Septology

Septologien #1-7

by Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Translator)

WINNER OF THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

2022 International Booker Prize, Finalist2022 National Book Award, Finalist2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, FinalistNew York TimesEditors’ ChoiceNamed a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and BookforumWhat makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Asle, an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. His only friends are his neighbour, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers—two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions about death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness. The three volumes of Jon Fosse's Septology—The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name—collected in for the first time in this limited hardcover edition, are a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience—incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Nobel Prize, Contemporary, Philosophy

657 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2022

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

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do artists, similar to the valorous warriors, after their death depart for Valhalla?
The hero of the book is an old artist of the uncertain reputation and dubious abilities… Septology is a nonstop stream of consciousness bordering on delirium…
The picture he’s painted last is just two crossed lines… 

…I’d started painting, with the two lines, one purple and one brown, he says and I feel myself not wanting to talk about it, I’ve never liked talking about a picture I’m working on, or about any picture I’ve finished either for that matter, never, once a picture is finished the picture says whatever it can say, no more no less, the picture says in its silent way whatever can be said…

He analyses his behaviour and his motives… He recalls his entire life: his family, his childhood, his young years, his married life, his relatives, his artistry, friends and people he knew… However in all his recollections there is a hint at some shift in reality and a shade of ambiguity… He contemplates existence, creativity and Christianity… 

…I say that the cross is already a paradox, with those two lines that cross, the vertical and the horizontal, as they say, and that Christ, yes, God himself, died and then rose again to conquer death, he who came down to earth when people were separate from God because of what they call original sin, when evil, yes, devils took control of this world, as it says in the Bible, yes, it’s impossible to understand that, I say, and I say that evil, sin, death, all of it came into the world, yes, into the universe, it all exists because God said yes but there was also someone who said no, if you can put it that way, I say, because otherwise there would be neither time nor space, yes, everything that exists in time and space has its opposite, like good and evil, I say, and everything that’s in time and space will someday pass away, in fact most things, almost everything that there’s ever been in time and space is already gone, almost every last thing is outside of time and space, it isn’t anywhere, it just is, the way God isn’t anywhere but just is…

His thoughts are an indivisible blend of his imaginary being – the life he wished to live – and his actual life…  

…ever since Asle was admitted to The Hospital and they didn’t let me see him I’ve had no more desire to paint, and the bad picture, the one with the two lines that cross, luckily it’s not on the easel anymore, I’ve put it away, put it at the front of the stack of the unfinished paintings, with the stretcher facing out, I think and I think that it’s probably going to be morning soon, I think and I close my eyes…

Everyone lives two lives: the first is a life of the body and the other – a life of consciousness.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars? A constellation of stars.

For me, reading this was less a reading experience, more of an immersion and intermingling within a collective consciousness. Septology's prose style is hypnotic and incantatory, the rhythm so absorbing it invokes a lucid dreaming quality. I was utterly mesmerised by the style and the mystical quality but also the deep humanity and authenticity of the writing—it has so much soul.

The Septology, is a series of seven novels written by the Norwegian author Jon Fosse, collected in this fine single volume. It's a meditation on the nature of time and the human experience of it. Through the eyes of the main character he explores the ways in which time shapes our lives and our understanding of the world around us.

This really is an exquisite experience. The rhythm and cadence of the prose style, the structure of the novels, creates an entirely immersive flow. This immersive cataloging of each and every beat of conscious present tense is expressed in a realtime syncopation, moment-to-moment, thought-to-thought. The transitions from present moment to memory are seamless and crystalline. This detailed cataloging of thoughts and blending of timeframes elegantly avoids losing any intrigue or drama. The writing is masterfully punctuated with rising tension and powerful suggestion—a wistful peaceful scene of young siblings roaming on an Autumnal beach, will subtly escalate to such intensity you become overwhelmed as tranquility, in the beat of one's heart, becomes a cacophony of potential tragedies in one's mind. A deft heightened pacing and development of intrigue. The minutiae of a life lived is heightened to dramatic intensity; artfully composed and paced; deeply atmospheric. A theatricality to all of this, one can imagine resounding in a hushed and engrossed theatre.

The story is told through the inner thoughts of the protagonist, Asle. The continual and unbroken thoughts are expressed in the infinite single sentence. The prose style itself an exploration of time and existence. And the inclusion and repetition of religious themes suffuses the novel with a sense of the sacred and the transcendent.

The infinite sentence is long and winding, resembling the meandering thoughts we all experience. The character(s) is swept along on the tide of time, memory and moment-to-moment experiences and reflection. From waking to sleep and dream to waking the sentence wind ons. This prose style, combined with Fosse's masterful use of repetition and symbolism, creates a powerful sense of the passing of time and the cyclical nature of human experience.

The novels are structured around the passing of the seasons, with each book taking place over the course of a single season, and this structure allows Fosse to investigate the ways in which time affects our relationships, our memories, and our sense of identity. He also explores the ways in which religious beliefs and practices can provide solace and meaning.

It's so vivid; so enigmatic and engrossing that I'm still thinking about it weeks after finishing. It's so potent. I will be reading everything else Jon Fosse has written*.

*And the translator, Damion Searls learnt Norwegian so he could translate Fosse's oeuvre. Incredible work.

[Manny · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can't analyse this book, though I see some people making valiant attempts; it's an act of magic. Of course, any worthwhile novel is to some extent magical, but Jon Fosse is a truly outstanding magician. In ascending order, he got me to believe all of the following while I was reading it:

1. I was deeply in love with my dead wife and constantly felt her presence near me. Well, most competent novelists could have done that.

2. I was a devout Catholic who spent a large proportion of my time praying to my Lord and trying to find peace in His will. This is harder, but a fair number of good religious writers know the spell.

3. I was a brilliant painter who experienced the world in a way completely different from a normal person. This is a very difficult incantation which only exceptionally powerful literary sorcerers have mastered.

4. I was a fluent speaker of Nynorsk, an obscure language which I in fact don't know. I can't understand how he did this. I thought it was impossible. I know some related languages, and of course I'm familiar with the process of reading a text in a language I don't know well, guessing words from context. But here, there's a passage of several pages near the end which is just disconnected phrases mixed up from two parallel streams of narration, and I felt I could understand it perfectly.

How fortunate we are that Jon Fosse is a white magician who only uses his powers for good.

[Christopher]

This book has become lodged in my head, I think, and if I’m going to get it out, I’m going to need to write it out of my head, that’s for sure, I think, and I think that the entry point for my own understanding of this book is the reconciliation of the doubling of the characters, I think

And now, I see Asle and the other Asle wearing the same black coat, the same brown shoulder bag, with the same long hair, and I think, unless there’s further description to differentiate them, they must be one and the same, yes, of course, but then I see that one has married Liv and Siv and has had three children and drinks himself to death, while the other has married Ales, has had no kids, has stopped drinking, and has had a successful career as an artist, I think and I think that the author knows that the reader will inevitably be forced to reckon with these ideas and will begin to do that according to the conventions associated with writing, namely a realist narrative, I think, and I think that under those conditions the reader will be forced into the position that Asle is hallucinating or that there really are two Asles, both who paint and so on, yes, of course, and the first position doesn’t seem to be attractive because the Asles meet and there seems to be enough information to suggest that the Asles are distinct, but the second position doesn’t seem to be attractive because if we accept two Asles, then we also must accept two Guros, and we must accept Liv and Siv, and we must accept that Asle and Ales contain the same letters and that soul mates meet each other in a coffee shop, randomly and immediately come together and etc. I think, and I think this is abhorrent in a realist novel, not to mention that the first Asle doesn’t speak much, no, he often falls silent when he is around other characters especially when there are difficult things to discuss, and no, that doesn’t square with his memory of some deeply personal experiences of the Namesake Asle, for example, the scene where the Namesake Asle returns home to find his wife Liv has overdosed, I think, and I think there is no way he would have this information so this leads back to the first interpretation, the hallucinating narrator, how else would you explain Asle remembering a younger version of himself commenting on his current self driving past him and observing him without solipsistic hallucinations?

