Let’s do this!

For anyone who doesn’t listen to the Three Percent Podcast (“too much baseball!” “too grumpy!” “Chad speaks too fast and his voice is metal rake on cement irritating!”), you might have missed my appeal to Tom to reorder Riffraff’s bookshelves in a way that ¾±²õ²Ô’³ÙÌýalphabetical by author last name-author first name-title. I hadn’t really thought about this in detail before, but although it’s a logical system—especially for trying to find something quickly—it’s pretty lame. There’s no connective tissue between books shelved next to one another (Ann Quin and Anna Quinlen are very different), and it’s actually pretty counter-intuitive if you’re just browsing.

That’s why display tables exist! These are books that you can group according to a particular theme or event and that, due to the fact that the books are all faced out and arranged in a more or less random order (usually based on color, with similarly shaded red books as far apart as possible) forces the customer to peruse. To slow down and see what’s there.

Every bookseller will tell you that the books on display tend to sell better than the books that are shelved, spine-out, in the given sections. Which, on initial read, feels like some insight into bookselling, but probably doesn’t really mean all the much in the end, since stores will display books that they have the most copies of, and they’ll have the most copies of the books that are most likely to sell, and by putting them on display, they’ll sell that much quicker, and this is all very circular and uninteresting.

But it makes me curious . . . What would happen if you applied the sort of non-alpha logic of display tables to the sections themselves? By stymieing (which should definitely not be spelled like that) the inclination to straight to a spot to try and find a specific book, we could encourage impulse buys, simply by exposing people to books they otherwise would pass right over.

Two quick rationalizing examples, then onward to the fun stuff:

1.) Libraries! Yes, the Dewey Decimal system is rational and follows a very rigid structure, but it’s also a bit batshit when you think about it. Literatures split up by country of originÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýtime period? Everything’s arranged by a code that you can learn but never really intuit. There’s no way to just go find Shirley Jackson’s books in the library because they’re not under “J” but under PS3519 .J14b. Gibberish!

And yet, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read/heard someone talk about how they discovered their favorite author just perusing the stacks in a university library. Forced out of our normal set of expectations of how things are organized, we’re more open to options, to looking at things that we would otherwise never even notice. The brain is weird.

2.) The Amazon Experience. I’m not trying to stir the pot, but given that more than 50% of all book purchases are done online, thereÌý³¾¾±²µ³ó³ÙÌýbe some reason to think about how things are structured in this space versus a traditional indie bookstore. Meaning: I’m not even sure that it’s possible to browse a section of Amazon alphabetically. And even if you could? NIGHTMARE.

It’s not just that Amazon leverages the customer data it captures to ensure that every browser is presented with the titles they’reÌýmost likelyÌýto purchase given past purchases, location, current trends, the last five books they’ve viewed, etc., etc. Think about how you use the Internet—it’s always bouncing from one thing to the next. Clicking on a particular YouTube video because the title caught your eye. We have never progressed through the Internet in a systematic, A-to-Z way, but rather in a series of hyperlinks and associative jumps. And our brains are different now because of it. Is there a way that indie bookstores can acknowledge this shift in how we process information and capitalize on it?

One last bonus note: You don’t have to get too deep into behavioral economics to realize that we tend to make the same choices over and over and over. Some people get the same one or three things at their favorite restaurant because they know those dishes are good. Others only buy strawberry jam. Some decide to do something different every single chance they get—which is also a sort of rigid choice that’s being imposed. These ruts (aka “decision-making schemas”) are very useful in everyday life. Who needs to waste 10 minutes of mental energy trying to figure out which coffee shop to go to that morning. To steal an Anthony joke: Jessica Jones would be a better drunk if she ²¹±ô·É²¹²â²õÌýdrank Heaven Hill.

But we shouldn’t live like that. When it comes to culture at least. You can’t learn if you don’t explore and read/watch/listen to certain things that are way outside of your comfort zone. And simply by changing up the way you have to browse a section of books—that’ll do it. 100%.

Alternative Form of Shelving #1: By Time Period

I initially thought of this as a way of organizing just the History section, but really, why not the whole damn store? Let’s make this shit chronological. Fiction and nonfiction about the Medieval Period is one spot, the World War I books somewhere else, everything Trump-adjacent on the far left . . .

I’ve been reading a lot of books from twentieth-century Spanish authors. And I wouldÌý±ô´Ç±¹±ðÌýto be able to browse a shelf that mixed together the fiction I’ve been reading (like Sara Mesa’s amazingÌýFour by Four) with works of contemporary history and philosophy about contemporary Spain. If I saw Jesús Carrasco’sÌýOut in the OpenÌýnext to a Lara Moreno novel next to a book about the depopulation or rural Spain? I’d buy all three. But not if I had to go to three different parts of the store.

*

Idea #2!

OK, so far, all that above is semi-logical and coherent. But this wouldn’t be a Three Percent post if there weren’t some added layer that doesn’t really actually totally fit, butÌý³¾²¹²â²ú±ðÌýresonates. So let’s talk about trilogies and quartets from Norway.

When I first plotted out Norwegian Month, I wrote down 15 different titles that I wanted to read in July and write about. I read fast, but not that fast, so that didn’t actually happen. But one reason that there were sooooo many titles on this list is because Norwegians tend to write a lot of series. For the final post of the month, I want to plug at least a handful of them . . .

And, because, as you may have heard on the Two Month Review with Marius Hjeldnes or on tomorrow’s bonus podcast with Annette Orre, Norway has this “thing” of rating all products on a scale of one to six, illustrated with a three-dimensional picture of a die as if the rating were based on chance?, I decided that I would roll dice for all of these series and write about them through the lens of whatever the rolled. (This is not Tarot but it feels a bit like Tarot.)

Maja Lunde’s Climate Quartet (Dice Rolls Of: 1, 6, 3, 3)

WOAH. So I’ve been reading the first book in this series,Ìý (translated by Diane Oatley), all weekend, and IT IS NOT A 1. Then again, it’s not a 6. Anything involving the collapse of bee colonies is 100% up my alley, and a speculative book set in three time periods (1850s, 2007, 2090s) doubly so. The only problem I have with this is that, unlike a David Mitchell version of this book, the individual chapters rarely end in cliffhangers. I wish this were more commercial? (WORDS YOU NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD TYPE.) It’s interesting, but I’m not sure what my motivation if to keep reading. I’m only 150 pages in though, so maybe acts II and III really bring the shit home.

But the idea of having to pollinate all flowers by hand because there are no more bees? FUCKING TERRIFYING.

The second book in this series isÌý. It’s coming out from HarperVia in January. It’s about a worldwide drought and yesterday I rode my bike past the beach I used to go to here in Rochester and it’s completely been erased from existence due to rising lake levels. This world. Every day the news gets worse. SIX DICE!

The final two books haven’t been written, so 3s sound about right.

Alternative Form of Shelving #2: By Country (The Idlewild Model)

I hesitate to even include this here because it exists in the real world, and that’s not fun. But Idlewild in NYC organizes their books by country—not by authors ´Ú°ù´Ç³¾Ìýthat country, but any book about that country. Going on a trip to France? One shelf has all the fiction, travel guides, historical books, and memoirs by Americans about Paris, Marseille, Ligue 1, etc.

