MURDER STORY ABOUT A NORWEGIAN GUY WITH A MAGIC PENIS, This book defies description.
Or rather, I will fail at describing it, That being said, I will willfully fail at describing this piece of newclassic Norwegian literature by calling it an extremely funny sexcapade of a magical penis.
Yes, a magical penis. You've probably heard about it, They're usually attached to a Gary Stu,
AND YET, Jonas, our magical stud, is also a WIZARD at everything because he naturally gets the full sweeping talents automatically from every woman he manages to seduce.
It would be absolutely absurd and atrocious if it wasn't so eyerollingly funny, And the novel doesn't even have the FEEL of a humorous piece, It reads somewhat dire and emotional because we keep bouncing around an epic framework of his wife's murder and ALL THE MEMORIES of his entire life as vignettes couched within ALL the most minor details that eventually make up an epically cool building of a single character that I admit I grew to love.
Just not because he's so stultifyingly brilliant at anything he puts his hand to,
Indeed, the whole structure of the novel is all kinds of brilliant for real, An endless tirade of moments from his life that doesn't apparently have anything to do with the dire scene in question but EVENTUALLY becomes superimportant.
Multiply these by a bazillion and you've got yourself a prism of a character as seen by so many instants and the effect is FREAKING AMBITIOUS.
All the props, I'm really amazed.
Of course, I was VERY often annoyed as hell about Gary and the magical penis, But oh well, right The annoyance almost always transformed into me muttering, "Ohhhh, pllleeeeaaaaseeeee, . . " and enough eyerolls to make my eyes pop out like I just came out of a Warner Brother's cartoon,
BUT it worked, Strangely enough, it worked. Wow, read it on Manny's recommendation and can only say it was worth the effort, Am now on the second, I like the concept, I like the style, the telling of all the many yarns ismaking my mind spin in a wonderful way.
First I would like to apologize to my copy of this book, greg and kjaerstad for destroying my copy, I know that you have given me advice before on how not to destroy books, but I wanted to go for a walk and I wanted to read and it happened to be raining so.
. . yeah. Not that it affects the quality of the book,
This book doesn't seem to have any defining plot points, It isn't even that it lacks a story but that like the name of the rose the "plot" doesn't seem to actually be relevant to the story.
This book is a bit perverted, Just something important to be aware of, I also believe that I missed something at one point and couldn't figure out when Jonas' mother was taking buddha places whether buddha was an actual person or not.
I don't know what to say about this book basically because of the lack of direction in the actual book.
The stories are touching and interwoven extremely well, Not unlike the watchmen where several divergent things are going on that all seem to matter to each other,
One of the great things about the book is the focus on turtles and cause and effect, The book is about why things happen, and specifically why people react the way they do to especially to death, Manny said I must, so I guess I must! : I really liked this novel a lot though I have to admit that it was quite a hard read for me not only because I read it in its original version, but because of its quite different structure.
The novel, being a biography of the fictional character Jonas Wergeland, tells the story of his life but not in chronologial order, like one might expect, but in aboutlittle stories which are linked only through assosiations.
That can be really confusing from time to time, but over all it really is worth reading, I don't know what to say about this book, I don't know if I should even be rating it yet, I feel like I'm only a third of the way through a novel having finished this, that the next two novels not so much being a trilogy are going to comprise a finished work.
Sort of like a piece of classical music, sure you can listen to just a part of a Wagner opera and enjoy or not enjoy it, but you can't see the whole genius of what is going on by just listening to one movement of the entire work.
I don't want to say much yet about this, partly because I'm planning on campaigning heavily for every who cares about books that I know to read this, and I don't want to give away anything.
As for the style of the book it's
not straight forward, Some other reviewers seem to think that the book should be put into linear order, and the narrative pieces linked in a more reader friendly manner.
Those people are wrong. The author drops literary/musical/cinematic/artistic hints all over the place that help 'guide' the reader to what he is doing with form, and even without the hints having any kind of attentiveness should pull together all the different scenes into a coherent story.
Maybe the back of the book is to blame, This is not a 'detective' story about who killed the guys wife, it's not a murder mystery, it's not a James Patterson book.
I feel like I've already said too much, But I'll add one last thing because I don't think anyone I know will get it, I don't mean that smugly I just think the reference will not mean much.
This book reminds me, formally at least, like the opening seven or eight minutes of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No,, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs before the signing starts, something that still makes the music 'nice' but takes away from the beauty created in the first half of the first movement.
I recommend listening to it as much as I recommend reading this book, Det här är den första fristående boken i trilogin om tvpersonligheten Jonas Wergeland, Till att börja med kan jag säga att jag är jävligt trött på trilogier och romansviter, Ferrante, Knausgård Den där norrmannen Jon Fosse har nu släppt dem första två delarna i en romanserie om sju, "Septologin".
Snark Deppigt att Jonathan Franzen också har fallit till föga Vägskäl, som var jättebra, är tydligen deli en planerad trilogi.
