CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN

Author: Sayaka Murata
Year: 2020 (2016)
Publisher: Lind & Co
Language: Swedish (translator Vibeke Emond)

Reading some writers is like spending time in an ancient royal treasury in London or Vienna. laden with riches from floor to ceiling. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Thomas Mann, and Henryk Sienkiewicz come to mind as writers who will overwhelm their readers in a wealth of philosophical depth dressed in exquisite language and breath-taking style. Among contemporary writers Doris Lessing, Arundathi Roy, and Salman Rushdie could be mentioned.

Other writers are like that perfectly cut solitary diamond that stands in splendid isolation above all others sending its brilliance through countless facets in all directions and angles, demanding complete attention from the mesmerised onlooker. Nicolai Gogol, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Olga Tokarczuk are some writers that arguably would represent these sharp beacons in literature.

Yet from time to time, a writer settles for being the barely noticeable grain of sand inside the clam. The clam being you, the reader. The grain of sand that once being planted will over time grow into an ideal sphere of mother-of-pearl, expanding layer after layer as time passes, accumulating value by each thought being added, each perspective explored, each reflection pondered upon. In all its unassuming modesty. “Hur mår fröken Furukura” (“Convenience Store Woman”) by the Japanese writer Sayaka Murata appears to be precisely this sort of book and just maybe it is the rarest type of literature.

The plot is simple enough. Keiko Furukura is a thirty-six years old Japanese woman who has worked in a convenience store on an hourly basis for eighteen years. Colleagues have come and gone, bosses replaced each other numerous times, products been launched and cancelled, but Furukura has remained. This has caused some concern in her social life. No one is expected to work in a convenience store in Japan for this long. As a temporary solution to put oneself through college; sure. As an extra income for bored housewives for a year or two; no problem! But as a career? Unacceptable. Incomprehensible! Preposterous! On top of this, Furukura has never been in a romantic relationship which furthermore exacerbates her family’s and friends’ consternation.

From the offset, we learn through flashbacks from her childhood that Furukura has had a unique way to perceive the world around her and that her view has not always been aligned with the mainstream interpretation of social and natural phenomena in her community. Her occasionally radical actions as a young girl, based on literal rather than figurative compliance with instructions or incentives, repeatedly got her in trouble. As a consequence, Furukura began to observe people in her vicinity and mimic their responses to various situations. She even adjusted her choice of attire, her motion patterns, her speech and voice, and her opinions according to her observations. All was done in a dispassionate and objective manner without any show of emotion from Furukura’s side, apart from an occasional expression of disbelief or curiosity. Over the years, she manages to pass for somewhat normal. Had it not been for her career and her lack of interest in men.

It probably lies close at hand to diagnose Furukura somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum of high-functioning autism but for the purpose of the novel, this is largely irrelevant. Murata never mentions a diagnosis although Furukura’s family entertains the idea of their beloved Keiko being in need of therapy. Much more interesting are the things we can learn about our society through the eyes of someone who observes it from the outside and tries to adapt without really understanding. Contrary to an anthropologist, Furukura never attempts to explain or make sense of society. She is quite content merely finding a way to fit in and feel safe. Taking up the job in the convenience store was part of this quest to begin with, eighteen years prior to the events in the novel. Even so, we can learn a lot about ourselves by witnessing the world through the lens of her eyes. It is by this process, the nudge by the text that inspires the reader to apply his or her own power of observation to the story, that the grain becomes a pearl. Murata does not explain the world to us through Furukura. She does not interpret it or sift through it. She simply shows it to us through a different window.

A few words on the translation of the title. After some research, I seem to understand that the Japanese original title is in fact gender neutral and perhaps best translated as “Convenience Store Person” rather than “Woman”. Furukura’s gender certainly plays no meaningful role in the book. AT least not to her. The Swedish translation (which means “How is Miss Furukura doing?”) somehow misses the mark, too. Furukura is never referred to as Miss Furukura in the book; most of the time people just call her Furukura and only her family calls her by her first name. It seems to me that Murata went through some trouble to make her protagonist’s gender identity purposefully vague. And yet, both the English and Swedish translations blast it onto the respective cover.

SPOILER ALERT

All of Furukura’s carefully crafted persona is put to the test when the obnoxiously arrogant Shiraha is hired to the convenience store team. He is lazy, rude, unseemly, and daft. It soon transpires that his intended purpose of joining the team is to find a suitable wife. Not among his co-workers, mind you. That would be beneath Shiraha. He has his heart set on any random, affluent, and well-educated female customer of suiting age. Truth be told, he isn’t much interested in family life. All he claims to want is to get his own family, particularly his sister-in-law, off his back so that he can focus on starting his business.

When Shiraha and Furukura begin to talk, they come to realise that by moving in together, they can solve both their problems. The result of what seems to be a mutually beneficial arrangement and the effect it has on Furukura’s social life is the key takeaway from this book. Although, Furukura becomes miserable and thrown off, and makes no secret of it, her closest friends and family are overjoyed by the change in her life. Even when they see that Shiraha is an exceptionally poor choice of partner, they can still relate to Furukura through her misery which turns out to be her definitive entry ticket to full social acceptance. Better a miserable friend they can relate to than a content friend they cannot understand.

This, in the end, brings the story back to the assumption of Furukura’s diagnosis. Her atypical behaviour would generally be considered a result of her failure to connect emotionally to other people, as is part of the diagnosis for autism. And yet, looking at it from the other angle; isn’t her family’s and friends’ failure to connect with Furukura equally damning? And if so, on what grounds do we call out only one of the angles as a disability?

Sayaka Murata has written an adorable piece of fiction with a refreshing warmth and sense of humour. It is a simple and straightforward book about identity, acceptance, and harmony, all of which are important issues, but in no way do they overwhelm or crush the reader. I closed the book after the final page invigorated and energised with a final thought lingering in my mind: “Make Furukura the manager of the convenience store already!”

