‘A kind of surrealist writer’ (Haruki Murakami), who ‘doesn’t write to please other people’ (Lydia Davis). T Singer is the new novel in English from one of Norway’s most celebrated writers, proving ‘good literature makes us wiser about life, ourselves and other people’ (Dagbladet).
Singer, a thirty-four-year-old recently trained librarian, arrives by train in the small town of Notodden to begin a new and anonymous life. He falls in love with Merete, a ceramicist, and moves in with her and her young daughter. After a few years together, the relationship starts to falter, and as the couple is on the verge of separating a car accident prompts a dramatic change in Singer’s life.
T Singer is a brilliant and heartbreaking novel about indomitable loneliness, laying bare the existential questions of life in Solstad’s classic, bleakly comic style.
Winner of the Norwegian Critics Prize
Dag Solstad is one of Norway’s leading and most celebrated contemporary writers. Solstad has won many Norwegian and international awards, most recently the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize in 2017, and is the only author to have won the Norwegian Critics Prize three times. All three of his novels already published in English – Shyness and Dignity, Novel 11, Book 18 and Professor Andersen’s Night – have been listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
ALSO BY DAG SOLSTAD
Shyness and Dignity
Novel 11, Book 18
Professor Andersen’s Night
Armand V
SINGER SUFFERED FROM a peculiar sense of shame that didn’t bother him on a daily basis but did pop up occasionally; he would remember some sort of painful misunderstanding that made him stop short, rigid as a post, with a look of despair on his face, which he immediately hid by holding up both hands as he loudly exclaimed: ‘No, no!’ This might happen anywhere at all, on the street, in a closed room, on the platform at the train station, and he was always alone whenever it occurred, although he could be in places where other people were gathered, passing him in both directions, for instance on the street or in a park, or in an exhibition hall, and these people would see him stop, rigid as a post, holding his hands in front of his face, and they would hear him exclaim those despairing words: ‘No, no.’ Or he might be suddenly overcome with shame over something that had happened long ago, a specific scene from his past, most often from way back in his childhood, a memory that would pop up without warning, and again he would raise both hands in front of his face as if to hide as those despairing words burst out: ‘No, no.’ One such specific childhood memory that filled him with this sort of intense shame happened to pop up when he was in the process of moving to Notodden, he was thirty-four years old back then; but it also popped up now, more than fifteen years later, at the time this is being written, and right now it was as raw and unexpected as when he was thirty-four or even twenty-five, for that matter.
So this childhood memory must have had great significance for him, and it offers an insight into the underlying pattern of his life, although it distinguishes itself as something that has been rejected or expelled from this underlying pattern, as something he does not want to acknowledge. It is, in all its ‘insignificance’, a burden he cannot bear to carry, and yet – Singer must admit this – it is undeniably an important part of himself, its very presence, despite his palpable rejection, something to which he cannot respond without being paralysed by an agonising feeling of personal shame.
In brief, the incident goes like this: Singer and A (who is his best friend) are in a shop that sells toys. A has picked up a supposedly amusing wind-up toy, which he winds up to show Singer how it works. The women sales assistants are not happy, and sooner or later they step in to tell A to stop doing that; Singer doesn’t think the wind-up toy is especially amusing, but he pretends he does in order to please A, and he does so in a strident voice with forced laughter that no doubt gets on the nerves of the sales assistants. Suddenly Singer notices that his uncle is in the shop and has probably been there for a while. His uncle is watching him. Singer sees that his uncle is looking at him as he loudly tries to please A with his forced voice and feigned laughter. Singer sees that his uncle looks astonished. Singer is embarrassed.
His uncle greets him and offers a few mundane comments. Singer greets him in return, and then he and A slip out of the shop. They head down the street, scurrying along, looking in shop windows at random, stepping into a doorway, stepping back out, roaming here and there; an ordinary afternoon in a small town for anyone growing up who’s still a child, near the coast in the Vestfold county of Norway. But something has happened that has stuck with Singer and will make him remember this incident decades later, something that embarrassed him and will continue to embarrass him whenever he thinks about it.
