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"Once a writer is born into a family, the family is finished." Czeslaw Milosz
"I
won't talk about my family." Vigdis Hjorth
"I
object greatly to this taking people's lives and putting them into fiction. And
then a famous author who resents critics for saying that he doesn't make things
up”. Deception, Phillip Roth
A
novel that combines "reality fiction" and metafiction is difficult to
pull off. Hjorth's novel is an absorbing read. It exposes the treachery of Norway's
Social Democratic party's attempt to privatise its postal service and integrate
it fully into its capitalist economic system.
It
has to be said that Long Live the Post Horn is one of the few novels about the
postal service. Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 comes to mind, as does Charles
Bukowski's Post Office, which reviewers of Hjorth's book have ignored.
Hjorth,
born in 1959, is a prolific author of over 20 novels and is well-known in her
own country, although not as renowned abroad. However, her latest book, Is
Mother Dead, is changing that. Long Live the Post Horn! (2012) is the third of
her books translated into English by the superb Charlotte Barslund. The surreal
cover of Long Live the Post Horn! was designed by Rumors. It is beautiful and was
included on a BuzzFeed News list of "the most beautiful book covers of 2020".
All major media publications extensively reviewed the novel.
In
the Los Angeles Review of Books, Makenna Goodman wrote of Long Live the Post
Horn! that it was "a familiar exposition of capital and commodity" and
argued that "Hjorth manages to make it feel urgent in a new way" and
that her writing style was "neat
and direct, even when it becomes circuitous" and concluded that "a
novel like Long Live the Post Horn! does not come around often enough."
The
book's main character is Ellinor, a PR consultant who decides to take on the European
Union [EU] and the Norwegian Social Democratic Party's attempt to privatise the
postal network. While exposing the treachery of the Social Democrats, the novel
glorifies the trade unions, which in the modern period have collaborated with
big business as much as the European Labour Parties.
During
a recent book launch of Hjorth's new book Is Mother dead, she chilling recounts
that one of the leading Social Democratic politicians mentioned in the book was
killed in the July 22, 2011, massacre at a social-democratic summer camp organised
by the youth division of the Labour Party, where 69 people were brutally
killed, by the fascist Anders Breivik.[1]
During
the same meeting, Hjorth was brutally honest about how writing about her family
in her novels had deeply affected her mental health. Hjorth writes about being
in psychoanalysis, "What is interesting, when you go to see an analyst,
you find out how many lies you have in your story about yourself," she
says. "Often, you survive because you have these lies. But still, you have
to get rid of those lies even though you have survived by telling them to
yourself. And that's a painful process. I think that people who have been in psychoanalysis
learn not to lie as much as they did before. So, like we are talking here now,
my mind might be thinking, 'Ah, Vigdis, Is this right? Are you lying now? Is
this how you like to see it? OK, be honest.' So you learn the technique of
communicating with yourself."
Her
novel Will and Testament provoked a lawsuit from her own family, and her sister
then wrote her book in response to Hjorth's. According to Hjorth."Most
families have a kind of official family story," This is how we do
Christmas', and so on. If one member does not share this official, nice story,
there is a big tension. I think I have given a voice to that person who has a
more complex story who is not prepared to be part of it. The family won't
listen to her, and there is a great deal of unpleasantness."
She
suggests a long tradition in Norwegian fiction, especially among female
writers, to expose the dark underbelly of family life. "I think literally
the first sentence that Sigrid Undset, our Nobel prize winner, wrote, in her
first book was 'I have been unfaithful to my husband'," she says, with a
laugh. "So it was always there." The desire for truth-telling
emerges, perhaps, from a particular sameness in Norwegian family life, she
adds. "I think in England for example the difference between rich and poor
has always been big and especially now. And so there are lots of versions of
family life. In Norway I think we are more equal in generally. And I think when
everyone is living the same way, people compare all the time. It makes them
look from behind the curtains at their neighbours."
Hjorth's
honesty has deeply affected her readers as well as the people who translate her
novels, with Charlotte Barslund writing, "When I translate a novel, I am
always conscious of the place where it takes off and the place where it lands.
Will its themes resonate with its new readers who bring their own experiences
to a novel conceived in another country? Since I was commissioned to translate
Is Mother Dead two years ago, I have become increasingly aware of how many
instances of family estrangement exist both among people I know and outside my
circle. Hjorth's thoughtful, honest and razor-sharp analysis of estrangement
has left me with a sense of profound sadness and a desperate plea for compassion,
humility and tolerance. There has to be another way than cutting people out of
your life if they don't share your truth. Is Mother Dead shows us that there
are no winners in the intergenerational battle"?
From
a philosophical standpoint, Hjorth is deeply influenced by the work of Soren
Kierkegaard. The title of Vigdis Hjorth's novel, Long Live the Post Horn!, is
taken from Soren Kierkegaard's work, Repetition, in which the 19th-century
Danish philosopher cites the post horn. The horn was used in Norway to announce
the coming of the mail. It must be said that Kierkegaard is not a healthy
influence on Hjorth's work.
In
a critical review of Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography by Joachim Garff, Tom
Carter writes, "Kierkegaard, whose major works include Fear and Trembling,
Either-Or, and From the Papers of One Still Living, remains a major figure in
philosophy. He is one of the principal authors of some of the most prevalent
philosophical positions in academia today, which include the rejection of
reason, science and the Enlightenment, and, above all, a rejection of the unity
of reason and reality, which is a rejection of the possibility of science.
Kierkegaard saw no correlation between universal essence and individual
existence—between the law-governed processes of the objective world and the
perceptive and cognitive faculties of the individual. Moreover, he denied that
such a correlation was achievable."[2]
Unlike Kierkegaard, Hjorth does see a connection between universal essence and individual existence. This does not make her a socialist or anti-capitalist, but it gives her a deeper insight into the problems millions of workers face worldwide. As a teacher, Hjorth worked with people who had no papers or were refugees, and this empathy with working people imbues her work. Her new book deserves a wide readership, and her previous work should be re-examined.
