Erlend Loe

Doppler slår seg i hodet og skjønner at han må flytte fra kone og barn og ut i skogen. I skogen lever han alene, forsøksvis i en jeger/sankertilværelse, men diverse hensyn, primært behovet for skummet melk, gjør at han holder seg i nærheten av sivilisasjonen. Etter hvert får han også selskap av en elg og forskjellige mennesker. Doppler forfekter et nobelt syn om at naturen er for alle, men stjeler også uten hemninger fra både andre mennesker og butikker. Han får det for seg at show more "flinkheten" er den store samfunnsfienden, men her vil jeg si at han forveksler flinkhet med materialisme og statusjag. Dopplers tanker og tilværelse får en til å tenke seg og gir mye både å kjenne seg igjen i og ikke å kjenne seg igjen i. Ikke minst er boka også morsom. Anbefales. show less

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/129350768253/lazy-days-by-erlend-loe

The title of this superb little tale should have remained and contained both the words Mixing Part. The title Lazy Days is unjust, inappropriate, and mediocre for a book this good and honest to the core. From the opening pages one can easily discern what I mean by this as the English translation for the German name of the town this family chooses to spend their holiday in is nothing less than tantalizing as it contains a show more humorously bad translation. Mixing Part Churches. It definitely set the tone for where the author meant to take me.

Having already raised a family of my own certainly helped me to understand and appreciate the humor and seriousness of this brilliant work. All relationships are absurd, and the reasons we remain in them are often questionable. Some call it love, others an arrangement. I have always termed all marriage alliances as deals no matter how much love is involved. And often, throughout a long life, the deal changes. New negotiations must incur and new agreements for any hope for the continued “love affair” to thrive. Often in these processes, relationships become devoid of any passion, and often love exits to far-off reaches, and is nowhere in the vicinity of where it was supposed to endure the coming tribulations. In other words, sometimes our lives do become theater, and this is what this novel details.

I cannot imagine this book being enjoyed, or being of much use to anyone not already subjected to a long and accomplished relationship. If deceit and cowardly behavior signifies what a marriage can be, then this bit of work by Erlend Loe would be too much for those of us to bear. Plus it is not conventional in its style. It is basically all dialogue and the reader must discern at all times who is actually doing the talking. There is little help given the reader except for the supreme craft of Loe always present on the page. The questions and conversation he employs keep the action steadily moving. Everything on the page is connected, and skillfully executed. I had absolutely no trouble in following the dialogue. It was as if my wife and I were the ones who actually wrote this book. It was if my own kids were present on the page. I like to think our family might too have been, at times, interesting, and this book was actually one I should have written myself. But alas, I did not. It was Erlend Loe who performed this miracle. It appears Loe has additionally much more to offer his reading public, as he has never repeated anything in the three books translated into English that I have read thus far. He obviously borrows from his life and his varied interests in it. It seems every question regarding his life he attempts to face honestly on the page. And we are rewarded consistently by his efforts. The sharp and biting dialogue prepares us for the route his wandering plot portrays. The results are magnificent in their clever and exquisite development.

Having been confused from time to time over which direction my own life should take, and wondering if I ever could be the person I often imagined myself to be, it is refreshing to read of the same consternation the narrator Telemann has for his own life. By reviewing his own sexual fantasies happening outside his marriage bed it helps the reader to understand why Telemann’s wife Nina might actually stray herself from the so-called sanctity of marriage. After his wife’s Nina’s gift of a popular cookbook to him, Telemann obsesses daily over the author Nigella Lawson and her buxom body. Telemann extends his obsession to hating the art collector Charles Saatchi who she was presently married to. The concept that Life is always theater is not difficult to accept when confronted with it so aggressively as Loe is wont to do. By also involving the couple’s later attempt at viewing together the great seven and a half hour Hungarian film Sátántangó by Béla Tarr the absurdness grows amidst the reality of their creative adulteries. Having been myself subjected to this film twice already, the haunting soundtrack composed by Mihály Víg, by default, as well saturates the Loe narrative for me. Sátántangó was based on one of the great novels written by László Krasznahorkai, who is a regular collaborator in most Béla Tarr directed films.

Contrary to the mostly lukewarm reviews of Lazy Days, I found this title to be fresh and invigorating, and one of the best reads of the year so far for me. show less

These kinds of novels with a childlike, naive narrator seem to be becoming more popular; or, perhaps, I am on a streak, having recently read Matt Haig's "The Humans" and Fredrik Backman's "A Man Called Ove." I find it a bit tiresome. It reads like a literary exercise, an excuse for the author to dispense "wisdom" without actually having any. This book is particularly bad, lacking redeeming qualities like an original premise (e.g., math and aliens in "The Humans") or an interesting character show more (Ove). I don't usually complain about this, but the narrator's dilemmas also reek of privilege. Forgettable. show less

I’m curious, did you hear about this book from 1996, in the same way I did? That would have been in the political coverage of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. Seems that Mayor Pete found the book while at Harvard, and when he discovered that the Norwegian author, Erlend Loe, didn’t have any other works that had been translated, he learned Norwegian. Mayor Pete was certainly an original politician in many ways.
Curiosity of discovery aside, this slim paperback is one very clever and show more original coming-of-age novel. The style is simple and tells of a young man who has dropped out of a MA program, isn’t working, has no obvious ambition, and is house sitting for his brother. He does have a compunction to make lists of all sorts of things, and to bounce a red ball off the wall for hours at a time. Oh, and he finds great comfort in one of the kids toys where you hammer the pegs through the bench, and then flip it over and pound them all right back. The simple things can many times be the most rewarding.
As little is expected of him, he does the simple things that bring him pleasure, the things that he can control, while all the major decisions of his life are currently over the horizon of this temporary phase of his life. He knows that they will come his way eventually, but he’s into the uncomplicated pleasures of life—while he can. [I can strongly relate to this situation, at his point in my own life.]
The writing reflects the simplicity of his life, as well as the self-controlled nature of his days. Many lives get complicated at this point—when one knows that the major decisions of life won’t be leaving you alone much longer. Many times those complications are drugs and other addictions. Another way is when someone start making a few or many of the myriad of self-destructive choices possible in life.
There are hoards of coming-of-age novels, stories in which characters feel that the time has come when they must grow up, must make all those major life decisions. However, just maybe, this stellar and slender novel is a grand example of the time in life before all that happens. Or, on the other hand, it may be not be showing what precedes, but what can supersede all that.
No matter how closely you feel to the life depicted within this story, this extremely funny and insightful book was a real treat to read and to relate to, and it is wonderfully original and fresh. show less