Knowing what to think

I have been a lazy blogger. Or, actually, I read "Ett gott liv" (=a good life) by Ann Heberlein while it was so fresh the reviews hadn´t come out yet and I just didn´t know if it was fair to think what I thought about it. Then Tranströmer happened to us - cultural bliss in medialand - and when the reviews finally came I was kinda out of wind.

Ann Heberlein is a Swedish scholar in the field of theology, her particular speciality is ethics and more specifically she has written books about responsibility and evil. 2008 she published a book titled "Jag vill inte dö, jag vill bara inte leva" (=I don´t want to die, I just don´t want to live), where she "came out" as a sufferer of bipolar disorder. I didn´t read it at the time, but it was a major media happening and hard to miss.

The reason I picked "Ett gott liv" was, more or less, that it was available as an e-book at the library and it was on the first page when I was looking for something new to read. Coincidence, really. I quickly became hooked. And realized that this book is a kind of corrective to the other one, that she describes somewhere as her "suicide note". She writes that the book came out while she was still deeply depressed and suicidal and she thinks the publisher she then used never should have allowed her to go through with it. She claims to want to discuss how the publishing world "uses" people who are weak or ill and lacking in awareness of the consequences of baring it all, just to make a buck. Now, Heberlein writes well and seems very much on top of everything, so of course I became curious to see how she writes when she is ill and cannot be held accountable for her own actions, so I downloaded "Jag vill inte dö, jag vill bara inte leva".

Well, she sounded pretty much like someone who knew what she was doing at the time. Not much difference between the books in that respect, it´s very much the same Heberlein that the reader meets on the pages. I don´t know what kind of person one would have to be to have understood at the time that Heberlein should not have been allowed to publish the book. I also find, while I read both of them, that I´m arguing with her. I don´t agree entirely about the way she describes the world. I think she sometimes makes sloppy generalizations about culture and society and what people think and what people want and so on.

I also increasingly, as I read, get the feeling that she is trying to play me, that I´m being manipulated into thinking, well, I´m not sure what I´m supposed to be thinking. That she is sane, perhaps. She is quite honest about the first book being an attempt to get away from responsibility (one of her pet projects, that). I have seen that in a few people I have known over the years: they are eager to bare it all, to confess and lay all their shortcomings before you, so that they will not have to say NO to anything. They want you to do it for them. Pull the brake when they can´t do it themselves, for whatever reason. (Heberlein has now, when she is supposedly sane, made a pact with her husband. Next time she is ill, he is allowed to stop her. If he can.)

I imagine being bipolar is not easy. It must hurt to try and patch up ones lost esteem, self- and professional, after an episode and repair a damaged reputation (if indeed it is). Heberlein is well worth reading, probably has one of the best intellects in this country and I´m curious about her other books, including a novel that she is allegedly writing with her husband. Read this as a peek into a mind that sometimes runs away with itself and that is trying to regain control. Treat it as a field trip. You might not be able to put it to words exactly, but you will learn something if you listen to Ann Heberlein.

First Class Rome

I can´t remember if I have blogged before about what I consider to be the best travel guide in the world: Eyewitness Travel Guides. (Swedish: "Första klass reseguider"). I discovered them more than ten years ago, when we were planning a week in Prague. I bought one and it so informed our stay there, it just became one of my best vacations ever.

Thing is, what I need from a vacation is to be stimulated. I need that much more than rest, probably because I make sure I get enough of that during the year. Burning both ends of the candle never seemed a very attractive option to me, perhaps because what I love to do requires a rested and alert mind. It forces you to take responsibility for your health if you don´t want to find yourself in a state where reading just becomes impossible, let alone thinking a complicated thought. I have been there, I have no desire to go back.

Anyway, these guides are gold struck for anyone who wants a historical background, an overview, detail, suggested walks, a few tips about tipping, hotels, customs, what to eat, what to drink, where to shop. The books are heavy, of course, being so packed with information, but I have a solution to that. I read it, find the pages that are interesting, photograph them (the camera is a fabulous notebook, haven´t you noticed?), make a few lists in a small notebook/diary, and leave the heavy book at home. Or return it to the library, as I´m about to do with this one.

So what am I looking for in Rome? Well, if the weather gods are with us (November is apparently the rainiest month of the year in Italy) we will see the city from the outside. Walk, walk, walk. Forum Romanum, the Vesta Temple, the Colosseum, all those (hundreds of?) churches, the Pantheon, the Tiber. If it rains, there are a few museums on my list. But with only two days, one must realize it´s impossible to see it all.

And then there´s the food: the spaghetti, the cheese, the cookies (who knew they had world famous cookies?), the bread, the porchetta. What I will try to avoid is what the call "the fifth fourth", which is the intestines. Something of a specialty that, tripe and such. Not so interested in that.

Only a month until we go!

