It opens with the account of how the Italian Antonious Bellori has an encounter with two angels in the 16th century, which inspires a lifetime of research into angels. This narrative level is reminiscent of Eco and Borges in its analytical, essayist style, and not least in treating the subject of angels as if it were as scientifically valid as those subjects we currently deem scientifically valid.

I am not well enough versed in the Bible and accompanying religious writings to know, but I assume that while Biblical references are correct, most or all references to old writings on angels are as fictitious as Bellori himself.  The result is a philosophical treatise that touches on far more than angels and is for the most part challenging, but enjoyable.

Old Stories in a New Light

This narrative level is broken up by two lengthy stories that reimagine events from the Bible. First, there is the story of Cain and Abel, for the most part told from Cain’s perspective. The portrayal of Cain as a socially awkward but hard working and basically good person who is continually outshone by his extrovert but equally troubled brother, is a powerful story of how we always judge and misjudge one another. Similarly, the story of Noah and the Ark is as much about the family dynamics in Noah’s family and the personal growth of his sister Anna, as it is about the flood. Here, too, the narrative is personal and intimate, creating strong emotional bonds of empathy to the characters.

In short, these Biblical stories are by far the best sections of the book. The characters are distinct and well-rounded, the pacing excellent, and they embody a kind of Romantic preoccupation with nature description that you also see in Knut Hamsun. Yes, it is that good. For most of my reading of these sections, I completely forgot that they were based on Biblical characters and events – I can’t imagine a stronger endorsement of Knausgård’s achievement than that!

Unnecessary Coda

The final narrative level is in present time and envelopes the two previous ones. The Norwegian narrator, Henrik Vankel, is writing a book about angels, using Bellori’s treatise as his main source. Its frankly preposterous theory of what happened to the angels makes some sense within its fictional universe, but the portrayal of the narrator comes too late in the book to make as much emotional impact as is probably intended. As a result, the coda is a bit of a let-down compared to the narrative levels preceding it.

This is my third Knausgård novel (the others being My Struggle 1 and 2), and I see a trend here. He has an extraordinary way with words, enabling him to infuse everything he writes about, both the serious and the banal, with philosophical and emotional power. However, he is also a baroque writer who follows his own whims and lacks the ability to curb himself. The self-berating he does as Henrik Vankel suggests he is aware of the problem:

All that damned talk of mine, when I never quite knew where to draw the line, and therefore let it flow out in all directions. (485)

However, he does not rectify it. If he wants to tell a story loosely based on a childhood experience or an embarrassing anecdote, he will do so whether it fits or not. In this case, he and his editor should have paid more attention to the fact that there is a time for everything, and some stories, no matter how compelling, should be cut.

Nevertheless, if you have the patience to stick with it when the text veers too far, you will be rewarded with a great reading experience.

Skjermdump fra Filmpolitiet-artikkel, med vekselvis fete typer, irrelevant link, og vanlig typesett.

Jeg så dette illustrert da jeg nylig kom over en litt eldre artikkel kalt “-Ikke dårlig, bare vanskelig” hos P3 Filmpolitiet. Jeg er storforbruker av artikler på nett (gjerne sendt til min Kindle via Tinderizer), i tillegg til å ha jobbet med brukervennlighet på nett i mange år, og reagerte straks på at teksten var vanskelig å lese. Store bilder stykket opp teksten unødvendig, omtrent annenhver setning var formatert med fete typer, og ikke minst: teksten var full av linker til andre Filmpolitiet-artikler. Disse var ikke integrert i brødteksten, men på egne linjer som brøt opp teksten og distraherte fra den (skjermdump ovenfor).

I kommentarfeltet påpekte flere lesere det problematiske med linkene i denne artikkelen, blant annet thommie myhrvold.Han fikk imidlertid svar på tiltale fra “Labbetass”, som innrømte at de fete typene var problematiske, men slo fast følgende om linkene:

I følge all god teori for web usability, er linkene i denne artikkelen brukt på riktig måte. De gjør at du får avbrudd i lesingen, slik at du får litt tid til å tenke over det du nettopp har lest. Det skjer for det meste på det underbevisste plan, og gjør at du husker teksten lengre. I tillegg følger de hypertekstprinsippet, med linker til relevant informasjon på riktig sted. Du kan lese om dette på f.eks. www.useit.com. Har du noe teori bak dine påstander om at det ødelegger flyten, så vil vi gjerne høre dem.