But no, maybe there is a third thing, another way of looking at these two interpretations and holding their contradictions both in mind as truer than either of the realities, a sort of koan or thought-generative paradox narrative picture whose reflection reconciles that we are actually unknown to ourselves as we grow older, as we edit our own memories through repeated narration to ourselves using the aid of images, pictures, paintings, diaries, remnants of permanence whose information is lossy-encoded by virtue of time moving forward and the impossibility of total recall for most, I think and I think that third way of interpreting the text must take into account the reflections on God, yes, of course, they’re too big a part of the book to ignore, that’s for sure, so maybe this third way is like a prayer or a meditation, something that uses prior forms but whose unity of form and content produces something entirely unique, something unnameable

And now I see that Asle re-experiences many things that involve bifurcations, points at which things could have been otherwise, I think and I think that life is like that, I think and I think there are many things that we regret doing, choices that we made that we wish we could unmake (like writing this review in a terrible mimic of Fosse’s style) and ways that we can actually remake ourselves and convert to new ways of life and new thinking that can make us into different people, yes, and there’s also many places to revisit in the text that will make another reading yield a more coherent, or possibly less coherent interpretation, yes, I seem to remember in the first installment, the other name, some talk about two selves, the self of the body or the historical self (the self who is composed of the series of facts and events that actually occurred) and the soul-self, the spiritual side, the self that is changeable moving forward, I think and I think there it is, the two selves, the Asle and the Ales in each person, and maybe the girl with the long dark hair is actually Liv, and the Guro that lives in Bjørgvin actually had another name at one point in the retelling (so Åselik’s Sister could be the only historical Guro), and that St. Andrew’s cross is also St. Andreas cross at the beginning of section VI of a New Name, and that there is a nearness and a farness that is captured throughout this text in a way that is unbelievable, and that maybe that third interpretation is really possible and now I think that I should really stop because despite all of this, I really need to drive to Bjørgvin again to visit Asle, I think

And now I see that the painter has single images while the writer has many successive images in a single work, and that the reader becomes another type of artist in the interpreting of the work of art, yes, of course and that the writer writes the book and it is a single book and the reader reads the book as many times as they want and that it’s never the same book even though it is the same book

[Jorge · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Y me veo de pie, mirando el cuadro con las dos rayas, una morada y una marrón, que se cruzan en el medio….” Con esta original frase se anuncia una obra inclasificable, inmersiva y muy singular que nos lleva a los mecanismos y escondrijos de la introspección humana y a grandes momentos de paz y que ha sido para mí una experiencia especial en mi vida como lector.

Esta edición recoge tres novelas del Nobel de Literatura 2023, el escritor noruego Jon Fosse (1959). La primera de ellas se llama “El Otro Nombre” desarrollada en dos partes, la segunda novela se llama “Yo es Otro” que contiene tres partes y la tercera llamada “Un Nuevo Nombre” que contiene dos partes, de aquí el nombre de la obra, “Septología” desarrollada en siete partes que pienso deben de leerse de manera completa y secuencial.

De inicio puedo comentar que me parece que me he topado con un gran logro literario que me ha dejado un muy grato sabor de boca y que seguramente será motivo de muchos estudios, opiniones, análisis e interpretaciones, tanto de conocedores y entendidos como de aficionados. Al principio me desconcertó un poco el estilo digamos que minimalista pero a la vez abundante y rebosante de detalles y de repeticiones inagotables, de ideas y frases que en apariencia hacen que la trama no avance, que se estanque casi a cada paso y no sólo que se detenga sino que retroceda, pienso, pero que va creando una progresión casi onírica, produciendo un efecto como el de una suave anestesia, para luego volver a avanzar morosamente en un interminable flujo de sencillas ideas y triviales sucesos para llevarnos a la intimidad del ser humano; aunque también el autor se las ingenia para plantearnos cuestiones fundamentales del arte, de la vida y de la espiritualidad colocándonos en una estado de meditación.

Caracterizada por una intensa introspección Fosse despliega su muy larga obra en lo que puede ser un solo párrafo, no utiliza puntuaciones, ni separaciones de ninguna otra especie que no sean comas, construyendo así interminables páginas sin interlineados, pienso, con ideas sencillas y cortas y con una cadencia acompasada que nos va seduciendo poco a poco, pienso. No pasó mucho tiempo para que la prosa de este autor me atrapara.

Me parece que lo más representativo de la obra es que el autor detenta el poder para entrar, de lleno y sin cortapisas, en otra mente humana tanto en sus pensamientos cotidianos y triviales como en los más densos y complejos.

La forma de escribir de Fosse simula el flujo de nuestro pensamiento, no hay interrupciones, nos presenta una corriente continua de pensamientos con múltiples repeticiones, con indecisiones y giros, mezclando ideas insustanciales con otras de carácter práctico y otras más de carácter filosófico y místico, y también con recuerdos llenos de nostalgia. ¿Quién no ha deseado tener este extraordinario poder de penetrar en una mente humana?

Difícil definir esta obra del escritor noruego, tal vez cabría el término literatura experimental o literatura posmoderna o novela de libre construcción o relato introspectivo, no lo sé. Sin duda esta novela la disfrutarán mucho más aquellos que son escritores, especialistas en la materia o críticos, así como los lectores más avezados. Esto no quita que también yo la haya disfrutado enormemente.

Ha sido una muy buena experiencia sentirme sumergido en esa inmensa e interminable conciencia que crea el autor, con esa prosa lenta, minimalista y reposada, pienso, construida con repeticiones y en apariencia sin trama concreto, con un ritmo extraño del que Fosse muestra un dominio total y que en todo momento nos impulsa a continuar leyendo sus interminables divagaciones y recuerdos, pienso.

Todo el libro es una constante y enorme reflexión interior de Asle, el protagonista, que versa principalmente sobre su vida pasada, sobre el arte de la pintura y sobre su irreductible fe religiosa. Estos temas dictan la manera en que Fosse se reconoce ante el mundo:

“…y eso de verse a uno mismo como católico, no es sólo una cuestión de fe, sino una manera de existir en la vida y en el mundo que tal vez se parezca a eso de ser artista, puesto que ser pintor también es una manera de vivir, una manera de existir en el mundo, y para mí estas dos maneras de existir en el mundo encajan muy bien, en el sentido de que ambas generan una distancia con el mundo, digamos, y apuntan hacia algo distinto, tanto hacia algo que está en el mundo, algo inmanente, que lo llaman, como hacia algo que se aleja del mundo, algo trascendente…”

Sin duda el autor es un gran estilista del lenguaje, con dotes de equilibrista y contorsionista, con un enorme dominio de su narrativa y una excepcional destreza para desdoblar simultáneamente el pasado en varios planos del tiempo, para luego volver a enrollar ese pasado sin apenas darnos cuenta.

