Book Specs 📖

• Author: Jon Fosse
• Translator: Damion Searls (from Norwegian)
• Genre: Literary Fiction / Philosophical Fiction
• Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Pages: 832

One Sentence Synopsis🔖

A hypnotic and chaotic narrative about a widowed painter in Norway that finds his doppelgänger and goes on a journey of spiritual self-discovery.

Notes/Thoughts📝

• This is one of those books that will require a second, third, infinite reading. I could feel it in my bones that it was going to shift my brain chemistry.
• On rhythm/repetition: Fosse uses exhausting repetition for scenes, characters, phrases to impose a dream-like state where the timeline and characters all start feeling the same and you start second-guessing what you just read, because why does it feel like you already read that a couple of pages ago?! It’s absolutely brilliant. The more I think about it, the more confused I get, and the more it resembles real life and faith and things that I know to be true but can’t explain…basically the book captures the essence what we all yearn for in life, to capture or reach or to put into words but we can’t…UGHHHHH a true artist! Another tie-in of repetition is that of prayer/rosary and how that is linked to religion/faith, which becomes both an anchor and a release from reality.
• On faith/religion and art: Religion always gets a bad rep but I think people take it too literally instead of looking at its representation or what the narrator says is the “spirit”. He then extends that to good art or good poems and how goodness is in quality which is inherent but must also be expressed thoroughly so the light shows even if it is “invisible”. this darkness is connected to pain and suffering that the painter, Asle experiences but is also the connection to the light which he also connects to God and love. To connect the contradictory nature of faith/religion which is beyond reason like love,and something incomprehensible like poetry, and beauty etc etc, is that not what we all learn to understand? WTF like how is this grand analogy, run-on sentence, stream of consciousness nonsense make SO MUCH sense :’)
• On Grief and Love: The Swing scene which is in Book I “The Other Name” was epic and my forever favourite. It was beautifully written to represent the push and pull of fear and love and sex and youth. I was floored with how much tenderness, angst, release and freedom in a scene about two kids and a swing that was much more than two kids and a swing. “I think” (a phrase used repeatedly in this book by the narrator) even in all our experiences, whether it’s grief or love becomes this echo chamber of everything we’ve ever experienced, and that’s why we find contradictions, right/wrong, beauty/ugliness, good/evil in some of our greatest or most memorable moments.

“Quotes”🗣

“It’s always, always the darkest part of the picture that shines the most, and I think that that might be because it’s in the hopelessness and despair, in the darkness, that God is closest to us…”

“it’s just when things are darkest, blackest, that you see the light, that’s when this light can be seen, when he darkness is shining…when it’s darkest is when the light appears, when the darkness starts to shine…”

“…both life and death are things you can understand but not with thoughts, this light understands it in a way, and life, and paintings, I think, get their meaning from their connection to this light…”

“there’s a lot of strength in weakness, yes, maybe the weakness is itself a strength? and it’s possible that God is all-powerful in his weakness…

“…because belief, or insight, knowledge, yes knowing is what I’d prefer to call it is something that a person suddenly and mysteriously understands is the truth, and this truth has never been said the way it is, and it can never be said because it isn’t words, it’s The Word, it’s what’s behind all words and what makes words, makes language, makes meaning possible and maybe it can be shown but it can’t be said…”

“…I didn’t want to be good at it, I wanted to paint just so that I could say something that couldn’t be said any other way…”

“…because every language gives you access to its share of reality, and the different religions are different languages that can each have its truths and its lack of truth…”

“Quality, quality and truth always win out…”

“…but words can say so little, almost nothing, and the less they say the more they say…”

“…The Bible has to be interpreted, has to be read metaphorically, yes, like it’s not the real thing but a picture, like a painting with its own ruth, because The Bible is literature, and when it comes right down to it literature and visual art are the same thing, I think, and to understand The Bible, you have to start from its own spirit, for the letter kills but The Spirit gives life…”

“…and I think that it’s when I’m most alone, in my darkness, my loneliness… and when I’m as quiet as I can be, that God is closest, in his distance…”

“…I think that everyone has a deep longing inside them, we always always long for something and we believe that what we long for is this or that, this person or that person, this thing or that thing, but actually we’re longing for God, because the human being is a continuous prayer, a person is a prayer through his or her longing…”

“…I think that dogs understand so much but they can’t say anything about it, or else they can say it with their dog’s eyes, and in that way they’re like good art, because art can’t say anything either, not really, it can only say something else while keeping silent about what it actually wants to say, that’s what art is like and faith and dogs’ silent understanding too…”

“…the greatest artists do something different, they bring something new into the world with their own unique quality, their entirely unique art, yes, they create a new way of seeing that no one had ever known before, and after an artist like that has finished his work the world looks different…”

“…all good art has this spirit, good pictures, good poems, good music, and what makes it good is the material, not matter, and it’s not the content, the idea, the thought, no, what makes it good is just this unity of matter and form and soul that becomes spirit…”

“…art is everyone just being like themselves, and totally themselves…”

“…there are two kinds of time, the time that just passes and that really matters only so that daily life can move along its course and then the other time, the actual time, which is made up of events, and that time, can last, can become lasting…”

“…God hides in silence, I think, and also in love…”

“…but isn’t every human being a unity of opposites, yes, a paradox, they call it, confidentia oppositorum, they call it, with a body and a soul, like how Christ was both human and God…since faith is paradoxical, self-contradictory…it can never be understood with reason…”

“…The first time you walk some path, it feels the longest…”