 

 

 

THE RED ROOM

Author: August Strindberg
Year: 1981 (1879)
Publisher: Norstedts
Language: Swedish

From Portugal in the Southwest to Russia in the Northeast, from Pessoa to Pushkin, every country in Europe and probably most other countries as well, has its national literary treasure that is a monumental figure in its own country but little-known outside of its borders (I touched upon this in my review of Pushkin on this blog in August 2021).

For Sweden, this literary giant is August Strindberg. Insofar as Strindberg is spoken of at all internationally, a conversation for the most part confined to the walls of academia, he is first and foremost associated with his stage plays; most notably Miss Julie but also Master Olof, The Father, The Ghost Sonata, and A Dream Play. To Swedes, on the other hand, he is just as famous if not more, for his novels The People of Hemsö, The Son of a Servant, and more than any other “Röda rummet” (“The Red Room”). 

“Röda rummet” is generally considered to be the first modern novel in Swedish literature and its arrival in 1879 stirred up a storm in the Swedish cultural establishment at the time. Strindberg’s choice of topic, his relentless criticism of the media, academia, and art world, and his concrete, straightforward, and unapologetic use of the language, were all new to the populus litteratus holmiensis at the time. The book quickly became hotly contested and feverishly debated.  

Strindberg knew exactly what he was doing and how to evoke this effect. He had closely followed the developments of French literature the years before, striking up what could almost be called a friendship with Émile Zola, who in 1868 had earned great fame with his highly provocative novel “Thérése Raquin”, which Strindberg surely must have come across, and had already started to publish his magnum opus; “The Rougon-Macquart” saga. Strindberg was determined to become the foremost naturalist writer in Scandinavia modelled on Zola. “Röda rummet” effectively earned him this title.

The novel is set in mid-19^th century Stockholm where Arvid Falk, a newly examined civil servant, having grown disillusioned by the inefficiency and self-aggrandisement of the bureaucratic caste to which he belongs, decides to sacrifice his education, social standing, and steady income in favour of becoming a journalist in pursuit of truth, beauty, and social equality. He quickly descends into the impecunious circles of Stockholm where he meets a catalogue of odd characters, almost exclusively male, who for a moment in time share their destinies with him. Through his interaction with them, he comes to realise that the people at the bottom of society, among whom he was hoping to find the genuineness he thought lacking in the administrative classes, are just as corrupt, scheming, and malicious as they are on any other step of the social ladder. His boundless disappointment is the pivotal climax of this novel. There is no salvation for him to be found. One of Strindberg’s most famous quotes “Det är synd om människorna” (”How pitiable people are”) could easily summarise this novel, as well.

It is commonly accepted that Arvid Falk is based on August Strindberg himself. Not in the autobiographical sense , but many of Strindberg’s observations, opinions, and values are brought forth by the actions and statements of this character. It is reasonable to assume that most if not all of the remaining characters are similarly modelled on real people whom Strindberg knew.

To me, the sculptor turned philosopher Olle Montanus stands out as the most memorable one. Strindberg makes a point of a man originating from the most modest of backgrounds with the most basic of educations who is, at the same time, the brightest and most perceptive of the characters that Arvid Falk encounters. Olle Montanus’ infamous lecture titled “On Sweden” given to a self-proclaimed but utterly confused workers’ union is a classic in itself and allows Strindberg to unleash a fierce assault on the Swedish self-image and bizarre nationalism. Montanus outright calls Sweden a German colony in front of a frantic audience which leaps to the defence of a system that effectively oppresses it.

Interestingly enough, there are only two female characters of interest in this novel and both are portrayed as deceitful, petty, quarrelsome, and conniving. The young wife of Arvid Falk’s dominant brother, is a vain and materialistic but not terribly bright schemer who is good at picking her husbands pockets for money but bad at spending it in a way that would afford her any substantial improvement to her social position. The other one, Agnes, is a fugacious phenomenon in most men’s lives but despite sacrificing her honour, she gets very little but scorn and misery in return. In the end, from the good-natured Arvid Falk, himself.    

Each of the plots that Strindberg chose for Röda rummet, is intended to highlight a specific slice of society that the author wishes to criticise. The press is one of Strindberg’s most obvious targets as he destroys the leading Swedish newspapers of the time accusing them of being dishonest and self-serving.

“- Have you no morals, Ygberg?
- No! Whenever a fool has an idea—it comes to the same thing whether it is original or not—he calls it his conviction, clings to it and boasts of it, not because it is a conviction, but because it is his conviction.”

By referring to the newspapers using clever but decipherable monikers as disguise, Strindberg accuses the press not only of corruption and personal agendas but also of collusion and plot to safeguard their mutual areas of influence and power. The public argument between liberal and conservative news outlets, that ostensibly resembles a struggle between ideologies, in essence turns out to be a joint power vertical where the agents reinforce each other in a relationship akin to symbiosis.

Strindberg also fires off broadsides against the financial and insurance industry. The rise and fall of the insurance company Triton, in which Arvid Falk’s overbearing brother is one of the investors, is a scorching critique of the lawlessness typical for the financial sector at the time. The account of the wide variety of small niche-banks, many of which at the time had the right to print their own banknotes, further underpins the state of chaos that prevailed. In an absolutely hilarious episode, one of Arvid Falk’s acquaintances shows up on his doorstep distributing outrageous loans left, right, and centre.

"- How much do you want? I can let you have it.
- Are you serious? asked Falk, and his face cleared.
- Serious? Hm! How much? The figure! The amount!
- I could do with, say, sixty crowns.
- Good Lord, how modest you are, remarked Borg, and turned to Levin.
- Yes, it is very little, said the latter. Take as much as you can get Falk while the purse is open.
- I'd rather not! Sixty crowns is all I want, and I can't afford to take up a bigger loan. But how is it to be paid back?
- Twelve crowns every sixth month, twenty-four crowns per annum, in two instalments, said Levin promptly and firmly.
- Those are easy terms, replied Falk. Where do you get money on those terms?
- From the Wheelwrights' Bank. Give me paper and a pen, Levin!

