Jan Kjærstad

Jan Kjærstad at the Oslo bokfestival 2011

Jan Kjærstad (born March 6, 1953 in Oslo ) is a Norwegian writer .

He studied at the private college for theology in Oslo ( Det teologiske Menighetsfakultet ). His numerous publications include novels, short stories, essays, picture books, short stories and articles. From 1985 to 1989 Jan Kjærstad was editor of the literary magazine Vinduet .

Homo Falsus or The Perfect Murder

Homo Falsus is often referred to as the first postmodern novel in Norway, and by some researchers as one of the most important postmodern novels of all. Jan Kjærstad "[however] advocates the compatibility of realism , modernism , postmodernism and metafiction and is explicitly dedicated to a formal renewal of the novel, which he considers urgently necessary due to the social changes in the information age." (Wischmann 2002, 280)

In Homo Falsus , a writer ( both narrator and character within the novel) writes a novel about a woman (she calls herself Greta) who writes letters to three men, luring them into an apartment and making them disappear during sex or murder (the " perfect murder ”). She in turn is writing a novel about a writer who writes about a murderous woman. Suddenly the writer discovers articles about three missing men in the newspaper and even receives letters from a woman whom he believes to be the murderess in his novel. He desperately tries to evade his fate by giving his character a motive and introducing a detective into the story who is supposed to solve the case ...

Homo Falsus is a novel about a writer who writes a novel. The genesis of the novel is metafictively thematized in the novel itself (Persson 2002, 83) and thus directs the reader's attention to the artificiality of the text. In addition, the boundary between fiction and reality is repeatedly called into question, because “[the] language that is supposed to describe reality is itself a fiction. We have to learn to live with it ”(Kjærstad 1996, 35). Metafiction is "aware that literature can only ever be imitation [...]" (Ableitinger 1995, 118). The novel criticizes itself by demystifying the poet (124), for example the narrator admits to having copied entire paragraphs from other books in his previous novel (Kjærstad 1996, 265).

According to Ortheil, one of the hallmarks of the postmodern novel is that the author / narrator is replaced by structures that “expect the reader to do the decisive work” (Ortheil 1987, 126). Consequently, the reader must be able to interpret signs and find answers himself. The reader's ability to abstract is also required in Homo Falsus. The structure of the novel is so convoluted and complicated that it is difficult to reproduce the content, let alone summarize it. The reading experience follows the “ mosaic principle”: All things are linked to one another in some way, are in some way related to one another (Anhalt 2002, 25/26). Thus there are also many different ways to read and interpret the novel.

The text itself is designed like a labyrinth : “Where the text pretends to explain itself, it only leads further and further into its labyrinth” (Anhalt 2002, 43/44). On the narrative level , the structure appears like a Möbius strip : A real narrator on the fictional level writes the fictional character “Greta”. This in turn writes the fictional character “narrator” (cf. Anhalt 2002, 24ff). The form of the narrative should "become an independent function, a cognitive grid" (Graf 1999, 48).

Pattern , we repeatedly and in various combinations ( Mandala , Mosaic, Tangram -Figuren at the beginning of each chapter, black and white tiles and piano keys, varied salad combinations of the writer / narrator, the road network from Oslo and the patterns that the people walking into draw that Binary of 0 and 1 etc.). They dominate the structure of the novel.

Elements within the text are repeated, albeit in a different constellation or under a different name. There are significant similarities between the life stories of the three men, such as their professions (lawyer, theologian and officer), which overlap with those of their fathers (major, lawyer and pastor). Or the grandfathers who “bequeath all three of them an object that should lead to Napoleon's treasure ” (Anhalt 2002, 39). All the attributes that are ascribed to the figures are interlinked and form a coherent pattern. This networking parodies individuality in a certain way , as the five characters in the novel could just as easily be one person.

Kjærstad's novel reads like an encyclopedia as it contains many different narratives and texts in the narrative ( detective novel , trivial literature , scientific and political texts, science fiction , computerized texts, texts about music, art, literature, etc.) and the Reader bombarded with information and references. For Vera Ableitinger, "[t] he texts [...] are amalgams of elements from fine and trivial literature, science and pop culture " (Ableitinger 1995, 118). This amalgamation creates irony - a characteristic of metafiction - as it imitates a wide variety of fictional genres (119).

Some of the texts contain errors and thus justify the "unreliability of all narrative instances" (Wischmann 2002, 300). Greta also admits that she once built in errors in her thesis on Mao Zedong (Kjærstad 1996, 137). Here again the reader is challenged, because "Homo falsus parodies postmodernism [...], the seduction of the reader by the novel is the focus" (Ableitinger 1995, 125/26). The errors in the text are criticism of mass / media culture, which reduces everything to pure entertainment (Persson 2002, 82). Important media within the narrative are film and computers. The film is particularly important in the lives of the characters. The three men made their career choices based on films, for example Paul Ruud, who decides to go to law school after seeing a Spencer Tracy film. Or Greta, who gave herself her pseudonym after Greta Garbo and plays scenes from her films for the men before she "makes them disappear". The discourse about film also distorts the boundary between fiction and reality (cf. also Persson 2002, 100ff).