Even though I instituted this at Quail Ridge Books for our translated titles—and upped the sales of those books by two-three fold—I’m not sure it makes sense. Boundaries are artificial, yo. I never got good at Spanish because I never wanted to read ´Ç²Ô±ô²âÌýSpanish books. We’re all very cosmopolitan. If I took these “Month of X Literature” posts more seriously, I think I’d hate myself. Books travel. That’s the point. And they can be contextualized in a million different ways, with “country of origin” or “language” being one of the easiest and possibly most reductive.

Ìýby Jon Fosse, translated by May-Brit Akerholt (Die Roll: 4)

Not actually a trilogy! At least not in terms of volumes. (Although it is three novellas in one book.) Which is why it got one score: a 4. Which is . . . good? This is exactly where the 1-6 scale falls apart. A 3 is probably bad, but is a 4 that much better? Brains love extremes, so these middling numbers just get lost.

There is a newÌýseptologyÌýforthcoming from Fosse. It’s coming out from Fitzcarraldo (and maybe Transit?) in three volumes starting next year. I read the first one. I would publish this. (But made no offer because I can’t bring myself to outbid a friend, even though I’ve yet to reap the karma from this sort of collaborators-not-competitors approach *cough* NewDirectionsMathiasEnard *cough.*) But it’s also insanely slow and atmospheric and for a very particular Twitter crowd. It’s a 4! Out of 6!

Alternative Form of Shelving #3: Associative

This would be wild, but what if you took all the books in your store and, much like readers do in their private libraries, lined them up in a totally idiosyncratic way based on which books remind you of one another, either because of content, or when you read them, or where you read them, or whatever ideas there are connecting one book to another. Go crazy.

I have no idea what this bookstore would look like, or what it would be like to shop, but I feel like I’d stay there for a very long time, trying to figure out the psychology of the buyer. And that could be fun!

There’s a larger, unstated concept behind this entire rubric that I want to try and articulate once again: When you force readers out of the comfort zone of buying and reading the most popular, most obvious books, they will experience a greater joy in reading. That’s my hypothesis.

Sidenote: I don’t look through music in alphabetical order. Not at all. Spotify gives me recommendations that are based on my recent listening habits, recent releases, other forms of sequencing . . . It’s never A-to-Z.

ÌýTrilogy by Carl Frode Tiller, translated by Barbara Haveland (The Dice Say: 2, 4)

Somehow, that tracks.

I haven’t read the published versions of these books, although I did read a lot of pages from volume one translated by a translator who didn’t end up translating the book for final publication. And it wasÌýfine. A 2, 3, 4 . . . whatever.

David has lost his memory. When he places a newspaper ad to ask his friends and family to share their memories of him, three respond: Jon, his closest friend; Silje, his teenage girlfriend; and Arvid, his estranged stepfather. Their letters reveal David’s early life in the small town of Namsos, full of teenage rebellion, the uncertainties of first love, and intense experiments in art and music.

This sounds like a Nabokovian puzzle, but reads more like a Franzen novel. So it’s betwixt and between for me. I want something that’s either more pulp, or more brilliant—it’s 2019, we live in the extremes. Being middling is worse than death.

Alternative Form of Shelving #4: If X, then Y

The most Amazon form of shelving, and yet, maybe the most effective?ÌýIf you like Virginie Despentes’sÌýPretty ThingsÌýYou’ll Like Kathy Acker’sÌýEmpire of the Senseless. YEP.

And whatever crazy shit Tom was saying on the podcast about Amazon physical stores organizing books by rankings (definitely not true), I think they mostly operate off the principle of “If X, then Y” with books all faced out ²¹²Ô»åÌýnotÌýalphabetical at all.

What if a physical space reflected the decision-making process of a digital one? Everything is a display, a distraction. Let’s use every trick to get people to buy things they otherwise might not: pricing + discount, anchoring, recency bias. No one else is doing this, and we can quickly gain information about how people shop in ways that no indie store is actually tracking . . .Ìý

Even if I disagree with a particular store’s choices of Y for X, I think I would love this.ÌýWhat else is like Shirley Jackson’sÌýThe Sundial? Give me that book now!

Jan Kjærstad’s Wergeland Trilogy, translated by Barbara Haveland (Dice: 3, 6, 3)

Not to repeat the same joke, but: I’ll buy it!

The last two books in this series—²¹²Ô»åÌý—were published by Open Letter. My ranking of the trilogy?: Conqueror, Seducer, Discoverer. I agree with the dice!

(Also: I put myself on a 2,500 word limit for this post. I have 79 words left.)

Alternative Form of Shelving #4: Emergent Shelving

Let’s accept for a second that when you do inventory—once or twice a year—by scanning in every book that’s on the shelves. Let’s accept, for a second second that about 5% of your overall revenue as a bookseller comes from people calling you and having you set aside a particular title. Given that, it’s quite possible that how you shelve your books is totally cost-neutral. In other words, you lose a few sales, you gain a few impulse buys.

Especially if you encourage customers to reshelve books in whatever way that they feel. Create a community space where the customer isn’t just “invested,” but is literally part of the experience. I really wonder what would happen if you encouraged your clientele to rearrange books in whatever way they wanted. Let them build the displays! It would be sheer chaos, but it might also be beautiful . . . And if a store is supposed to serve its community, what better way to figure out what people actually want than to let them just take over?

(Disclaimer: None of these ideas will ever be enacted, but if they were! We could learn so much about people’s book shopping habits by trying things like this out. Instead, by sticking to the alphabetical model, we ensure that some books sell more than others simply because of where they end up on the shelf—at eye level, at the end of a row, etc. Rather than try and compete with B&N or Amazon on price or selection, some adventurous stores should try and compete by creating a space that defies “normal” organization and creates something that’s more than simply a shop, something that’s a browsing experience.)

Back in the first post of July—Norwegian Literature Month at Three Percent, because nothing reminds me more of Norway than a 110 degree heat index—I shared a bunch of statistics on Norwegian literature in English from 2008 through 2018. Including this:

This is the breakdown of Norwegian books by men (123 titles or 73%) published in English translation compared to those written by women (47 titles or 27%). That’s aÌýhugeÌýdiscrepancy! Almost three titles by Norwegian men for every single title by a Norwegian woman? Not a great look.

And because I have the data in front of me, I can list all 21—only twenty-one!—Norwegian women who, since 2008, have had work translated into English for the first time ever:

Selma Lonning Aaro

May-Brit Akerholt

Merete Andersen

Brit Bildoen

Hanne Bramness

Gro Dahle

Janne Drangsholt

Karin Fossum

Kari Hesthamar

Vigdis Hjorth

Anne Holt

Merethe Lindstrom

Maja Lunde

Hanne Orstavik

Gunnhild Oyehaug

Edy Poppy

Agnes Ravatn

Ingelin Rossland

Kjersti Skomsvold

Amalie Skram

Linn Ullmann

Compared to a number of other countries, that’s not bad, but aside from the mystery writers—Karin Fossum and Anne Holt in particular—and the one(?) Big Five author (Gunnhild Oyehaug), I’m curious to see how many of these other authors are easy to find out about online.

Let’s back up for a second first.

*

Shortly after putting together a really ambitious plan for Norwegian Month—and a to-do list that’s longer than a Texas mile—I took a kind of selfish “work” vacation. I went to an AirBNB alone (a place with no TV and no Internet) to work on a book idea I had (er, have, I suppose) about, well, baseball and framing and stuff. The vision I have makes no sense when I explain it, no matter how valiantly I try, but, in essence I want to write about non-quantifiable value at a time when everything is being quantified and analyzed.