Quick as lightning Levin produced a promissory note, a pen, and a pocket inkstand. The note had already been filled up by the others. When Falk saw the figure eight hundred he hesitated for a moment.

- Eight hundred crowns? he asked.
- You can have more if you are not satisfied.
- No, I won't; it's all the same who takes the money as long as it is paid up all right. But can you raise money on a bill of this sort, without security?
- Without security? You are forgetting that we are guaranteeing it, replied Levin, with contemptuous familiarity.  

/…/

- But seriously, said Falk, what happens if one can't pay on the day when the money falls due?
- One takes up a fresh loan at the Tailors' Bank, for instance, replied Borg.
- Why don't you go to the Imperial Bank? questioned Falk.
- Because it's rotten! answered Borg.
- Can you make head or tail out of all this? said Sellén to Olle.
- I don't understand a word of it, answered the latter.”

August Strindberg’s legacy in Swedish literature cannot be overestimated. This is partly due to the eristic and ignescent public figure that he was in his day. While most writers and thinkers gradually develop their philosophy, Strindberg’s thinking and attention fluctuated wildly over his lifetime. He constantly found new battlegrounds and new viewpoints that repeatedly hurled him into ever new conflicts and controversies. His constant clashes with the cultural elite, which made it impossible for him to ever have a seat at the Swedish Academy let alone be considered for the Nobel Prize, and his persistent onslaught on the bourgeoisie, the church, and King Oskar II generated a persona that was vacillatingly considered a threat to civilisation and a hero of the people depending on community.

Yet looking beyond this, on literary merits alone, Strindberg remains a leviathan who influenced many great writers who came in his wake, the same way Emile Zola once influenced him. His analysis of power and ability to put his finger on the key elements of the power struggle in society as well as his courage to voice these opinions were trailblazing at the time. Jorge Luis Borges called him “my god, alongside Nietzsche”, Thomas Mann said that “Strindberg’s influence, moral and artistic, can only be compared with that of Tolstoy”, and Maxim Gorky often cited Strindberg as one of his sources of inspiration. But maybe Franz Kafka put it the best in a diary entry in 1915, three years after Strindberg’s death.

“My condition is better since I read Strindberg. I am reading him not to read him, but to be able to lie on his chest. He holds me like a child on his left arm. I am sitting there as a man on a statue. Ten times, I am in danger of falling down but on the eleventh attempt I sit steadily. I am secure, and I have a great view.”    

 

All translations of "Röda rummet" to English by Ellie Schleussner, Howard Latimer Ltd, Kingsway (1913). Translation of Kafka’s diary from lecture given by professor Björn Meidal in Stockholm 2012. All other translations are my own.  

OUTLOOKS

Author: Christian Munthe
Year: 2022
Publisher: Alhambra
Language: Swedish

The novel is like a long journey by car or a train through a foreign country. Through the window, you watch the scenery as you make your way toward the goal of your voyage. You see the landscape as it changes. Villages come and go, rolling hills become mountains and then valleys, cities and forests alternate before your eyes. You absorb the impressions and through them learn about the environment, the architecture, the nature, the history, and the life of the people who live in these lands. You allow the impressions to flood you like the waves of an ocean flushes a beach.

Suddenly, you see something that catches your eye. Maybe it is something you do not understand. Maybe something of particular beauty or value. It could be something you have seen in a picture but never visited live. You stop your car, you get out, and you spend some time focusing on this one particular thing, whether it be a landmark, a historical place, a cave, a sunset, or a herd of sheep grazing on a hillside. You take your time to savour this particular phenomenon. This brief stop, by contrast to the moving car, is a short story. An opportunity to drill into one single issue or topic, or to evoke one particular thought or emotion.

This is precisely how I read Christian Munthe’s collection of eight short stories in a volume titled “Utsikter” (not available in English but the title could be translated as “Views” or “Sights” but also “Outlooks” or “Forecasts”) which in various ways address the nature of humanity in a rapidly changing and mechanised and digitised world.

The first story, “Strandfynd” (“Flotsam”), is a tale about a small coastal community and the drastic consequences of a bubble bursting when a person who thinks he is keeping a secret about his private life is made aware that he is the only one who actually considers it a secret.

“Överlevarna” (“The Survivors”) is a study of the metamorphosis of ethnic and national identity across generations on the backdrop of a Jewish family that left Poland during the Nazi occupation, and how such an identity can come about by destiny as much as by choice.

 “Sanningens pris (“The Price of Truth”) is a futuristic account of a world order where not only science and research are subject to global market mechanisms but truth itself is determined by supply and demand.

The fourth text is “Högt över ytan” (“High Above the Surface”) which is told in the shadow of the widely overlooked shipwreck of M/S Jan Heweliusz in 1993, dwarfed by the loss of M/S Estonia a year and a half later.

In “Videomöten” (“Video conferences”), which is the shortest of the stories in this collection, Munthe investigates the nature of communication and how poor-quality online meetings using tools such as Teams or Zoom, can serve to keep a relationship alive but also how they reshape it and become an integrated part of the relationship rather than just a vehicle for it.

“Medborgare Roskow” (“Citizen Roskow”) tells the story of the totalitarian apparatus and how power can be exercised by the use of narratives rather than people, and the dangers of turning rights into privileges.

The seventh and longest text has also lent its name to the entire collection, “Utsikter”. Again, Munthe takes us into the future, this time to dwell on the concepts of time, distance, and responsibility as the main character is leading a group of scientists with the mission to find a way to travel between solar systems and establish human (or pseudo-human) colonies.