Scary people

I found this book through a newspaper article about the author, Sigvard Lingh. I think it was his birthday or something, and it mentioned this book he has recently written, "Psykopater och Sociopater - ett spektrum" (= psychopaths and sociopaths - a spectrum). Lucky for me, the local library bought it on my suggestion. It´s a large book, A4-format and almost 470 densely written pages. However, that does not mean that it´s difficult to read. On the contrary. The tone is the one you´d find on a very interesting and entertaining lecture. You can hear Lingh´s voice very clearly, speaking directly to you.

This is on one hand a compendium of all the research that has been made about psychopathy, the footnotes are extensive and it´s easy to go from Lingh to any other author that you´d like to dive more deeply into. On the other hand, it´s a very personal account and reflection about the psychopath in general and psychopaths that the author has met, both in his profession as a psychologist and as a lecturer and teacher. I reminds me a bit about my own binders from the courses I took at university. You get the feeling Lingh wants to share a lifetime of collected knowledge and a huge fascination for these people.

Surprisingly, I find that I´m pretty well read on the subject. I have already encountered most of the authors he mentions, one way or another. Why does one get this fascination for people that are "mad, bad and dangerous to know"? I suppose it´s like being really into World War II documentaries or horror flicks. You´re attracted to what scares you the most. Perhaps the instinct is that knowledge will make it less scary, like trolls that go "poof!" when you look directly at them. I´m not sure it works, though. Which is probably why literature is, has always been, and always will be totally preoccupied with war and scary people.

If you are as fascinated by the subject as I am, I do recommend it. You´ll get through it rather quickly, because it´s a bit of a pageturner. At least, it was for me.

Adventures in post-war Paris

I don´t know if it´s this wretched weather (rain, rain, rain), but my pipes are not what they should be after a cold I had a month ago. Bound paper isn´t doing my health any favors, so I´m limiting my reading selection to electronic material. The library´s selection is limited, but on the other hand, I´m reading stuff I never would have found anywhere else.

My latest find is "Existentiell resa" (= existential journey) by Thomas Wahlberg. It´s not a novel, but a publication of letters, mostly written by his mother Britta, married at the time (1947) to Swedish artist Bertil Wahlberg, from Paris and Menton on the French Riviera, during an eight month long trip, when Bertil was supposed to work and study other artists. And he did, according to the son, who claims the 40´s (Bertil and Britta were only 24 years old) may have been his father´s greatest years as an artist, before he succumbed to the financial pressures (he eventually had five children by two wives) and painted more "sellable" things. (A quick look around internet auctions shows that his work now goes for prices well below 2000 kr, or 200 British Pounds, or 280 USD.)

This book is published by the author himself (I can not find any reviews of it online, at least) and the tone sometimes leans a bit toward the private. Between the letters he explains the background, sometimes ventures into the future and at times digresses into issues unexpected, sometimes interesting, sometimes not so much. A stern editor wouldn´t have gone amiss here. That said, I am charmed. Wahlberg has a very interesting story to tell and I read it all greedily.

One gets a real sense of the zeitgeist, both from the letters and the pictures, some of the adventurers themselves, some of the family back home, and some of the paintings that were made during the trip. The Wahlbergs married young, as people often did at the time. Sons Thomas and Jockum was born in 1943 and 1946 respectively. When the parents went to Paris, the children were left with Bertil´s mother Berta, and seem not to have been much missed. Clearly, there was a lack of responsiblity, both financial and parental. Bertil hardly wrote home at all, except to give his parents instructions about money matters, but when he did, his descriptions of Paris and France are very charming and hints at a literary talent. Some of his poetry (and other writings?) has been published by the son Thomas and I intend to have a look at it.

There were anecdotes I found pretty amusing. For example, in one of the first letters, from Bertil to his young wife, he advises her to try what was considered the next most reliable way to provoke a miscarriage (next to the infamous and dangerous knitting needle method), which was to walk excessively and drink lots of tepid beer. Apparently, she tried this with both pregnancies and I imagine the excercise and vitamine B only made her and the foetuses stronger. If it had worked, the British Isles would be scarcely populated, indeed...

I don´t entirely understand the title of the book. There isn´t much existentialism in here, although the young couple do visit the famous club Tabou and Bertil may have been more influenced by the movement than the text actually shows. It´s more about bickering with some Swedish friends that they share lodgings with, gambling, drinking and dancing. And one also gets a good insight into the horrid conditions in France and all of Europe after the war, where everyone was trying to survive and didn´t loose any sleep over ripping off and outright stealing from a young, naive, and seemingly wealthy couple from Sweden.

The author does not try to hide that there has been quite a bit of animosity from the children over being abandoned for such a long time at such young ages, but he claims now to be reconciled with it. And one belives him. The book is a rather loving account of the young adventurers his parents were and the tone in the book is tender. And I can´t decide whether this is the book´s greatest strength or its greatest fault.

