Backlisted - The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

The Ice Palace or Is-slottet by Tarjei Vesaas is a 20th century classic by one of Norway’s greatest modern writers. First published by Gyldendal in 1963, it went on to win the Nordic Council Literary Prize in 1964. In 1966, it was published in Elizabeth Rokkan’s English translation by Peter Owen who described it as the best novel he ever published. To discuss it we’re joined by friend of the show Max Porter – who’s surprised it isn’t the most famous book in the world – and by another great Norwegian, Karl Ove Knaussgård, who agrees but who also think’s Vessas’s The Birds ( or Fuglane), published six years earlier, might be even better. We discuss both books in their English translations (recently released as Penguin Modern Classics) and Karl Ove treats us to a reading from the beginning of The Ice Palace in Norwegian. This episode also features Andy sharing his pleasure and deep amusement at Bob Dylan’s latest book – The Philosophy of Modern Song (Simon & Schuster) while John is moved by Emergency, Daisy Hildyard’s darkly beautiful novel about a rural Northern childhood overshadowed by presentiments of the coming climate disaster (Fitzcarraldo Editions). Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length) 4:18 - The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan 12:35 - Emergency by Daisy Hildyard 17:16 - The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm * If you'd like to support the show, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us in the depths of rural Norway, sometime in the mid-20th century. It's very cold and dark enough for stars to appear and a hard frost covers the ground. A young girl strides purposefully down the road, wrapped in a thick coat, her forehead all that is left exposed, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. A long-drawn-out crack echoes like a gunshot.

It is the ice moving in the lake below. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of Year of Reading Dangerously, and today we're joined by two guests, one returning and one making their debut. Welcome back, Max Porter, and welcome Carl Oveck, now scarred. Hello, both of you. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Hello. Carlo is a Norwegian writer whose work, including the six-volume sequence My Struggle, the novel A Time for Everything, the Seasons Quartet, and most recently in English, The Morning Star, has been published in 35 languages. He has published 22 books spanning fiction, nonfiction, essays, and biographical portraits of Edvard Munch and Anselm Kiefer.

Early next year, there will be a publication of the paperback of Karloff's collection of essays in the land of the Cyclops. He is joined by Max Porter, who was last with us back in August 2019. Goodness me, that feels like a long time ago. To talk about Ridley Walker in our live recording at the Paul Elliott Festival. Incidentally, if listeners, you've like a long time ago, to talk about Ridley Walker in our live recording at the Paul Elliott's Festival. Incidentally, if listeners, you've never heard that particular episode. It is genuinely one of our favourites, partly because of the readings by Max and by Una McCormack from the remarkable novel Ridley Walker in front of a live audience, totally captivated by what they heard. A really magical, magical moment who i felt it was anyway

max did you feel that felt really special that one yeah i have really warm memories of that time partly because of it was at port elliott wasn't it and that's um a thing of the past can no longer be again so yes i loved it we finished our chat about ridleyley Walker and I went and got a pint of beer and jumped in the estuary. That's how we try and finish every episode of Batlisted. Also, I kept on thinking about that book. Yes. I know we all do. We have all kept on thinking about that book ever since any of us first read it. But it's a nice kind of staging post in my lifelong thinking about that book.

I think we could record another episode on that book, no problem at all, and say an hour's worth of totally different things as well. Different things. Do you know what I mean? It's true. So rich. And before that, Max, you joined us for episode 32, where we talked about the many virtues of the horse's mouth by the Irish writer Joyce Carey.

Max is the author of three novels and his fourth, Shy, will be published by Faber and Faber and Greywolf Press in spring 2023. His work has been translated into 30 languages. But the book we're here to discuss is a 20th century classic, The Ice Palace or Is Slotit by Talje Vessas, one of Norway's greatest modern writers. First published by Guldendal in 1963, it went on to win the Nordic Council Literary Prize in 1964. In 1966, it was published in Elisabeth Rockand's English translation by Peter Owen, who described it as the best novel he ever published. Max Porter agrees. He's surprised it isn't the most famous book in the world. But we'll also be discussing The Birds, or Fuglana, by Vessas,

published six years earlier and which Carlo Vei thinks is even better. Anyway, before we start strapping on our skis and bearskins, Andy, what have you been reading this week? Well, I'm really happy to say that I've been reading the new book by Bob Dylan, which is called The Philosophy of Modern Song. As you know, Bob Dylan is an author who's published several books. He published Tarantula in the early 1970s. That's his novel. And he published Writings and Drawings, which is a collection of his art, his essays and his lyrics. And he published Chronicles, which is one of the best music books ever written.

All right-thinking people would agree with that. And ushered in a wave of music books in its wake. And now he's written this book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, since which time, of course, the publisher Chronicles, he has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Talia Vassos was nominated 50 times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, or thereabouts. Bob Dylan was nominated twice, I think I'm right in saying,

and won on the second occasion, controversially. I reckon this new book came about because some enterprising editor or agent went to Bob's people and said, you know that radio programme you used to do, Theme Time Radio Hour, in which Bob would read links between records that he'd chosen. It was a terrific show.