There are numerous IT references in the novel. The fictional author / narrator pretends to have created part of the text with the help of a computer program: "Kjærstad deconstructorar [...] ett antal traditionella föreställningar om författaren" ( Kjærstad deconstructs some traditional ideas about the author ) (Persson 2002, 109). The author becomes superfluous, the novel writes itself.

The structure also reads like a computer program: three stories / episodes with a limited number of elements, but a myriad of variations (Persson 2002, 105; see also Anhalt 2002, 36ff). Greta's story about her ex-husband is told in three different versions with the biographical background of three people ( Schönberg , Joyce , Picasso ) etc. The function of these references for Persson is as follows: “Det kulturellt Höga (script cultures) sidoställs och konfronteras med det kulturellt låga (teknologin) ”( The culturally“ high ”(written culture) is placed next to the culturally“ low ”(technology) and confronted with it ) (Persson 2002, 102). As early as 1968 , Leslie Fiedler wrote in his essay Crossing the Border, Closing the Trench !, "[...] that bridging the gap between elite and mass culture is the exact function of the novel today" (Fiedler 1968, 20).

Ultimately, the narrator fails at the end of the novel. When writing the “new person”, the “homo recens”, a person without motives and without reasons, he has failed and has to recognize that “the novel, despite all newer theories and a lowered ambition, maybe a Feelhorn extends into the periphery of reality ”(Kjærstad 1996, 163). When he feels threatened by his fictional character, he knows no other way out than to bring in a detective , the typical character of the postmodern novel (for example in Paul Auster's New York trilogy). Roald With is written to “end the program” (Wischmann 2002, 303), to cut the Möbius strip, to give Greta a motive for her actions. The attempt fails because the detective's methods of investigation seem constructed himself (cf. Persson 2002, 130) and “Greta refuses to be written” (303). After the detective's visit, she has an idea: “A writer. She wanted to write the story of a writer who would write a book about a woman's new strategy. A frame story for a fictional novel. Actually only one consequence. Write to yourself. […] Making the impossible possible ”(Kjærstad 1996, 432).

Works

Kloden dreier stille rundt (1980, short stories)
Speil (1982, novel)
Homo falsus eller det perfect mord (1984, novel) → translated into German by Gabriele Haefs in 1996: Homo falsus or the perfect murder (Rotbuch Verlag, published 1998 as Rowohlt paperback)
Det store eventyret (1987, novel)
Menneskets matrise (1989, collection of essays)
Jakten på de skjulte vaffelhjertene (1989, picture book, 1990 translated into German by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel: The Waffelfest im Hochhaus, Boje-Verlag)
Rand (1990, novel) → Translated into German in 1994 by Angelika Gundlach: Rand (Eichborn Verlag, Die Andere Bibliothek series , published in 2003 as a List paperback)
Forføreren (1993, novel) → Translated into German in 1999 by Angelika Gundlach: Der Verführer (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, published in 2001 as a List paperback)
Hos sheherasad, fantasiens dronning (1995, picture book)
Erobreren (1996, novel) → 2002 translated into German by Angelika Gundlach: Der Eroberer (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, published in 2004 as a List paperback)
Menneskets felt (1997, collection of essays)
Oppdageren (1999, novel) → Translated into German in 2004 by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel: Der Entdecker (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, published as List paperback in 2006)
Tegn till kjærlighet (2002, novel)
Kongen av Europa (2005, novel) → 2016 translated into German by Alexander Riha: Der König von Europa (Septime)
Jeg er brødrene Walker (2008, novel) → 2013 translated into German by Bernhard Strobel: Ich bin die Walker Brüder (Seventh)
Normans område (Roman, 2011) → 2017 translated into German by Bernhard Strobel: The Norman Areal (Septime)
Slekters gang (novel, 2015)
Mountains (2017, novel)

Honors

He has received several awards for his literary work.

Web links

Literature by and about Jan Kjærstad in the catalog of the German National Library
Biography about Jan Kjærstad on nbl.snl.no in Norsk biografisk leksikon (Norwegian)
Jan Kjærstad on snl.no in the store norske leksikon (Norwegian)

personal data
SURNAME	Kjærstad, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Norwegian writer
DATE OF BIRTH	March 6, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH	Oslo

Works

Honors

further reading

Web links

Jan Kjærstad

contents

Homo Falsus or The Perfect Murder