The final part of the book is “Vålnaden i Nanzen-Ji” (“The Phantom in Nanzen-Ji”) which pits a family man against the memory of his abusive father, the influence of weakness and pettiness across generations, and the undetermined relation between forgiveness and liberation.

Reading these stories, it is clear to me that they have been written by someone who is used to writing, but even more to reading. Not only because Munthe is a professor of philosophy and is more than familiar with the philosophical and sociological thinkers of past and present, but even more so because the thoughts contained in the stories, and the way they are being tested and presented show a comprehensive familiarity with world literature. The issues raised herein, seem to have been on the author’s mind for some time before he finally decided to put them in words in the form of fictional stories.

Even though, I read them all with great interest (with a slight reservation to the eponymous “Utsikter” which I found somewhat messy and disorganised), I will contain myself to commenting on only two of them here.

“Sanningens pris” is in my view a highly perceptive and intriguing story. The main character, Oskar Kamp, is the Head of Market Monitoring at the relatively recently inaugurated Knowledge Liability Office (“Kunskapsgälden” in Swedish) in charge of monitoring and reporting deviations in the trading patterns of science, research, and truth. The point of the exchange traded truth is to allow the invisible hand of the global market to determine what is true and what is false. It is a dystopian world where investor sentiment, rather than facts and public interest, dictates not only what academic endeavours to finance and what research projects to pursue, which to some extent is the case in our society already, but moreover it determines what is and is not true. It is a chilling proposition, but it does not end there.

One of the disciplines that has an index on Oskar Kamp’s monitor is economic science which is considered basic research. This means that the truth-assumption of the science that constitutes the platform for the Knowledge Liability Office is itself subject to the market forces monitored by the same. This problem resembles Russell’s paradox in set theory where the set of truths in this case include the truth that depends on and evaluates truth itself.

“Medborgare Roskow” is at its core a power analysis. There is the clearly visible power structure that divides the population up in denizens and citizens where the former have some basic rights and privileges but are excluded form higher offices, freedom of movement, and higher education whereas the latter constitute a small elite to which all doors are open. Officially, there is nothing stopping any person from becoming a citizen, if they can pass a rigorous test. But there is also an invisible power structure which is the privilege of the ruling party alone and above which no denizen or citizen stands.

Munthe’s power analysis seems to hark back to the Marxist thought on class struggle but as I read it, this is merely a mirage. The division between the citizen elites and the denizen masses is actually an artificial ruse intended to give society a veneer of class difference, but as Robert Roskow will find out, true power is vested elsewhere. Whoever controls the definitions, controls the people. Citizens and denizens, although having different roles and privileges, are equally oppressed, albeit not equally abused, by the system and its enforcers. In that sense, the story becomes a critique of the failed implementation of Marxism in the 20^th century (cf. my review of the Communist Manifesto from August 2021). In a Swedish context, it can serve as a visualisation of the right-wing parties’ adamant claim that there are true and less true Swedes, but they have a hard time defining what they mean by it. How would they propose to test the difference between a Swedish citizen and an alien denizen without being openly racist?

One of the drawbacks with the short story format is that characters are not really supposed to develop. There just isn’t room for it. Instead, their personalities and backgrounds are there to test them in a particular situation or conundrum. Munthe does a solid job sketching his characters. To me, Oskar Kamp is much akin to Leo Kall and Winston Smith as the one cog in the oppression machinery that begins to wobble. Robert Roskow is the expired part that is replaced by version 2.0. Both are rays of humanity in the darkness of a faceless machinery.

Without a doubt, “Utsikter” is a delightful read with each of the stories offering just the right amount of food for thought to keep your mind busy during the day without freaking you out. I warmly recommend it to anyone who appreciates having their circles moved a bit from time to time. Although this was the writer’s first attempt at belletristic writing, I surely hope it will not be his last; whether the next publication be a long journey, or a curious stop along the way.    

 

 

12 RULES FOR LIFE: AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS

Author: Jordan B. Peterson
Year: 2018
Publisher: Allen Lane
Language: English

Jordan Peterson rose to fame largely thanks to his smash hit “12 Rules for Life” in 2018 and has since then taken a place among the most notable popular thinkers and educators of today alongside Richard Dawkins, Slavoj Zizek, Sam Harris, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb to mention a few. His right-wing, conservative, Christian perspective on culture and the human psyche fills a void in the non-academic discourse that, whether you agree with him or not, is a valid viewpoint in Western society. His academical credentials (PhD in Psychology from McGill, teaching positions at Harvard and Toronto, long practical experience from clinical psychology and therapy) are impeccable and he gave lectures, participated in debates, and featured on talk-shows and panels around the world long before he became a superstar.

“12 Rules for Life” is exactly what it says on the cover. Peterson lists twelve rules and elaborates on how following them may lead a person to a better and more harmonious life. The rules are

1.      Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Peterson’s point of departure is similar to Hobbes’ as described in “Leviathan” (see review from April 2022), that chaos is a state of nature and the driving force for each individual human is to dominate other humans. Peterson here argues that if you act like a winner, you will be perceived as a winner, and ultimately become a winner.

2.      Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. Peterson notes that people are more likely to pamper their loved ones (or even pets) than themselves and encourages his readers to pay as much attention to themselves and their needs as they do to others.

3.      Make friends with people who want the best for you. Friendship, to Peterson, is a reciprocal arrangement. There has to be value in friendship for both parties engaged in it. If you realise nothing good for yourself is coming out of your relationship, or if you would not recommend one of your friends to your sister or your father, then you may be better off not entertaining friendship with that person.

4.      Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Life choices are games of success and failure. Our selective mind compares us unfairly because the standards it chooses for our comparison are arbitrary. Peterson argues that we see what we expect to see so our experience of success or failure can be managed by adjusting our expectations.

