Tomas Tranströmer, Nobel laureate, is the toast of the literary world at present. He was a near ubiquitous presence in the weekend’s books pages. Philip Hensher has written a profile in the Telegraph that says anything and everything you need to know about the enigmatic Swedish poet.
‘Tomas Transtromer was by profession a psychologist who worked with criminals, drug addicts and in prisons. He published small amounts of poetry over the years, much of which reflects an interest in nature and in a kind of imagistic approach to the natural world. In 1990, Transtromer suffered a major stroke which made it impossible for him to speak in public. However, he has gone on writing and indeed has published an autobiography.’
Hensher notes that Tranströmer is the latest in long procession of slightly obscure Swedes to have won the prize and wonders if Tranströmer’s work will endure beyond the transient salons in which he is currently admired. Somewhat mischievously, Hensher quotes a Tranströmer haiku to force his readers to entertain his question: ‘My happiness swelled/ And the frogs sang in the bogs/ of Pomerania.’
American author Teju Cole offers his thoughts on reading Tranströmer at the New Yorker’s books blog:
‘To read Tranströmer—the best times are at night, in silence, and alone—is to surrender to the far-fetched. It is to climb out of bed and listen to what the house is saying, and to how the wind outside responds. Each of his readers reads him as a personal secret. For this reason it is strange to see this master of solitude being celebrated in the streets or showing up as a trending topic on Twitter and a best-seller on Amazon. He usually dwells in quieter precincts.’
This is rapidly turning into the Swedish edition of Across the literary pages. Novelists Jeffrey Eugenides and Adam Thirlwell became friends by drinking their way through a lonely literary festival in Sweden in 2004. They recently caught up in the Paris Bar in Berlin to discuss Eugenides’s latest book, The Marriage Plot. Saturday’s Guardian recorded their conversation. Warning: the article is not for the feint hearted or the black hearted — theirs was an earnest discussion about narrative structure, Roland Barthes and ‘honesty’. But, if you like that sort of thing, it’s a very absorbing piece.
Finally, the most important literary news of the moment is that Joey Barton, enfant terrible of British football, has sold the rights for his as yet unwritten autobiography. Any thoughts on a title?
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