It ran on the internet. I think there were two, maybe three seasons of it. And I think this book probably came about because somebody said to Dylan's people, you know, I reckon there's a book in that if we just got Bob to put down his thoughts about artists or music or people that he likes. And this is the equivalent. What you get is Dylan writing about all manner of records,

some of which you might expect, such as Detroit City by Bobby Bear or Ball of Confusion by The Temptations, Obscure Stuff Like Doesn't Hurt Anymore by John Trudell, Dean Martin's in here, Blue Moon, It's All in the Game, Tommy Edwards. But I'm going to read to you from early in the book where Bob shares his thoughts about Pump It Up by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. thoughts about Pump It Up by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. And this made me laugh out loud when I was walking through the city in which I'm currently living last week, because on the audiobook version of The Philosophy of Modern Song, Dylan has recorded parts of it seemingly in an echoing corridor outside a dressing room while out on the road somewhere. And then one of a number of celebrity readers takes over from Bob.

So you start by listening to Bob. Give it to me, 80-year-old Bob, a bit like that. And then Pump It Up, the celebrity who takes over the audiobook juices from him is Helen Mirren, which is quite a jarring contrast. But this is also wonderful, this description of Pump It Up. which is quite a jarring contrast. But this is also wonderful, this description of Pump It Up. I want you to imagine the first section I read. I'm just going to say Bob Dylan.

I won't do the voice. Bob Dylan, and then I'm going to say it goes to Helen Mirren after that. Pump It Up, Elvis Costello, originally released on the album This Year's Model, Radar, 1978, written by Elvis Costello. And now here's what Bob Dylan has to say. This song speaks new speak. It's the song you sing when you've reached the boiling point. Tense and uneasy, comes with a discount, with a lot of giveaway stuff. And you're going to extend that stuff till it ruptures and splits into a million pieces.

You never look back, you look forward. You've had a classical education and some on-the-job training. You've learned to look into every loathsome, nauseating face and expect nothing. You live in a world of romance and rubble and you roam the streets at all hours of the night. You've acquired things and brought people the goods. This song is brainwashed and comes to you with a low-down, dirty look, exaggerates and amplifies itself until you can flesh it out, and it suits your mood. This song has a lot of defects, but it knows how to conceal them all. Okay, so that's what Dylan says about it. And now here's what Helen Mirren says about it. Elvis is one of those guys whose fans fall somewhere between the two poles of passion

and precision. There are people who tick off the boxes of his life with the same obsession of someone completing a train schedule, while others don't know anything beyond the fact that he sings a song that accompanied a particularly devastating breakup. Very seldom a cheery wedding song, but plenty of breakup songs. Knowing a singer's life story doesn't particularly help your understanding of a song. Frank Sinatra's feelings over Ava Gardner allegedly inform I'm a fool to want you, but that's just trivia. It's what a song makes you feel about your own life that's important. Elvis Costello and the Attractions were a better band than any of their contemporaries. Light years better. Elvis himself was a unique figure.

Horn-rimmed glasses, quirky, pigeon-toed and intense. The only singer-guitarist in the band. You couldn't say that he didn't remind you of Buddy Holly, the Buddy stereotype, at least on the surface. Elvis had Harold Lloyd in his DNA as well. At the point of Pump It Up, he'd obviously been listening to Springsteen too much, but he also had a heavy dose of subterranean homesick blues. Pump It Up is a quasi-stop-time tune with powerful rhetoric and with all this Elvis exuded nothing but high-level belligerence. He was belligerent in every way, even down to the look of his eyes. A typical Englishman or Irishman, didn't matter how much squalor he was a-living in, always appeared in a suit and tie. Back then, English people appeared in suits and ties,

no matter how poor they were. With this manner of dress, every Englishman was equal. Unlike in the States, where people wore blue jeans and work boots and any type of attire, projecting conspicuous inequality. The Brits, if nothing else, had dignity and pride and they didn't dress like bums. Money or no money, the dress code equalised one and all in old Britain. Pump it up is intense and as well-groomed as can be, with tender hooks and dirty looks, heaven-sent propaganda and slander that you wouldn't understand. Torture her and talk to her. Bought for her. Temperature was a rhyming scheme long before Biggie Smalls or Jay-Z. Submission and transmission. Pressure pin and other sin just rattled through this song. It's relentless, as all his songs from this period are. Trouble is,

he exhausted people. Too much in his songs for anybody to actually land on. Too many thoughts. in his songs for anybody to actually land on. Too many thoughts, way too wordy, too many ideas that just bang up against themselves. Here, however, it's all compacted into one long song. Elvis is hard-edged with that belligerence that somehow he is able to streamline into his work. The songs are at top speed and this is among his very best. In time, Elvis would prove he had a gigantic musical soul, too big for this type of aggressive music to contain. He went all over the place and it was hard for an audience to get a fix on him. From here on, he went to play chamber music,

write songs with Burt Bacharach, do country records, cover records, soul records, ballet and orchestral music. When you are writing songs with Burt Bacharach, you obviously don't give a fuck what people think. Elvis flows through all kinds of genres like they are not even there and Pump It Up is what gives him a license to do all these things. Who doesn't want to run from this podcast straight to their copy of this year's model and play,

pump it up, right? Well, it's so, this book is so enjoyable. And as you may have noted from Elvis, from Bob's thoughts on Elvis Costello, Dylan is nothing if not king of the backhanded compliment.

So, so I really, I really, really enjoy this book. With your eyes or with your ears, it's called The Philosophy of Modern Song. It's published by Simon & Schuster and it costs £35. John, what have you been reading this week?