5.      Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. Children are monsters. And if they are allowed to remain monsters into adulthood, it can only end in calamity. Peterson tells his readers to take responsibility for assimilating their children into society in a way that will make other people like them. A person that is appreciated by others has a better chance of getting ahead in life. And it is the parents’ responsibility to make this happen.

6.      Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. Being prepared is a virtue. The only thing that you can truly influence is your own life and your own house. You have full power to prepare your house for a flood or a storm, in a way that you do not have to prepare your neighbourhood, or town or country. Peterson wants us to dig where we stand.

7.      Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient). Work and sacrifice are delayed gratification. By sacrificing something small today, we may gain something significant tomorrow. This insight, according to Peterson, is characteristic for humans and makes us superior to other creatures. He wants us to invest in our future, instead of hunting for instant pleasure.

8.      Tell the truth – or, at least don’t lie. Peterson argues that people lie when reality becomes too hard to handle. Lies are a tool to warp reality. However, if reality becomes warped, we ourselves risk getting lost in a mirage. We lose sight of what is real. Therefore, lies eventually come to hurt ourselves in the end.

9.      Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t. People seem to be gripped by fear of having to change their minds. Conversations usually turn into power struggles. Peterson claims, that the search for knowledge is the highest form of wisdom. By this rule, he wants our dialogues to be centred on knowledge, and not on ourselves.

10.   Be precise in your speech. The world is simple when it behaves. That is why people navigate via categories. It makes the world predictable. Simple minds require simple rules. A person who does not know him- or herself, can find comfort in ignorance. Self-discovery, however, is empowerment. The more we know, and the better we know it, the more precise we can express ourselves, and the better we can formulate our goals, our critique, and our demands.

11.   Do not bother children when they are skateboarding. People are not risk-minimisers; they are risk-optimisers, says Peterson. Exploring the limits of danger, fear, and one’s own capacity builds confidence and self-awareness. Boys and girls play different games because they have different predispositions. Male aggression is natural, not cultural. That is why one should allow boys to be boys and girls to be girls. Both in school and elsewhere.

12.   Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. Suffering is the baseline of life, says Peterson. Every major religion is based on the assumption of suffering. By finding moments in life where suffering can be temporarily suspended, we keep ourselves from perishing or going mad. Peterson advises his readers to pay attention to every little ray of light in their lives, even if that ray is just petting a random cat. Dogs are fine, too.

Many of these rules seem rather straightforward and uncontroversial at first glance. I can certainly subscribe to the advice that we need to take care of ourselves and engage in relationships that are mutually beneficial or to take the time to smell the roses (or pet cats) every now and then. Still, I would like to make one or two remarks.

First, it is imperative that the reader understands that the rules in this book are not universal but rather intimately associated with the Western, or I should say even Northern American, culture. Even though Peterson’s worldview is rooted in his base postulate that life equals suffering, which he shares with many major religions including Buddhism, his antidote to chaos is narrowly focused on people like himself. His frequent referrals to Scripture (most notably the story of Cain and Abel in the Genesis) and his own upbringing in Fairview, Alberta, as a proxy for society as he perceives it, make an unmistakeable statement about his intended audience.

Second, Peterson is quick to make claims in a way that suggests that his conclusions are the only possible ones from the evidence at hand. But that is not always so. Even if we may agree with him, intellectual honesty demands that we remain open to alternative interpretations of the facts. Peterson proposes a simplified universe and tolerates no disputes. To a lesser mind, his assertiveness may sound powerful, but to an educated reader, this constitutes a weakness in Peterson’s argument.

Third, Peterson assumes that each individual person is an independent agent and that there is no option for collective action. Society, in Peterson’s eyes, is a Leviathan or a law of nature that cannot be changed or influenced, since all intervention by any human being must be done on an individual level. Every rule in his book is rooted in this assumption.

Apart from these three general observations, some of the individual rules require particular unpacking. As this book has been twisted and turned by readers far more competent than I in both philosophy and psychology, I will not claim to make a comprehensive analysis of the Peterson-doctrine, but I will allow myself to highlight a few of the many thoughts and arguments that caught my attention.

Rule 4. Jordan Peterson seems to align himself with the neoclassical dogma of the rational man that governs modern economics. “If you hadn’t decided that what you are doing right now was better than the alternatives, you wouldn’t be doing it.” This seems like a very bold statement for a psychologist to build a rule of life upon. There are countless of reasons why people knowingly commit acts that they are fully aware are not optimal for them. This happens due to an array of reasons such as laziness, fear, hatred, malevolence, self-harm, mental illness, or (as Peterson points out himself in Rule 7) as a pursuit of instant gratification rather than long-term benefits. Actions are not always based on decisions. On the contrary, we are just as busy deciding subconsciously what not to do as we are deciding what to actually do. The bulk of human actions are driven by instinct and emotions, and very little is subject to conscious and rational deliberation. As Peterson says himself in Rule 9, “[p]eople think they think but it’s not true.”

Rule 5. In this rule Peterson, again, makes some sweeping claims. He suggests that humans (Homo sapiens) are naturally violent, and presents as evidence the violent predisposition of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as our species’ closest relatives, claiming that evolution maintained aggression in our branch of the evolutionary tree of primates. What he fails to address is that another branch of Pan, equally closely related to humans, the Bonobos (Pan paniscus) are significantly more docile than chimpanzees and possess little of the aggressive instincts of their slightly larger cousins. This doesn’t mean that Peterson’s claim about human aggression is false, but his evidence is by any standard inadequate.