Looking forward to Rome

The first weekend i November, we are going to Rome for the first time ever. We´ve been talking about it for years, and now it´s going to happen! Rome is one of those odd places that I feel I almost know, because I have read so much about it, but now I realize that the Rome I think I know anything about is classic Rome, the Rome of the Ceasars. It´s been two thousand years...

To close the gap I grabbed this book: Kristina Kappelin´s (Swedish journalist extraordinaire, reports from Italy about absolutely everything, and does it super well) "Rom - maten, människorna, livet" (=Rome - the food, the people, life). Turns out, it was a very good choice.

It´s like being guided through the city by a good friend, someone who is really enthusiastic about where she lives. The pictures, taken by another Swedish woman living in Rome, Charlotta Smeds, are über-wonderful, you can almost feel the smell of the food, hear the noise from the streets and it just makes me think I can´t wait to go there and how am I ever going to see all those places in just two days? At the same time, she is telling me that Rome is not all those things that tourists have on their checklist, but the streets, the small shops, the small osterias, the crappy wine, the good food, the Romans, the atmosphere. And she makes me relax. And hope for good weather. So that I can walk those streets all day long.

The Psychology of Art

I had a half hour to spare and spent it in front of the psychology-section at the local library. There is plenty for those who seek help and support, mostly about separations, depressions and sleeping disorders. Surprisingly many books about sleeping. I came home with two volumes by Rollo May, one of the classics in the field of existential psychology.

I´m pretty sure I´ve read him before, in the 80´s, probably "Freedom and Destiny" ("Frihet och öde" in Swedish) but I can´t remember much about it. Or maybe I´m wrong, perhaps it´s just that everyone refers to him that makes me think I have read him. However that may be, the one that really resonated with me this time was "The Courage to Create" (="Modet att skapa") which is a thin volume, densely written, about the psychology of the artist and the role he has to play in society.

It really has made me think differently about art, both literature and visual arts. He writes about how the artist channels the zeitgeist and expresses the undercurrents of politics and culture in his work and it really inspires me to study history - a subject that I´m already very interested in - from another point of view.

Excellent book. "Freedom and Destiny" didn´t grab me as much this time around. Perhaps I will have reason to return to it later. But for anyone interested in the mechanics of creativity and art, I really recommend Rollo May´s "The Courage to Create".

The Demands of the Genius

Another memoir about a creative woman: Käbi Laretei. She is now perhaps most known for having been married to Ingmar Bergman for ten years, but she was also a very successful concert pianist in her day, who collaborated with Stravinskij and Paul Hindesmith, to mention only two. In this small book "Toner och passioner" (= notes and passions), she writes about her working life, about the pianist Laretei. Her two husbands are only present in a couple of anecdotes that are of importance to the story of her career. Much more important is her own "housewife", Bärbel, who was her nanny/housekeeper/secretary. In the end, when she asks the question why her career as a pianist cooled off and she started doing other things, one of her answers is that Bärbel left her. (It rings a bell: Åsa Moberg writes in her memoir that one of the most thrilling things about her lover, Harry Schein, was that he lived with a housekeeper.)

When Laretei writes about the struggle of the travelling performer: lost luggage, time to practice, a place to practice, inferior instruments (there´s a lot about Steinways and Pleyels and such in here), noisy hotelrooms, demanding impressarios, demanding conductors, demanding composers, the difficulty to sleep, taking care of one´s hands, the importance of a certain kind of earplug, irritating children on planes - well, you think it can´t have been an easy life.

The whole memoir is centered around one special relationship she had to an American couple, that acted as her impressarios in the US for ten years. It´s interesting to read how they courted her, did everything for her, but in the end also demanded quite a bit from her. There are no free lunches, as they say. Unconditional love is a rare thing, indeed.

And there is also the doubt, the constant striving for a better performance. Laretei is never satisfied and in this passage, she is talking about it with her first husband, Gunnar (in my own, quick translation):

After a concert in Helsingfors I cried on the phone and lamented my total failure with my Beethoven concert. A few years later I heard the same concert on the radio, a fantastic recording. "That´s exactly how I want it to sound! Why can´t I play it like that, that´s how I want it!" Gunnar said calmly: "That´s you playing."

I bet that felt like a rather pleasant slap in the face, haha.

After my read, as I google Laretei and think about the demands of the creative person and how impossible it must be for that kind of genius to thrive in Swedish society today, with its demands for equality and how no one is expected to have to give up anything (career, a good night´s sleep, whatever) for a child or a spouse, I come across mention of her son with Bergman, Daniel. I remember him also becoming a film director but I haven´t heard anything of him for years. Turns out, he doesn´t seem to have done anything in the film industry since 2000. According to Wikipedia, he works as a nurse. I don´t know if it´s true, but if it is, there is a sense of balance to it, I think. Or irony, if you will. Perhaps the cult of equality and sameness, agreeable though it may be, has cost us quite a few original thinkers and performers.