La historia se cuenta a través de los pensamientos del pintor llamado Asle, quien perdió a su esposa, Ales, tiempo atrás, y ahora vive solo en un rincón apartado junto al mar de Noruega y ahí transcurre su vida solitaria entregada a la pintura y a la subsistencia. Asle piensa continuamente en otros Asles, uno es contemporáneo suyo que también es pintor, alcohólico y con ideas suicidas, otro es un joven y otro más es un niño, lo que nos hace pensar en que Asle ve en ellos sus vidas pasadas y construye seres imaginarios en una especie de juego de espejos, dotando a la novela de cierta ambigüedad. Con esto el autor nos recuerda que en cada etapa de la vida hay una persona diferente: no es lo mismo el niño que dio paso al joven y éste a su vez a la persona actual. Son seres completamente diferentes que ya sólo viven en nuestra cabeza.

La ambientación es cautivadora ya que Fosse construye un mundo entre el abismo de los fiordos, las embarcaciones, el mar gélido, los copos de nieve, el suelo helado y resbaladizo, las incesantes olas del mar, así como el extremo frío del medio ambiente del pueblo donde habita, pero también nos traslada a las calles y callejuelas de lo que parece ser la ciudad de Bergen llamada aquí Borghovin.

Cada una de las siete partes del libro se inicia con la descripción de una pintura que acaba de hacer Asle, consistente en dos rayas que se cruzan, una morada y otra marrón que forman una cruz. Además de iniciar cada una de las partes con esta frase, también aparece esta idea en reiteradas ocasiones en el inmenso flujo de pensamientos de Asle a lo largo de toda la obra y parece indicar que guarda un significado especial que relaciona al arte con la espiritualidad. Me atrevo a pensar que la contemplación de esta pintura por parte de Asle es el único momento que representa el presente en toda la extensa obra, todo lo demás es pasado, fantasía o alguna proyección del futuro.

A pesar de lo extenso de esta obra, cada novela abarca un solo día más o menos, durante el tiempo de adviento y muy cercano a la Navidad. En esos días Asle va desplegando sus preocupaciones, sus sentimientos de culpa, su ausencia de tranquilidad y sus recuerdos; también nos cuenta algunos contactos con otros personajes, reales o imaginarios, como los otros Asles, o como su esposa fallecida Ales, con Guro una mujer que también parece tener un doble, con su vecino y solitario amigo llamado Asleik, así como con el dueño de la galería de arte Beyer en donde Asle expone sus cuadros, o bien con su amigo de juventud Sigve.

Conforme avanzamos en la novela encontramos también alusiones a la naturaleza de Dios relacionándolas con la pintura, como por ejemplo:

“…en esos cuadros hay una especie de luz, una especie de oscuridad luminosa, una luz invisible que habla calladamente y que dice la verdad, como si no fuera el pintor quien mira, sino hay algo que mira a través del pintor…”

En las postrimerías de la novela Asle se declara estar ya aburrido de la pintura, el gran motor de su vida, de la que dice que ya no significa nada para él, mientras él sigue contemplando a Ales, su esposa fallecida, a través de las olas del mar y no distingue si la cercanía que siente con Ales en el fondo es la cercanía con Dios.

“… porque todo arte bueno tiene espíritu… y lo que los hace buenos no es ni el material, la materia, ni el contenido, la idea o pensamiento, pues no, lo que los hace buenos es precisamente la unión entre materia y forma y alma…”

Si he dicho que el autor es un gran estilista y hace acrobacias con las ideas y el lenguaje, pienso que las traductoras no le van mucho a la zaga en cuanto a virtudes ya que han hecho verdaderas contorsiones lingüísticas y mostrado un gran oficio para lograr un estupendo trabajo de traducción del noruego al español, ellas son: Cristina Gómez Baggethun y Kirsti Baggethun. Un gran reconocimiento para ellas ya que sin este trabajo de traducción no hubiera podido yo disfrutar tanto de esta obra.

Después de haber leído algunas entrevistas con el autor y de haber terminado de leer esta magna obra, podría establecer una analogía entre Jon Fosse el escritor y Asle el pintor: ambos utilizan su arte para desaparecer imágenes, para alejarse de la vida; tanto la pintura como la literatura tienen o pretenden tender un efecto exorcizante.

“es evidente que los grandes artistas marcan una diferencia, con su arte particular, absolutamente particular, introducen algo nuevo en el mundo, pues sí, una nueva manera desconocida hasta entonces, y cuando uno de esos artistas concluye su obra el mundo tiene otro aspecto”.

¿Y finalmente de qué trata esta sucesión de novelas?
Podría concluir que trata del estado de fuga del ser, del tratamiento que se hace de lo común y lo existencial, de las dramáticas incursiones en el pasado, de los simbolismos que establece el autor entre la pintura y la vida: los colores, los trazos, la oscuridad, la luz, lo genuino, lo que es valioso para cada quien.

“…existen dos clases de tiempo, el que pasa y pasa y en realidad solo tiene importancia para que la vida cotidiana siga su curso, y luego el otro, el tiempo auténtico, ese que está compuesto de acontecimientos, mayores o menores, pero en cualquier caso de algo que se diferencia, ya sea para bien o para mal…”

[Ilya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the most unique reading experience of my life. Jon Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2023 “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” I cannot agree more with that statement. Septology is a novel composed of seven novellas which are divided into three parts: “The Other Name”, “I is Another” and “A New Name.” While there are three different books, Septology was meant to be read as a stand-alone novel.

This novel follows the life of Asle, an aging painter and widower, who lives by himself near Norwegian town called Bjorgvin. He has a doppelganger who lives in Bjorgvin who is also named Asle and he struggles with alcoholism and has a dog named Bragi. Asle spends his days painting pictures and contemplating about his past, religion and death. One day, Alse drives to Bjorgvin and finds another Asle near death from his drinking. Asle decides to help his doppelganger and takes him to a hospital. I don’t want to say anything else about the plot to avoid spoilers, but this storyline is deceptively simple.

What stood out the most to me was Septology’s unique writing style. The novel is written in one continuous sentence, and it’s written in a stream of consciousness technique. Initially, I was hesitant to begin reading this novel because of its stylistic choice but 50 pages in the book I was completely hooked. If an act of meditation was a novel, it would be Septology. The vocabulary of this novel is simple, but the ideas conveyed are profound. This novel delves deep into the questions of religion, art, alcoholism, memory and death. Fosse masterfully explores these topics and leaves the reader with more questions than answers. You truly care for these characters, especially Asle and other Asle. What’s unique about this story is that, at times, it reads like magical realism, but it’s not quite that. Instead, I would call it mystical existentialism. Fosse is interested in the mundane details of our lives, and he manages to create a mystery surrounding those details. At times the prose felt like something written by David Lynch, especially the parts about doppelgangers.

I would recommend this book to fans of literary fiction and psychological fiction. If you’re looking for a different reading experience, you should give Septology a shot. The mood of this novel is haunting, melancholic and moving, so if you’re interested in that, you should pick up this book. Overall, I absolutely loved this book and it will stay with me for a really long time. Jon Fosse is an incredible author who deserves his Nobel Prize award. Norway is really spoiling us with all these contemporary fiction authors who are interested in exploring existential topics. Without a doubt this book is going on my 6 star shelf.

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. This book is a prayer. I saw it at the bookstore and thought No It’s you. I suspected I’d either hate it or love it and it turned out that it was an unexplainable experience. I don’t think I can recommend it to anyone because the book makes no sense rationally as a book and I’m pretty sure the vibe could be difficult to capture. It’s kinda a 600 page sentence-going into someone else’s dream type thing. Calming, reassuring, almost a switch OFF for the mind. The reading experience is not a postmodern accident. Fosse knows what he’s doing as he’s describing the painter Asle, experiencing the same thing the reader experiences when he paints. Add to favorites.