The biggest problem I’m having—aside from a near-constant state of self-deprecation, especially when I think that these posts can serve as some sort of “proof of concept” behind my whole insane book idea—is that writing about value mostly means writing about failure. And when I’m writing about failure—in a book that’s at least partially autobiographical—I’m really just pondering my own failures. And how my life/career/ideas/editorial selections stack up against others. Definitely not well!

Anyway, putting aside that moment of self-doubt (fuck self-doubt! fuck aspiration! fuck ego! and fuuuucccckkkk Twitter!), my other big plan for my time away was to read a couple books by Norwegian women—the two that are referenced below—and prep some posts for Three Percent.

That didn’t happen.

Instead, I discovered Shirley Jackson, aka, one of my five most favorite authors ever of all time.

This started by downloadingÌýHangsamanÌýfor my Kindle before taking off to the AirBNB. (And please, come at me if you want. If you work at an indie bookstore between Rochester and Great Barrington, MA and had a copy of HangsamanÌýin stock, please send a picture. It wasn’t available in the central library here, nor in the U of R one, and, to be honest, there is something rewarding about being able to read in the dark, on a roof, well into the wee hours of the morning.)ÌýHangsaman came up in a marketing meeting about Sara Mesa’s Four by Four, as a suggestion from one of our summer interns as a possible comparison, and as a voice that might help with editing this strange, captivating book.

(Side note: Four by Four is AMAZING. It’s the sort of book that gets stuck in your mind, forcing you to puzzle it all out. And dwell on it. The editing process has been incredibly illuminating for this title. We’re taking the translation to a new level.ÌýJust wait, y’all. Just wait.)

Everyone who went to high school already knows of Shirley Jackson. She’s the author of “The Lottery,” which, because bold claims are the thing in 2019, I’m going to state, emphatically, with no qualifications or any hand-wringing, that this isÌýthe Greatest American Short Story Ever. We all know it. It caused a bit of controversy. It’s layered. It’s immaculately well-crafted. It’s singular in its voice. And it’s not by Hemingway. (Big plus.)

Everyone who watches Netflix knows aboutÌýThe Haunting of Hill House, which is pretty much not at all related to the Jackson novel of the same name—but who cares? Lots of people watched this. “Inspired by” is the new “adapted from.”

And some people knowÌýWe Have Always Lived in This Castle, which I first heard about and read in 2008 when Bragi Ólafsson recommended it during his reading tour here in the States. When the aforementioned intern recommended Jackson as a possible comparison point for Sara Mesa’s novel, this was the book I thought of. A novel with a weird interplay between voice and perspective, plot and narrative framing.

I didn’t want to reread that, though, which then led to my finding out that Jackson had written four novels I’d never heard of:ÌýThe Road through the Wall,ÌýHangsaman, The Bird’s Nest, ²¹²Ô»åÌýThe Sundial.Ìý

I have no doubts that some readers of this website have read some/most/all of these books, but for whatever reason—because of “The Lottery”?, because she’s a she?, because her books are supposedly “genre”?—Jackson flew under my radar.

Looking at her earlier books,ÌýHangsamanÌýjumped out. A book about a school (likeÌýFour by Four) that’s both sinister and a parody (again,ÌýFour by Four), and a lesser known book from a famous author (I am a total mark for being “that guy who read the book by XXXX that no one else ever reads”), sounded ideal to me.

In fits and starts, as I worked on my book (aka came to terms with several of my limitations as a writer and thinker), I read Hangsaman. And when I finished, I had two thoughts:ÌýWhat the fuck did I just read? Who else has written about the connections between this book ²¹²Ô»åÌýTwin Peaks?Ìý

*

The first book I planned on reading on my little write-a-cation (I’ll let myself out) was Anatomy. Monotony.Ìýbecause the description sounded so very horny. (FYI: . Can someone let me know what’s going on? Anyone?)

What is fidelity? InÌýAnatomy. Monotony., Edy Poppy examines this question with an intimacy and ruthlessness worthy of Marguerite Duras. VÃ¥r, a young woman from a small Norwegian town, and Lou, a Frenchman from Nîmes, maintain an open marriage. But their polyamorous experiment is freighted with jealousies. Their life in London is broken into by one fascinating stranger after another, until eventually they decide to move away, back to VÃ¥r’s rural hometown―a decision that will change the nature of their relationship forever.ÌýAnatomy. Monotony.Ìýis a novel about sex, love, and the creation of literature in no uncertain terms.

Admittedly, I’m not digging too deeply into my Google results, but at first glance, there seems to be almost no conversation whatsoever of this book. “too personal, too forced,” and , but wins, due to this opening paragraph:

I have lived with the novel Anatomy. Monotony. for the entire 19 years of my real-life story with its author, Edy Poppy. I’ve known its players, the inside story – from her first notes in the galleries of Tate in London. Now I have a chance to read it. Dare I?

Oh, shit!

*

The first result I got for “what does Hangsaman by Shirley jackson mean?” was a GoodReads page that was basically a cold, objective evaluation: With a grand total of 9 ratings, the book had received a 3.22 rating.

NOT A SIDE NOTE: What is a small sample size for book review ratings? In baseball, 600 plate appearances is prettyÌývalid. No trends stabilize before 100 plate appearances. But off of 9 GoodReads ratings this book is mediocre.

This book is definitely not a 3.22 out of 5.00. That’s like giving a C to a student because you’re too dumb to notice they know more than you. But who’s going to go on there and try and change that score? What are we doing, rating books in this way?

*

Vigdis Hjorth is a big name in Norwegian literature. Her novelÌýWill and Testament (forthcoming from Verso) sold like, if I can remember the number from the press release I threw away, like 140,000 units.

Open LetterÌýhas sold more than 120,000 net units over our history. That’s not a failure. I don’t think? It’s not. No way. Success isn’t only sales figures. Right?

Four siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret.

When a dispute over her parents’ will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled twenty years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer houses to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. To outsiders, it is a quarrel about property and favouritism. But Bergljot, who has borne a horrible secret since childhood, understands the gesture as something very different—a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured.

Will and TestamentÌýis a lyrical meditation on trauma and memory, as well as a furious account of a woman’s struggle to survive and be believed. Vigdis Hjorth’s novel became a controversial literary sensation in Norway and has been translated into twenty languages.

I did read a bit of this book. My hot takeaway: It’s worth checking out, but the most interesting part of the first 60 pages is about the narrator having an affair with a married man. The most boring parts are all the whining about the summer houses and the inheritance. It’s very repetitive. But I assume it becomes more and more interesting as it goes along. In Verso I trust. They are not failures. Every editorial decision they make is lauded.

That said,ÌýWill and TestamentÌýis noÌýThe SundialÌýby Shirley Jackson, which I immediately downloaded after finishing HangsamanÌý(although, in all fairness, I did go to the local independent bookstore, , and bought the only Jackson book they had in stock, a Netflix tie-in version ofÌýThe Haunting of Hill House), and ended up devouring over the course of a single day.

*

All clickbait headlines are awful, but this one really bugs me: ““

I’ve spent the week so far reading mid-century-style: pocket paperbacks and folded pages, making notes in the margins with ballpoint pens. When I finish Shirley Jackson’s 1951 novel HangsamanÌýtoday, though, I immediately head to the 21^st century—I take out my phone and start Googling furiously.