Budskapet er altså at vi brukerne som synes denne teksten var slitsom å lese tar feil, for artikkelforfatteren har ekspertene bak all den gode teorien for web usability i ryggen.

All God Teori

En sak er den arrogante holdningen lagt for dagen her, men innholdet er også problematisk. “Labbetass” bryter selv med brukervennlighetsprinsipper når han linker til hjemmesiden til Jakob Nielsen i stedet for å dyplinke til en konkret artikkel om linking i innhold på nett, så det er vanskelig å gå hans påstander etter i sømmene, men min erfaring er:

• Det er riktig at avbrudd i teksten der det er naturlig er brukervennlig. Tekst på nett bør formateres i korte avsnitt med flittig bruk av mellomtitler.
• Linker er derimot av natur pekende bort fra teksten og bør derfor være integrert i brødteksten slik at brukeren selv kan velge: fortsette å lese videre på denne siden, eller klikke på linken for å gå til den andre.

Relevante, integrerte linker

Faktisk kan integrasjon i brødteksten være en lakmustest for om linken er relevant eller ikke. Lar linkene seg integrere naturlig, hører de hjemme. Gjør de det ikke, er de overflødige. Jeg forstår at mange medier har et visst press for å drive trafikk til egne artikler (selv om P3 ikke har reklamevisninger å bekymre seg for), men de overflødige linkene her viser at det hensynet er satt foran hensynet til leserne.

Skjermdump med linker markert - begge linkene går til samme artikkel.

Artikkelen omhandler vanskelighetsgrad i dataspill i et historisk perspektiv, og da er det naturlig å integrere en link til Filmpolitiets slakt av spillet “Amy” i første avsnitt, men er det nødvendig å gjenta samme link bare fire linjer lenger ned (skjermdump til høyre)?

En link til anmeldelsen av spillet “Dark Souls,” som er kjent for å være spesielt vanskelig, samt til artikler om bølgen av lette “casualspill” er også relevant.

Det er nok vanskeligere å forsvare disse linkene, som alle bryter opp den allerede fragmenterte brødteksten uten å ha noe med debatten om vanskelighetsgrad i spill å gjøre:

• LES: Runes spådommer for konsollåret
• ANMELDELSE: PS Vita – en dings mange vil få glede av fremover
• ANMELDELSE: Touch My Katamari – Gale japanere vet best
• ANMELDELSE: Varg Veum – De døde har det godt

For ordens skyld: De døde har det godt er ikke et spill.

Kunden har rett

Poenget mitt er ikke å henge ut verken Filmpolitiets artikkelforfatter eller “Labbetass” (selv om jeg ikke setter pris på den bedrevitende holdningen sistnevnte legger for dagen), men følgende:

På samme måte som kunden alltid har rett i servicebransjen, har brukeren alltid rett på nett, i den forstand at vi rett og slett unngår å besøke nettsteder som ikke er brukervennlige. Da hjelper det lite å si: “Jammen, dere har ingenting å klage på! Eksperter sier at det vi gjør er brukervennlig!”

This is not me.

I just got to the part in My Struggle 2 (Min kamp 2) by Karl Ove Knausgård where he googles himself and thought it was time for me to do the same.

It’s just one of those things people in our generation do from time to time, especially if they have spent a significant portion of their professional and personal life online, as I have.

Also, I’m applying for jobs in Norway and fully expect prospective employers to google me! If that’s you, my LinkedIn-profile is here.
(norske arbeidsgivere bør heller sjekke min norske og mer utfyllende profil)

The page 1 results for the search “tore hogas” were relevant enough, with this site and some of my most popular articles here as the top results. Then my Google Profile, Facebook page, some individual tweets (my Twitter profile doesn’t come until page 2), etc.

Weirdly, a page called Academic Information made the first page of results. This used to be a part of my long-defunct site with concert reviews, I had completely forgotten about its existence, and it was last updated in 1999!

Will the Real Tore Hogas Please Stand Up?

Things get even weirder and pretty funny when you switch from searching “Everything” to “Images”. Check the screenshot below (click for a larger version):

Screenshot of the image search for Tore Hogas. Can you spot me?