[To-The-Point Reviews · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are books with pages and pages, you read books with pages, walk through the street to the bookshop, to buy a book, yes, buy a book, to the pages, to walk through the street, to buy a book in the bookshop, yes, there are books in the bookshop, where you walk, through the street, to the shop, where you walk, down the street, for the pages where you will buy a book, to read, to buy the book, for the pages, yes pages, there are pages, yes there are books with pages and pages, you read books with pages, walk through the street to the bookshop, to buy a book, yes, buy a book, to the pages, to walk through the street, to buy a book in the bookshop, yes, there are books in the bookshop, where you walk, through the street, to the shop, where you walk, down the street, for the pages where you will buy a book, to read, to buy the book, for the pages and speak to Jon, where Jon speaks, in the bookshop, and where they read books, through the street, where they hand you, yes you, they hand you a Nobel prize, and Jon speaks in the bookshop, where the Nobel prize is given, and pages, yes pages, down the street, for the book which Jon wrote, and the pages, yes the pages, yes, the Nobel prize winning pages, in the bookshop, where there are books with pages and pages, you read books with pages, walk through the street to the bookshop, to buy a book, yes, buy a book, to the pages, to walk through the street, to buy a book in the bookshop, yes, there are books in the bookshop, where you walk, through the street, to the shop, where you walk, down the street, for the pages where you will buy a book, to read, to buy the book, for the pages, yes...

[Adam Chant · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was hard going but so rewarding. I took it in slowly over quite a while, finding it easier to read on quiet nights alone at home. This isn't a journey I could recommend to anyone really, it's 800 pages and only a handful of sentences. That said it was breathtaking, insightful and truly a work of art. Thats it, it's art, a massive continuous thought with the pen (or brush) only leaving the surface fleetingly every so often to breathe then plunging back to the depths.

[notgettingenough]

I was going to give my female friend who won't read female authors (despite being an avid reader) Jeff in Venice for Christmas, but on second thoughts, it's going to be this. That'll learn her.

[Alex O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection - incredibly moving portrait of grief, grieving, art, and God's relationship to all of that. I was drawn into this book like few others. Each section had much to offer and much to ponder. First time I have wept during a read in quite some time. Utterly beautiful and deeply human. I was enraptured the entire time - this second reading was enriched tremendously by some outside reading, as well as a better familiarity with Fosse's body of work.

Hypnotic, beautiful, mystical and powerful. Enriched my view of the world in a way no other book besides the Bible ever has.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb! A unique reading experience! At first, I thought the absence of full stops would make Septology read like Ducks, Newburyport, but no, not at all. I don't believe I even missed their absence. It didn't feel like thoughts or words were rushing at you. If anything, it was the other way around. Reading Septology read like a very calm meditation on one's life, a sort of chewing the cud where you kept on digesting the same memories, for a second time, a third, over and over, helping to bring understanding and acceptance of what once was. I expected September to be a difficult month, but it was my time spent outdoors reading Septology while enjoying the fall weather that brought such peace to my days. A mesmerizing read! I enjoyed it immensely. Fosse is worthy of his Nobel Prize in Literature!

The reels:

1. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_alsI...

2. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_dmvQ...

3. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_ikRk...

4. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_qEin...

5. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_weYv...

6. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_87pJ...

7.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAEdvR...

8. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAQ9Fb...

9. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAd6Xf...

10. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAjBAj...

[Antonio Luis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Altas cotas de genialidad en momentos en que comparte su sabiduría sobre la esencia de la vida, el paso del tiempo y su incidencia en las historias de cada ser humano, porque consigue con su protagonista lecciones de vida sobre aspectos universales que trascienden los tiempos de la narración sobre esos hechos concretos.

Narración única, inmersiva, esencial e identificable desde el principio el estilo habitual del autor.
Es como los prestidigitadores que veíamos en televisión hipnotizando a alguien del público, y para el éxito de la hipnosis es imprescindible la voluntad del hipnotizado de prestarse a ello. Hay que aceptar los trucos narrativos del autor para disfrutar la novela; si ese lenguaje y su cadencia no gusta, será imposible disfrutar esta obra.

[Miroslav Maričić · Rating 5 out of 5]

„...mislim, i pitam se zašto more postoji? i nebo? i zašto ja postojim? zašto bilo šta postoji umesto da je sve ništa? pitam se, jer u jednom trenutku je sve nastalo, i u jednom trenutku će sve nestati, ne samo ja,“

Nakon što sam neizmerno uživao u Foseovoj Melanholiji, kao logičan sled na čitalačkom repertoaru našlo se njegovo najobimnije i po rečima kritičara najkvalitetnije delo Septologija. I kao što i samo ime kaže delo se sastoji iz sedam delova, a tih sedam delova smešteni su u tri knjige koje predstavljaju užitak za sve ljubitelje književnosti. Ko je čitao Melanholiju, Jutro i veče, i To je Ales, u suštini i može da zaključi o kakvom stilu pisanja i kakvim lajtmotivima je ispunjeno delo Septologija. Na sceni, mada u nešto blažem obliku, opet imamo konstantno ponavljanje jednih te istih delova rečenice, malo izmenjenih, ali uvek bar sličnih, koji pojačavaju tenziju čitaoca tokom čitanja i iskazuju psihičko i emotivno stanje junaka književnog dela. Povezanost života i smrti, tanka linija koja razdvaja ta dva transcedentalna pojma, blizina i povezanost svetlosti i mraka i surovi norveški pejzaš u obliku fjordova, koji su mesto za život, oni ga pružaju i unapređuju, ali ga u svom mraku kroz igru i rad i uzimaju. Očigledan je uticaj i mitova, svakidašnjih i neodređenih pojmom nacije, na koje se oslanja život svakodnevnog čoveka i na osnovu kojh su stvorene i savremene religije. Fose očigledno voli u svojim delima da piše o umetnicima, slikarima, oni kao da pružaju odgovarajuću potku Foseu za razrađivanje svojih ideja, on kroz umetnikove misli dotiče Paltonovu ideju praslike.

„...posle sat ili dva ili koliko već dugo u peći celi vidljivi čovek nestane, telo nestane, ali nevidljivi čovek ostaje, jer on se nikad nije rodio pa ne može ni umreti, mislim, da, nevidljive oči ostaju kad nevidiljive nestanu, jer ono što je duboko u očima, duboko u čoveku, to ne nestaje, jer duboko u čoveku je Bog, tu je carstvo božije, tako je zapisano, da, i jeste tako, tu, duboko u čoveku je ono što će otići i spojiti se sa onim što je nevidljivo u svemu, i što je povezano sa vidljivim, ali što nije vidljivo, da, to je ono što je nevidljivo u vidljivom, i što čini da vidljivo postoji,“