What else would you do? Everything you can imagine exists online somewhere, so, obviously, someone must have tried to articulate this weird novel. Go on, Dan Kois, editor ofÌýSlate:

“Natalie is lonely at school. And because of who she is, and because of what kind of novel this is, her loneliness is terrifying. The dangerous power of awareness, quotidian social brutality, loneliness, and existential fear propelÌýHangsamanÌýtoward the edge of becoming a psychological thriller, rather like one of Patricia Highsmith’s, only less physically violent, funnier, more lyrical, imaginative, and interior.â€�

At the very least I’m reassured that I didn’t miss some enormous plot point. Instead, I’m left with the thoroughly enjoyable activity of chewing over the book I’ve just read: thinking back on Natalie’s voices, her diaries, her puffed-up father and desperate mother, the man at the party, the one-armed diner and the best friend, only some of whom, it’s clear, actually exist.

Just to clarify, Dan quotes Francine Prose’s intro, and then reassures himself that his (unarticulated) reading of the book wasn’t 100% off-base.

It would take many more paragraphs to address even half of the interesting things you can find in this book. Questions or observations like:

1.) Natalie was sexually assaulted, right?

2.) What an amazing parody of a domineering father . . .

3.) . . . AND of a man who thinks he’s a writer.

4.) Those letters home from college.

5.) The history of that college (Bennington?) is so wonderful in its specificity.

6.) And that ending? Let’s assume Tony isn’t real. Natalie still hasÌývery uncanny experiencesÌýwith several adults in the last third of the book.

7.) Including the very unnerving car ride back to town, which seems to take place at a very different point in time.

9.) And don’t forget about the 0ne-armed man!

But is any of this addressed in the only contemporary review of this book? Nope! The rest of his review is this:

My hunch is that the establishment of the trade paperback as an exciting format for lit-fiction—cemented by theÌý, launched in 1984 and a fabulous success almost instantly thanks to Jay McInerney’sÌý—meant that suddenly every author wanted a large-format paperback edition for herself. They also cost more: more money for publishers, higher royalties to authors. So where once most trade paperbacksÌý, that format now became a way to differentiate high-toned fiction from its pulpier, poppier, mass-market brethren. The bet was that readers would pay for quality. For a while, they did.

Now, of course, the only thing I’m willing to pay for is speed. I spent $8.89 to download a book in seconds, even though it’s just data, words on a screen, more ephemeral even than the shabby mass-market tucked into the cupholder of my beach chair. Fifty years from nowÌýHangsamanÌýwill be over 100 years old, and this little object that once sold for 50 cents may well still survive—in my daughter’s house, or in a thrift shop somewhere, or on the shelves of some other mass-market fetishist like me, carefully tending the last remaining treasures in his collection. That $9 Kindle version will be long evaporated into the ether, just another obsolete file format, more orphaned data lost in the dark where no one will ever find it.

Wait, what?

*

Every Shirley Jackson book I’ve read has a moment when the main character gets lost in the woods and has some sort of vision that’s maybe real, maybe in their (broken) mind, possibly supernatural. Someone mustÌýbe talking about this. Somewhere.

*

Where does discussion of theÌýnot-mega-popularÌýbooks take place nowadays?

This is something I want to include in my aforementioned book in progress—or on a podcast, or something—but the democratization of book culture via the Internet has only really reinforced the gap between immense success and being completely ignored. A book is only going to be talked about in detail ifÌýeveryoneÌýis talking about it. It’s very rare to see someone going out on a limb and talking up a book that others haven’t already anointed. Or that isn’t positioned to be “the next big thing.”

Which will always strike me as weird, since I grew up at a time when everyone was desperately trying to set themselves apart through their choices of which bands, authors, movies, etc. Never admit to liking a book thatÌýnormalsÌýreally like.

I don’t feel like that’s the vibe anymore, although maybe I’m just wrong. Twitter is probablyÌýnotÌýthe best way of assessing culture at large.

*

The only other thing I could find online about Hangsaman was on . Initially, this made me feel hopeful. It would make sense for conversations about more obscure books to happen here. But then, this:

This is going back to the old point that I’ve written about (and podcasted about) a million times, but the most pressing issue for the field of international literatureÌý¾±²õ²Ô’³ÙÌýincreasing the infamous 3% number, it’s cultivating conversations around the books thatÌýareÌýpublished. Of the 600+ translations published last year, there were probably a dozen that received a respectable amount of attention from reviewers, literary websites, booksellers, Twitter, and the like, with the overwhelming majority of international titles (and, to be honest, most books in general), just fading away.

None of this is new, or insightful. But if you start to unpackÌýwhyÌýcertain books receive 90% of the conversation, and others get absolutely nothing . . . That’s interesting. Even a bit disconcerting if you accept that it’s not theÌýbestÌýorÌýmost worthyÌýtitles that get the attention, that there are other forces at work, shaping our culture. (Shadowy forces and luck. It’s always all about luck.)

So it’s not surprising that it’s hard to find people talking aboutÌýWill and TestamentÌý(hopefully that will change when the book is officially released) ²¹²Ô»åÌýAnatomy. Monotony.ÌýI’m not sure there’s anything to be done, but I’m becoming more and more despondent about a culture that seems to only value the mega-hit. Twitter broke me this week when, after not checking it for days and days, I opened up the app and saw every silly tweet as someone’s attempt to go viral. Just keep chucking out those puns and witty observations and one day you’ll make it!ÌýLike trying to understand YouTubers, this really bums me out. We don’t see value in the object itself, but rather in the number of references and likes that object has received. And since most people, especially nowadays, want to be part of the in crowd, once something starts to be popular, we all rush to like and retweet it, to make sure that we can demonstrate that we know what’s good.

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HangsamanÌýis a fantastic book. AndÌýThe Haunting of Hill House is exquisitely crafted. But, in the end, my favorite Shirley Jackson novel is The Sundial. It’s one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, a sort of comedy of manners set against a somewhat sinister backdrop. The Victor LaValle foreword (posted onÌýÌýas a “book review,” which is odd) does a great job articulating what makes her book so damn good:

The Hallorans, and their extended hangers-on, become a kind of cult when one of them, Aunt Fanny, receives prophetic messages from her long departed, much revered father. He has appeared to his only daughter to warn that the world is soon to end. All those in the Halloran home must prepare for the coming doom. Shut the doors and windows, close themselves off from the cursed world. Prepare to become the last of the human race. In quick time the family members are drawn into paranoia and conspiracy. They come to believe the prophecy. They have been chosen to inherit the earth. Jackson proceeds to illustrate, in rich detail, just how sad such a fate would be. The whole world ends, ²¹²Ô»åÌýthisÌýis all that’s left? Jackson spares no one her precise, perceptive eye. Sadder still is how much I recognize myself, from my worst moments, in one character or another. What saves me from despair is Jackson’s wit, her deadpan demolition of human foibles. For me, that kind of reading experience is essential, and when I discovered Shirley Jackson, it was as if she’d understood what I wanted, what I needed, and set it all down on the page long before I was even born. That recognition is profound, life changing, whether it comes in a darkened movie theater or between the covers of a novel.

Personally, I love the way Aunt Fanny keeps trying to get in bed with one of the hangers-on by pounding on his door and insisting that she’s “only 48” and therefore, still desirable. That and how the granddaughter keeps questioning whether or not the post-apocalyptic world, in which everyone outside of the house has simply vanished, is actually a good thing, since they’ll all still be stuck with one another . . . Oh, and the set-piece where the Halloran Cult meets the True Believers, who share their own vision of the coming end of the world—a vision that the Hallorans find absolutely ridiculous. (I don’t want to give away any more of that scene though . . . Those few pages alone are worth the price of admission.)

