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3.38 AVERAGE
3.38 AVERAGE
40: Diversions by Hjalmar Söderberg...initially purchased post-Sweden visit in 2018 and now seized for reading as a reminiscent return to those glorious three weeks in preparation to write about it all myself!
I very much enjoyed the ability to picture these walks main character Tomas took through Stockholm...envisioning, for instance, what Scansen is when it's mentioned and referenced, and what he might see in walking there. Additionally I could follow on a map the treks Tomas took, having walked those same routes and seen similar sights when we were there.
When lengthy street names and locations were were specified, such as Kungsträdgården (translated as King's Garden), which is a park and central, popular area filled with outdoor cafes, a popular meeting spot and the location of outdoor concerts, I both remembered being there and told of its importance and also noted, reflected, on how different this text and translation, say, from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, in which specific locations are often mentioned only by their first letter and then an ambiguous finish (for example, K_____, in this case) and seemingly for multiple reasons. I always taught or theorized that the point of that with Dostoevsky was that the events--say of Crime and Punishment--could occur in any city--Everyman's city--a general, rather than specific location where "things like this" could happen to anyone, the point of the story to be the things or events, the circumstances and consequences, rather than the specific story belonging to this singular character in this singular space.
Interestingly enough, the context and action of Söderberg's Diversions is just as easily a story of Everyman, too: Tomas Weber is a young man who is on his way to success, having begun and succeeded in the first steps of schooling as a medical student, having recently passed his first exams yet still having a long way to go toward being employed as a doctor and making a good living. He's also exhausted all gifts of money from his father, a professor, and cannot ask for more. Yet, he'd much prefer to be living an independent life...but more like the adventurous, carefree life, more like his foil in ways, a young man about six or seven years older named Johannes Hall, who has rather appeared from nowhere and lives a life of leisure in many ways, aristocratic, though...classy and pricey, it seems. Weber really cannot keep up.
This is not a new book by any means; this was Söderberg's first novel, published in 1895. Yet it's plot is terrifically contemporary in many ways--a young man seeking satisfaction of purpose and love, wishing to "keep up with the Jones's" but without his own means to do so. The novel chronicles eight or so months in Weber's life, telling us of a handful of others who make an appearance and walk with him a while, serve some particular purpose, but are then sort of discarded and/or leave of their own accord. Weber has to find his own way and purpose, make his own happiness, with nobody else to simply provide that for him.
Either Söderberg was very wise beyond his own time and space OR some of the issues of our lives really have not changed much and/or cyclically return...or some profound combination of the two from a smart writer now long gone (Söderberg died in 1941).
And next I'll read the introduction. I do appreciate that Barrett's 2014 start of this translation includes this note: "(in which spoilers abound after the first five paragraphs)." LOL! I did not read it yet...and now will.
I very much enjoyed the ability to picture these walks main character Tomas took through Stockholm...envisioning, for instance, what Scansen is when it's mentioned and referenced, and what he might see in walking there. Additionally I could follow on a map the treks Tomas took, having walked those same routes and seen similar sights when we were there.
When lengthy street names and locations were were specified, such as Kungsträdgården (translated as King's Garden), which is a park and central, popular area filled with outdoor cafes, a popular meeting spot and the location of outdoor concerts, I both remembered being there and told of its importance and also noted, reflected, on how different this text and translation, say, from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, in which specific locations are often mentioned only by their first letter and then an ambiguous finish (for example, K_____, in this case) and seemingly for multiple reasons. I always taught or theorized that the point of that with Dostoevsky was that the events--say of Crime and Punishment--could occur in any city--Everyman's city--a general, rather than specific location where "things like this" could happen to anyone, the point of the story to be the things or events, the circumstances and consequences, rather than the specific story belonging to this singular character in this singular space.
Interestingly enough, the context and action of Söderberg's Diversions is just as easily a story of Everyman, too: Tomas Weber is a young man who is on his way to success, having begun and succeeded in the first steps of schooling as a medical student, having recently passed his first exams yet still having a long way to go toward being employed as a doctor and making a good living. He's also exhausted all gifts of money from his father, a professor, and cannot ask for more. Yet, he'd much prefer to be living an independent life...but more like the adventurous, carefree life, more like his foil in ways, a young man about six or seven years older named Johannes Hall, who has rather appeared from nowhere and lives a life of leisure in many ways, aristocratic, though...classy and pricey, it seems. Weber really cannot keep up.
This is not a new book by any means; this was Söderberg's first novel, published in 1895. Yet it's plot is terrifically contemporary in many ways--a young man seeking satisfaction of purpose and love, wishing to "keep up with the Jones's" but without his own means to do so. The novel chronicles eight or so months in Weber's life, telling us of a handful of others who make an appearance and walk with him a while, serve some particular purpose, but are then sort of discarded and/or leave of their own accord. Weber has to find his own way and purpose, make his own happiness, with nobody else to simply provide that for him.
Either Söderberg was very wise beyond his own time and space OR some of the issues of our lives really have not changed much and/or cyclically return...or some profound combination of the two from a smart writer now long gone (Söderberg died in 1941).
And next I'll read the introduction. I do appreciate that Barrett's 2014 start of this translation includes this note: "(in which spoilers abound after the first five paragraphs)." LOL! I did not read it yet...and now will.