn’t be writing this review, yes.