Skorrar på riktigt gör det bara när Elam jämför Lars Norén och Maja Lundgren, och påstår att det varken var skillnad i kön eller maktposition som kom medierna att behandla dem olika, utan litterära kvaliteteter (negativa bestämningar som ”impressioner” och ”narcissism” smygs in om Lundgren) och gradskillnader i hänsynslöshet: ”Det var dessa avslöjanden om andras sexualitet, snarare än författarens kön, som avgjorde vem av de två som skulle sjukförklaras.”
Avvikelsen från den för övrigt konsekventa solidariteten med kvinnliga författarskap är så flagrant att man misstänker att ytterligare ett Elamskt jag kommit till tals, nämligen den före detta kulturchefen på den tidning som engagerade sig hårdast mot ”Myggor och tigrar”, skriver Kristoffer Leandoer i Svenska Dagbladet.
"När Carina Rydbergs roman Den högsta kasten kom ut 1997 lanserades den som en autentisk skildring av författaren, men här valde åtminstone kritikerna att läsa boken som en skönlitterär fiktion. Debatten om hämnd och kränkning kom att föras vid sidan av det litterära samtalet. Att Rydbergs sjukförklarades av vissa debattörer gjorde bara hennes bok ännu mer populär och omtalad.Även Maja Lundgren sjukförklarades efter utgivningen av Myggor och tigrar (2007). Elam menar att romanen bör ses som ren fiktion i stället för som självbiografi, på samma sätt som Lars Noréns En dramatikers dagbok (2008). Den oformlighet som präglar bägge verken är ett uttryck för en medveten estetik som ställer frågan om vad ett jag är i vår tid. Det är en rimlig läsning om man med den förstår att fiktion kan förmedla sanning. Jag håller dock inte med om den lägre värderingen av Lundgren. Myggor och tigrar introducerar ett nytt kvinnligt subjekt, ett självmedvetet jag som trycker på patriarkatets ömmaste punkter", skriver Camilla Hammarström i Aftonbladet.
*gillar*
SvaraRaderaDet gör ju jag med. Och jag ska inte börja om från början igen och tala om varför "fiktion" inte funkar på just M&T.
SvaraRaderaGod helg!
Keep cookin', som sagt var.
SvaraRaderaHi Maja,
SvaraRaderahere that student again, from Germany, Stefania ist my Name.
I dare to bother you with a question (and take advantage that "the author is not dead").
I have read an article written by Torsten Rönnerstrand, Le mythe de Narcisse comme intertexte dans un roman d'autofiction, and I am having problems understanding one of his arguments.
He compares M&T with Inferno and argues, that your article in Aftonbladet "Att våga hålla fast vid sitt förflutna" and the narcissistic aspects in "Majas" (die Erzählerin, not you) charakter have a lot in common. So that you constructed "Maja" like a narcissistic person a la Freud.
What for me does not make sense is:
Rönnerstrand writes: “Un autre parallèle concerne la façon de combiner les notions de “narcisisme” et de “libido”. La distinction établie dans l’article entre “libido du Moi” et “libido d’objekt” fait apparaître de grandes ressemblances avec l’emploi qui en est fait dans Myggor och tigrar, pp. 361, 393”
He refers to this 2 Abschnitte:
"En typ av vendetta som trots allt är relativt ovanlig. Kanske var Cosimo själv ”sugen” på henne som det brukar kallas. Cosimo Di Lauro brukar beskrivas som snygg. Han ser ut som ondskan själv, en bildskön men äcklig typ. Min libido har inte alltid varit vad den borde, och bröderna Giuliano som unga kan jag medge att de var snygga och hade karisma, men Cosimo Di Lauro ser bara psykopatispäckad och drogstinn ut."
and
"Att jag som det banalaste syndrom väljer ut den mest tillknäppte främlingen i hörnet för att avlägsna min destruktiva libido till betryggande avstånd."
Do you have any idea, what he means? I dont see that parallel between the article's jaglibido och objektlibido and "Maja". Your article is pretty anspruchsvoll für Fachfremde :-)
I´ve actually asked the writer of this article to fuck off, I tried to be polite for a while but here´s nothing worse than "nedlåtande välvilja". He later wrote an article that was even worse, comparing me with "Lila" in Ferrantes books, we were both "osäkra men äventyrslystna kvinnor" till skillnad från Tomas Lappalainen with his objective, intellectual view on Naples and the camorra.
