Johan Borgen (1902–1979)

If I had to describe The Scapegoat in one word, that word would be 'substantial'. The book isn't long nor is its prose dense, but it's packed with implicit questions, speculations, and observations. You could with justice call it a novel of ideas. You could with equal justice call it an existential novel: Borgen addresses the choice to be made between action and inaction, the way that that choice changes us, the nature of personal freedom, and the quest for authenticity. But since he also show more deals with fracturing of the self, with a need for guilt so strong that only punishment can relieve it, and with confusion between past, present, and future, you could just call it a book of great substance.

The Scapegoat is divided into three sections. In the first part the protagonist, Matias Roos, stands near his remote cabin in a forest watching himself walk away to fetch the motorcycle he'll ride into the city, perhaps colliding with and killing a child along the way. The Matias who left home is in the second and longest portion of the book on the run because of a different crime and hoping to cross a frontier. Refused permission, he is given a bed in a nearby boarding-house, a stiflingly and memorably hellacious place. There Roos is subjected to figures from and memories of his past. And the final section of the novel shows Matias finally having his guilt accepted, wrongly, by others before he returns to the cabin in the woods where Matias awaits him. And, in keeping, the reader has choices to make (or refuse to make): Was part of this story hallucinated? dreamed? a fantasy? was it all unreal? did Matias in fact never leave home?

Because I fear I might have made Scapegoat seem difficult to follow, I'm giving an excerpt to show the simplicity of its prose and the--at least occasional--directness in the presentation of its themes:

'Events repeat themselves. Sometimes I ask myself, are we all repeats? Don't we pass through life more and more like shadows, first of ourselves, then of the shadow? Our individuality, where does it go? It turns into a caricature. I, Antoinette Skarseth, must have been somebody once, unique. . .[but now seem] a caricature, a simplification. What is left? Bigotry. And what is left of me? . . . . An echo all my life perhaps, for all I know.'

If this all sounds unappealing you might consider reading Borgen's Lillelord--it too is very good but its content is more straightforward and traditional. show less

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/81982040134/the-red-mist-by-johan-borgen

It is quite possible that this slender novel could rank as another five-star wonder, a masterpiece in its incessant ranting, insanely versed but controlled, and presented as a sometimes fitful digression in regards to the nervous character always present on the page. But I am not sure. Fact is, I liked the book very much and I am more than willing to rate it four stars with the idea that I may in time generously raise it show more as rightfully high as his most obvious obsession the author called The Column of Freedom.

The entire reading experience for me was presented as a question to determine some type of answer for. And for me, and almost comforting in its realization, The Red Mist became the horror of one’s own life that we are attempting to escape or run away from.

… always there must be something happening for people without knowledge or perspectives, people on the run from what they know to something they don’t wish to know.

Johan Borgen’s analogy regarding the quote mentioned above is to row a boat backwards to catastrophe.

To flee is not to create, it is to anticipate change, from fear of what must come. And what must come is the past, the thing that bobs up behind layers, that vanished once, or nearly vanished, that bobs up again with a letter, a thought, a smell. Who can say that a flight can stop, or a fall — that it can stop? The doomed, the absurdly unliving — they’re no longer my friends, they’re deserting me in their sphere.

Many years ago as a small boy I had, perhaps like many others but unbeknownst to me, a four-pack of my own personal Play Dough and wanted not only to impress but to find another someone, perhaps and to be honest, probably a female, in which to play with. But I was not willing under any circumstance to part or sacrifice all four containers of my precious colored dough and so opted to only bring out with me the red. I bring this memory up because while reading this book I profoundly surmised this voice, or even this set of voices, was telling me that freedom meant being “so high that you can see far below that your liberation is red.” And that I admit was a bit weird and something I cannot, nor wish to, explain.

In my feeble attempt at providing for you a nutshell, The Red Mist is a story featuring Goldilocks and Herman, and a monstrously tall and hideous Column of Freedom. But be prepared for an insane account of a past murder, a vigorous dunking, and a hidden corpse. As well as a mental illness misused and untreated. And doctors possibly as sick as the patients they treated. Pages and pages of an obsessional monologue ranting and raving in its lunacy. A book so convincing that it almost takes one to know one, if you know what I mean. show less

Próim és kontráim is vannak. A pro mindenekelőtt az, hogy alapvetően* Borgen azok közé a skandináv minimalisták közé tartozik, akik kellő űrt hagynak a leírt szöveg és a szöveg mögötti tartalom között, amit aztán az olvasó önerőből betölthet. Meg aztán azt a vak is látja, milyen sokszínű íróról van itt szó: vannak morálfilozófiai novellák, vannak lírai felütések, és van benne két történet (Victoria Regia, Az útlevél), amit kedvem volna ellopni, show more és sajátomként beküldeni egy moly-antológiába. Mindkettő azzal nyert meg magának, hogy eredményesen ötvözi a kafkai groteszket és a skandináv minimalizmust – és hát két kvázitökéletes novella (mert tökéletesnél rosszabbat sose lopnék) egy kötetből (még ha az életműválogatás is), az nem kevés. A kontra ezzel szemben az, hogy Borgenről időnként lejön, hogy civilben publicista – nagyon a lájkolásszámra megy. Amivel nekem aztán tényleg semmi bajom, csak éppen ezek az érzelmes-bölcselmes betétek, amikkel egy-egy elbeszélést fűszerez, hát picit kilógtak a szövegből. Amúgy bőven korrekt válogatás.

* Ez az alapvetően egyúttal persze kontra is. Merthogy lehetett volna még úgyabbul i show less

I had to give up on this. I left my bookmark in place if I ever return, but it just did not sustain my interest. Disappointing.