Background
Fosse is only the fourth Norwegian to win the highest award in literature, and the first one in almost a century (but there’s totally not a Swedish Norwegian rivalry…goodness no). Born in Southwestern, Norway (in the town of Haugesund…a frequent opponent of our favorite Rosenborg sides), he committed himself to writing after an early accident left him confronting mortality. But while he was always a writer, he almost opted to focus instead on being a rock ‘n’ roll musician. He opted to continue studying and building his authorial voice being called (in different turns) a Modern Ibsen, or a Norwegian Beckett, culminating in the Nobel committee naming him its laureate “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”
Works
God is so far away that no one can say anything about him and that’s why all ideas about God are wrong, and at the same time he is so close that we almost can’t notice him, because he is the foundation in a person, or the abyss, you can call it whatever you want
all good art has this spirit, good pictures, good poems, good music and what makes it good is not the material, not matter, and its not the content the idea, the thought, no, what makes it good is just this unity of matter and form and soul that becomes spirit…prayer and confession and penance all at once…
God is love and love is inconceivable without free will…
Jon Fosse from A New Name (parts VI and VII of the Septology, published 2022 in translation by Damion Searles
Message
Stream of conscious writing isn’t my favorite, and it can be almost impenetrable, but Fosse’s work was surprisingly smooth and comforting. Everything in the work I read A New Name played beautiful with random chance, doubled identities, parallel realities and the indescribable unity of everything. If I can put an overly simplistic button on it, I would say: there is an absurdity to everything we say and think and do, and that absurdity is part of the beauty of life.
Position: #8 Box to Box Midfielder
Fosse’s style is so fluid, so wide ranging, and so impossible to pin down (intentionally so given the stream of conscious style) that the only position that can do him justice is the #8 role, where he has the freedom to push forward or drop back as he pleases. And indeed, he, his work, and everything he offers can be both fulcrum of the attack and anchor of the defense all at the same moment.
Sound off in the comments below to share your thoughts on the newest member of the Nobel FC Family
MacKenzie's Boot Room 