SvaraRaderaI haven´t constructed "Maja", it is not autofiction. Sure I analyse myself, I have quite a bit of selfirony as well, readers rarely miss this but some critics do, and that results in embarrassing interpretations like osäker och äventyrlig kvinna. Mafia romanticism is a collective thing. there is quite a bit of krimturism - I don´t know if ypu´ve read Matilda Gustavssons article about Naples, we were meant to go there five years after M&T but I had a sudden posttraumatic backlash, she Went there alone and wrote a quite good article about it.
"Hypocrite lecteur mon semblable mon frère": there´s quite a bit of Baudelaire in M&T as well. I Think it is a book that you walk into. Where was I: self distance. Self irony. Yes. But narcissism? - not so sure.
Mariage, having a family, is a narcissist project as well as any other.
I think Swedish culture today isn´t really a patriarchy but it is still phallocentric and sexist. It became very clear when Åsa Beckman claimed that M&T was part of a trend: the vindictive mistress. My goodness, women are so accustomed to NOT being regarded as individuals in their own right, that even feminists tend to make marginal male characters to huvudpersoner, as if they could´t bare the thought of indepencence in women, reducing it to narcisism or failed mistresses...
You ask as many questions as you like.
RaderaHi Maja,
SvaraRaderabecause I am writing about performative bioggraphism, his atofictional ideas about "un auteur jouissant" are not really helpful. I am following Jon Helt Haarders ideas. Autofiction is not good, because of the obvious "fiction"-Inhalt. "It's me, it's not me"-kind of Play. For Haarder it s about "reduction", not construction. But Haarder talks about "tröskelestetik", and here I am a bit "stuck". The Wirklichkeitseffekt it's really dominating. A "fictional"- Pakt (fictional as in made up) it's not existant (except "samtalet med Farbror Mario, where you specify it). But M&T was published as a novel, and this fact reinforces the tension between "what am I reading? Is it Literature or is it Wirklichkeit?". Haarder compares this tension (tröskel-tillstånd) with the Marina Abramovic Performance, where the public didnt know, what to to.
"Self-irony" as you have just said, suits this kind of estetik. So it is a good hint, thank you!
There is (except Lenemark) very littel useful seconday literature for M&T. I mean that studies the book, not its reception. Elams study is a but unwissenschaftlich and is based on her own assumptions, as on Literaturtheorie.
Thank you for your time.
True, still today most critics prefer to write about the reception. For instance: "And they declared her mad!"
RaderaAs if that was the most interesting part.
I think it´s a symptom of narcissism in the cultural media :-)
As if media is the center of everything. It is not.
But also - M&T is actually a quite complex book, probably more difficult to write about and analyse than, for instance, Knausgaard.
A clear difference in the reception, though, is that the truth of Knaysgaards memories wasn´t so much questioned in Sweden (but they were in Norway).
For myself I didn´t want to call M&T a novel, but it is always better for the Publisher to call it fiction, in a way it´s a way to protect the writer from personal attacks - which would have been dishonest as I myself attack people - and also a way to protect the publishing company from critique. "What the heck, it´s just fiction". No it isn´t…
I haven´t read Harder, and I hadn´t any theories in mind when I started to write M&T. I think I´m a bit old fashioned when it comes to literature that inspires and inspired me - but I would like to mnetion André Bretons Nadja, surrealism (objektiv slump, oplanerade vandringar, t.ex)…
RaderaWork in progress could maybe be a useful concept as well
Self irony - yes, I myself find it a bit hilarious that I wrote the sort of tacky Godfatherinspired interview with farbror Mario, letting him moralize about my doings in the Spanish Quarters, but paradoxally that was - at least I Think it was - a way of "segra över situationen" so to speak.
RaderaThe real farbror Mario is in jail now, by the way.
RaderaThank you very much.
SvaraRaderaI will just cite this information in my uppsats, which is actually better then any other secondary literature.
In a few years maybe they will find the right words or theories for the book and it's narratological structure.
Thank you! :-)
RaderaI could add that some aspects I don´t quite understand myself - for instance, why did I write, in the first chapter, about the bridge in Boscoreale, when I turned to the reader and said that if you find this a bit upptäckresarstyltigt, I will tell you: wait - how come? I didn´t know what was going to happen, so why did I tell the reader to wait? I hadn´t yet decided to open the doors to reality and let it in oredigerat. Or the chapter Drömmar med senarelagda innebörder, I didn´t know what was going to happen. Those are just examples, I mean that my writing, the whole book, is deeply irrational, and thus I imagine it must be difficult to write about it in a rational way.
RaderaJust a few very late thoughts :-)