That’s about where this idea of promoting Kjærstad starts to get awkward . . . See, we only published the last two volumes of the trilogy: Overlook did the first, which still appears to be in print in some form. AND we did both of ours in paper-over-board/caseback/hardcover sans dust jacket, and never had the ebook rights. (Which isÌýso 2009 that it makes me gag.)

Anyway, we have nothing to discount for you.

I do want to encourage you to read Kjæstad though, and will post a few things from him this month regardless, starting with this very special post from Norvik!

As it turns out, after seeing my first post for Norway Month (the big data dump), they contacted me about a couple of their forthcoming books—including a new title by Jan Kjæstad!

First off, if you don’t know , here’s a bit that they wrote as a way of introduction:

Norvik Press is a small publishing house specialising in high-quality English translations of Scandinavian literature. We mainly publish translations of classics and contemporary literary fiction. Our publication list consists of some of Scandinavia’s most influential and renowned authors, like August Strindberg, Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf and Vigdis Hjorth—whoseÌýA House in NorwayÌýis a PEN Award winner and nominated for the Dublin Literary Award 2019.ÌýBerge,Ìýby Jan Kjærstad, will be published autumn 2019.

(Spoiler alert: I’m planning on covering the Vigdis Hjorth book that’s forthcoming from Verso later in the month.)

And here’s the description ofÌýBerge:

One August day in 2008 the Norwegian Labour Party’s most colourful MP, Arve Storefjeld, is discovered in a remote cabin in the country, together with four of his family and friends, all with their throats slit. This unprecedented crime in the peaceful backwater of Norway sends shudders through the national psyche, as the search for the perpetrators begins and people have to adjust to the terrifying thought: it can happen here too.

The rapidly unfolding events are narrated from the stand-points of three observers who in different ways become drawn in to the investigation: Ine Wang, a young journalist who has just finished a biography of Storefjeld and realises that the tragedy has presented her with an irresistible scoop; Peter Malm, a judge whose ideal of a quiet contemplative life away from public scrutiny is turned upside-down by his unwilling involvement in the case; and Nicolai Berge, a former boyfriend of one of the victims, who emerges as the main suspect and a focus for the public demand for catharsis.

Published six years after the trauma of 22 July 2011, when 77 Norwegians were killed in a one-man assault on the government offices in Oslo and a Young Labour camp on the island of Utøya, Jan Kjærstad’s novel explores the vulnerabilities of modern life and the terrifying unpredictability of acts of terror.

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ÌýBerge

Jan Kjærstad

Excerpt translated by Janet Garton

Published by Norvik Press

Apparently it was a crime beyond all comprehension. A hiker had rung the papers. Several people had been killed in a cabin in the wilderness of Nordmarka, way off the beaten track. Slaughtered, according to the tip-off. In a bestial way. Amongst the dead were well-known people, it was said. Extremely well-known.

Terrorism, flashes through my mind. Finally it has arrived here too.

I’m standing here with my mobile phone in my hand. Trembling. Was this to be my lucky day after all?

I’m shocked at the thought, try to stop it, but it won’t be stopped, I feel a kick, because I’m at a low point, not just in my life, but here too, stranded on an island. I’ve been feeling out of place for a long time, standing here dressed up and sweaty, watching young couples running around in the sand in just their underwear, I can see that the party is already beginning to degenerate, I read the long text message again, just to make sure that I haven’t read it wrong, and let my mobile slip back into my bag, like a weapon into its holster, I think, as Marie waves and points, I have to come down and sit on the rug, she pulls comic faces, I smile and indicate that I’m fine just here, raise my glass, at the same time as I conceal a grimace of contempt and regret that I could be so stupid as to accept this wedding invitation, on Hovedøya in the Oslo fjord of all places, the bridal couple in white, the guests in white, even I’m in white as the invitation demanded; and they were in luck, the weather on this late August day made you long for a parasol, and everything was so unbearably romantic, with the wedding ceremony in the monastery ruins and everything, the word of God and birdsong and tears of joy, a cool female, presumably Lesbian, vicar, lots of hot air, solemn, far-too-solemn words about love, the greatest of all and la-di-da, doggerel, doggerel, but just the tiniest bit moving; it was just as much a Celtic ritual, a dash of Tolkien, surrounded by tall leafy trees, the flock of people in white amidst all the shimmering green, poetry reading, kissing, unrestrained kissing, champagne in plastic glasses, masses of champagne, the vicar too drank the champagne greedily, and I was surrounded by shouted conversations which became even more meaningless as they all got mixed up together. ‘Skål for the newly-weds,’ I hollered, just to be a part of it, people began to stumble on the stone steps of the ruins, screaming with laughter, I should never have come, Marie was a much younger colleague from the paper, murdered, and she was pregnant as well, she had admitted, in a bestial way, I felt like an old woman alongside Marie’s contemporaries, to hell with them, lucky bastards, and everything was so strenuously informal and improvised and abandoned, we were hippies in 2008, forty years too late, of course there was not to be any stiff wedding lunch, it was a picnic, many dead, they’d brought rugs and baskets, occupied the meadow sloping down towards the northern beach, the one facing Lindøya, and they spread it all out with shrimps, French bread, lemons, salad, wine from cooler bags, some people lit grills in the designated areas, so that an aroma of grilled meat, mixed with the smell of grilled lobster, soon lay over the rocks and the hill up towards the forest, and we had an orgy of food, we drank, we toasted, spontaneous speeches were made, one platitude after the other, of course people had brought guitars, there was singing, raucous singing, ‘All you need is love’, to hell with them, lucky bastards, all these shamelessly young attractive people with their lives ahead of them, well-known people; some danced, some smoked, and it wasn’t just ordinary cigarettes, there was indiscriminate kissing, there was indiscriminate petting, several couples disappeared into the forest, giggling, soon they’ll be skinny-dipping, I think as I watch, I recognise the atmosphere, fifteen years ago I would have gone skinny-dipping myself, now I’m just depressed by all this happiness, genuine happiness, I grudgingly admit, whilst I search for an excuse to be able to sneak off home.

That’s why I see the text from Ulrik as a life-line, a chance to get out of here. These killings. Many people murdered in the forest. I catch the scent of something, the scent of a heaven-sent opportunity. Who would have thought that on one of the loveliest of late summer days . . . In town no-one knew that in the forest not far away . . . Sooner or later it had to happen here too . . .

I can feel it. A current of air. Something is happening. Everything is changing.

I turn away, no-one takes any notice, I find the steep path up towards the westerly canon emplacement, the high point with a view towards Bygdøy, towards the Fram and Kon-Tiki museums, towards the town and the looming hill to the north. What has happened in the spruce forest behind it? In a bestial way.

The yells from the beach below get louder and louder. I catch a glimpse of Marie, whirling round and round like a Dervish. Shouldn’t she be a bit more careful? My gloominess returns. Where did this melancholy come from? Is it the awareness that Heggholmen is just nearby—Heggholmen, where I met Martin one tropical Midsummer Eve at the beginning of the nineties? I was far from feeling out of place at that party, a bacchanal which was held in a large outbuilding decorated with leafy branches, just next to some summer cabins near the water. There we had garlands of flowers in our hair, paper lanterns under the roof, parma ham and melon, a whole roast lamb, bowls of strawberries, barrels of wine, two acoustic guitars and everyone singing—when I think about it, it was not very different from the wedding celebrations I am just now running away from. The difference was Martin. And that I was young, younger, in the middle of my journalism course, Martin had just finished and got a job on a paper, I was uncertain, wondering whether I should drop out of my studies and do something else, but Martin urged me to go through with it, said it was the world’s most important profession, we were the fourth estate, for Christ’s sake, he was glowing with eagerness, pushed a strawberry between my lips, I had nothing against creeping into the bushes, kissing, felt just as carefree, just as crazy, as the wedding guests I can see on the beach below me; there was something about Martin’s eyes, a look that struck sparks, I didn’t feel horny, just switched on when I looked into them, and later in the evening we were shown around an artist’s place on the southern point of the island, and were given more wine, an exclusive wine, in a studio down by the water’s edge, and we sat there drinking amongst extraordinary paintings and sculptures, and I was the finest work of art in the place, whispered Martin, and we had swum, we had swum naked, that first evening we met, we had kissed, we had done everything you do when you meet on a warm Midsummer Eve by the fjord and fall in love at once. I wasn’t drunk, I was switched on.