U Septologiji pripovedač je Asle, ostareli slikar, koji nam nekoliko dana pred katolički Božić pripoveda priču o svom životu, svom obitavanju na ovom svetu. Sam način pripovedanja je neobičan, sa obiljem ponavljanja, ali i sa konstantnim promenama onoga o čemu se pripoveda. Tako je u jednom trenutku odvija razgovor Aslea sa komšijom Aslakom, da bi u istoj rečenici Asle svoje pripovedanje prebacio na prošlost i neki određeni trenutak iz sećanja u kome Asle hoda pore Ales, u kome iznajmljuje stan u Bjergvinu ili nam opisuje detinju igru u čamcima na obalama fjorda. Istovremeno primetno je odsustvo znaka interpunkcije na način koji smo to navikli, čitava Septologija je jedna velika rečenica, mračna reka koja svetli, misli su odeljene zarezima, tu je i poneki upitnik, ali rečenica je jedna, a čak si ni ta jedna rečenica ne završava na kraju dela, jer tačke ni na kraju nema, priča se poput života, naprosto nastavlja mimo svih nas. Delo obiluje likovima za koje ne možemo utvrditi da li su jedna osoba, više osoba istog imena, ili ista osoba različitog imena, tokom čitanja perspektive koje naginju na jedno ili drugo mišljenje se menjaju, jer Asle u bolnicu odvodi Aslea, Asle se u restoranu susreće sa slikarem Asleom apsolutno istim kao i on i fizički i sudbinski, njihove priče su u određenim trenucima istovetne, ali se u sasvim drugim trenucima granaju i razlikuju. A tu su i ženski likovi, Ales pre svega, pa i Asleove prethodne žene i njihova deca Dečkić, Devojčica i Dečak, ili Guru mistična sestra ka kojoj idu na Božić, preko fjorda, preko vode, sa druge strane vode?, ali koju je Asle već sretao, koja je uvek tu negde, kod koje je on bio, sa kojom je pričao, koja mu je poznata, Asleu ili Asleu? Kroz svoje pripovedanje, koje je u sadašnjosti u prvom licu, a u prošlosti se pretvara u Aslea koji poput svevidećeg pripovedača samo prisustvuje dešavanjima i prenosi ih, Fose koristi slikarstvo da bi sukobio mrak i svetlost, lepotu i ružnoću, da bi nam darivao tišinu. Asle u svojim slikama traga za božanskim sjajem, on traga za svetlošću u mraku, za onim večnim sjajem nevidljivim ali jedino stvarno vidljivim, on ne preslikava pejzažno svoju okolinu, njega ne interesuje mrtva priroda, on slika sjajnu tamu, koja u sebi sadrži tragove božanstva. U toku pripovedanja on svoje slike prodaje u bjergvinskoj galeriji, on je cenjen i od prodaje slika živi, ali kao i kada je reč o životima Aslea, ostavlja se pitanje koliko je Asle u stvari uspešan slikar.

„mislim i gledam svoje mesto na moru, uvek, uvek sedim i gledam svoje mesto na moru, gledam talase,“

Septologija predstavlja jednu od onih knjiga koje kod čitalaca izazivaju i različite emocije, u pitanju je delo koje ima bezbroj tumačenja i koje se poput života jednog čoveka može na različit način posmatrati, iz različitih perspektiva. Kada smrt dođe po čoveka, u toj poslednjoj agoniji, da li dolazi do podeljenosti na duh i telo, da li duh prepoznaje svoje telo ili na njega gleda kao na nepoznatu ličnost? Septologija deli svoje likove na jedinstvo i mnoštvo, na one koji su prizemni i koji se uzdižu iznad vidljivih elemenata, u jednom trenu oni darivaju istovetnost, u drugom likovi istog imena imaju različite osobine, baš poput čoveka i njegove svetlosti i njegove tame, onog koji je pio i onog koji zbog nečega više ne pije. I naravno ostaje pitanje ženskih likova, a samo njihovo razrešenje ne mogu ni pojmiti, i naravno Aslak, komšija sa traktorom, koji upravlja brodićem, ko je zapravo on? Septologija je delo o kome će se sukobljavati mišljenja, koje će doživeti mnogo tumačenja i koje u svom nemerljivom kvalitetu sa radošću primorava čitaoca da ponovo prione na čitanje, jer tu je negde rešenje, tu je negde nevidljiva svetlost koja obasjava vidljivi tekst ove fantastične i sa razlogom hvaljene knjige.
Delo je preveo Radoš Kosović i rekao bih i ugradio deo sebe u Septologiju, on je stvaralac sam za sebe i bez takvog fenomenalnog prevodioca ni ova knjiga ne bi bila preneta na pravi način na naše književno tržište. I naravno on nije samo prevodilac Septologije, jer u ovo doba pojačano interesovanja za nordijske autore sve češće se može videti njegovo ime, pa ostaje pitanje koliko je zapravo svojim vrhunskim prevodima Kosović otvorio vrata nordijskoj vrhunskoj savremenoj književnosti.

„... i Aslak kaže da o najvećom stvarima, o moru i nebu, o životu i smrti, niko ništa ne može reći zasigurno, kaže i pije pivo i kaže da je sve to u nekakvom nepoznatom mraku, dolazimo iz nepoznatog mraka i vraćamo se u nepoznati mrak, tako je to, i tu nema više šta da se kaže, a da li je čovek bio nešto u tom mraku pre nego što se rodio, i da li postane nešto u tom mraku kad umre, o tome se ništa ne može reći i ništa ne može znati, on samo može da se čudi tome, a odgovore nema,“

[Fraser Simons · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a case for reading them with time apart and a case for reading them at once. The reiteration of events do feel stilted because they feel like a recap that stands out, rather than the influx of memories that are relived, probably as a trauma response. They feel apart from it for the only reason of signalling to the reader that they should remember them, because it’s about to be expounded on.

It also, I think, mostly denies a lot of catharsis, despite learning quite a bit. Some things are never explained, though they’re dwelled on constantly. And I suppose just with the writing style there’s a heavy bit of solipsism that begs a few questions. Mostly, the strength is in the unique style of delivery and the melding of conveying philosophical underpinnings and characterization. There’s a lot of form meeting function that telegraph so much about the character. The reader knows so much more about them than they do themselves, which rings very true, to me. How well can you know yourself without input from other people? How much can you make out and what do you construe in your own little locked room? What are your own paths trampled down in the wilderness of your mind, unconsciously taking you through the same way, time after time again?

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished it in 2024, and instantly knew it was a book made for eternity.
A few days later, I read a review that gave me a strange, luminous thought: that one day, far in the future, people like us will read our words about their great books — and they’ll see that we were here, that we had the immense privilege of reading this quiet, eternal masterpiece while it was still being called contemporary.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I sit here staring at the monitor trying to verbalize how exactly I felt when reading Septology by Jon Fosse, let alone finishing it last night as the purple sky ceded to shades of brown and dark blue when the sun set, I am still unsure how exactly I felt, well feel really, it's a meditative and very introspective read that follows a painter who at the outset of the novel finished his masterpiece, two diagonal lines intersecting, one brown, one purple, that cross at a point near the middle of a white canvas, and from there you read about the main character's (Asle) internal monologue for just under 700 pages as he ruminates on religion and art and how they intersect and how both facets impacted his life from past to present, the novel plays with time and recollection in a Proustian manner as he recalls instances of his past that he attempts to purge from himself in the present by way of his paintings, I think and I think that nonlinear delivery of the narrative made for quite a compelling read, one of my favorites this year, and the use of repetitions, while very simplistic in design, made the experience quite impactful the further you get in, ritual like almost, which is appropriate given the main character's love of rituals in both religion and art, which is also prevalent in the symbolism seen throughout the novel, lots of metaphor, but not necessarily overt either, a very pared down way to deliver fancy literary pyrotechnics, the anti Mircea Cartarescu perhaps, though that isn't to say that the novel is grounded in reality either, Fosse adds his own brand of surrealism, but it's much more pared down than his Romanian counterpart, more ambiguous you could say, though arguably more effective in some ways given the nature of the storytelling and how it sticks out relative to the mundane routine of the characters, a celebration in simplicity you can say, I think, and this extends beyond the surreal aspect and into the plotting itself, much like the canvas detailed in the opening lines, the novel features a few seemingly unrelated plot threads floating around here and there end up crossing paths at certain points in the novel for maximum effect, nothing is without purpose, though it is without urgency in pace, though the book was never a bore for me to read personally, but it's one that will either click with you or not, and it's something you will know quite quickly, so with that being said, I enjoyed this book very much, but will only recommend it to a few people, if you want to give Fosse's work a go, try one of his smaller novels, like A Shining, that book is less than 100 pages I should say, and could be read in a single sitting, and it provides a solid snapshot of what to expect in his style, so with that being said, yes, I enjoyed this novel very much, the thematic content clicked for me personally as it dealt with a lot of topics I have thought about personally, so in a surreal fashion, it felt like reading the thoughts of my own doppelganger to be hyperbolic, I think, but yes, very much worth reading for me, and for some, but yeah, not much in between I would say with this one, I think, and I think that the introspective nature will either be a delight to read or it will put you to sleep