I've been reading Emergency by Daisy Hildyard. It's her second novel, her first, Hunters in the Snow. Got lots of terrific reviews. And then she wrote a nonfiction book. I keep worrying away, as listeners to this podcast will know, keep worrying away at books about the countryside, the pastoral novel. Ever since I think Salman Rushdie told me that it was a moribund dead form, I've always felt the need to go out and try and seek out pastoral novels that aren't. I spoke about All Am on the last episode, PJ Harvey's remarkable verse novel set in and around a Dorset village. Emergency is set in a Yorkshire village in the 1990s. The woman, the narrator, the unnamed narrator,

is looking back on her childhood. And in very similar ways, it's kind of playing around in woods and quarries near her home, observing the difficulties of adult life while also closely observing the movements of nature. And also, I suppose, the emergency in the title is all of this lovely pastoral stuff is happening in a world that's slowly choking to death and dying, and pesticides and plastics, the stuff of late 20th century childhood,

are part of the problem. Somehow, Daisy Hildyard manages in her episodic way to make a really beautiful and kind of, I wouldn't call it a page turning novel, but I read it very quickly and found it completely captivating. Certainly if you're a fan of Daisy Johnson's Fen or Fiona Moseley's Elmet or Sarah Hall's short stories or, dare I say it, Max Porter's Lanny, you're going to find this book attractive and rewarding. Anyway, the kestrel is hovering close to the mole. And she looks at the mole.

I could see him intimately now. His features were precise and miniature, acorn cup ears, thread-fine whiskers radiating in all directions, and tiny hand-shaped feet. His whole body was vibrating violently. He seemed unable to move. The kestrel had paused again, and my gaze moved up and down, drawing a direct line between them, like a lift between two floors of a building. I felt a sense of love arise inside me, as huge and widespread as the vole was small and specific, and it occurred to me that I could rescue him. I knew what this would mean because I'd done it before.

When the huge black rabbit who lived in a run in our garden had a nest full of babies, my parents had told me not to touch them. I sat outside the hutch and waited for them to be revealed when their mother rolled aside tiny pink squirming things which were in the process of becoming, from day to day, delicate versions of their parents. When they were a week or so old, skin still visible through a sheen of black fur, My mother explained why I wasn't to touch them. The rabbit would eat her babies if they had a strange smell on them. I held my hands in front of my face, but they didn't smell like anything except faintly soap.

Anyway, she takes, of course, one of the little rabbit pups, and then, of course, she returns it. The following day, I went to see the rabbits, and the mother was alone in her run. She was truly a big rabbit. I watched her for a while. She seemed calm, nibbling dandelion leaves, and I felt a sense of affinity with her

because we had done it together, destroyed the babies with our colossal care. Even today she seems to me very human in the way her principles forced her to self-destruct and in the scale of her appetite which far exceeded what she needed to survive, those dandelion leaves. I don't mean that the rabbit was much like a person more that principles and will amongst most other qualities memory love are not exclusively human traits by any reasonable definition all creatures have character really great little book um it was weird reading that in the same week that i was reading this us because there's definite sense of the weird allegorical relationship that we have perhaps

with nature or that nature has with us. Okay, so what's the name of the book? That is Emergency by Daisy Hildyard, published by the ever-excellent Fitzgeraldo Editions. Great. Back to Torre Vesas and the Ice Palace. It was Nicky Birch, our producer, who first alerted us to this short but brilliant novel in our summer reading episode back in 2020.

It's the story of Sis and Un, two 11-year-old girls. Sis is popular and outgoing, and Un more reserved, an orphan, and newly arrived at the village school. They are powerfully and mysteriously drawn to each other. Shocked by the intensity of her feeling after Sis visits her at her auntie's house, Un decides she will skip school the next day to visit the waterfall on the river that the other children have mentioned. The weather has been so cold it's frozen the waterfall into a huge and complex pillar of ice, alluring and terrifying in equal measure. The fallout from that decision fills the book's final 80 pages. Written in a deceptively simple language, it explores love, guilt, sexual awakening, and our complex relationship with nature in a way that is

profoundly original and memorable. How simple this novel is, wrote Doris Lessing, how subtle, how strong, how unlike any other. It is unique, it is unforgettable, it is extraordinary. And these are all qualities the Ice Palace shared with another novel, The Birds, which was first published in 1957. The story of Mattis, a man in his late 30s who lives with his older sister. Despite all because of his learning difficulties, he enjoys an intense relationship with the natural world and the ability to pose the deepest of philosophical questions. It's another quietly devastating story about loneliness and the difficulty we have making ourselves understood. Carl Ove has called it the best Norwegian novel ever and said it would have

been counted among the great classics from the last century if it had been written in one of the major languages. And as we have Carl Ove here to develop that thought, let me ask you, we would normally ask you, when did you first encounter the work of Thierry Vessas? But in a sense, I suppose what I would like to know is both that and could you just put Vessas into context for English-speaking readers in terms of his importance in terms of modern Norwegian literature? Yeah.

I can't say when I first heard about Vesos or learned about him at all, because he's always there. Yeah, he's taught at schools, and he's kind of one of the most important writers. So he's in the canon. He's everywhere, really. So I just tried to write an essay about the birds for an anthology. And it was almost impossible because everyone knows everything.

So there's nothing to say about it, really. But then I reread both The Ice Palace and The Birds, and I found it that didn't really matter. It was all about presence, all about being in the book. It's all about being there, which especially The Birds 2 is about somehow. Max, when did you first become aware of either Versace or the Ice Palace specifically? I think I might have read The Birds

first. I had a crush on the catalogue of Peter Owen. I'd read Silence by Shusako Endo, which I can recommend the backlisted podcast episode on.