Rule 11. This is probably the most problematic of the twelve rules and the one where Peterson does away with all scientific or pseudo-scientific decorum and indulges fully in his personal opinions and preferences. He goes on a completely unsubstantiated rant on how the educational system, from primary school all the way through higher education, favours girls/women and how post-modernism was created as a way to oppress men by calling out the myth of the patriarchy as the root cause for every female failure or short-coming. To his credit, he admits that culture (I prefer the term “society” or “social norms”/“social expectations” but I will humour Peterson in this regard) is an oppressive structure and his thought on the balance between oppression and opportunity that culture provides is valid for the type of popular science that this book is supposed to be. But he then dismisses the claim of the patriarchy as “perverse” without offering much more than anecdotal evidence that sounds more like coming from an anonymous twitter-troll than a world-renowned professor of psychology. As an example, he submits that “[t]he Swedes, /…/, push equality to its limits” without explaining what the limits of equality might be. Can men and women be too equal?

To conclude, there is abundant evidence that what we are witnessing now, and which is causing the right-wing backlash in many communities, is the final hour of the White, Christian male hegemony. Peterson himself, is a prominent warrior in defence of a world-order that is being challenged by non-Whites, women, and gender fluidity. It is a valid, albeit problematic position to desire the perpetuation of the old world order, but it does not do anybody any favours to deny its premise or misrepresent the ideas that challenge it.

“12 Rules for Life” is a textbook on how to preserve current power structures and how each and every one of us can and should assimilate ourselves and our offspring into the matrix without questioning it or trying to influence it. “If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, /…/ it’s time to examine your values.” A recurring theme in Peterson is just this. Life is suffering. Don’t try to change it. Learn to live with it. The only thing you can change is yourself, the world is unchangeable. Don’t even try. This message is hammered in through every single one of the rules.

If you agree with this doctrine, then this book will certainly give you massive support and I do not doubt that it will offer useful advice on how to make space for yourself in the purgatory that is life and make your time on earth less torturous. If on the other hand you believe that the world can be changed and should be changed, and that cooperation and collective action are a thing, Peterson has very little to say that will convince you.

Having said all that, I want to make perfectly clear that I hugely enjoyed reading “12 Rules for Life”. I would not have chosen it myself but received it as a gift from a friend whose opinions and taste in literature I highly value. This encounter gave me the opportunity to reflect upon my own hierarchy of values and my arguments in support of my standpoints on various issues. Moreover, it offered me a window into the mind of a competent conservative thinker which gave me insights I would otherwise not have been able to gain in my everyday environment. In the spirit of Peterson’s Rule 9, I would therefore like to add one additional rule.

Rule 13. Read books that you receive as a gift and that you wouldn’t have picked yourself.

 

 

THE WIFE

Author: Meg Wolitzer
Year: 2015 (2003)
Publisher: Wahlström & Widstrand
Language: Swedish (translator Peter Samuelsson)

“It is a fundamental truth that man is incapable of remaining permanently on the heights, of continuing to admire anything”, Sören Kierkegaard says in his critique of Baroness Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd’s novel “Two Ages”, in which he for a moment veers into the burdensome task of exploring the forces that move collective human resentment. Kierkegaard observes that in all eras and ages, people have made fun of their superiors. Villagers of patricians, commoners of the nobility, students of professors, women of men. But more than that, what begins as true and genuine admiration or even adoration, must inevitably turn to scepticism and many a time even scorn. When this occurs, the time spent admiring a figure that the person now despises, to that person may appear to be squandered. At this point, embarrassment, bitterness, and hatred enter the scene and vengeance is only a small step away.

Meg Wolitzer’s most famous novel “Hustrun” (“The Wife”) can by all means be read from this perspective. At least ostensibly so which no doubt is the author’s intention. In the very first sentence, we meet a wife who has had enough. Joan Castleman is the spouse of a celebrated novelist, Joe, who is on his way to Helsinki to attend an award ceremony in which he is to collect a prestigious literary prize. Joan, the narrator of the story, accompanies him. And right there, in Finnair’s lavish first class-section 30,000 feet above the ground, she decides that it is time to leave Joe.

The rest of the novel is a string of flashbacks where Joan reminisces about her and Joe’s life together interspersed with episodes connected with the ongoing procedures in Finland. Jane recounts how Joe and she met, how she felt about him, how he treated her, how their children grew up, how she gave up a promising writing career to become a homemaker and to support Joe’s writing ambitions. This is a conventional chain of events which is all too well-known to us and Wolitzer carefully chisels the understructure for the woman’s bitterness, regret, and chagrin to tick every box of the 21^st century reader’s expectation from a domineering man and his submissive but unsatisfied better half. Young Joan’s infatuation with a handsome and sensitive literature teacher in college, her sacrifices, and final disenchantment are easily mapped against Kierkegaard’s observations to say nothing of the millions of female fates in the 20^th century.

And that would have been all, if it weren’t for a delightful twist in the end.

Although many readers will no doubt read “Hustrun” as a book about female emancipation and the revolt against the patriarchy, which I have reason to believe may have been Meg Wolitzer’s intention, it is difficult to shake the impression that first and foremost, the book is about resentment and regret. The bitterness brewing inside Joan, for reasons that are gradually revealed as the story unfolds, threatens to consume her, and her choice of actions resemble revenge more than escape or liberation. Joan seems to project her bitterness over her own choices and her anger with herself onto the man to whom she dedicated her life to a point where her emancipation becomes less about her and more about him. Even in her moment of revolt, Joe remains the focal point of her attention. That makes Joan weak and vindictive instead of strong and victorious.

Also, Wolitzer’s characterisation of women in general throughout the novel are all but feministic. For example, I was disgusted by how she made an over-sexualised caricature of the flight attendant in the early chapters of the novel.

“Women in uniforms carried baskets to and fro in the aisles, like a sexualised army of little red riding hoods.
- Would you like a biscuit, Mr Castleman?, asked a brunette while leaning over him with pliers in her hand and when her boobs slid forth a bit and then back again, I could see the ancient machinery of excitement kickstart within him like an automatic pencil sharpener.”*

“Even the brunette, who had seemed so seductive to Joe only a while ago, now looked like a tired hooker who can’t wait to get off her shift.”*

What kind of feminist writes like that about a predominantly female yet highly qualified profession?