[Frazer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly immersive. Hauntingly spare, confronting in its depths.

Uncanny to read a book that so brilliantly mimics the patterns of human thought. Stream of consciousness? More like a torrent. A lot of people's first comment is that this book is an 800 page sentence, but after a short while it became second nature to me, and made me ponder about what we might be missing by cleaving to grammatical conventions. Full stops can imply a great deal about human cognition: that we have discrete 'thoughts', that they occur in succession, that they can be excerpted and tested for their rationality as a hermetically sealed sentence. And although we might be conditioned to believe human thought does in fact function this way, the instinctiveness of Fosse's writing exposes its fallacy. His writing resists division, as I found when I was trying to write down some quotes. There are no seams. Each 'thought' is bound up with the one that precedes it and the one that follows it. Each has its specific context that alters its meaning, significance and implications.

His writing also does something remarkable to time, both the temporality within the book and the reader's temporality. The book spans a handful of days leading up to Christmas in western Norway. The darkness never fully lifts. Yet as we become lost with Asle in his memories, particularly those of his beloved Ales, our sense of the book's time is distorted. Small things prompt us about time's reality - the room's coldness after the stove has died, Bragi the dog's bodily needs. Was it only me getting almost physically uncomfortable about the dog's wellbeing? Dogs need more than crumbled bread!!

Christian theology pervades the book like a ghost. Fosse elegantly (and accurately) captures both the beauty of Roman Catholic philosophy and the immense existential challenge it poses to the adherent.

I have too many thoughts about this book to put here. I'm currently working my way through everything that's been written about Septology and Fosse. I then plan to write a proper review which I'll be sure to link people to.

Safe to say I have a lot of unfinished business with Septology.

[ra · Rating 5 out of 5]

craziest month of my life.....i've said this before bc i think i read it in one of the blurbs but reading this is like doing a rosary in how it forces you to slow down but there are also so many movements it pushes you into on account of the form of being one unbroken sentence, and that's what kept me at it initially but also being me i did really really enjoy all the stuff about god and painting. i'd only read melancholy
i-ii before this but that was an entirely different much more painful endeavour than this although they're certainly adjacent (both being about norwegian painters/repetitive style) but this book is so. like obviously im not gonna be able to accurately capture what's been so carefully unfurled across 800 pages but something about believing so deeply in god but also in some deep abyss having abandoned yourself or some version of yourself and it is just so terrible to be so much alone and have to go on anyway. but then also the whole world is there. and there's
christmas dinner to eat that someone made for you because they didn't want you to be alone. and even though you feel so empty let it be to make room. can you tell i cried like 3 separate times in the last 100 pages i love this book dude

[Kempu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leer esta historia ha sido un largo romance. Con la excusa de indagar en sus recuerdos a través de un juego de dobles, Fosse despliega esa prosa que es como el aliento de un monje cisterciense por una variedad de paisajes introspectivos, recuerdos traumáticos y reflexiones teológicas. Es fascinante contemplar el desarrollo de esos personajes dibujados con un lenguaje tan mundano que prácticamente los puedes tocar y sentir como si fueras tú mismo el que está viviendo la vida de Fosse. Al final, responderse a la pregunta de quién es uno mismo, tratar de aprehender una identidad es igual que capturar todo el mar con las manos desnudas. O como la botella de vino que se vacía.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jon Fosse is one of the very best contemporary authors. Read his books, especially Septology.

Full video review here: https://youtu.be/X77c0K7lKQY

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finer minds than mine have waxed eloquent about this book, but FWIW, I enjoyed it as a slow, melancholy, hypnotic rumination on art, life and the choices we make.

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022 and longlisted for the National Book Awards, Translated Literature 2022, Septology is said to be the magnum opus of Norwegian author Jon Fosse (b.1959).  Importantly, as far as I'm concerned, Septology is nothing like the self-indulgent meanderings of that other famous Norwegian author who has mined his own life, and the lives of his significant others, ad nauseam. (I have read one of his, and I hope made it clear in my review that I loathed his cruel observations about his family.)

Septology was originally published in three volumes, all translated by Damion Searls and published in English by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Det andre namnet - Septologien I-II (2019). The Other Name: Septology I-II;
Eg er ein annan - Septologien III-V (2020). I Is Another: Septology III-V; and
Eit nytt namn - Septologien VI-VII (2021). A New Name: Septology VI-VII. 

In October 2022, Giramondo published this Australian edition of the series in one volume for the first time.

Septology is not a book for all tastes. Considering that it's a very long book, not much happens, and some of what happens is confusing.  But by the time the reader reaches the last chapter, it's impossible not to be invested in the narrator Asle, and to care about what happens to him and the other people in his life.  And to feel a sense of loss on the last page.

BTW There are some 'spoilers' in what follows, but nobody reads Septology for the plot. Even during the heart-stopping sequence when there is a risk that Asle might die in the blizzard or fall into the sea under Åsleik's drunken seamanship, the reader knows that there are many pages to go so it's not a spoiler to observe that he survives those events.

In Book 1 we meet Asle, an ageing painter sufficiently successful to have made an adequate living out of his art.  Since the death of his wife, he lives alone on the Norwegian coast in Dylgia, a few hours' drive from Bjørgvin, now known as Bergen. The name Dylgia seems to be a bit of a Norwegian in-joke, because my Google search revealed that it was the site of a battle in one of the sagas.  Well, Septology is a saga, and the central character seems to have struggled with himself for most of his life.

Book I, like Books II-VII, begins with Asle contemplating the same painting.  In Book I, it is Monday.

And I see myself standing and looking at the picture with the two lines that cross in the middle, one purple line, one brown line it's a painting wider than it is high and I see that I've painted the lines slowly, the paint is thick, two long wide lines, and they've dripped, where the brown line and purple line cross the colours blend beautifully and drip and I'm thinking this isn't a picture but suddenly the picture is the way it's supposed to be, it's done, there's nothing more to do to it. (p.3)

These pairings in the painting prefigure numerous other pairings in a work suffused with doppelgangers.

