Solstad, Dag 1941-

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Solstad, Dag 1941-

PERSONAL: Born July 16, 1941, in Sandefjord, Norway. Politics:“Marxist-Leninist.”

ADDRESSES: Home— Norway.

CAREER: Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Norwegian Critics Award, 1969, 1992, and 1999; Nordic Literary Prize, 1989, for Roman, 1987; Dagen’s Literature Prize, 1990; Dobloug Prize, 1996; Gyldendal Prize, 1997; Brage Award, 1998.

WRITINGS

Spiraler (short stories; title means “Spirals”), Aschehoug (Oslo, Norway), 1965.

Svingstol (short prose collection; title means “Swivel Chair”), Aschehoug (Oslo, Norway), 1967.

(With Georg Johannesen and Jan Erik Vold) Gruppe 68, Ny norsk diktning, Cappelen (Oslo, Norway), 1968.

(With Einar Økland) Georg: Sit du godt? (play; title means “George, Are You Sitting Comfortably?”), Norsk samlaget (Oslo, Norway), 1968.

Irr! Grønt! (novel; title means “Patina! Green!”), Aschehoug (Oslo, Norway), 1969.

Arild Asnes, 1970 (novel), Aschehoug (Oslo, Norway), 1971.

25. september-plassen (novel; title means “The 25th of September Square”), Aschehoug (Oslo, Norway), 1974.

Kamerat Stalin eller familien Nordby: et skuespill om en norsk kommunistfamilie i åra 1945-56, Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1975.

Svik. Førkrigsàr (novel; title means “Betrayal: Prewar Years”), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1977.

Tilbake til Pelle Erobreren? artikler og intervjuer om arbeiderlitteratur, Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1977.

Krig. 1940 (novel; title means “War: 1940”), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1978.

Brød vog våpen (novel; title means “Bread and Weapons”), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1980.

Artikler om litteratur, Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1981.

Gymnaslaerer Pedersens beretning om den store politiske vekkelsen som har hjemsøkt vårt land (title means “High School Teacher Pedersen’s Account of the Great Political Revival That Has Visited Our Country”), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1982.

Sleng på byen, Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1983.

Forsøk på å beskrive det ugjennonntrengelige (novel; title means “An Attempt to Describe the Impenetrable”), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1984.

Roman 1987 (novel; title means “Novel 1987”), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1987.

Medaljens forside: en roman om Aker (novel), Cappelen (Oslo, Norway), 1990.

Three Essays, Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1991.

Ellevte roman, (novel), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1992.

14 artikler på 12 år, Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1993.

Svingstol og andre tekster (prose and poetry), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1994.

Genanse og verdighet (novel; title means “Shyness and Dignity”), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1994.

Professor Andersens natt (novel; title means “Professor Andersen’s Night”), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1996.

T. Singer (novel), Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 1999.

Artikler, 1993-2004, Oktober (Oslo, Norway), 2004.

Shyness and Dignity, Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Considered one of the leading writers of prose fiction in mid-twentieth-century Norway, Dag Solstad began his career as a rebel against established literary tastes and conventions. His first book, Spiraler, a collection of Kafkaesque short fiction, was, in the opinion of Janet Garton in Facets of European Modernism, “one of the opening chords in what was very quickly to grow into a crescendo of literary and critical activity.” With other young writers of his generation, Solstad associated himself with the progressive journal Profil. In its pages, he published several articles that identified two essential criteria for Norwegian Modernist fiction: the rejection of realism and probability in favor of a search for significance, or “essentialness,” and the importance of myth and dream. Embodying these criteria, the stories in Spiraler focus on alienated individuals who, like many of Kafka’s protagonists, seem to be caught up in a game with unknown rules. As Garton puts it, a Spiraler protagonist “has lost control of what happens, and fears that indeed anything may happen—silent women may suddenly explode, chandeliers may crash down and bury him. The people he meets are not real, but lifeless objects or figments of his own desires and fears.” In one story, a comfortable hotel becomes a menacing prison; in another, the shards of a broken mirror become “bodies” and symbolize a man’s loss of identity.

In his first novel, Irr! Grønt!, Solstad presents a more developed exploration of the individual’s search for autonomy. The book reveals the unmistakable influence of Polish writer Witold Gombrowitz, whose theory of “Form,” or the way in which human behavior is controlled by outside forces, particularly intrigued Solstad. In a critical article, Solstad explained Gombrowitz’s theory: “Those who really identify completely with what they are doing are living a life without insight and in consequence a life of lies. Our only possibility of living a life which is relatively human and dignified lies in maintaining a distance to the way we behave.” The protagonist of Irr! Grønt!, like that in Gombrowitz’s satirical tour-de-force Ferdydurke, strives unsuccessfully to maintain such a distance, to become both observer and controller of his social behavior.

With Arild Asnes, 1970, Solstad began to move away from foreign influences and experimental styles, and toward a more direct political approach. The novel’s central character is a young writer who returns to Oslo after living abroad. Feeling alienated in Norwegian society, he attempts to correct the problems of his culture through participation in Marxist politics. “An important aspect of the story,” observed Jan I. Sjåvik in the Encyclopedia of World Literature, “is how Asnes overcomes his distaste for the simple and direct language of the Marxists and, in the end, becomes able to make it his own.” The novel attracted considerable attention, as did Solstad’s following novel, 25. september-plassen, which explores the betrayal of working class values by Norwegian Labor Party leaders after World War II. This theme received even more extensive development in Solstad’s trilogy, Svik. Førkrigsàr, Krig. 1940, and Brød vog våpen. The trilogy offers a Marxist version of twentieth-century Norwegian history, beginning with the years leading up to World War II and ending with the postwar collapse of socialist ideals. The novels suggest complicity between the Norwegian bourgeoisie and the Nazis, but also, in Sjåvik’s view, offer “a highly readable [story] that contains skillfully drawn portraits of members of the working class and their lives during trying times.”

When it became evident in the 1970s that Norway did not want a Marxist society, many committed socialist writers were prompted to re-think their philosophies. Solstad wrote two books exploring his politics: Gymnaslaerer Pedersens beretning om den store politiske vekkelsen som har hjemsøkt vårt land, which discusses—and appears to retract—his past political engagement, and Forsøk på å beskrive det ugjennonntrengelige, about the impossibility of a decent life under Labor Party policies.

Roman 1987, for which Solstad won the Nordic Literary Prize, is also a political novel. It recounts the experiences of a talented teacher who gives up his career to join the working class. Though this attempt to live as a factory worker ultimately fails, the protagonist insists that his effort still had value. In his later novels, including Genanse og verdighet, Professor Andersens natt, and T. Singer, Solstad continues to probe the problem of individual versus society.

Shyness and Dignity explores themes of identity. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly said of the book: “With sublime restraint and subtle modulation, Solstad conveys an entire age of sorrow and loss.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

BOOKS

Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century, 3rd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Garton, Janet, editor, Facets of European Modernism: Essays in Honour of James McFarland Presented to Him on His 65th Birthday 12 December 1985, University of East Anglia (Norwich, England), 1985.

Landro, Jan H., Jeg er ikke ironisk: samtaler med Dag Solstad, Pax (Oslo, Norway), 2001.