The first few rows of images has me (and some photos from this site), but also an abundance of what looks like Asian female models. What?! If you follow those links, they all go to a scammy-looking site (I won’t link it up) that claims to have all my info, despite listing me with the address I lived at in Minneapolis 15 years ago!

What kind of weird stuff did you find when you googled yourself? Let me know in the comments!

Robot Soldier on the museum roof.

I spend a Sunday afternoon at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo and end up having the best museum experience thus far in my life.

Studio Ghibli movies have occupied a special place in my heart since I saw Spirited Away (2001) at the Tromsø International Film Festival. The studio is often compared to Disney – not in tone or style, but in impact – but I personally hold Ghibli higher than any other animation studio. Their movies exhibit a unique world vision, solid and excellently paced storytelling, and an amazing craftmanship unseen elsewhere. Just writing this I have to curb myself – this is not about the movies, but the museum created by the studio’s visionary director Hayao Miyazaki.

The museum is in the corner of a park in Mitaka. I was unsure whether to go there from Mitaka station or Kichijoji, but landed on the former as that is the route provided by the museum itself. There is a shuttle bus running between the station and the museum, but I decided to take the 15 minute walk.

Ghibli Sign with a Totoro.

Even in late December, it was mild and sunny, and the area is a quiet and surprisingly green neighborhood of mostly two-story brick houses that reminded me of England. Signs with a Totoro ensured I did not get lost.. yet.

Getting lost

True to Miyazaki’s vision, the museum building is itself a part of the experience, looking as if it has grown out of the park grounds and is changing with the plants and trees growing and changing around it.

Ghibli Museum exterior with Christmas tree.

Inside and out, the building feels like being on a Ghibli movie set if those had been live action films and not animation. The interior embodies the museum motto “Let’s become lost children together.” It is like a maze with all kinds of nooks and crannys, a spiral staircase one has to try out to see where leads, and a bridge across the Central Hall. Children and playful adults alike can explore and see all kinds of wondrous things. There are obscure photos, paintings and mechanical objects everywhere. Turn a corner and you can suddenly see a model of a mechanical fish pedal driven by frogs. Pay close attention when you take the route across the roof of the Straw Hat Cafe (the museum restaurant), and you can see Prince Lune’s security guards from The Cat Returns (2002) scowling at you from a window.

Lune's cat security guards.

Also, it is a warm and inviting place, in wood and with lots of light filtering through oddly shaped windows – many of which are stained-glass windows depicting scenes from Ghibli movies. There are many comfortable chairs and benches as well, but I recommend that you go outside if you want to sit down for a while. There are several patios and verandas to relax on and appreciate the museum’s park surroundings.

From one of these verandas, you can take yet another spiral staircase to the roof garden. Besides being a beautiful and relaxing garden, its most striking feature is the fantastic Robot Soldier from Castle in the Sky (1986), which can be seen from afar. Although resonating most strongly with those of us who have seen the movie, the broken down robot with plants growing out of him is a haunting and beautiful sight.

Robot Soldier from Castle in the Sky.

Permanent Exhibits: The Beginning of Movement Room

This room puts animation in a historical context and embodies Miyazaki’s insistence that film is something physical and tactile, not just bits of information. It has several zoetropes and other machines to illustrate early examples of stop motion animation, including “Bouncing Totoro,” a three-dimensional zoetrope with clay figures of Mei, Satsuki and other characters from My Neighbor Totoro (1988).

Rows of panorama boxes use layers of handpainted glass to create three-dimensional scenes from movies like Princess Mononoke (1997), as well as movies that don’t exist. A projector shows loops of simple animations, for example what the fire inside the coal furnace in Spirited Away might look like when it eats the coal!

Even the bathrooms have unique decorations. Here a trompe l'oeil from Castle in the Sky.

Permanent Exhibits: Where a Film Is Born

The concept for this part of the museum is to recreate a succession of rooms that show the process necessary to create an animation film. It is such a simple, yet effective display of the unique vision, craft and soul behind the Ghibli movies. In the end, it is really moving to see.

It starts with the preproduction room, a small but cozy workspace with hundreds of concept sketches the size of postcards filling all the walls (many from Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)), overflowing ashtrays, dirty coffee cups, a ton of books, strange objects piled everywhere, and lots of scrapbooks and photo albums of research to leaf through.