But in Book II, these same thoughts take place on Tuesday and he is less sure about the painting, and by Book V it is Thursday, and he thinks it's a really bad painting.  By Book VI the crisis in his life is upon him:

... I can't look at this picture anymore, it's been sitting on the easel for a long time now, a couple of weeks maybe, so now I either have to paint over it in white or else put it up in the attic, in the crates where I keep the pictures I don't want to sell, but I've already thought that thought day after day, I think and then I take hold of the stretcher and let go of it again and I realise that I, who have spent my whole life painting, oil paint on canvas, yes, ever since I was a boy, I don't want to paint anymore, ever, all the pleasure I used to take in painting is gone... (p.551)

He doesn't understand why, but he just wants to get rid of it all and in Book VII, his aversion has solidified.  And this is the man who in Book I was obsessed by light. He sees pictures in his head and paints to clear his mind of them.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/12/06/s...

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful and painful and heart wrenching
About the process of creating art that reflects an inner self, about past and present and unfulfilled future blending together, about loneliness and the light in the darkness and prayer to a God who doesn’t answer but is present in the gaps that Alse’s wife left behind
In a way it is a novel about filling gaps; the story’s jumps between past and present fill in the gaps of Alse and Ales’s story, Alse’s doppelgänger, Alse’s relationship with his art and with God

[Kaylee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will miss reading this every morning and night for the past week, like a dream/former life

[Lelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

tl;dr: I picked it up because I wanted to know why Fosse won a Nobel prize in literature in 2023.
Fosse's writing style is hypnotising and inescapable. There is no punctuation in the book, save for commas and the occasional question mark. A semi-unreliable narrator by the name of Asle takes us through his streams of consciousness which circle back over themselves and loop around to be thought again and again. What is current, what is memory, what is imagination? Beats me. Also who is Asle (2?) -yes Asle's doppleganger by the same name - and what of his story is a truth, and what of his story is simply another version of Asle(1)'s hypothetical life? Still don't really know.
The book contains an interesting framing of religion, as Asle (1) grows into believing in God in his own way (grows up Catholic leaves the church comes back in some capacity because of his wife), and also an interesting exploration of the value of art - both to an artist (what makes one painting more special than another) and to a buyer (what sells) - but neither idea is framed so concretely that you may learn anything; rather you will wonder why you are reading the same idea phrased the same way for the eleventh time because that is to exist in Asle's mind.
I don't regret reading these 700-something pages - Septology broadened my worldview of what "rules" authors must abide by, and how one can experiment with language, construction, and storytelling. In the context of the film Nickelboys which has just come out and this trending experimentation with first-person narrative, perhaps this book is worth exploring. ultimately i think you can read shorter, more interesting, phenomenally easier books. but to read it is certainly an experience (even if not one I recommend).

expanded review (of sorts):
While reading this book I was on a fifteen hour (Amtrak) journey from Cincinnati to Richmond. I decided at some point (after reading Septology for about four hours straight) to write, and found myself caught (to some extent) in Fosse's style. for my own sake i am including this journaling attempt in my review, because i think in looking back this will be the best grasp i can possibly give myself of what it felt like to read septology and what i thought of it. if you endeavour to read on, best of luck.


Friday, November 29th.

The old man by the window wears a troubled expression. He peers out the glass as if looking for someone he knows, out here in the West Virginia woods. In front of him is a plastic cup, nearly emptied of ice and a brown soda. The young man destination Danville who spoke to me at 4am as we stood in line at the Cincinnati Amtrak station in the frigid air, and then again twenty minutes later when he offered to put my suitcase in the luggage rack, now sits in the left corner of the cafe car, poring over yellow-bound textbooks. When he sees me come in he smiles and asks “still working on your book?” twice, because the first time I have my headphones on and do not hear his question. The second time he asks I reply “yes, unfortunately it’s rather long,” and hold up the thick paperback I’ve been lugging around for the last two and a half weeks, a novel by the title of Septology that much like this essay seems to have no real punctuation or plot, and rather long streams of thought that end in commas, the words “I think,” or a Catholic prayer.

Two of the stops we’ve made in the last three hours have had snow, small flakes like white pepper drifting across the window and sticking to the glass. They dissipate before they hit the ground, caught in the wind like fall leaves. I say it is Christmas because Thanksgiving is over and now there is snow but it really still is fall; outside the window are stark grey trees emptied of their reddish brown leaves that now coat the forest floors, and grey-blue rivers that run so slowly they look still, or maybe that’s just the motion of the train.
In coach where I left my bag and coat I have a window seat and the aisle seat next to me is empty so I don’t know why I’m now sitting in the cold cafe car, with the troubled old man and the boy who carried my suitcase and the smell of melted American cheese that makes me nauseous.

There are fourteen stops on the Amtrak line between Union Terminal in Cincinnati, Ohio and the aptly named Charlottesville Amtrak Station in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fourteen stops is about 13 hours if the train doesn’t experience delays from harsh weather, concurrently running freight locomotives, or unexpected crew changes – which, to those who have traveled Amtrak before, are all recognisably inevitable symptoms of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation’s trademarked experience. In its entirety, this particular line runs from Chicago, Illinois to New York City, New York – at which point passengers can take one of two lines: either to St. Albans, Vermont, or Montreal, Canada. The last stop before the Canadian border is Rouses Point, New York; if we decide to travel further, explains the thorough “Crossing the US-Canadian Border” guide on the official Amtrak website, all passengers above the age of 16 will be required to produce passports and endure Canadian customs upon arrival.
My final destination is not technically Charlottesville and rather Richmond, but no train lines run from Union Terminal to Virginia’s capital. Instead, Amtrak offers a connecting bus line from Charlottesville to Richmond – another two stops, each about an hour apart. This makes the total journey back from my grandmother’s house – discounting inevitable delays – about fifteen hours. As it was, the journey began with a delay: though scheduled to leave Cincinnati at 3:30 am, this train didn’t reach its mass of groggy passengers huddled in the stinging cold of the Union Terminal Amtrak platform until past 4:40 am. Grabbing my assigned seating-ticket stub from the attendant on the platform this morning I felt a sort of deja-vu – it’s only been four days since I rode the Amtrak from Richmond to Cincinnati. I feel now I might deserve some sort of frequent-passenger recognition for my cumulative thirty-something-hours spent aboard this week.

Jon Fosse will not make me a better writer but rather a lengthier one, if these meandering sentences are any indication. At least I’ve retained the use of periods. My readers will thank me, I think, unless they particularly like Norwegian prose that traces itself in circles like “a line that went out for a walk,” which is how someone once defined a drawing, and there’s some accuracy in such an idea, but when the lines don’t connect do they lose continuity? Is it one line still or is it now many? In Septology, Asle’s drawing of St. Andrew’s Cross has two lines, perpendicular to each other, two brushstrokes streaks of paint in different colours and “light,” he says, coming from within the painting because that’s what makes his paintings valuable, he thinks. Is that one line walking or two? I wonder if a line walking alone would get lonely, but I’ve been on this train for nearly nine hours – or how shall I measure time? ten stops, three dining car closings, four trips to the bathroom – sitting alone doing nothing and I don’t feel lonely at all. I’ve felt lonelier in crowds of friends; funny how that works.
What wins a book a Nobel Prize in literature, I wonder? Is it, as Septology has, a capacity to make readers contemplate the solitude of wandering lines? Is it, as Septology has, a capacity to convince readers that faith in God’s existence bears no relevance to God’s existence itself? Religion is so easily a topic deemed Important and Sensitive, though I find the Bible divides as many as it brings together – so perhaps union isn’t the principle behind qualifying value. Is a book itself thought-provoking, or is its reader just sensitive to new ideas? Would everyone write of Fosse as I do? Is it the eleven stops three bottles of water one chocolate-dipped biscotti dunked in lukewarm coffee – or how shall I measure the passage of time? – that determines how and why I think about this book, or would Fosse’s God and art and circular prose affect me the same way in the back of a crowded classroom reading under my desk as I once did in primary school? I am not nine years old anymore but I do still wish on shooting stars and kiss my parents goodnight and so maybe I haven’t grown up yet. I am eighteen riding alone in the cafe car of an Amtrak bound for Richmond which is home but not quite because home is what’s inside of you not where you live and I still bleed California salty ocean veins coloured like Bay area traffic and twenty-four-hour taco trucks and vegan quinoa salads at a potluck with neighbours you’ve never really met but dog-sat for once when they paid you in Starbucks gift cards and a fern you didn’t know how to take care of. When experience becomes memory, is that growing up? Asle in Septology hasn’t quite figured out the difference between past and present, his storytelling of vision and memory blur like watercolours on a plastic palette. Perhaps time is irrelevant when your existence feels infinite and perhaps that’s what wins a Nobel prize – conveying an infinite experience. In any case sitting here – twelve stops down seventy percent of my phone battery used up two podcast episodes four hours of sleep – my experience in time feels perpetually suspended. Perhaps fifteen hours on a train is an infinite experience.