If “Hustrun” is supposed to be a feministic piece of literature, in my view, it mostly misses the mark. However, there are one or two tidbits of certain interest. One of them is the character Elaine Mozell, a female writer whom Joe introduces to Joan while she is his student at college. Elaine has attracted a modest amount of attention for her writing and although she is considered a genius among literary scholars, the publishers hesitate to market her books. She confides in Joan during a cocktail party at the college and opens her eyes to the truth about being a woman and a writer in patriarchal America. Years later, when Joan thinks back to this encounter, she realises that Elaine Mozell has disappeared from the literary scene without leaving much of a trace. Together with Joan’s later decision to give up her own writing career in favour of Joe’s, this is a testimony to the talent lost to the world, sacrificed on the altar of gender roles.

The exiguous literary value of “Hustrun” offers little of aesthetical substance or poetic import. The pace, however, is mostly moderate without ever becoming tedious or lengthy and the chronological jumps are easy to follow. Despite some of its deficiencies, the final twist is well presented and makes the whole story worthwhile. May it serve as a warning to all who believe that their life choices are governed by inescapable fate and whose inner pain risks turning outward into rancour and revenge. And may you, dear reader, never lose the ability to experience the thrill of childlike admiration.

*My own translations from the Swedish copy for illustration purposes only, and not necessarily identical to the English original.

THE AFRICAN

Author: Jean Marie Gustave Le Clézio
Year: 2005 (2004)
Publisher: Elisabeth Grate Bokförlag

Language: Swedish (translator Ulla Bruncrona)

The father/son dichotomy is among the oldest tropes in literary history going back to pre-antiquity. Zeus dethroning Kronos, Sophocles’ drama Oedipus, which is probably a much older legend simply exploited by him, and much of the Old Testament revolve around the discord between the begetter and his offspring. Many prominent writers over the centuries have furthermore turned to writing as a form of therapy, diving deeply into their fathers’ roles in their lives. Sometimes, the purpose has been to understand. At other times, to forgive. At still others, to deliver vengeance. Peter Härtling’s “Nachgetragene Liebe”, Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield”, and Ivan Turgenev’s “Pervaya Lyubov” may serve as a few of many examples from all over Europe of stories written by sons about their fathers. Similarly, Marguerite Duras seems to have written “The Lover” (see my review from 15 March 2020), in an attempt to process her memories of an overbearing mother and to finally, at a mature age, liberate herself from her.

French Nobel Prize-laureate J. M. G Le Clézio makes his mark on this territory with the autobiographical essay “Afrikanen” (“The African”). This is a story about his father, the physician serving in the British colonies in Africa while his wife and sons remain in France, and how the distance in geography, time, and culture laid the foundation to what turned out to be a virtually impenetrable curtain between them.

Curiously enough, the barrier between father and son did not become tangible until 8-years-old Le Clézio and his family were called for by his father to unite with him in Ogoja in south eastern Nigeria. This would be the first time the boy met his father. He had heard his mother and other family members speak about him, of course, and the father had been careful to write letters and remit funds to his wife on a regular basis, but to the young Le Clézio he was just an idea. A concept. Or more accurately; the idea of a concept. The physical encounter with the father, who would become the embodiment of the unknown environment into which the boy was thrust without any agency of his own, rattled the 8-year-old mind and heart. He became an alien in his new home. The curtain, that had previously been nebulous and logical suddenly became real and inexplicable.

The sensation of displacement was further exacerbated by his father´s stern regime, which was a contrast to the loose reins Le Clézio and his brother had enjoyed under the supervision of his aunts and uncles back in France. Discipline, routine, and order suddenly became mercilessly enforced on a level that the young boy was completely unaccustomed to. Not only did he suddenly have a father, but he had one that showed little love and plenty of acerbity.

A child of such a tender age does not have the language or the perspective to process this type of shock and Le Clézio can account merely for his memories of his juvenile self trying to sort out a new reality. It is a gripping endeavour to try to put into words the emotions of a child by the guidance of a grown man’s recollections of emotions that he himself is no longer qualified to reproduce.

“As a child, one doesn’t make use of words. And words are not exhausted. This is a time in which I live far from adjectives and nouns. I cannot say or even think: impressive, colossal, power. But I can experience what these words refer to.”*

Le Clézio’s solution is to approach the memory of his father by integrating him into his memory of the portion of his childhood spent in Africa. Africa made his father and consequently, his father, to Le Clézio, becomes Africa. The opalescent landscape, the pungent odours, the bright smiles on the dark faces of the people whose attitude to nudity and privacy differs vastly from that of the French, are all building blocks that make up the African. So are the squalor, disease, and colonial oppression that he encounters.

As the author digs deeper into memories and tries to navigate his impressions toward the essence of his father, he also reflects upon himself and what his own existence might have posed to his procreator. In Africa, his inevitable whiteness was the main factor connecting him to his family, but it also placed him in the category of the oppressors who instigated such animosity in his father. The aging doctor, by all accounts, seems to have revolted vehemently against the maltreatment of the local population by the British and French governments. He identified with the people among whom he lived, not with those for whom he worked. The son became an inescapable testimony to the African’s own whiteness and a reminder that despite his best efforts and his own choice of identity, he may never become Ogoja to the same degree that Ogoja had become him. He was African; his progeny was French.

And yet, “Afrikanen” turns out to be a love letter; an expression of affection and gratitude to the man who loved the author’s mother and who beyond just giving him life, gave him the opportunity to become the man that he is. It would certainly have been understandable had he resented his father due to his harshness and his lack of interest in his children. As Fyodor Dostoyevsky writes in “The Brothers Karamazov”.