The next room is for background art, also filled to the brim with art, but this time beautiful, vividly colored hand-painted landscapes. After that comes the staging department, with a recreation of the director’s desk where storyboards are drawn, plus huge volumes of storyboards. I leafed through many fantastic storyboards of The Secret World of Arrietty (2010) in this room.

Finally, there is the animation room with the final frames, painted cels, ink and color swatches and an animation stand where you can see foreground being pulled across a background. It is a replica of the animation stands Ghibli used, although now they have also gone digital and don’t use them any more.

Special Exhibit 2011-2012: The View from the Cat Bus

The exhibits in this area change, and currently it is The View from the Cat Bus. It starts with a life-sized cat bus (not to be confused with the one in the playroom for small children). It may not sound like much, but the people I joined in there really enjoyed sitting inside the cozy and soft bus, touching its fur and quietly watching the “scenery” outside the bus. Moving on you could walk through highlights of other movies, and even sit down in front of a restaurant from Spirited Away without any risk of turning into a pig!

The Saturn Theater

Of course the museum has its own movie theater, and with Miyazaki’s insistence on the tangibility of film, you can see the projector and the projectionist in the back of the Saturn Theater.

Each visitor gets one ticket to the theater to see short films that are only being screened here. The ticket itself is a nice memento; it looks like a film strip with frames from a well-known Ghibli movie. I got the scene with Chihiro and the guest in the elevator from Spirited Away.

The Day I Harvested a Star (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Cynics might call the idea of showing movies in a museum like this lazy, but the movie I saw, The Day I Harvested a Star (2006) was anything but. On the contrary, it was one of the best Ghibli movies I have seen – and I have seen most of them! It is about boy who goes from a hyper-modern city to work at a farm. He gets some seeds from a couple of strange characters and grows a little planet hovering above the pot.

Getting out

Stained glass window from the outside (it is not allowed to take photos inside). Can you see Totoro?

I have been to many museums, including the Louvre in Paris and the Henie-Onstad Art Centre in Oslo when they had an amazing Frida Kahlo exhibit, but there is no doubt in my mind that the Ghibli Museum tops them all. Not because Miyazaki and the other Ghibli artists are greater than Da Vinci or Kahlo, just in terms of the pure museum experience I had. In fact, I originally figured I would spend about two hours at the museum. However, the first time I even checked the time, three hours had passed! After spending a total of over four hours, I decided to leave.

First, though, I went through the gift shop, appropriately named Mamma Aiuto after the gang of sky pirates from Porco Rosso (1992) – if you like Ghibli you can really get fleeced!
I bought a tin of cookies with the museum logo on it for people at work, thinking (rightly) that my daughters would want the tin to keep things in afterwards, a great book about the museum with lots of wonderful photos for myself, a scarf and socks with susuwatari on them for my wife (it’s a private joke), a replica of Sheeta’s pendant from Castle in the Sky for my oldest daughter to adorn her cell phone with, and a cat bus for my youngest – who adores stuffed animals and Totoro.

My loot from the sky pirate shop Mamma Aiuto.

On my way back I decided to go through the park to Kichijoji station instead of back the way I came to Mitaka. I am glad I did, because the park itself is worth a visit. It’s not a carefully sculpted park, and I like that – having an area of untamed nature with paths crisscrossing it. I stopped for a while and watched a group of falconers and owlers (is that what you call an owl trainer?) train their beautiful birds. I had a look at the temple next to the lake, but skipped the park zoo.

Had I been there with my family, though, we probably would have gone to the zoo as well. Taken together with the unruly nature of the park and the equally chaotic and playful world of the Ghibli Museum, that could be an excellent family outing.

Akihabara (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The name Akihabara Electric Town has a legendary air to it among computer and gadget nerds, video gamers and manga fans. While it is an interesting experience to walk its busy streets and many, many stores, I came away from it somewhat underwhelmed.

As circumstance would have it, Akihabara was both the first area I went to from Narita Airport, and also the last I hung out in before returning to the airport.

I actually arrived on the day when the PlayStation Vita, the latest and highly anticipated handheld games console from Sony, launched. That really influenced the vibe of the area, with demo booths for the console and its roster of launch games outside and inside the biggest stores, such as the new Yodobashi store. Some stores were sold out already, while others had long lines. It was quite frantic!