I feel it flare up. Long ago. Lost.

Slaughtered?

I ring the paper and get through to Jakob who is holding the fort this Saturday, he doesn’t know much more, but there are blue lights, he says, top priority, he says, people are on their way there now. ‘Where?’ I ask. ‘Blankvann, not too far from the Kobberhaug hostel,’ he says. Bloody hell, could that be right? I’d gone skiing there on the way to the Kikut viewpoint together with Martin. Sodding Martin. ‘According to what we’ve picked up from the police, the tip-off is right,’ says Jakob. ‘Someone found the bodies this afternoon.’ ‘How many?’ I ask. ‘Five,’ he says. ‘Perhaps more.’

My eyes follow a wedding guest as he strips off his shirt before helping himself to grilled lobster. I feel groggy, and it’s not from the champagne, the wine or the smell of burnt meat. ‘Terrorism?’ I ask. ‘It looks that way,’ says Jakob. ‘Five dead?’ I repeat. ‘Yes, at least, they say it’s a hell of a mess,’ he says. ‘Who?’ I ask. ‘Don’t know,’ he says, and his voice is different from normal. ‘I think it’s something sensational,’ he says. ‘Something we’ve never seen before.’

Again a shudder goes through me, and not because I’m scared. For a long time I’ve had a feeling that nothing is happening. Or that the same thing is happening over and over. Not just in my life, but in Norway. It’s not an undiluted blessing for a journalist, living in a prosperous society where no-one gets passionate about anything, with such a damned limited range of events. But now. Something is happening. Something different. On Sunday morning a peaceful country awoke to the news that . . .

Holmenkollen hill looks strangely dark in the fine weather. To the right of the masts is the tower of Tryvannstårnet—like a rocket no-one’s ever managed to fire. And behind that. Seven to eight kilometres into the forest. At least five dead. Suddenly it looks as if the ridge of the hill is holding back a dark evil behind.

I can’t stand any more, I must get home, I don’t know whether it’s because of the news, the agitation I feel, or whether it’s because the guests on the beach have all stood up and are singing ‘Love Is All Around’ with their glasses raised, accompanied by guitars, actually quite tunefully, actually not a little movingly, and I feel sad, melancholy, without quite understanding why I feel sad and melancholy. Martin, it’s all to do with Martin. I send a text to the bride – the pregnant bride – who most likely won‘t glance at her mobile till the next day, before I leave the bastion and stroll past the monastery ruins and onwards down to the quay, where I stand waiting for the little ferry; it’s just me and a few remaining bathers, no-one else from the wedding, they’ve booked a special boat so that they can continue partying in town. I try to keep my eyes on the ferry dock at Aker Brygge, but my glance is drawn inescapably upwards until it rests again on the ridges of Holmenkollen and Vettakollen, blue-black in the near darkness, as if I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of something further in, behind. Bestial? Have they been shot, hanged, dismembered? As I walk on board the ferry it seems that the evening sky has an apocalyptic gleam.

Is this such a day? Is this one of those days which will give rise to an oft-repeated question: where were you on 23 August 2008?

One of the more interesting observations about Norwegian fiction in translation is that, despite the significant number of crime novels published mostly by Big Five presses, the top two publishers of Norwegian lit since 2008 are Dalkey Archive (16 titles) and Graywolf Press (12). Two nonprofits, one whose meteoric rise over the past decade-and-a-half can be partially (if not mostly) attributed to the enormous success of a little Norwegian author named Per Petterson, the other responsible for a significant number of books by Jon Fosse, a potential Nobel Prize winner.

There were two things that stood out the most to me when I looked into Dalkey and Graywolf though, one of which will probably surprise you:

1) Of Dalkey’s 16 titles, 5 are by Stig Sæterbakken and 5 by Jon Fosse. 62.5% of their Norwegian books are from just two authors.

2) 100% of Graywolf’s Norwegian books (in the ) are by men.

You can see here where my “sad dad” idea was coming from . . . Especially when you read some of the descriptions of these books:

Ìýby Stig Sæterbakken (trans. by Seán Kinsella)

Dentist Karl Meyer’s worst nightmare comes true when his son, Ole-Jakob, takes his own life. This tragedy is the springboard for a complex novel posing essential questions about human experience: What does sorrow do to a person? How can one live with the pain of unbearable loss? How far can a man be driven by the grief and despair surrounding the death of his child? A dark and harrowing story, drawing on elements from dreams, fairy tales, and horror stories, the better to explore the mysterious depths of sorrow and love, Through the Night is Stig Sæterbakken at his best.

by Stig Sæterbakken (trans. by Seán Kinsella)

The second volume in Stig Sæterbakken’s loosely connected “S Trilogy,â€�ÌýSelf-ControlÌýmoves from the dark portrait of codependent marriage featured in the acclaimedÌýSiameseÌýto a world of solitary loneliness and repression. A middle-aged man, Andreas Feldt, feeling that he is unable to communicate with his adult daughter over the course of a friendly lunch, announces on an inexplicable whim that he is going to get a divorce. Though his daughter is initially shocked, she quickly assimilates this information and all returns to normal. Faced with this virtual invisibility—for no matter what actions he takes, the world seems to take no notice—Andreas is cut adrift from the certainties of his life and forced to navigate through a society where it seems virtually everyone is only one loss of self-control away from an explosion of dissatisfaction and rage.

by Per Petterson (trans. by Charlotte Barslund)

1989: Communism is crumbling, and Arvid Jansen, 37, is facing his first divorce. At the same time, his mother gets diagnosed with cancer. Over a few intense autumn days, we follow Arvid as he struggles to find a new footing in his life, while all the established patterns around him are changing at staggering speed.ÌýI Curse the River of TimeÌýis an honest, heartbreaking yet humorous portrayal of a complicated mother-son relationship told in Petterson’s precise and beautiful prose.

by Carl Frode Tiller (trans. by Barbara Haveland)

David has lost his memory. When he places a newspaper ad to ask his friends and family to share their memories of him, three respond: Jon, his closest friend; Silje, his teenage girlfriend; and Arvid, his estranged stepfather. Their letters reveal David’s early life in the small town of Namsos, full of teenage rebellion, the uncertainties of first love, and intense experiments in art and music.

As the narrative circles ever closer to David, the letters interweave with scenes from the present day, and it becomes less and less clear what to believe. Jon’s and Silje’s adult lives have run aground on thwarted ambition and failed intimacy, and Arvid has had a lonely struggle with cancer. Each has suspect motives for writing, and soon a contradictory picture of David emerges. Whose remembrance of him is right? Or do they all hold some fragment of the truth?

by Jon Fosse (trans. by Damion Searls)

A child who will be named Johannes is born. An old man named Johannes dies. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed. Beginning with Johannes’s father’s thoughts as his wife goes into labor, and ending with Johannes’s own thoughts as he embarks upon a day in his life when everything is exactly the same, yet totally different,ÌýMorning and EveningÌýis a novel concerning the beautiful dream that our lives have meaning.

