Everything Like Before

March 1, 2021
These three dozen stories and vignettes by the venerable Norwegian writer range from bleak to darkly comic. Born in 1929, Askildsen has written novels but is better known for his short fiction, often described as minimalist. The work gathered here, which includes five pieces from Selected Stories (2014), features mainly spare prose exploring the distances and conflicts between people linked by blood, marriage, or circumstance. Behind the petty friction chafing a husband and wife at their vacation home in "A Lovely Spot," something simmers, waiting to boil over. Elsewhere, two elderly men sharing a park bench eventually discover a vital connection and perhaps the source of the narrator's "miserable life." A son, home visiting, tries to understand his long estrangement from his father but concludes that "we're doomed to torment each other." In a kind of mirror image of that story, the long, complex "Mardon's Night" describes a man's strained reunion with his son in anxious thoughts and pained memories. The collection's title story unravels destructive patterns in a marriage: A couple on vacation in Greece come to blows after heavy drinking and the wife's flirtation with a stranger. "When you're drunk," the husband says, "you invariably walk all over me." The book ends with 11 stories from the collection Thomas F's Final Notes to the Public (1983), which are mostly vignettes featuring an elderly man finding points of interest or amusement amid the depredations of advanced age. The exception is "Carl Lange," a 32-page psychologically acute Simenon-esque cat-and-mouse tale in which a man copes with a persistent police inspector. Like "Mardon's Night," it shows Askildsen also has a strong nonminimalist side. This is a fine craftsman who offers lighter moments amid the Nordic gloom and an unrelenting intelligence.

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May 3, 2021
This ruminative, gloomy collection draws from five decades of Askildsen’s career, including some translations previously collected in Selected Stories. “A Lovely Spot” and others feature dialogues between romantic partners, while many, such as “Encounter,” explore sibling or father and son relationships. The book-length “Thomas F’s Last Notes to the Public” comprises the outstanding “Carl Lange,” where an old man suspected of a crime finds his free will and, eventually, his actions constrained (and perhaps dictated) by the accusation; and 10 shorts in which a man bids farewell to family, friends, himself, and the world. In many stories, the erosion of years or the abrasion of physical interaction has worn away any protective layers in the characters’ frosty relationships, leaving the players exposed, at or past the point of dissolution. The étude-like studies reveal Askildsen’s effort to resolve recurrent themes, such as lovers facing insecurities or infidelity, family members chaffing at frayed affections, and comity plagued by mistrust and resignation. The lengthier works shine brightest, among them “A Sudden Liberating Thought,” in which a Beckett-like series of encounters between two old men becomes a discourse on euthanasia; and “Mardon’s Night,” where three people’s thoughts and actions blur in enigmatic blocks of text. While as a whole the collection can be exhausting, this definitive volume brims with stellar material. This is best consumed in small doses.