It’s not the fact that his uncle saw them acting in such an uncouth manner. It’s not because he was being a naughty boy that Singer felt embarrassed, even though that was exactly what he was. He and A had gone into the toy shop and proceeded to do whatever they liked. They had boldly started playing with the toys on display. It’s true that when his uncle showed up, they left at once, but neither Singer nor A felt embarrassed because Singer’s uncle had seen them doing whatever they liked in the toy shop. Singer wasn’t even afraid that his uncle might tell his father; if he did, it really didn’t matter, and Singer knew that. He could calmly set off after leaving the shop to roam the streets, going in and out of a doorway, with his cap askew and mischief radiating from his boyish figure.
It was something else that his uncle had caught him doing, something that brought a look of astonishment to the man’s face when he caught Singer at it. The loud, forced voice, the feigned laughter. That was what his uncle had observed, and with a sense of astonishment that made Singer feel embarrassed, even ashamed, decades later. Not because of the laughter itself, but because his uncle had observed him laughing in that strident and phoney manner. In terms of A, to whom the laughter was directed in an attempt to please him, it made no difference that Singer had carried on in such a duplicitous fashion, even if A might have noticed this. If he had, and if he’d asked his friend, once they were out on the street, why he’d acted in such a phoney manner, Singer could have simply denied it. Or he could have confirmed it and said that A had bored him with his childish behaviour, but he didn’t want to offend him and so he’d tried to laugh along with him, though he couldn’t quite pull it off. In other words, Singer wasn’t embarrassed by his own forced, childish laughter when it came to the person the laughter was intended for, even if that person had noticed and pointed it out.
It’s possible to imagine Singer being able to laugh like that in other contexts, for instance at home, which would have annoyed his father, prompting him to tell his son to stop that fake laughing. Then Singer would have been a little embarrassed, but mostly offended. And if his father had mentioned it to others, such as his uncle, saying that he was displeased by his son’s strident, false laughter, and if he said this in front of his son so that he heard him, then Singer would have felt insulted, even betrayed, and he would have never forgiven his father. But he wouldn’t have been embarrassed.
It was his uncle’s presence that had evoked the feeling of shame. It wasn’t the laughter itself, but the fact that he’d been seen. And by someone who knew him and who was astonished. Astonished by Singer’s affected voice, by the way he was laughing. Astonished that Singer, whom he knew so well, would suddenly, when thinking he was unseen, utter such a horribly phoney laugh. So loudly. So fake. Caught in the act, and possessed of such a false laughter. A child. Caught and exposed. Singer hoped that his uncle wouldn’t mention it at home. Even if he would have only felt insulted and not embarrassed if his father had caught him laughing in that way, he still fervently hoped that his uncle wouldn’t mention it at home. Because he knew what his uncle would say if he did. He’d known all his life what his uncle would say. That Singer had such a ‘strange’ laugh. He was convinced – even today as this is being written – that his uncle wouldn’t have said that Singer had such a phoney laugh, or a forced voice, but that he’d had such a ‘strange’ laugh.
That’s actually the extent of it. A minor, inconsequential incident in Singer’s life, remembered from his childhood. The fact that he once felt embarrassed at being observed by his uncle is not all that difficult to understand. What is less understandable is why this incident should settle so permanently in his subconscious, occasionally popping up as an image in his conscious mind, so that he not only recalled feeling embarrassed at the time but continued to feel embarrassed whenever the incident popped up, even experiencing a profound sense of shame at the memory.
When this book begins, Singer is thirty-four years old and in the process of moving to Notodden to start a new phase in his life. Looking back, he sees that his life has been marked primarily by restlessness, brooding, spinelessness, and abruptly abandoned plans. To other people, he might appear as a distinct and clear personality, but in his own mind he is vague, even anonymous, which is what he prefers. Should he feel shame for that reason? No, and normally he was not tormented by such feelings. So why couldn’t he deal with the embarrassment of his childhood – when he was observed by his uncle as he uttered such unnatural and forced laughter – without being overwhelmed by an unbearable feeling of shame on his own behalf ? This was both quite annoying and a mystery to him.
There were also other incidents of an ‘erased persona’ that popped up in his mind and overwhelmed him in a similar fashion, incidents that weren’t linked to his childhood but might be things that happened to him as a grown man, in some cases even quite recently. Incidents that had to do with awkward mistakes, or misunderstandings, if you will.
