New Directions mourns the loss of Dag Solstad (1941–2025), the Norwegian author of over twenty books—novels, essays, plays and short-stories—including four in English translation with New Directions: T. Singer (2018), Armand V (2018), Professor Andersen’s Night (2019), and Novel 11, Book 18 (2021). Praised by Geoff Dyer for his “wonderfully uncompromising conception of the novel,” Solstad also had such admirers as Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, Karl Ove Knausgard, and was a three-time recipient of the Norwegian Literary Critics’ Award. When asked about the “Solstadian” style, as distinguished by his exceptionally long, multi-clause sentences, Solstad told The Paris Review, “Some things I do not wish to reflect upon or analyze. Nothing good comes of it.”
From T . SINGER, translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nuunally
Singer enters a dark room, a room where a movie is going to be shown, or the setting of a jazz concert. Singer is running a little late, and he sits down at a table, joining others whom he knows. This might be right before the film starts or the jazz concert begins, and the light is dim, so that he catches only glimpses of faces in the dark, if at a jazz concert, faintly illuminated by the candles on the tables. He says something to the man next to him, who is B. But B looks astonished and replies in a somewhat disoriented manner, as if he doesn’t quite understand why Singer said what he just said, even though what Singer said isn’t the least bit remarkable. Then Singer understands that it’s not B sitting next to him, but K. The instant he realizes that he is guilty of a misunderstanding, he feels totally disconcerted and doesn’t know what he should do. He feels like disappearing, sinking through the floor in the classic sense, but unfortunately that’s not possible, no matter how dark it is, nor can he make use of the dark to simply run away, because the damage has been done, and K knows full well that Singer is the one who has sat down in the vacant chair next to him and then addressed him in that odd fashion. Odd for K, because Singer doesn’t usually talk to K in that way; B is the one he usually addresses in that manner, which would seem natural in that case, while with K it seems unnatural, and that is why K was taken aback. And Singer is sitting next to him, feeling mortified.
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