Other than games, the area has a truly overwhelming number of stores for computers and computer parts, various gadgets and electronics. I wandered through some of them, plus a visit to Animate, a veritable haven for fans of anime. It is eight floors filled with a dizzying array of anime volumes, character merch, games, etc.

Maid Cafe Staff (Source: Wikitravel)

I did not visit a maid cafe, which apparently is an Akihabara specialty – cafes where young women dressed as French maids serve you. Maybe I’m getting old, but the girls on the street handing out fliers for these cafes, shivering in their outfits but smiling bravely, did not make me want to try one.

Overall, I would probably have been a lot more excited about visiting Akihabara were it not for these factors:

1. The globalized economy means that very little of unusual gadgetry is unique to places like this. Most stuff gadget nerds like me are interested in can be found on the Internet and shipped anywhere.
2. I am currently not interested in computer building and upgrading, so hundreds of computer parts stores just lower the signal to noise ratio of the area for me.
3. I have already experienced areas much like Akihabara in Seoul: Yongsan Electronics Market (and, to a lesser degree, Tehcno-Mart) – and #1 and 2 hold true for those places as well.

Super Potato

A familiar figure from the Super Potato interior.

One place really deserves mention, though, and that is the retro gaming store Super Potato. It’s notoriously hard to find, and I even passed by it twice despite having marked it on my Google Map!

The second time I heard some faint theme music from a certain iconic game franchise (pictured right) and found it! Basically, this store is over three floors. The top floor is a mini arcade where you can play some of the old arcade classics of your youth (if you are as old as I am or older).

The other two are simply packed to the brim with games and games consoles. I am tempted to say that if there is a console that ever came out in Japan, Super Potato has at least two of them for sale, plus a lot of the game cartridges that came with it.

In addition, littering the narrow aisles were stations where you could play most of these old consoles, including a rare Virtual Boy – Nintendo’s failed attempt at a 3D home console with huge, uncomfortable 3D glasses instead of a screen and an equally bad controller. Having tried some kind of Wario game on this console for a few painful minutes, I can see why it failed!

I really cannot do justice to this place in words, but many have put videos from it up on YouTube – I recommend that you check it out if you are at all interested. Here is a sample:

In conclusion, if you are going to Tokyo, you should visit Akihabara (and especially Super Potato), but you may want to keep your expectations in check.

Screengrab of tweet by @HirokoTabuchi

This tweet and picture reminded me to write this post, and illustrates the area well. It is from the Hachiko Plaza, right next to the Shibuya subway station. The plaza is a popular spot to meet up before embarking on the night’s adventures, although like Ms. Tabuchi I wondered how that even works with so many people crowding the area. I arrived as early as 8 pm on a Saturday, and it looked exactly like this.

In fact, the name of the plaza itself shows that its status as a meeting place is a long-running one. The faithful dog Hachiko is well-known in Japanese culture. Every day until his owner’s death in May 1925, Hachiko met him at the train station after work. As the dog did not know his owner had died, he continued to return to the train station every day at the exact time the train was due – for nine years. A bronze statue of the golden brown Akita was erected in 1934, and a newer version of this statue is still there. I found that the Hachiko statue, wearing a Santa hat for the occasion, was the only place on the plaza you could be reasonably sure to find the people you had agreed to meet.

From the plaza, cross the five-way crossing, noting the bizarre feeling of being in a veritable sea of people, and explore the smaller streets with the many interesting restaurants, cafes, bars, and clubs of the area. It is a major hotspot of Tokyo nightlife and well worth a visit just to hang out and soak up the unique atmosphere. There were far more westerners here than any other place I went to in Tokyo, plus beautiful young men and women – all unfazed by the occasional strange ones. I was the only one who started at the sight of a figure that can only be described as a demonic robot Santa stalking the streets!

Since it was still fairly early when I arrived, the atmosphere was a mixture of shopping and partying, and if you are at all interested in manga, anime, and various collectibles associated with it, I can recommend Mandarake. I am not that interested, to be honest, but still found that huge store fascinating. I especially liked the wide array of old Japanese toys in equal parts wood, plastic and tin. Sure, there were Western items there, like Disney and some cool wind-up tin Stormtroopers from the original Star Wars, but for the most part it was like looking at an entirely alternate but compelling childhood universe where the only thing that was familiar was Astro Boy.

