FISH GRUEL

If you were to ask a communist agent what their favourite book was, the answer might be Das Kapital, and Lenin: The Iskra Period. No surprises there. For me, while I concede that both of those are loveable and fascinating oh by golly yes, it would be The Wind In The Willows, almost anything by Vladimir Nabokov, Indian Food: A Historical Companion, by K. T. Achaya, and probably something by Johan Wigmore Fabricius or Maria Dermoût.
From time to time it varies.

A person whom I know very well has A Tree Grows In Brooklyn on her list.
Ahead of Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.


Probably no one I know has À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust.

Sad.


Boring people have the Bible. Which can be entertaining. Remind them of the rape of Dinah, the vow of Jephthah, and the charmingly innocent pornographic quality of the Song of Songs sometime. In detail. Then poke them with even more juicy tidbits as they recoil.



"Fascinated as usual she watched his stubby fingers deftly rub out the flake tobacco for his pipe, after his nourishing repast of gruel with boiled beans (the only thing the nearly toothless old man ate). No trace of arthritis. She knew that once he had lit up, he would slowly stumble out the door and take a half block walk. For his health, he said. No matter how bitter the winds in Aalesund most of the year, he did this. He prided himself on his knowledge of Art Nouveau architecture -- for which the town was famous -- even though at his advanced age he could barely write the term correctly anymore. He only vaguely remembered that it meant "stone navels", a term for dried fish. The town's fishing fleet was the most modern in Europe; notorious for stealing every one else's herring. And cod. And sturgeon, shad, salmon."

Thus far our introduction to our hero, Bjørn Trøllsen, elderly resident of a city on the edge of a Scandinavian wasteland. Who was once covered with hair, but is now over forty years old. Northern winters age a man.

While turning the pages of The Year We Lost Our Eels, a famous novel by a man whose name is quite unpronounceable (winner of the Nørske Kritikerprisen, nøta bene!), I likewise rub out some flake. Though intrigued by Margit's developing relationship with the man she has been tasked with taking care of, who sofar has manfully resisted her pleading that he use a wheelchair to get about -- just avoid sloping streets, the harbour is only one uncontrolled roll away -- as well as her urging that he bathe, I intend to sample this literary masterpiece in sips, instead of great gulps. The brilliant director Odd Einarsen didn't do that, and in consequence his epic film 'Fiskegrøt' inspired by the book, while critically acclaimed was considered too dark and depressing for an American movie audience, and did not receive mass distribution or much exposure. North Americans are not ready for a cinematographic paean to existenzangst.

Tried watching it once. Couldn't hack it.

The scene with the harpoon gun and all the orphans at the tannpirkerfabrikk is particularly hard to swallow.

And unlike the protagonist in the novel, I am not obsessively fond of Død Hval Virginia Tobakk Skiver. I do not prefer it over all other flake tobaccos.
Today I'm smoking something Danish.


'When in the middle of his walk he expectorated, he unexpectedly spat out a tooth. "Well, there goes one more", he thought'.


This essay fondly inspired by two people of Norwegian ancestry, the strange shiznit considered meaningful literature by intellectuals in the Netherlands, and recollection of Phillip in Switzerland's comment that early Scandinavian literature was something along the lines of a man saying to his wife to keep his dinner warm, he'd be back soon, then going across the island to bash in his neighbor's brains with a dried fish. Something like that. I read many sagas, I cannot disagree. There's just something about the North Sea climate that inspires.
And surely everyone loves dried fish?

TOBACCO INDEX


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