With Sarah Perry. With Sarah Perry, which is a great one. And also The Year of the Hare by Artur Pasolino. And both had had rather a profound effect on me, as well as some books, obviously, by Herman Hesse and Paul Bowles. And I just thought, well, this publisher is perhaps the best publisher of translated literature. I can't imagine that I would have another hit with this publisher. And then I read The Ice Palace, and I think it's certainly one of my very favorite books.

But my experience of reading it was an almost spiritual revelation, really. But that was how I came to it. Yeah, my love of Peter Owens. And then someone who worked at Peter Owen heard that I was enjoying all these books and then came and gave me all the Peter Owen books, which started a kind of great binge of, you know, some of the greatest writers of all time.

I think really. Peter Owen binge. That's a, that's a thing. Yeah. That sounds like a thing. Well, I told John in a message that when I was reading The Birds this week,

I opened it up and my copy of The Birds is actually signed by Versace to Peter Owen. To Peter Owen? They've given away the file copy. Oh, no. Amazing. Signed July 68 with greetings for Peter. Wow. That is extraordinary. So I think I should probably give it back to Peter. Wow. That is extraordinary.

So I think I should probably give it back to them. It probably belongs in their archive. Will you, though? You have to know, I guess. You fool, Max. You fool. You damn fool. From what I can gather, Ice Palace was the first of,

I don't know whether V versas has been published in in english any of his previous now he wrote 25 novels and all this i think uh carlo v was i mean he was yeah so he's much more prolific writer than we would i mean these are the two that get talked about most in the in um in the english language world. What kind of maniac would write that many books, Carl? I don't understand. He lived a long life. Before I come back to you, Carl, I'd like to ask Max, you glancingly referred to a spiritual experience there of reading The Ice Palace, right, the first time?

Yeah. Where is the spiritual element of the novel well for me it is in the in the broader kind of versus um universe the relationship between human beings in the natural world but particularly in this book the way that that is set against a sort of devastatingly insightful portrayal of childhood unease and affection and nameless uh emotional currents passing between different human beings almost almost like a spiritual charge be it erotic or political or whatever it is he does that almost better than any writer i have ever come across to the point where it's as if the book itself has an aura beyond its subject to do with the sort of potency of its truth I think

particularly about the relationship between the children and and the adult and then in the natural world it it gets into your skin in in the way um closer to the condition of music or or visual art um and I think it was one of the first times i'd experienced that as a reader at that time in my life i was as as we all are all the time and searching for work that that for the truth for for fight for work that kind of goes beyond the what i felt to be the kind of mannerisms of the social realist novel or whatever it was it kind of cut through what i deemed to be a certain artificiality at work um and because perhaps of what you've said you've

mentioned as the kind of allegorical features of his work or partly because of the sheer spaced out um the extraordinary aesthetic that he that he achieves uh as well as the kind of brutal honesty of his portrayal of mental processes and social processes. It was revelatory to me, as, you know, as Talis was when I first heard it or something. I'm sort of reaching around for comparisons, but there wasn't really any when I first read it. I thought I had found a higher form. comparisons, but there wasn't really any when I first read it. I thought I had found a higher form. He's the sort of writer that you might apply this to a filmmaker or a musician or a chef who is clearly operating to a well-worked-out aesthetic, but you don't know what it is. And part of the appeal as a reader is trying to puzzle this out from the,

infer it from the clues contained in the writing there's a real steady sense of this i am telling you this because this is so important to how i see the world and how i create and i always find that very seductive actually actually. I find that that makes me want to sink into the work. And I'd never read him before we did for this. And I don't want to, you know, copy you, Max, and say it was spiritual, but it was certainly incredibly stimulating to think, oh, great, i don't know

what the rules of this are that's so appealing to me it's very interesting also you mentioned that his his worldview and his way of looking at things appears in two girls that are 11 in one book and in an idiot in another so it's it's two places in in society where normally nothing of value is going on you know it's it's it's like it's beyond what's important and and there there it happens which i think is interesting in itself and a big part of his genius really to go there and also that seems that strikes me also to to have something in common with the realm of the spiritual and as much as the the more difficult questions of uh forgiveness uh tolerance taboo these are these are questions that are in the darker corners of of the dogma of

of the church or the moral preachings of the religious leaders in there and and as you say he he just goes straight to them with a kind of unfussiness with a kind of representational clarity that is it is so rare that it strikes one as profound um and also there's no there's no trickery there's no showmanship about it it's utterly direct um these books strike me as incredibly honestly built there's no sort of theatrical strategies at work really beyond beyond the sort of depth of their investigation and i find that incredibly impactful as a reader don't you also find it i i mean i i think of how many ways that story of a new child at school could be told usually you would expect her to be bullied every point it seems to me he kind of well and he's that's a really great way of describing that

you you're not sure what rules he's adhering to but you know there is a set of rules yes but you that's the point yeah but at every point it seems to me he undercuts the kind of the lazy narrative expectation of what this oh this is a coming of age novel oh this is this is about a girl's girls in school and kids arguing that the kids don't actually bully and the way he paints that relationship between the two girls seems to me to be i mean you know it's a book you have to read and reread to get the full marrow of meaning, I think. Yeah. I'd like to ask Kolov a very difficult question.