The “beautiful dream that our lives have meaning” . . . I don’t think I could’ve found a better line to end that exercise on.

That’s not to say that these books aren’tÌýgood. I’ve been looking forward to reading the Sæterbakken for a while (more on that below), and Fosse is really good (if not sometimes a bit heavy with the emotions and the slowness), and everyone loves Per Petterson. It’s just, as I was reading Sæterbakken’sÌýInvisible Hands—a dark thriller of sorts involving a girl who goes missing and a run-of-the-mill male detective who makes an emotional mess of things checking into the case a year after her disappearance—I was struck by just how maleÌýsome of books I had assigned myself for July appeared.ÌýNot just male in the “written by a man” way, but in the sort of self-serious, “important literature” way as well.

Again, this isn’t to disparage these books—Invisible HandsÌýis quite good, and I more or less devoured it—it’s just an observation about which typeÌýof books are making their way out of Norway. This is partially why we’re doingÌýMonsterhumanÌýby Kjersti Skomsvold. Not only is she one of the very few Norwegian female writers to have more than one book published in the U.S. (22 Norwegian male writers have 2+ books available in translation compared to only 8 women), but this is a big, baggy book. The sort that tend to be overlooked when they’re written by women, and heralded when they come from men.

(Again, again, I’m not saying big books by men are bad. I LOVE THEM. See:ÌýThe Invented Part, my Pynchon obsession,ÌýJR, the Sergio de la Pava books, etc. and etc.)

One more comment on this, then I’ll let it drop: There’s something in the “Sad Dad” tone of these books that bums me out. Not in the obvious sad-dad ways (time passes, people die, does life have meaning?, all those tropes that exist in hundred of books written by Serious Men over the past thousands of years), but in the “is there actually a market for these” sort of way. I sort of had that feeling reading Dag Solstad’sÌýÌýas well.

T SingerÌýbegins with thirty-four-year-old Singer graduating from library school and traveling by train from Oslo to the small town of Notodden, located in the mountainous Telemark region of Norway. There he plans to begin a deliberately anonymous life as a librarian. But Singer unexpectedly falls in love with the ceramicist Merete Saethre, who has a young daughter from a previous relationship. After a few years together, the couple is on the verge of separating, when a car accident prompts a dramatic change in Singer’s life.

The narrator of the novel specifically states that this is not a happy story, yet, as in all of Dag Solstad’s works, the prose is marked by an unforgettable combination of humor and darkness. Overall,ÌýT SingerÌýmarks a departure more explicitly existential than any of Solstad’s previous works.

Although I quite like this—because it’s bleak, because existentialism, because nothing hasÌýto happen for a book to be interesting—I totally understand why my students found it “boring.” It’s not a book for twenty-something women. Which is kind of my point—it feels like the market has shifted so far away from this type of book.

I have to admit, that’s just a feeling I have based on things like Twitter (which I’m avoiding as much as possible to eliminate the possibility of becoming a “Sad Dad” tweeter) and various “best of” lists. And general buzz, I suppose.

There are two reasons for this that come to mind and neither of which will surprise you:

1.) Because we’re at a point in time in which the “old white male” narrative feels bankrupt and other voices (women, LGBTQI+, people of color, etc.) feel, and largely ate, more pressing and relevant.

2.) There aren’t a lot of white dudes reading traditional white dude literature.

Sticking with point 2: There are some, there will always be some, yet although I do believe these books should be published and their readers (myself included) should have access to great works of literature in this vein, well, despite all of that, I don’t think there are many of us out there. It doesn’t feel impossible that there’s been a shiftÌýand this particular demographic ofÌýliterary readersÌýis shrinking.

These observations are as obvious and banal as anything I’ve ever written, but aside from poking jokes at Peak Sad Dad Twitter, I’m not sure there’s a more relevant way to build up to saying at least a few things about Stig Sæterbakken’sÌý (trans. by Seán Kinsella).

As I mentioned above, this is a mystery/thriller. A young girl suddenly vanishes, the case goes nowhere, really, for a year, so Inspector Kristian Wold is told to give all the evidence one last pass and close it for good. No one wants him to spend much time on this task (except for the mother of the missing girl), but, well, he sort of does.

Which brings me back to the male voice/Sad Dad bit. I don’t think people who read a lot of detective novels would be all for this—there are no real clues for you to puzzle out ahead of time, the pacing is slow AF, not a lot of high tension/cinematic scenes, all things I assume that readers of these books are accustomed to, although maybe I’m wrong?—but it is well-crafted, written with a directness that can be very appealing when done by someone good, not just adequate. There is a resolution to the mystery, although not the book itself—or not with 100% precision anyway—which is thought-provoking in the way that it forces you to build a final narrative explanation for the ending.

All that: good. It’s a good book. Probably a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes sort of book. (Or “Positive” on BookMarks, which I suppose is the more appropriate—although less numerical, and thus less trust-inspiring?—reference.) But, it has a lot of those “male voice” aspects I was going on and on about above. Here are a few:

1.) Wold is more or less immediately attracted to the missing girl’s mom.

2.) The implied explanation for why he starts banging said mom is because his wife is “crazy” (aka has a lot of migraines) and quite good at the nagging (she texts aÌýlot). Oh, and she “badgers” him about how he’s probably banging the missing girl’s mom already. So why not?

3.) When their affair is found out, he’s suspended and she cuts things off. This drives him—almost immediately—to the point of becoming basically a stalker.

4.) At one point they find a body of a young girl, and the mom starts to believe . . . When it turns out to not her daughter, she loses her shit, and Wold has some resentment toward her for pulling back from him, due to the missing daughter “getting in between us.” (Paraphrasing there. I think.)

5.) When he actually does find the daughter (SPOILER ALERT), he doesÌýsomethingÌýthat “resolves” that problem so that he can be with the mom again. Which creates a troublesome narrative resolution.

Now, here are a few things I want to say to walk a lot of that back, and maybe one or all of them will surprise you?:

1.) All of those things above double as noir tropes.

2.) If I had framed this post as a way of looking at books that rework noir tropes in interesting ways (the noir becomes the rails of the story, but not the engine), then I could have used all of those as examples of things he’s playing off in the novel.

3.) The very lackadaisical pace of the book could be a commentary on the traditional noir in which I think (god I feel out of my depth with these generalizations) the detective is portrayed as being more driven, questioning, engaging, figuring shit out, whereas his foils are the ones that are lackadaisical and not direct, not forthcoming.

4.) As could the idea that he gets with the “femme fatale” (not exactly a typical femme fatale, but I’m going to stretch this metaphor for at least one more point) and maybe—MAYBE—kills her daughter to be with her is a reversal of the traditional structure in which the femme fatale fatally fucks the fellow’s life. (According to Wikipedia, “one of the most common traits of the femme fatale includes promiscuity and the “rejection of motherhood” playing right toward my reading of this as an anti-noir.)

5.) That said, Wold does make all his moral comprises for the girl . . .

Given that this has devolved into a post of lists, let’s finish with one that undercuts everything as much as possible, but is as close to a syllogism of criticism as I can muster at this moment:

1.) I chose to frame this piece in one way (A: Sad Dad) instead of another (B: Anti-Noir).