Singer enters a dark room, a room where a film is going to be shown, or the setting of a jazz concert. Singer is running a little late, and he sits down at a table, joining others whom he knows. This might be right before the film starts or the jazz concert begins, and the light is dim, so that he catches only glimpses of faces in the dark, if at a jazz concert, faintly illuminated by the candles on the tables. He says something to the man next to him, who is B. But B looks astonished and replies in a somewhat disorientated manner, as if he doesn’t quite understand why Singer said what he just said, even though what Singer said isn’t the least bit remarkable. Then Singer understands that it’s not B sitting next to him, but K. The instant he realises that he is guilty of a misunderstanding, he feels totally disconcerted and doesn’t know what he should do. He feels like disappearing, sinking through the floor in the classic sense, but unfortunately that’s not possible, no matter how dark it is, nor can he make use of the dark to simply run away, because the damage has been done, and K knows full well that Singer is the one who has sat down in the vacant chair next to him and then addressed him in that odd fashion. Odd for K, because Singer doesn’t usually talk to K in that way; B is the one he usually addresses in that manner, which would seem natural in that case, while with K it seems unnatural, and that is why K was taken aback. And Singer is sitting next to him, feeling mortified.
Singer is mortified because he has mistaken K for B. K is taken aback but he doesn’t know that Singer is guilty of making an embarrassing mistake. At least he doesn’t know that he has been mistaken for B. What he heard was Singer speaking to him in an unnatural voice, which means that Singer now needs to be wary of him, and so he continues talking feverishly, in such a way that he won’t further draw K’s attention to what just occurred, because the thought that K might discover that Singer had actually mistaken him for B is unbearable. Then Singer would feel exposed, and he would sit there feeling so ashamed at addressing K in such a manner.
This incident exists in many different versions in Singer’s consciousness. Common to all of them is the fact that the configuration of B, K and Singer is such that it’s impossible for Singer to confess to K that he has mistaken him for B. This is true whether B and K are both acquaintances but not close friends of Singer’s; or whether B is a close friend and K merely an acquaintance; or whether they are both perceived as close friends by Singer. Under no circumstances could Singer have clarified his gaffe to K, because it was not just a gaffe, it was an irreparable and embarrassing mistake. He can’t say to K, when he notices that K is taken aback, ‘dammit, I mistook you for B,’ because if he did that, K would really have good reason to be astonished and think: Is this how he talks to B? I’m amazed. Because even if B is merely an acquaintance, on par with K, the ordinary remark that Singer uttered to K, whom he has mistaken for B, belied a familiarity that he possesses only when he talks to B, yet this remark was delivered to K, to whom he also talks when speaking directly to him with a certain familiarity, but that familiarity is different and wouldn’t have been regarded by K as familiarity but as confidentiality. And B similarly would not consider Singer’s remarks as familiar but as a spontaneous and natural confidentiality.
What was it he said to K, whom he thought was B? Something quite ordinary. Perhaps something about how dark the room was. Perhaps something about the film (or the jazz concert) they were about to see (or hear). Perhaps some slightly joking remark about the weather, the chairs, the table, the candlelight. Perhaps a comment about a third mutual acquaintance, Y, whom K also knows, spoken in a somewhat different tone than he would have used if talking to K about Y. Perhaps Singer even spoke of Y in a manner that K didn’t think was accurate, either because there were things about Y that K didn’t know, or because the remark about him was overly demeaning or overly positive. Or what if Singer said something about the darkness, expressed in a ‘dark’ manner, a bit gloomily, with a hint of irony, which he would never use when talking about dark rooms with K; because with K he usually talked about things like dark rooms in a more direct manner, referring to, say, light switches: dark room = light switch off; bright room = light switch on. And so K was taken aback by the gloomy, metaphorical way in which Singer now spoke to him about the dark. And Singer couldn’t bear the thought that he, unintentionally, had initiated K into this confidentiality regarding his way of speaking of the dark that held true for him and B, who, by the way, may have been no more than an acquaintance, precisely as K may have been; in fact, this thought filled him with shame.