Oh, no. Which is, I'm so sorry, but I assume you haven't read the translations that we've read. So we're reading him in English. Yeah. And I wonder what what the distinguishing traits of his prose are in norwegian it's very simple and very very melodic and and very i think the comparison to music is is very relevant and there is an a thing with versus is that he writes in new Norwegian.

We don't have to go into that, but it's the same as Jon Fosse, basically. And it's unthinkable. Jon Fosse is unthinkable without Thayer Versus. Fosse's first book is like a continuation of Versus somehow. And then he develops in his own. But the simplicity is key. And the musicality as well. It's funny that the simplicity, I think, is there in the translations.

Yeah. The musicality, I think, is much harder for a translator to capture. I don't know, John, what you think. I don't speak Norwegian, but I love the sound of it and I love the kind of the rhythm of it. We'll probably read a couple of extracts. I don't think you'll get the full effect of that in English because English is such a mongrel language. But I think the idea of this being, you know, you were saying talus,

you know, kind of it's polyphonic music. It's not harmony. You've got two different strains that are running at the same time. The theme of un and then the theme of cis in one, rather like the theme of mattis in the birds and the theme of a sister. They're not harmonies, but they are polyphonic, spatial, three-dimensional. They feel like the spaces in them are really important. Yeah.

Well, listen, why don't we show, not tell? Max, could you read us a little bit from one of the English translations? And then I might ask Karl Ove to give us his reaction to whether he feels it's capturing the sense of the Norwegian original. Yeah. I had forgotten, and perhaps I don't know how it is for you, Carl, having not read these for some time and returning to them now,

but I had forgotten some of the more audacious stylistic flourishes at work in these books, particularly in The Birds, with what's happening in Mattis' mind and how he formulates that as a sort of, almost like a sort of prophetic, radical visionary. You know, he has these sort of visionary, you know, Hildegard of Wingen style blasts occur in his mind. And I had forgotten that in the texture of these books.

Anyway, this is the Ice Palace. They had finished their walk. It was black night. Aunty had gone the rounds. They came to Sis's house first. A single lamp shone waiting for her. There was no sound. Well, here we are. And I'd like to say, began Aunty, but Sis said quickly, no, I'll see you home. Oh no, don't bother, I'm not afraid of the dark. I'm sure you're not, but may I? Yes, of course you may. They set off once more. The sleeping house with the waiting lamp wheeled away, the road was deserted. They began to feel a little tired. I'm not cold, not a bit, said Aunty, and Sis ventured

to ask, what will you do in the place where you're going to live? She did not know where it was, it had not been mentioned. Aunty was used to seeing to everything on her own. Oh, I shall have to busy myself with something or other. I'll find something, she said. I've sold the house too, you know. Don't worry about me for an instant, Sis. No.

I'm a worthless creature, said Aunty shortly afterwards when they were nearing her house, nearing the end of the evening. She began again, worthless. The people here have done everything for me during this misfortune and now I'm going like this when I ought to take my leave properly. What do you think, sis? she asked when sis made no reply. I don't know what to say and so I've been thinking that since you've been with me this evening they'll get to know that I went the rounds and that I did it as a way of thanking them. There's that too, I've

counted on your telling them about it and I'd be grateful if you would, though I know that only a worthless creature would think things out like that. And now they would have to say goodbye. would think things out like that. And now they would have to say goodbye. They were floating, almost at one with the darkness, reflecting no light. Their footsteps could not be heard, but their breathing could, and perhaps the heart. They mingled with other, almost inaudible, nocturnal stirrings, like a small vibration in long wires. Afraid of the dark? No. Bright woodwind players had appeared and were walking along the sides of the road.

Brilliant. Bright woodwind players had appeared. I know. And this, it has to be said, this is the moment in the book you think, previously at the beginning of the book when she's walking the streets, she is scared of the dark. She confesses she's scared of the dark, sis.

And she won't look at the sides of the roads because there are, she hears voices, sinister voices from the sides of the roads. And somehow now by this point in the narrative, of voices from the sides of the road and somehow now by this point in the narrative they've become kind of woodwind uh melodious woodwind it's it's it's an astonishing it's an astonishing trick trick up the sleeve of a writer to do that it reminded me um well it it did a weird mental trick to me this time carlo which is that it reminded me of Giotto, who I've been thinking about for a project, which in turn reminded me of your book on angels.

Your second book into English, maybe, your first. But I felt that there was this use, as you said, John, of repetition and mirroring, that you have this sense of her alone in the dark and you suddenly have this sense of her with a potentially infinite number of consciousnesses, human and non-human, around her, which is terrifying and beautiful.

It's an amazing piece. Carlo, what is this like for you to hear English speakers discuss the rhythms, textures and themes of one of Norway's greatest writers. Does this overlap with how you would feel about it or is the Venn diagram of the circle separate? No, it's absolutely wonderful to hear and that it's actually happening.

I think every post I've met who actually have read him is a fan or really loves it. But there is something very nice about it, because if you grew up in Norway, you're used to him. You know, you can wear writers out. You know too much of them. But to discover him, I wish I could read him for the first time again. But still, I do take pleasure in reading him again and again, which I actually do. much of them but to discover him i wish i could read him for the first time again but but still i do take pleasure in reading him again and again which i actually actually do and did did the

translation you just heard did it feel right yeah yeah good yeah great who is that who is the translator we should give them credit where credit where it's due a bit rock and for that for the ice palace yeah it's just done a Rockhand for the Ice Palace. Yeah, she's done a really good job. Carlo, you talked about how he's articulating, you know, outsider figures or people who were not paid attention to. Yeah. Did he see himself in those terms?