2.) Both viewpoints are 100% valid, although if you’re approaching books from a social good side, A works 1000% better than if you’re only interested in writing as art as game as intellectual stimulation as divorced from real reality, for which B isÌýinteresting.

3.) That said, the veryÌýconceptÌýof the B approach existing makes me think that there are works of art (which sounds pretentious as fuck in a way that it didn’t in 2010) which require some unpacking to be appreciated.

4.) I almost completely changed my mind about this by forcing myself to think about the things I didn’t like about it.

5.) I’m not sure what significance that actually has.

6.) It’s July: Time to sprinkle in a few books that are simply fun. I’ll never stop reading all the books listed above, but I’ll neverÌý´Ç²Ô±ô²âÌýread only them.

I never really had a chance to share my findings (which maybe are kind of somewhat interesting?), and since I feel obligated to NORLA for bringing me on such a fantastic trip–and notÌýjustÌýfor the amazing sauna experience on the opening night—I decided to make July “Norwegian Literature Month” on Three Percent. Starting Friday, our Jan Kjærstad books will be on sale as part of our “Author of the Month” program, I’ll be interviewing three different people for Three Percent, there will be weekly posts about a different group of Norwegian authors, and starting on the 25th,ÌýMonsterhumanÌýby Kjersti Skomsvold will be the focus of the ninth season of the Two Month Review.

All that will be fun! (I think? I hope?) But for today, I wanted to provide a wider context by sharing a bunch of charts and nerdy shit to see if we can pick out any interesting trend lines. Next week I promise to bring the weird and the funny (the working title of next week’s post is “Norway’s Sad Dads: A Global Epidemic”), but before getting to that, I think it’s worthwhile seeing how Norwegian lit stacks up against the other Nordic countries, what’s being translated, by which presses, etc., etc.

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Let’s start with the most basic: Which Nordic countries are getting their fiction and poetry translated into English?

Although there’s not aÌýhugeÌývariance between the five countries, Sweden has been leading the way from the inception of the Translation Database right up to 2018. In terms of raw numbers of translations (of only fiction and poetry) between 2008 and 2018, here’s the breakdown:

Swedish: 239

Norwegian: 164

Danish: 104

Finnish: 62

Icelandic: 60

That’s an average of 57 Nordic titles/year, which is pretty solid! Much higher than the Balkans and Baltic States and, I don’t know, Central America. This is doubly true if you’re into police procedurals/mysteries/thrillers, but I’ll leave that for later.

Two notes: That upward trajectory for Norwegian lit is really encouraging, especially given that they are the Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair later this year. See that 2012 bump in Icelandic titles? That’s thanks in large part to being Guest of Honor (and AmazonCrossing). Given that natural bump that happens thanks to Frankfurt, I would bet heavily on Norwegian lit being the trendiest of the Nordic countries over the next few years. Well . . . maybe. I’m going to complicate that statement in a couple charts.

Second note! Iceland is WILD. I’m big on Icelandic literature, and have been for more than a decade. But the fact that they’re only 2 books behind Denmark? That seems insane. Iceland is so small!

So, because I’m a data nerd and feeling it tonight, I reran all these numbers, scaling them to the number of titles translated into English per 1,000 native speakers of the various languages. In other words, I tried to make this data a bit more standard so that we weren’t comparing a country with 320,000 native speakers (Iceland) against the 5 million Norwegian speakers. Because, obviously, there’s no way that Iceland can really compete with that on a book-by-translated book level.

Here’s the resulting chart!

Even more illuminating than expected! In this case, Iceland looks likeÌýsuch an outlier.ÌýThat’s really wild and exactly why “Iceland Month on Three Percent” will happen in the not-too-distant future. (Unless Sweden invites me over there first? *WINK*)

DATA ANALYSIS IS FUN.

Oh shit. This is actually the most interesting chart that I was able to come up with. I took all of the Norwegian books and sorted them by publisher. Look at those top two: Dalkey Archive and Graywolf.

Long time listeners and readers knowÌýall aboutÌýthe Dalkey Problem, but for anyone new to this, let me recap in one simple set of statements: Dalkey Archive has been one of the most innovative, aesthetically pure presses of the past 50 years; Dalkey Archive has lost a lot of employees and never transitioned into a 2.0 version with a publisher different than the founder (both Graywolf and Coffee House have accomplished this); Dalkey Archive books can be hard to get and don’t have a ton of support among independent bookstores.

Which all fucking sucks.

Sorry for the blatant obscenity, but, seriously, there’s no Open Letter without Dalkey. And there’s no Deep Vellum (or Transit or New Vessel?) without Open Letter, which, without Dalkey isn’t . . . Dalkey is one of the few presses that is uncompromising in its aesthetic vision, something that I appreciate more and more as I both age and watch my colleagues use Twitter in hilariously embarrassing ways.

Independent presses start up each and every day. And a lot of them have vanished. Or been acquired. Or become something other than what they started as. (I want to write a post about how listicles have eliminated diversity among indie publishers as we all chase the same clicks, the same audiences, the same trends. Which bums me out. Have a fucking vision, kids, and believe in it.) Dalkey was always fringe, and despite all my issues—both private and public—with how it evolved over the past decade, I respect the impulse and commitment. Now more than ever.

That said, how many of the 16 Norwegian titles that Dalkey published have you read? Check that: How many are you aware of? Does anyone remember that Dalkey was the first to publish Jon Fosse more than decade before Fitzcarraldo? (I actually take some credit for this. It’s the petty side of myself, but I did Fosse and Alexievich and Énard first even if no one cares. Which is so shitty to focus on! But I am a shitty person! Recently, I heard other editors brag about their “misses” and thought, dude, I don’t even get credits for my hits so why don’t you fuck yourself, champ. I am not a good person. I know that.)

Anyway: Which of these books are “available” and which are read? We all know of Knausgaard and Nesbo and Petterson, and some of us know of Fossum and Fosse and Øyehaug and Jacobsen, and a couple people know of Sæterbakken and Kjærstad. (Follow along all month, and I will fill you in onÌýallÌýof these authors.) “Available” and being “part of book culture” are two separate things. And it’s quite possible that being “part of book culture” and “really great literature” don’t correlate. These are all issues for a much longer piece (aka, the book I’m going to work on in a couple weeks when I lock myself away in a light house [?!] with no WiFi [?!?!!?!?] to write about decision making, luck, and baseball. I doubt any of you will ever read this, but I need to get it out of my system), but for now let’s just move on to another graph:

Well that was totally predictable. There are more mystery/thriller/police books translated from the Norwegian than all other categories combined. (Although my prediction was that mysteries would come in at 69% they only hit 51%. Which is still something.)

Spoiler Alert: It’s highly unlikely I’ll write much about these mystery/thrillers this month. I’m sitting in that light blue slice of the pie, reading my weird fiction (actually unusual, not Twitter “we want a brand!” sort of “weird”) and trying to figure out what makes books interesting and not just trendy.

Last chart! I have no more unfinished thoughts to share, nor any subtle digs. This is bad. Of the Norwegian books that have been translated into English over the past eleven years, the vast majority were written by dudes. My half-thought out prediction at Lillehammer about the “future of Norwegian lit” was that it would be dominated by women writers; having looked into the statistics, I’m going to double-down on that.

We’re about to enter a five year period in which Norwegian literature is very trendy—especially when written by women. And when it’sÌýunusual.Ìý Goodbye, Knausgaard and Petterson. There are new voices that are going to resonate.