“Why am I bound to love him simply for begetting me when he has cared nothing for me all life after? Oh, perhaps those questions strike you as coarse and cruel, but do not expect an impossible restraint from a young mind. /…/ Let the son stand before his father and ask him, ‘Father, tell me, why must I love you?’”**

Despite a thin veneer of bitterness and travail, the totality of Le Clézio’s book is a warm document of tolerance and gratitude. What makes this possible is in the end Africa. Father and son who never got to know each other across a kitchen table, seem to figuratively meet on the plains of Ogoja and connect on the grasslands on Ntumbo. Their minds touch on a dirt road in Kwaja and they unite in their shared experience of Babungo. In a photograph. In a memory. It is a love by proxy, but it is a love that transcends time and space and flows beyond the confined entities of mortals. A love as true as any other.

“While I write this, I realise that this is more than my own memory. This is also the memory of the years before I was born, when my mother and father trekked together along the footpaths of the Cameroonian highlands. The memory of my father’s angst and hope, of his loneliness and misery in Ogoja. The memory of moments of happiness where my father and mother are united in a love that they think will last forever.”*

In this way, the African becomes the father not in spite of, but thanks to, Africa.

 

*My own translation from the Swedish copy.
** Translation by Constance Garnett, The Lowell Press, New York, 2009

 

SOLDIER WITH A BROKEN GUN

Author: Vilhelm Moberg
Year: 1998 (1944)
Publisher: Albert Bonniers Förlag
Language: Swedish

Vilhelm Moberg without a doubt counts among the most important figures in Swedish literature. Few writers either before or after him have described the hardships of the regular rural Swede in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and the dream of a better life in America as detailed as he has. His magnum opus, The Emigrants-tetralogy, has become an integral part of Swedish national identity and an urgent reminder that Swedes were also refugees from poverty and famine at one point in time not too long ago. To the Swedish population, this period is known as “Fattigsverige”; i.e. “Sweden, the impoverished”. His careful research, based to a large extent on the many years he spent in the US living among descendants of the Swedish diaspora, sets him apart from other writers concerning themselves with this era in Swedish-American history.

His interest in poverty and migration was surely triggered by the fate of his own family. Like so many other Scandinavians from the poorest segments of society, much of Moberg’s family also migrated to the New World at the turn of the century, including several of his siblings.

At the same time, a growing and increasingly assertive socialist movement was sweeping across Europe. Sweden was no exception and Moberg soon signed up as a party member for the Social Democrats. He spent a considerable portion of his adult years debating for the rights of the under-privileged classes, and from the 1920s and onwards against Nazism and Communism.

All these things; poverty, inequality, the dream about America, writing, socialism, and the fight for a better and fairer tomorrow, come together in what is possibly the closest Moberg ever came to an autobiography: “Soldat med brutet gevär” (not available in English but the title could be translated as “The Soldier With a Broken Gun”). Moberg himself said of it “this is not an autobiography, but this novel, more than any other, is based on material from my own experience.”

The protagonist and Moberg’s alter ego, Valter Sträng, is born as the youngest son to a soldier. Growing up in a society where militarism, alcoholism, want, and political abuse were ubiquitous, at an early age he recognises that the main framework of the Swedish community, based on Lutheranism, allegiance to the King, work ethics, and alcohol are all chains applied to the under-privileged classes by the ruling elite in order to keep the former docile and useful. This puts him at odds with his father (the soldier) and many of his friends, classmates, and colleagues. Much of the storyline is aligned with what we know about Moberg’s own life and even though Valter Sträng finds himself in some situations which may not have been precise representations of Moberg’s specific experiences, the truth is in the message Moberg tries to convey. The writer lets us know how he would have acted had he been faced with some of the challenges he puts before Valter Sträng. And on a whole it is credible.

In many respects, “Soldat med brutet gevär” is a Bildungsroman that captures the transition of a peasant boy from the childhood years in the soldier’s cabin to the threshold of literary fame and the ascension into the cultural and political elites. Bit by bit, Valter Sträng explores the complexity of a society in upheaval and tries to legitimise his path through life. Moberg links his political maturity to his biological aging as if to say that becoming an adult is tantamount to taking a stand. A young Valter Sträng repeatedly laments the fact that his family, friends, neighbours, and co-workers remain oblivious to the social injustice around them and the structural prison created for them by the affluent classes. And yet, a watershed moment for him is when one of his political adversaries calls out his own ignorance. Knowledge, honesty, equality, and activism define Valter Sträng in a way I do not doubt Vilhelm Moberg wanted to be defined himself.    

Besides the biographical virtues of this novel, as always with Moberg, his deep understanding of the class struggle in the 19^th and 20^th centuries as well as his proficient and precise way of putting it into words in a way that almost a century later we can still relate to, makes him the timeless novelist and essayist that he is. His use of the Swedish language, in particular when he twists it to capture the full flavour of various Smolandian dialects and sociolects, provides a peephole into how southern Swedish dialects may have sounded in the past and a study of what role language has as a social class indicator. Valter Sträng’s dialogue as a child and adolescent is written in the Smolandian dialect. As he grows up and discovers socialism, his language changes and Moberg gives him a voice that rivals that of the rich and educated. When he enrols at a formal education institution and begins to socialise with scholars, the transition of his speech is completed. The effect is exacerbated whenever Valter Sträng meets his mother or other characters from his past, whose language remains provincial, something which Valter Sträng never comments or ponders upon.

An element in the novel that I could do without is the superfluous accounts of Valter Sträng’s sex life. His love interests are usually of little consequence for his development and although explaining the main character’s rather detached and unemotional relationship to the opposite sex may serve an autobiographical purpose, the sequences dedicated to his endeavours and ensuing doubt are at times almost cringe-worthy.

The novel is at its best when it focuses on the political awakening of the young boy and his political maturation process. This is where Vilhelm Moberg rightly becomes a giant among giants.