We should actually pause here to state that it may be difficult to understand why this should be so mortifying for Singer. He has, after all, only obeyed the basic rules of conversation, or of addressing someone with whom he’s well acquainted, in this case B. He speaks differently to B than he does to K because he knows B and K in different ways, and the contact that has been established between Singer and B is based on different experiences from the contact between Singer and K, even though all three of them know each other and have enough shared interests that they happen to show up at the same time in this dark room, gripped by the same interest in indie films or experimental jazz. But Singer shares something with B that he doesn’t share with K, something in his tone of voice, for example, a certain confidentiality, something about which he wants to be confidential, precisely because it’s B he is speaking to (and he is Singer). With K, he speaks differently, the tone between them is different, and that’s something everyone recognises – that’s how we, in fact, speak with our friends and acquaintances, with a difference in words and tone from one friend to another, one acquaintance to another; and the only mistake Singer has made in this instance is that he thinks he’s talking to B when he’s actually talking to K, and surely that is forgivable! But that was not how he experienced it. He experienced this mistake as unforgivable.
Was it because he gave himself away? By what he said? For example, about the dark? By the veiled tone in which he spoke, which took K aback, which seemed so odd to him? The fact that K thought he spoke of the dark in a ‘profound’ way, which literally shoved him out of here (away from K), precisely because it was a confidential gesture towards someone else, who wouldn’t have regarded the remark as ‘profound,’ but as a confidence based on a mutual recognition of the relentlessness of the dark (which, when speaking to K, Singer would have linked to something positive, say, the turning a light switch on or off; that was their shared confidence about the same darkness, basically equally gloomy)? Don’t know, don’t know, Singer doesn’t know.
The only thing he did know was how he’d experienced the incident, both when it happened and when it popped up in his consciousness a short time later or long afterwards. There was the fact that he’d revealed to K his ordinary, and yet naked, familiarity with B, a familiarity that had nothing to do with K. And the fact that he then had to resort to hiding, in shame. But why this incident, for example – about a different, more ‘profound’, and possibly more pretentious way of talking about the dark – should provoke in him such a pervasive embarrassment, and so long after the fact, was something he could not explain.
But perhaps it would be easier to understand if the conversation had dealt with a third person, meaning Y. Singer talks about Y, whom K also knows, though not very well. Singer talks about Y in a somewhat demeaning way, a little sarcastically – no, that’s not right. It would probably be easier to understand if he spoke of Y in a complimentary, almost admiring way, which takes K aback, and Singer, to his horror, realises that he’s guilty of an embarrassing error, mistaking K for B, and it’s particularly mortifying because he has spoken of Y in an almost admiring way, which gives the remark he addresses to K, whom he thought was B, a familiarity that not only takes K aback, but also undoubtedly makes him feel a little self-conscious, because he isn’t prepared to receive this confiding, and admiring, remark about Y who is largely a peripheral figure for him, yet Singer speaks of Y in such a warm and familiar manner. When talking to B, it would have been natural to speak this way about Y, and it’s this confidentiality that K is allowed to hear; but for him it seems odd, even unnatural in all its familiarity; it’s as if he hasn’t heard Singer but instead the voice of some entirely different person, which takes him aback and might even make him feel a little self-conscious, embarrassed on Singer’s behalf. Because in this way K, unintentionally, receives insight into Singer’s ‘nakedness’ when he brings up another person without meaning to; something he registers with a certain astonishment that he doesn’t understand and, possibly, with a vague sense of self-consciousness, and he wonders at Singer’s unnatural way of speaking. He has no idea that Singer has been caught in the act, in all his ‘nakedness’. He has merely heard something that takes him aback, an unnatural voice, an ingratiating way of speaking that he doesn’t recognise in Singer. He doesn’t know that it is Singer’s ‘nakedness’ he has captured, and observed. But Singer knows it, and he has to hide his ‘nakedness’, his shame, in that moment. And while Singer behaves with a similar ‘nakedness’ towards K, based on the confidentiality and familiarity that the two of them share, K does not experience this confidentiality as Singer’s ‘nakedness’, but as Singer himself, in the sense that it’s Singer, after all – this is Singer speaking about this and that, here in the dark, in the way that Singer usually speaks, and in a way that he, K, has not only grown accustomed to but has even learned to value (it must be assumed). When someone who has your confidence happens unintentionally to observe you as you are displaying a confidentiality towards someone else, that’s when this ‘nakedness’ occurs in you, the person being observed. K sees an unfamiliar and different, more ingratiating, Singer, filled with