Dag Solstad
Author of Shyness and Dignity
About the Author
Image credit: Photo: Bjarne Thune
Series
Works by Dag Solstad
Gymnaslærer Pedersens beretning om den store politiske vekkelsen som har hjemsøkt vårt land (1982) 110 copies, 1 review
Kamerat Stalin, eller Familien Nordby : et skuespill om en norsk kommunistfamilie i åra 1945-56 (1975) 3 copies
Svingstol : En samling prosatekster 3 copies
Lise Ögretmeni Pedersen'in Ülkemize Musallat Olan Büyük Siyasi Uyanisa Dair Anlatisi (2020) 2 copies
DROJE DHE DINJITET 1 copy
Georg: Sit du godt? 1 copy
Om Brand av Henrik Ibsen 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1941-07-16
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Norway
- Birthplace
- Sandefjord, Norway
- Places of residence
- Sandefjord, Norway (birth)
Berlin, Germany
Oslo, Norway - Occupations
- novelist
playwright
short-story writer - Awards and honors
- Aschehoug Prize (2004)
Brage Prize (Honorary Award ∙ 1998)
Gyldendal Prize (1996)
Dobloug Prize (1996)
Nordic Council's Literature Prize (1989)
Members
Reviews
Lists
Books I Loved (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 54
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 1,804
- Popularity
- #14,272
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 41
- ISBNs
- 245
- Languages
- 18
- Favorited
- 10
After finishing a lecture on The Wild Duck for bored uninterested senior high school students, he steps over that behavioral line, very publicly shaming himself in front of students and teachers. To most of us, his display of imperfection would not be so ruinous -- the point is, for him, it is catastrophic. Solstad alternates giving us Elias' past history along with the present and as I learned his story and character I was simultaneously sympathetic and also thinking, 'Jeez, dude, get over yourself and live.' Solstad is giving us a person crushed by character, circumstance, choices, unable to overcome and move on. Nothing feel good. I think it is a genuine attempt to explain why some people break, seemingly over nothing much.
I was least drawn in by the portrait of Eva, the abandoned wife of his former best friend who becomes Elias' wife. She is (over and over again) described as an indescribable beauty which just made me want to vomit. Also kick both of them hard. To him, (as she was to husband #1) she is not a person but an object to admire although now and then Elias makes a half-hearted attempt to view her a real person, he can't. In part because of her covetousness for nice things. Which brings us to the underlying critique of capitalist society and blablabla - but I don't buy that Eva is shallow and Elias is doomed because of it. He is who he is. She is a person who can't be judged as she gave up having a rich internal life for two men and her child when she was too young to know any better, although she has, in her forties begun to assert herself (which proves my point).
The ending is apparently open-ended, but to me it is implicit that Elias will act, definitively.
Karl Ove Knausgaard admires Solstad and he is one of the few contemporary Norwegian novelists in translation. And I have barely even mentioned the exegesis of The Wild Duck, the play Elias is teaching that fatal day! Might the best thing in what really is a superb but somehow very maddening novel. ****… (more)