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"A longtime cult-classic in Denmark, this novel about dissolution and despair has been out of print in the US for over eighty years until now. Ole Jastrau is the very model of an enterprising and ambitious young man of letters, poised on the brink of what is sure to be a distinguished career as a critic. In fact he is teetering on the brink of an emotional and moral abyss. Bored with his beautiful wife and chafing at the burdens of fatherhood, disdainful of the commercialism and political opportunism of the newspaper he works for, he feels more and more that his life lacks meaning. He flirts with Catholicism and flirts with Communism, but somehow he doesn't have the makings of a true believer. Then he takes up with the bottle, a truly meaningful relationship. "Slowly and quietly," he intends to go to the dogs. Jastrau's romance with self-destruction will take him through all the circles of hell. The process will be anything but slow and quiet"--… (more)
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It's a portrait of the mental malaise of the intelligentsia in Denmark in the 1930s. The principal character doesn't have any principles or purpose: he's a critic, but we never hear about his own interests in literature; he has no clear political allegiances; he has only fleeting thoughts about religion; and he doesn't connect well with people. He decides to do "stupid" things, and to "go to the dogs." So he lets his marriage fall apart, lets himself become an alcoholic, quits his job, and, toward the end, watches passively and with some relief as his house burns down. (I thought of the drunken man in Copenhagen several times, wondering exactly why he liked this novel.)
Kristensen was principally a poet, but he has an excellent ear for dialogue, and the book's strongest passages are its conversations. He loves the way people can miss the really important moments in conversations. Crucial explanations are deftly elided, confessions fall on deaf ears, people deflect and repress difficult thoughts. Kristensen is wonderful at describing the play of emotions on people's faces, and often the emotional rhythms of a scene move much faster than the words they speak. All that is what kept me reading. I don't care about the intellectual life of Copenhagen in the late 1920s; I didn't care what happened to the protagonist, who is on a stereotypical journey into self-destruction; I wasn't convinced by the depiction of alcoholic hallucinations, random humiliations, and blackouts (A. L. Kennedy does it so much better); and I didn't think the character's drifting was ever either well motivated or provocatively unmotivated. But the way the conversations continuously slip, their inconclusiveness, their drunken repetitions, their boredom, their opacity, their unending unrewarding lack of clarity, was very rewarding.