Hur som helst, Förföraren är en postmodern roman, Det betyder att det s k narrativet är lite okonventionellt, Man fattar inte vem berättaren är och berättelsen har en snurrig, ickelinjär struktur,
Jag Kjærstad är kanske en nordisk David Foster Wallace aldrig läst, Förföraren handlar bland annat om tennis och television Två ämnen som ligger DFW varmt om hjärtat va
Jag vet inte hur förtjust jag är i sådana här postmoderna böcker, som består av idel utvikningar.
Eller utvikningar är ett missvisande ord, för det finns ingen huvudsaklig handling, romanen är en räcka små historier, Boken är jävligt lång, för att inte säga mastig långa stycken och nytt kapitel efter två radbrytningar.
Episod på episod ur Jonas Wergelands liv, berättat huxflux, Jag lovar mig själv på sida, när jag är som mest utled på hela grejen, att inte låta mig charmas av ett spännande slut.
Men på upploppet är jag faktiskt rätt så golvad, Inte för att alla historier knyts samman på något perfekt sätt, utan mest för att Kjærstad tror så uppriktigt på det han skriver.
Jag älskar faktiskt böcker som hyllar berättandet,
Sammantaget: boken är en tjock massa av text, som i sina sämsta stunder mer känns som ett informationsflöde än litteratur.
Men det ändå en häftig resa, sitelink tumblr. com/post/
This is a very long book and it is quite amazing to me that any one writer can have this much life experience and still be capable of telling about it.
And keep it interesting. Even if research offered the many historical facts adjusted as fiction and presented as anecdotes I would still find it remarkable that Jan Kjærstad could actually pull it off as well as he did.
It is a long life story of Norwegian TV celebrity Jonas Wergeland told in circles and repeats, ending at a certain point when the weary traveler and star of his show discovers the love of his life flatout on a polar bear rug deadred in their home after being murdered with a Luger.
For an enormous number of pages the narrator relates the many stories connected to the life of Jonas Wergeland and how these events all contributed to the dreadful result we are faced with in the very early pages of the novel.
The mystery the book blurbs promise it to to be never quite measures up, though the revealing and tantalizing anecdotes all add to a quite suspenseful and fulfilling climax.
There is no possible way in which I might explain this novel, I can say however that as I perhaps too eagerly updated my wife these last few days about each extremely wonderful experience I had while reading this novel she finally replied, “It sounds like a Wes Anderson movie.
” So the very best I can do now would be to inform anyone already enamored with the work of screenwriter/filmmaker Wes Anderson that this book is completely up their alley.
Throughout the revolving myriad of countless stories related page after page regarding this fascinating life of Jonas Wergeland one is immediately struck by the eccentricities, curiosities, dangers, and clever results in all his affairs.
Jonas is quite an amazing individual as are the unlikely heroes in every Wes Anderson film, Overthetop is an understatement but it makes the reading experience absurdly fun,
A continuing theme for me throughout this first book of a trilogy is how everything is always connected, Each chapter in one way or another returns to visit a previously told story or adds something or other to an unfinished business.
I failed to count the many chapters but there are numerous anecdotes involved in getting to know this man Jonas and the principle influences that made up his life.
There are several memorable and important characters we meet along the way, By the end of the book almost every question of fate is answered except for the initial mystery of his good wifes death.
I suppose that being the paramount reason for the author making this work a trilogy,
It is quite unfair to focus on the almost undo importance given to Jonass “magic penis” or the phallic symbol his aunt employed as a lifelong artistic obsession.
The truth is that most young men are a bit too interested in that thing between their legs, as are some women perhaps, but there is really nothing to be done about it.
Denying, ridiculing, or shaming only makes it worse, But the interesting development in this book for me regarding this phallic obsession is that Jonas himself never seems overly impressed or even brazenly brags about his manly gift.
Jonas always is the wanted one in a sexual relationship, which to some of us just might be a mutual fantasy not often shared.
He was never the initiator of any of the sexual behaviors in the first place, and for the most part always during the act itself remained on his back on the bottom.
And what seemed both beautiful and amazing to the narrator of this tale was the unlikely fact that this magic organ could fairly accommodate and satisfy any wanting vessel, be it large or small.
But the book was far beyond such a seemingly shallow thing as this magic penis, It was achingly more about a real tingling up his spine that would climb up and into his shoulders, It was about owning and using his imagination, exploring and revealing human nature, and understanding the world we live in a bit outside of the box rather than remaining stubbornly stuck in our given notions of things as they are.
Given that Jan Kjærstad, like me, was also born inadded more of a connection to his writing.
Having the novel placed in the same time period I grew up in offered opportunities galore for me to remember and reflect upon too.
I smiled often and always felt satisfied, This is rare in a book for me, In absence of any good explanation of what actually occurred between the covers for me, the bottom line for what I took away from reading this novel was a poignant reminder that life can be comprehended only as a collection of stories.
In good time I look forward to my continued reading of the remaining two books in this trilogy, .