After the hush of the basement store and its nerdy clientele (let’s be honest here), it was back into the fray of the neon-bathed streets again, as Saturday night in Shibuya continued.

First, a caveat. I quickly realized that Tokyo is idiosyncratic in having practically no free or easily accessible Wi-Fi coverage whatsoever.  I knew I would have access to Wi-Fi at my hotel, but could otherwise not count on being connected. Additionally, I was traveling light, so no laptop. I only brought my Kindle and iPhone. Again, as Japan uses a different cell phone standard from South Korea, I could not use my iPhone as a phone – it was essentially an iPod Touch for this weekend.

Google Maps

As I would be largely offline, I did something as lo-tech as print some maps and routes from Google Maps.

I had made a map especially for the trip, with possible locations to visit highlighted. If you have not done this before, this is how:

1. Search for desired locations in Google Maps.
2. Locations are marked with a red marker on the map, and if you click on the marker, you get a pop-up box with more information about the location.
3. As long as you are logged in with your Google Account you can select “Save to map” in this information box, and save the location to your own custom-made map.
4. Rinse and repeat.
   Here is mine:

View Tore in Tokyo 2011 in a larger map

From this map, you can print relevant area maps, or make routes from one place to another and print that.

Street View

Additionally, to ensure that I could find my way from the Meguro subway station to the Princess Garden Hotel, I used that wonderful addition to Google Maps called Street View.

Starting from the subway station, I could use the panoramic views offered by this service to basically take a “virtual tour” of my hotel neighborhood and preview what the walk from the station to the hotel would look like once I got there in person!

Metro

Speaking of the subway: I have some experience with subway systems in various European cities (like Oslo, Paris, and London), plus of course Seoul, where I live now. The Tokyo subway system is a bit more complex than I am used to, as it consists of several competing lines and not all subway maps (which tend to be in Japanese only anyway) show all lines.

To make sense of it all, I used a free iPhone app called Metro. This is in fact a very old app I used for many years on my old PalmPilot and my successive Palm OS PDAs, but it is now also available on the App Store. It has subway maps for pretty much every city out there, and once you have the maps installed (I have Oslo, Seoul, and Tokyo) you can easily search for subway stations and calculate routes between them. The app gives you the option of searching for the fastest route, as well as for the route with the fewest line changes. It also shows the entire route so you can keep track of where you are at all times.

Travelocity / Tinderizer / Amazon Kindle

I never really understood the need to spend a lot of money on travel guides, and so never bought any for any of my travels. This time around, I decided to make my own personalized Tokyo Travel guide:

1. I visited the Tokyo page of crowdsourced travel wiki Wikitravel.
2. Using the Firefox extension Tinderizer, I could go to various pages on Wikitravel that I found useful, and with just one click on my bookmarks bar (“Send to my Kindle!”) send those pages by email to my Kindle.
   In the process, the service strips out unnecessary formatting to make the documents more usable on the Kindle.
3. On my Kindle, I created a new collection called “Tokyo” and put all the documents that Tinderizer had emailed to my Kindle in it. Presto!

Any additional advice on using technology and gadgets to help with travel? Let me know in the comments.

This, then, is not a review (you can read my review here). It is an article about my experience of reading this book and also of dreaming, thinking, talking, and writing about this book.

I started reading it on Friday morning on my Kindle, then through the magic of Whispernet continued during breaks at the office using the Kindle app on my iPhone, and again synced back to my Kindle at home on Friday night. I read uncharacteristically late, until about 2 a.m. This is not because I am a slow reader, but because I for the most part only had time to read in short spurts.

The novel deals with time, history, and memory, and I had an uncharacteristically (again!) vivid dream about the same themes. I normally dislike people telling others their dreams and usually refrain from doing so myself, but this seemed so apropos that I have to:

When I awoke at 9 a.m. on Saturday, it was quite early and I woke with a start for two reasons. The first was the dream I immediately started writing about in a notebook I keep near my bed:

I was hard at work crafting the opening sentence of my novel. What I had written was, “Time is simple, and simple it has been to me” (the pun is lost in translation. I wrote in Norwegian, where the word “simpel” also and in fact more commonly means “vile”. Explicated: “Time is uncomplicated and it has not treated me well”). While working on this, a memory inexplicably appeared:

I was hiking in the mountains near my birth place in Northern Norway on a crisp fall day. I was with my father and his older brother, who remarked that walking at his old age always is slower than he expects and that he can sense the scorn of younger, fitter hikers he meets on occasion. I replied that those hikers had not finished that run in Mexico in less than two hours. Even as his face brightened, he said wistfully that he remembered almost nothing from that marathon.