Yeah, I think very much so. Right. He grew up in a farm. I think he was born in 1898 or something. And he was expected to take over the farm. And there was no way he couldn't do it. But still, his urge to write was so strong that he actually pulled out and became a writer, which probably was the hardest thing he could be at that time.

And then he felt bad about that throughout his life. So if you see interviews with him, he's talking about feeling guilt about doing nothing, just sitting looking, you have to defend it. It really is a problem for him. And then you see the places he goes are where nothing is produced. It's one of the key conflicts in the bird is that he's not he's not producing he's not functioning at all so i think he somehow felt like an like yeah i probably felt like matt is in in the bird somehow i think and

he was also a very silent man didn't speak almost at all if you send an interview with him it could take like two minutes before he replies and he will say yes you know it's like that kind of aura he has let's get him on this podcast well you got me yeah there is a recording of him where he compares himself. He said the character he most identifies with, I say this, I'm going at second hand, that he most identified with was Mattis, who is, as we say, would be classed as having learning difficulties, or on the autistic spectrum now probably,

but as Matt says, also has that kind of it is that sort of holy fool character i guess that he fulfills max he reminds me in some ways not others i'm going to say in some ways not others but he reminds me of a writer that you max porter record you were the first person to recommend I read, which is Haldor Laxness from Iceland. There's a kind of, I mean, Laxness is more sort of elaborate and Rococo in style. Social, yeah. And indeed socialistic for Sass.

But nevertheless, there is a kind of sense in the biography of sort of the audacity of becoming a writer in that era in a relatively small country is is something that these two authors have in common i think that's very true and um and and also the the finnish writer i mentioned before um pasolino. Maybe it's a modernist preoccupation, apocalyptic modernism perhaps as well. You would find it perhaps in poetry from the UK at that time.

But they are all, I think, it's funny what Carlo was saying about this sense of this guilt about being a writer or so, but maybe it's also this sense of the world storm occurring elsewhere and you not responding adequately to it not being earning enough money or or being strong enough or looking after doing your duty yes for the

icelandic sheep farmer is in a way the same as the the 11 year old girl in the playground this sense of the expectation of others and how that fractures not only yourself but also ultimately your language and your ability to be a voice so they have this deep like terror in these books are still quiet meditative things but within them is this sort of roaring concern worry yeah i mean it seems to me there's a delightful constant shying away from the obvious you know in another novel one would be more obviously bullied yeah at school or sis would have a more difficult time with her family because this is what i meant earlier when i said the rules those rules don't apply here you know i i find that scene near the beginning of the ice palace incredibly both meaningful and

unknowable where the two girls meet in the room i i i can't i can't account for it you know there's something uncanny about it. You have a decision, you. No. Then you'll hear it well. That was the bit I was thinking of reading, the mirror scene, because you're talking about patterning, right? Eyes recur throughout the Ice Palace,

including very memorably at the kind of the peak scene when she's, when Boone is inside the Ice Palace. But this is the bit when they're looking at each other, simultaneously looking at each other in the mirror, sitting and looking into a mirror. Four eyes full of gleams and radiance beneath their lashes, filling the looking glass. Questions shooting out and then hiding again.

I don't know. Gleams and radiance gleaming from you to me, from me to you and from me to you, and from me to you alone, into the mirror and out again. And never an answer about what this is, never an explanation. Those pouting red lips of yours, no, they're mine. How alike. Hair done in the same way, and gleams and radiance. It's ourselves. We can do nothing about it. It's as if it comes from another world. The picture begins to waver, flows out to the edges, collects itself. No, it doesn't. It's a mouth smiling. A mouth from another world. No, it isn't a mouth it isn't a smile nobody knows what it is it's only

eyelashes open wide above gleams and radiance they let the mirror fall looked at each other with flushed faces stunned they shone towards each other were one with each other. It was an incredible moment. It's, yeah. Well, maybe, you know, Carlo, when in between you reading this before and you reading it now, what is your memory of that scene in the bedroom? What do you think of it as a scene in the novel between two characters it is the central scene it is what the start of the book leads up to because when um is there at school it's sis is leading she's a leader she's she's the one who take care of the others and is just outside and she refuses to go in there and if she had gone in there she would have been also under that in that play and she refuses to play and when they go when i want to meet she uh she doesn't want to go to to sis she wanted to take her home she has something

there is some sort of equality that has to be built up between them but it's very ambivalent too and it's it's it's incredibly how he managed to describe those kind of that relation between them without mentioning it or without you know naming it and there is so much tension between them and you don't know what the tension is but it is it is incredibly well done and then this this merge of those two in one and then the split up and then then she lives with her in the months after. And it's like it's – no, I don't know what it is or where it takes me, but it's just – yeah, that scene is for me kind of the centre of the book, as important as the ice palace in itself

the way that scene echoes into the ice palace after the last yeah the thing yeah because when i reread it this time which would be my fourth read of the book i i thought well this time i'll understand something in that scene that scene that makes explicable what follows. I'll glean something between them. Maybe it's an erotic thing. Maybe it's something to do with the game they play. Maybe there's more there that I miss. And obviously the fact of it not being there is what is so precisely brilliant

about his evocation of childhood games and childhood yeah yeah language i i it makes me feel horribly lonely and excited in the way i i remember feeling as a child um pre-linguistic no there's no vocabulary for it exactly which is a hell of a trick gleams and radiance it's the it's light isn't it the light the light in this book is just you know know, the light of, as you say, like the light of the palace and then the light of the Thor when it comes. And when someone's attention falls upon you and you crave it as a child and then you realise that it may be freighted with all sorts of terrible dangers as well. And it's like a nausea. It's a wobbly feeling in your belly.