There are familiar faces on this train like the woman whose seat is a row in front of mine is the woman who sat next to me on the first trip there; and the girl pouring sugar into her coffee in the cafe car with the curly hair and camo pants and thick black Rocky Mountain Colorado sweatshirt is the same girl I saw pouring sugar into her coffee in the cafe car with the same curly hair and the same sweatshirt but maybe not the same camo pants on the first trip too.

Fosse what have you done to me why can I not write as I wish why must every sentence have six clauses and no real point, just a vague smudge of direction like the line-artist I follow on Instagram who traces her paintbrush on the canvas without lifting the tip and connects faces lips and eyes and noses together and yes it is beautiful but no one would say it is sharp or logical or clear or concise and these are adjectives that writing aspires to. Ernest Hemingway, for example, whose house may or may not be in Chicago, the people to whom I’ve spoken can’t seem to agree, is concise and his brevity is beautiful. I should aspire to Hemingway not you Jon Fosse and yet three hours of consuming your prose has wrecked my ability to put words on paper in a way that Hemingway could relate to in any plausible capacity.

The troubled old man with narrow glasses and short white hair is now filming out the window. I wonder what he sees. The naked trees; the still river? I wonder what the video is for. Will he watch it again? Is it for the sake of capturing a moment he wants to relive? Perhaps I’ve misjudged the old man and he is a renowned filmmaker capturing footage of the ephemeral experience of an Amtrak journey on his Iphone 14 pro with its three camera lenses and black rubber case.
The cafe car is closing, announces the disembodied voice of the conductor from somewhere above my head. I feel the young man destination Danville look at me. Four cafe car closings now all but one stop two delays seven-hundred-fifty-seven minutes – is this how I measure the passage of time? The announcement is repeated and I watch the young man finish his drink and grab his backpack and leave towards our seats. The next stop – my stop, Charlottesville – will be a “smoke stop,” warbles the intercom. Someone once explained that smoke stops – the longer, coveted train stops at which people are encouraged to get out and briefly stretch their legs – exist because train conductors and engineers may not work longer than twelve consecutive hours without at least an eight-hour rest and so every twelve hours the train must make a longer stop for the crew to swap out. There is something comforting about the knowledge that this captain’s last stop will also be mine. It’s as if we’ve endured this journey together.
I am packing up my bag but I open Septology and read "Our Father Who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name Thy kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" which is the end of every chapter of Septology, and as it ends so does this chapter of my train journey so I read and think that it does not matter whether I believe in God or Jon Fosse or the American railway because I am as beholden to the idea of existence suspended in time as Nabokov and Dotoevsky are to the essence of train-travel. In the end literature connects us all so as Asle breathes in slowly "Lord Jesus" and breathes out "Christ" and breathes in "Have mercy" and breathes out "On me," I feel the rocking train car wheels rolling on American steel which is tradition which is the word we use for history continuing. When we reach my stop I will disembark and the train will go on to New York and cross the border into Canada and everyone above the age of 16 will show their passports and I will be long gone in Richmond waiting for a friend to pick me up in his car, waiting to eat cheap fried-rice in a dingy Chinese restaurant, waiting to catch up, waiting to - finally - finish my journey home.

[shar · Rating 5 out of 5]

—" ... but there is meaning in everything that happens, the pastor said, and he said that God writes straight on crooked lines"

— "it's also always much nicer and safer to have two people in a boat than just one,"

I don't think I can say anything about this book other than I spent seven months reading it really slowly. There is a divine totality in the way our losses relentlessly accumulate but still generate new moments of beauty amidst unspeakable sorrow. After ten years of loneliness, you find yourself finally agreeing to a Christmas invitation from someone who doesn't want you to be alone, or putting slices of less burnt bacon on a friend's plate even though you don't want him in your house. These are ordinary events, and their beauty is hard to comprehend in the moment, but they happen, all the time, everywhere, a kind of straightness/wholeness that exists precisely because everything else has fallen apart. All the possibilities of our lives (what has happened, what could be, what could have been) will eventually meet in death, but before that, we tend to all of them as they come.

Reminds me of this one passage from Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping:

"Cain, the image of God, gave the simple earth of the field a voice and a sorrow, and God himself heard the voice, and grieved for the sorrow, so Cain was a creator, in the image of his Creator."

[Nikki · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not finish. I got up to page 80 of roughly 660 pages. I read as far as I did because this is a Nobel-prize winning author. At first, when I read the first few pages, I decided I might like the book. Two painters, two men with the same name, not to mention a cameo appearance by the younger of one of the two with his sweetheart, Norway fjords, the quiet creative life… sounded intriguing. But the stories — “she” is not with him anymore, the alcoholic, shaking “other” painter, the idea that we must believe in God (this seems a very religion-oriented book, at bottom), the friend going away for Christmas and the special lamb dinner—just kept coming back like stray cats, and while I am fond of the occasional cat, I am not interested in feral cats, cats that show up for no apparent reason, cats that on their 25th appearance just upset me because what can you do? I can see that the plays might be different. But this is simply too frustrating a novel, too self-indulgent, almost, in a weird way, preachy. I am taking this quote out of context, but in one interview the author says he might “feel sorry for the reader.” I do not want anyone to feel sorry for me. I do not read books to become a victim.

[sj · Rating 5 out of 5]

just fucking crazy a little bit you know i love a man in turmoil. good god

[Khrustalyov · Rating 5 out of 5]

To paraphrase a reviewer of Fosse's compatriot Knausgaard, even when it is boring it is interesting.

Septology is a sprawling and yet highly self-contained novel of a deeply felt inner life. It is written in a single non-sentence with no full-stops, a vivid flow of thought that appears formless and yet delivers a clear and engaging narrative. Technically it is a marvel but it is also deeply moving. There is a sense of Ibsen's naturalism here and Beckett no doubt comes to mind - although Fosse has little of the latter's humour. But it is really a very unique and individual novel that does not provide easy comparison.

A very beautiful work of a highly confident writer at the height of his powers.

[Karola · Rating 5 out of 5]

As stated in numerous reviews, Septology is rather a meditation than a traditional prose novel. Yet how much can be conveyed in simple words, the same thoughts reappearing in kaleidoscopic, vertiginous cadence...

As the protagonist remarks about paintings (and art in general), there shines a light that's most visible in the deepest of darknesses. A halo of inner light surrounds Septology throughout.