Walking on, it occurred to me that I had no idea why I had said that. I could not remember my uncle ever having run a marathon at all, much less in Mexico, yet that lost memory had surfaced at just the right time to comfort an old man. I was puzzled, yet pleased.

This memory of a memory must be useful to my novel about time, history, and memory, I thought to myself while pondering my simple pun.

The problem is, I was thinking while jotting down notes, half asleep and out of sorts, that the memory is false. I never went on a hike with my father and uncle, who had probably been in Mexico during his many years at sea, but never to run a marathon. My comforting words probably had something to do with my feelings of guilt regarding how I reacted when he was dying of lung cancer many years ago, as well as my unconscious mind trying to make sense of Barnes.

As I have tried to indicate with indents here, my dream had a Chinese box quality I cannot remember (!) having had ever before, as well as a strange vividness and attention to detail (and punning). It was almost analytical in its treatment of memories, and the second reason why I woke with a start was that I felt a kind of Eureka! moment of having cracked the code (or at least started to crack it) of the book. I felt I was near understanding the solution to the as yet undefined mystery of the book (parallel, by the way, of my wife’ s trying to deduce the solution (i.e. whodunnit ) of Jo Nesbø’s The Snowman, which she just finished. And yes, her theory was correct, she is smarter than me in many ways).

I quickly finished the book in bed, but in the end still did not know if my hunch was correct. I spent some time that Saturday rereading passages in the book, pondering questions (some of which are reproduced below), and finally Googling for solutions – but, as someone commented, every answer opens a new question – and starting to write both this article and a more traditional review.

Then I started rereading the whole book, while also urging my wife to read it so we could discuss it (I did mention she is smarter than me).

From here on (below the picture), there will be spoilers. Do not continue if you have not yet read the novel!

Thanatos (Wikimedia Commons)

• The thing that made me think I was close to understanding the book (before I had even finished it) was that I had a strong feeling that when Veronica asks her brother “He’ll do, wont he?” she is not just asking about his suitability as a boyfriend, but how he fits into some larger scheme.
  Most people blogging and commenting on Tony’s weekend at the Ford house focus on what it foreshadows. I.e. Veronica’s mom tried to seduce him (or succeeded?), but was unsuccessful. She was, however, successful with Adrian. I, on the other hand, have a strong feeling that something had already happened when Tony arrived at their house. Some cite the way she was referred to as “the Mother” as an indication that she was pregnant, but if that were the case would she not already have been pregnant then? Also, what about the mysterious gesture when Tony leaves – possibly a common gesture of indicating pregnancy?
• What is the significance of the sperm (not piss) in the washbasin? It must surely have some significance beyond signaling to the reader that Tony is an unreliable narrator, as it is juxtaposed with other significant memories in the opening of the novel.
• If we were, as Adrian put it in the diary fragment, to turn “equations and integers” into “traditional narrative terminology,” how would we do it? My wife and I tried, but it is hard, not least because the integers Adrian’s formula may not actually refer to the people he claims they refer to.

Ultimately, I had to give up without reaching a satisfactory conclusion or having “cracked it.” I felt I was going down a rabbit hole that might require more effort than rewards, and so turned back. I will definitely pick the book up again later, though. If you have any views on the book and the questions I have posed above, feel free to add a comment below.

As you are probably aware by now, this short book won the Man Booker Prize 2011, upon no less than the fourth shortlisting of a Julian Barnes novel. When I heard about it on a podcast I subscribe to, I decided to get it. Not because it won the aforementioned prize, but because the description of it intrigued me.

True enough: The first thing that struck me about it, only a few pages in, was the typically British way with words – the mixture of formality and vulgarity, the superb dry wit. This is a very funny novel, with some passages that made me smile or chuckle appreciatively, and several others where I laughed out loud.

That is what draws you in. What keeps you is its poetry and philosophy.

The Sense of an Ending is poetic both on the level of well-wrought phrases and passages, and on the macro level of the text as a whole. For example, there are recurring images such as the rivers, that are returned to, built upon, and even subverted in the course of the narrative, making it very much a poetic text.