To achieve that without actually saying anything is magnificent. And then afterwards, when Un disappears, they desperately want to know what did she tell you? Because she told her something. What was that? What did she tell you? And that's kind of a demand from the outer world. And of course she can't.

She knows it. And that's very much what Versus is about. There's no way to tell it, but you know it. And it's the same in the birds. It's the same conflict. He knows something, but he can't tell it. And you as a reader, you know it. It's that conflict with the inner and the outer.

And he's so incredibly good in capturing the inner without naming it or without anything. It's just floating around there, but you somehow get it. But I can't tell you what she meant to say either. I mean, it's ironic that the character of the two books that spends most time thinking in some some ways and and trying to have theories is mattis who is you know the the one who is supposedly um whose brain is not functioning normally i mean i love his why are things the way they are is his big insight is still that is the basis of all philosophy all theorizing about the universe

and everything amazing i've never read a writer who is less corny than versus and everything feels there's a rightness to it even when you're groping for the understanding of it as you are in that scene with them sitting on the bed, it's so subtle. Carl Ove, to help us, there's a contextual thing I'd like to know. Obviously, we said earlier in the episode, you rate the birds very highly. We don't get to read all of his works in English

because they haven't all been translated into English, right? Is he one of those writers with one or two great books and then a following train of reasonably good books? Or is he, in fact, incredibly consistent? And there are many more delights that we have yet to discover. There are many more delights. But he started out as a kind of very traditional, very realistic writer with a kind of romantic touch. But it's very different and very gradually developed from there.

And then he was a lot in Europe. He loved absurd theater and was very much influenced by modernism. And wrote and Kafka, of course, is also very important to him, and wrote, his novel started to be more allegorically, but in the same kind of setting. And then it's The Birds, and then it's The Ice Palace, which is highlights.

But all of those books, his later period, are somehow in one way or another great but very different could be much more political or or much more oriented to to the world war or and in these two books and and in his poetry kind of finds this balance between his his his first period and modernism and blends it into his own almost it's hard to see i find it hard to read other influences in his writing he's very much in his own writer i think and he found that in those two books i think but also yeah some others as well these are his masterpieces but it's great pleasure to read his early work too it's good but it's not

it's not at that level i think yeah okay interesting can i ask a sort of personal writer writer to write a question do you do you warm to him as a person as someone as a norwegian writer who has had in huge international acclaim do you do you do you sympathize with him is there is there a slightly you know in the kind of vertical axis sometimes there is warmth sometimes there is chilliness is there a warmth between you as as writers in your mind between me and uh and him if there is a warmth for me towards him the kind of right the kind of person he was the way he dealt with success the way he the way he stayed to himself etc yeah very much so he managed to protect his writing and he was uh he was um you know in in his late life people came in the 60s

the generation writers in the 60s that would be like beat poets or they they admired him started to admire him and kind of rediscovered him almost and they came and he guess you would see chilled out or he was he was chilled out yeah he was yeah andy should we play that clip of his daughter talking about him about writing and it's quite short and it would be lovely to hear a bit of norwegian it was especially in the morning that he wrote he was an an early bird. He worked best before anyone else had got up in the morning. And that's one of the memories I have from many mornings. Because me and

my brother's bedroom lay on the inside of his writing room. So sometimes when I woke up very early, I could hear the hum of the oven in his room. And it was very cold. The oven made a humming sound and he sat and mumbled when he wrote. And that was the best sound I could wake up to. We often fell asleep to the sound of him writing on the machine. With two fingers. With two fingers. Tap, tap, tap. That was a good song. Tap, tap, tap.

I got that. I love that I can imagine many children to write this who doesn't have that experience with their fathers let's get Max's children in right now oh god the sounds of him cussing

tap scratch click of his lighter there's a sense I have about him a slightly Beckett sense about him that kind of very private very precise about his work knows what he wants to do

but none of the ego or the flouncing yeah I think that's true the ego thing is yeah I think that's true and it's there in the writing too as well he's the opposite of a show off exactly

I think also there is maybe Beckett is a lovely comparison as well because there is the work is dealt with the utmost seriousness, but there is always a twinkle, and it's the twinkle that I think is so humane in this work, that little bit of humour or wit, even when terrible things happen. I mean, at the end of of the birds it's done with

tremendous lightness of touch funny fussy little details that warm it to us yeah it's not so much taking yourself seriously it's taking the work so seriously that almost in a sort of sacred sphere that you are still allowed to make jokes in the pulpit. And we're going to have to wrap up in a minute, but I'm very keen, Karl Ove, that we hear some of Versace's prose in the Norwegian, so we can hear the musicality of it. No pressure, no pressure, but we would love to hear that.

From either book, yeah. Yeah. So how much do you want me to read? I can read from the opening of of just a tiny bit of the opening of the ice palace maybe yeah that would be wonderful the first couple of paragraphs of the ice palace that would be wonderful En ung hvit panne som bårer seg frem gjennom mørkret. En elveårs jente. Siss.

