‘Morning and Evening’ by John Fosse  (2000) 107 pages                  Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls

This short novella has only two chapters. One depicts the birth of the Norwegian fisherman Johannes, and the other depicts the death of Johannes as an old man.

“More hot water, Olai.”

First we have his father Olai waiting in the kitchen as the midwife Anna helps Olai’s wife Erna deliver the newborn baby Johannes in the bedroom.

Whenever the author Jon Fosse writes about what one of his characters is thinking inside their head, Fosse doesn’t stop for periods in his writing. Our thoughts pile in on top of each other without stop. That is why they call it a stream of consciousness, the thoughts keep flowing non-stop. But when Fosse writes scenes of characters interacting, Fosse’s writing takes a more traditional form.

As expectant fathers are, especially those from Olai’s time eighty years ago, he is tense about the outcome of the birth.

The birthing is successful, and Olai gets the baby boy he wanted, Johannes. Anna the midwife says “Yes, he has taken his place in life now.”

After this first birth chapter, Fosse, in this short novella, immediately switches to the final day in the life of Johannes.

The old man Johannes wakes up one morning feeling lighter than usual. He walks down to the bay and meets his old fishing partner Peter who has been dead for several years.

“There’s Peter standing right in front of him now, alive, but isn’t Peter dead? didn’t Peter die a long time ago, didn’t he?”

Later, as Johannes is walking back to his house, he passes his youngest daughter Signe on the road.

“Signe, Signe, don’t you see me, he says, and Johannes is seized with deep despair, because Signe cannot see him.

Signe, Signe, Johannes says.”

When Johannes finally has Signes’ attention, Signe responds.

“Signe says

You too, you hung on for so long, you were so tough, but even you had to, she says.

Father, father, father, she says.

Poor old father, Johannes, she says.”

By focusing only on the birth and the death of Johannes and avoiding all the complicated stuff in between, Jon Fosse has created a poignant little novella. It probably would also have worked well as a play, except for the problems of actors portraying a newborn and a dead person.

Grade:    A

‘A Shining’ by Jon Fosse    (2023) – 74 pages                         Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls

In ‘A Shining’, we start out with this guy driving haphazardly.

“I got in this car and drove and when I got somewhere I could turn right or left I turned right, and at the next place I could turn right or left I turned left, and so on. I kept driving like that.”

Of course this aimless guy winds up getting his car stuck in the forest. He gets out of his car and while walking gets lost. In the unending forest, he first meets up with “a shimmering whiteness”, a presence. The presence says “I’m walking with you”. Later he meets his father and his mother in this dark cold forest. Is he imagining his parents?

Soon the reader realizes that we are in death allegory territory here. The language throughout ‘A Shining’ is vague and sketchy and unspecific. I suppose it was meant to be dream-like and haunting.

“My mother was here. My father was here. I saw them right over there, yes, just there, right there. Right over there, yes. Or maybe it was here where I am now that I last saw my parents. Maybe they were standing right here where I am now. That’s possible, it may very well be that it was here. Yes, I almost think it was here. Yes, it was here. Now I am sure of it. It was here. Nowhere else. Not there, bu here. Here’s where. Maybe I can call out and ask where they are.”

After a couple of pages of this sleep-inducing prose, I am less than half awake. This is the longest 74-page book I have ever read.

It does not help that this entire novella is written as one long paragraph with no convenient stopping points. However I did find my own natural stopping points for the several times I fell into a sleepy trance due to the dullness of the prose.

As far as death allegories go, I found this to be an overly simplistic lame one. By keeping his allegory so general and unspecific, Jon Fosse has made sure it applies to no one.

Grade :    C-

 ‘Aliss at the Fire’ by Jon Fosse     (2003) – 107 pages              Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls

They have recently published Jon Fosse’s 800-page, single-sentence, seven-part novel ‘Septology’. They have also recently republished Jon Fosse’s short novella from 2003, ‘Aliss at the Fire’. Lately I have read a lot of good things about this Norwegian fiction writer and playwright. So guess which book of his I decided to read.

In ‘Aliss at the Fire’ it is 2002, and wife Signe is sitting by the fire and looking out the window waiting for her husband Asle to return from his rowboat excursion in the fjords around their home. She has been waiting for over 22 years.

“she thought he was just staying out on the fjord for a long time, she thinks, that he’d still come back, but the hours went by, hour after hour, no she can’t bear to think about it, she thinks, because he’s really just gone, he’s never coming back,”

I am quoting only a partial sentence as the sentences in ‘Aliss at the Fire’ are very long with a multitude of short phrases. Despite being lengthy, the sentences are easy to follow and understand. The entire novella is Signe sitting by the fire, remembering, and for her as well as for us the thoughts in our minds don’t stop with a period but go on and on and on.

Waiting, waiting for Asle to return.

“she never fully understood him, not from the first time she met him, she thinks, and maybe that was why she felt so close to him”

Signe recalls that Asle’s great-uncle, also named Asle, met the same fate on the fjords and that this great-uncle’s father Kristoffer had nearly drowned in the fjords also but was saved by his mother Aliss. The family’s history in the fjords goes way back.

The writing in this short novella is vivid and dramatic, almost incantatory. I could easily visualize actors performing the roles of Signe and Asle, of Aliss and Kristoffer, etc. It did not surprise me to find out that Jon Fosse is one of the most produced living European playwrights. There is an Anton Chekhov-vibe, a Eugene O’Neill-vibe, a Tennessee Williams-vibe to Fosse’s evocative writing.

Someone would do well to translate the best of the plays of Jon Fosse into English so that they can be performed on stage in the United States.

Grade:    A