It is also a philosophical novel about the passing of time and what history we construct from the memories we have:

I need to return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty. (emphasis added)

But perhaps most of all, and the thing that draws you in for the second time or more: it is a mystery novel without a very clearly defined mystery, and therefore not a clearly defined ending. I am probably being maddeningly vague for those of you who have not yet read the book – and if that was not clear, you should. It is just that it is hard to describe what the mystery entails or revolves around without giving away too much of the plot. Read the book, and like the rest of us you will be left having to make your own sense of the ending.

As you do, be prepared to think about The Sense of an Ending, discuss it with your friends, maybe even tweet and blog about it. I know I did. Just do not expect a neatly wrapped up package.

Jeg er en statistikk-nerd sjøl, men også data-nerd (brukes det begrepet lenger, nå som gud og hvermann har opptil flere datamaskiner, smarttelefon og nettbrett?), så jeg har ingen notatbøker eller lignende hvor jeg har skrevet ned hva jeg har lest og når. Det var ikke før jeg opprettet Goodreads-profil at jeg begynte å registrere lesinga, men det var altså først i november 2007, og da var jeg allerede godt inne i min egen lesedvale.

Lesedvale definert

Hvis du ikke har lest Ellisivs bloggpost gjelder det altså folk som i hele livet har lest enorme mengder bøker, og som så av en eller annen grunn (i hennes tilfelle et lite barn) leser langt mindre enn før og langt mindre enn en ønsker.

Hun er såpass misfornøyd at hun ikke en gang røper antallet leste bøker i 2010 (på den annen side røper hun ikke hva hun lå på i sine beste leseår heller!), men jeg kan offentliggjøre de tallene jeg har uten (for mye) blygsel:

• 2010: 30 bøker
• 2009: 19 bøker
• 2008: 37 bøker

Ikke noe en litterat og skribent kan være bekjent av, spesielt ikke når en må trekke fra en god del barne- og ungdomslitteratur jeg strengt tatt ikke leste fordi jeg ville, men fordi det var en del av jobben min ved Five Star School i Seoul, Sør-Korea.

Lesedvale analysert (ish)

Nå har ikke jeg lagt mye tankekraft i dette, men minst to årsaker til denne dvalen virker sannsynlige:

1. Da jeg skriblet ned et lite notat til meg sjøl om denne artikkelen om lesedvale skrev jeg  at jeg ikke skriver så mye lenger. En “Freudian slip” som kanskje har betydning, ettersom jeg for noen år sia la skriving av skjønnlitterære tekster (foreløpig?) på hylla. Det kan godt være at det gamle uttrykket om at en som skriver også må lese også går andre veien for meg. Skriver jeg ikke litteratur sjøl, blir det også mindre lesing.
   Apropos lesing og skriving var det også et tilbakeslag like før jul 2008, da Nordlys  på grunn av finanskrisa bestemte seg for å ikke bruke frilansere til bokanmeldelser lenger.
2. På det tidspunktet hadde jeg anmeldt bøker for avisa i over tre år, tross min plassering i Seoul. Altså hadde jeg ganske god tilgang på nye bøker på norsk. Det er den andre årsaken: det er vanskelig for meg å få tak i bøker på norsk til en noenlunde god pris og jeg har sjølsagt ikke tilgang til bibliotek med norske bøker heller. Det er enda verre for meg, ettersom jeg tradisjonelt har lånt og lest langt flere bøker enn jeg har kjøpt. Lydbøker på mp3 kunne jeg lastet ned, men de er også utrolig dyre. Den norske ebok-fiaskoen er et kapittel for seg sjøl. Jeg kan sjølsagt lese engelskspråklige bøker, og gjør da det også på min Kindle (dette fantastiske lesebrettet har ellers forårsaket en liten oppsving i årets statistikk). Likevel er det med på å bygge opp en ikke udelt positiv følelse av utlendighet og eksil at jeg ikke får fulgt med på norsk litteratur. Min Kamp har jeg bare fått med meg den første av!

Vel, nå har jeg hørt et lesetips på Kulturnytt-podkast og skal straks i gang med Julian Barnes-romanen The Sense of an Ending. Bøker på norsk og å snakke med norske venner om dem får vente litt til.