I grunnen var det bare etterbiddag, men alt mørkt. Harfråsen seinhaust. Stjerne, men ingen måne. Og ingen snø til å lage lyskjemme, så mørket var tett, trass i stjernene. På sidene var det dødstil skog, med alt som måtte leve og fryse der inne i denne stund. Sist hadde mange tanker der hun gikk,

innballet for frosten. Hun skulle bort til den halte ukjente jenta unn for første gang, til noe hun ikke visste, de forvart dette spennende. Hvorfor, sa man, et høyt brak midt i disse tankene, denne ventingen. Et langt brestene, liksom. Bortover og bortover, medan det dovna av. Det var fra isen på det store vattnet her nede for.

Og det var ingen fare, bare i stedet gledelig. Braket fortalte at isen ble enda et grann sterkere. Det dunde som børseskåt, og sprang lange knivsmalle revner fra overflata og djupt ned igjennom. Likevel ble isen sterkere og sterkere til hver morgen. Da det ble en uvanlig lang og hard barfrosthausd, kneistran av kullet. Men kullen var ikke sist noe rød. Det var ikke det som stok for Brake i mørkret, men så sette foten var ikke sist noe rød. Det var ikke det. Det stok for brak i mørkret.

Men så setter foten støtt i veggen hans. God, that was bloody wonderful. You should see, I listen as you can't see this, but the smiles on the faces of me, Max Portier and John Mitchinson while Carlovo was reading that. Thank you so much. It's wonderful we get to hear the rhythms of it. It's beautiful. And the feel of it. It's beautiful, thank you so much. It's wonderful we get to hear the rhythms of it and the feel of it. It's beautiful. Thank you so much. I'm afraid, sadly, that's where we must leave Unne and Sis and Mattis and Hege behind.

Huge thanks to Max and Carlo for the invitation to explore the strange and beautiful world of Os sass's fiction to luke for making us all sound like we're on the same winter walk and to unbound for the double mittens you can download all 174 previous episodes plus follow links clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website at batlisted.fm and we're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter and Facebook and now in sound and pictures on Instagram too. You can also show your love directly by supporting our Patreon at www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. What do you get for your money?

Well, all patrons get to hear Backlisted episodes early and advertising free. And for even less than Mattis' pay for thinning out two rows of turnips, those who subscribe to the Lock Listener 11 get two extra podcasts every month. It's called Lock Listed. Think of it as our very own ice palace where we three wrap up warm and slip from icy room to icy room, enticing one another ever deeper into the mystery with stories taken from the books, films and music

we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight. A lot of listeners also get to hear their names read out on the show as a mark of our thanks and appreciation. This week's new patrons include Elizabeth Grelton, Alison Rowe and Sarah Imholt. Thank you. Yes, thanks so much. Thank you all for your generosity and to all our patrons.

Huge thanks for enabling us to continue to do what we love and enjoy. Thank you so much to our guests, Carla Vick, Nazgard, and Max Porter. Let me come to you, Max, first. This is a new tradition we've instituted since the last time you were on this podcast. Is there anything you feel we haven't covered

or anything you would like to say or anything you would like to say or anything you would like to tell the listeners about the work of taille versus well we didn't really talk about what happened in the book and i'm delighted um because i think it's something that people must discover for themselves but as an english reader i have in my life benefited so utterly so so so totally and transformatively from the work of translators and publishers that take risks on translated fiction. So in America, these books are published by Archipelago Books. In this country, they're published by Peter Owen and now by Penguin Classics, as you say, and translated. You know, we've mainly been reading the translations of elizabeth rock and which strike me as pitch perfect um and just immense gratitude and these books have were

smuggled to me you know by like secrets in the bookshop and i would encourage people to do the same that they're they're not noisy spectacular attention grabbing books they're they're books that live in you and grow and deserve to be reread so i would just encourage people to go out and support these independent presses and these translators that do this work it's a miracle a miracle how perfect yes how true thank you uh color is that anything you would like to share with the english-speaking world about the work of uh tell you versus that we haven't been able to cover today that you feel we should know about his work yeah well it's it's um when you read those books so when i read those books it's like i'm completely filled up i'm i'm they're so rich and there's so much going on and when i want to talk about it i can't say anything

it's like it's it's all in the reading experience and and that's also kind of what these books are about you know it's about the inner world and yeah and being not able to communicate it and he's he's the one i think that is kind of yeah capturing that and yeah that in such an amazing way. I really love his work. Yeah. But I can't say anything about it, unfortunately. So maybe I shouldn't have come to this show. You know what?

Admittedly, this is the love of a book that cannot be articulated. That's why we're here, listeners. And yet, I guarantee you people will go from here and want to read these books. Yeah. I found this really, both the experience of reading the books and listening to you both talk about them has been revelatory to me. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much for sharing them with us. Absolutely. John john anything you would like to add to that encomium yeah i mean i'm minded of our of our guest and friend david keenan who has that phrase holy books these these two books seem to me to be in as much as i can understand the concept of what is holy that they've they've definitely entered the pantheon for me these These are books I'll be reading and learning from for the rest of my life. So thank you both for the opportunity to do that. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Okay, thanks very much, everybody. Thanks, Max. Thanks, Carlo. Thanks, Jill Mitchison. Thanks, Producer Luke. Thanks, Nicky Birch. Thanks very much. Thanks, guys. See you Jill Mitchison. Thanks, Producer Luke. Thanks, Nicky Birch. Thanks very much. Thanks, guys.

See you next time. Thank you. Bye-bye. Guys, that was absolutely brilliant.