affectation when he shows this other person his confidence; it’s a Singer who has been revealed in his ‘nakedness’. Singer completely stripped of all clothing, behind which he might hide before K, as he usually does in all his confidentiality. Singer is disrobed right before the eyes of K, who might well feel a little self-conscious, but fortunately he doesn’t know that he’s seeing Singer unclothed; yet Singer knows, and he can’t hide his shame from himself, or from anyone else who might know. Singer has to hide in some other way, he has to find somewhere to crawl into hiding, taking along his shame. No one must see him like this, wrapped only in his obscenely white, soft, and shapeless existence. Oh, all these mistakes made in the dark, throughout the years, in dark rooms, offering some sort of confidential information to the wrong man; Singer couldn’t bear to think about them. In countless variations these sorts of mistakes would pop up, not only in the dark, but also in broad daylight, in rain and wind, in sunshine and clear skies, he might mistake K for B; even though he saw that it was K he was speaking to, he might accidentally talk to him as if he were B, it was to B he could say such things about Y, and not to K. Too late, he would realise, on that deserted, brightly lit street corner, that it was to B he could and should say such things, and not to K, and he sees that K is taken aback. But K doesn’t know – not at this time either, on this deserted, sunny street corner – that Singer has mistaken him for B, even though Singer, of course, knows, and he sees that K is the one he’s talking to. If K had known, he would have realised that he was now seeing Singer the way he was in reality, as he put on airs for B by uttering such praise, even admiration, for Y. But K doesn’t know this, he is merely taken aback; and for a brief moment he levels a puzzled, almost searching look at Singer, who has now realised that he is guilty of a new, embarrassing mistake, in broad daylight, on this deserted, sunny street corner, where the detritus of existence is scattered around in the form of empty cigarette packs that have been smashed underfoot, greasy hot dog wrappers, wet clots of spittle, dried-out dog excrement, withered leaves that have shrivelled after falling, even a banana peel, looking fresh and yellow with the pattern of the fruit still evident inside; and Singer tries feverishly to divert the conversation from the topic of Y, and eventually he succeeds, and he says goodbye to K and continues on, until one day, three months later, a year later, maybe five years later, he crosses a street and then this embarrassing mistake once again pops into his mind, and he goes rigid, as rigid as a post, as he raises both hands to his face, in broad daylight, to hide his expression, in full view of everyone, and he exclaims in despair: ‘No, no!’ For Singer this was both quite annoying and a mystery.
Not all the versions referred to here – both in the dark room and in broad daylight – occurred in Singer’s life as actual events, and thus they didn’t necessarily pop up in his consciousness afterwards in the way described. Truth be told, it was all based on a single actual event, a single version, and that was what popped into Singer’s mind, over and over again. But all of these versions, and countless others, existed as possibilities.
This did not torment him on a daily basis. Ordinarily, Singer, as seen from the outside, was an affable person, well liked by those around him, though a bit reserved; he tried not to stand out in any way, but those who knew him liked him because he was both open and had a quiet sense of humour, which at times could seem astonishingly pithy, at times downright biting, though that was rare, and afterwards he had a peculiar habit of taking off his glasses to polish the lenses. Perhaps he did this, because it was his way of trying to take the sting out of his biting remark, which – if you looked closely at him as he took off his glasses and polished the lenses – he personally seemed to enjoy; it was visible in his pleased expression, if you happened to look at his face instead of his hands polishing his glasses, or directly into his eyes, which now squinted short-sightedly without the wall of glass in front of them. He also seemed open, in the sense that he appeared to be without illusions, especially on his own behalf. He accepted his own weaknesses, calmly and without making a fuss about them, meaning without sentimentalising his own nature. He accepted, as a fact, that he was not particularly brave, not particularly elegant, not particularly good at sports or other youthful exploits, and that he was not an eloquent speaker if he had to make a speech before a large audience, which for the most part he was able to avoid. Nor did he participate in group singing because he claimed, in a casual way, that he didn’t have a good singing voice and so he didn’t want to ruin the joy other people had when they sang ballads together in the late hours of the night. He managed to make both himself and others understand that his place was to be found in total anonymity; that was where he thrived, and that was also where he could meet others on an equal footing. He wasn’t afraid to admit that he was no dance fiend; in fact, he wasn’t any kind of fiend at all. And for this he was well liked. So we might say that Singer, based on these conditions he had chosen for his life, was a sociable person. And for that reason these shame-infested images that popped into his consciousness tormented him, both because of their mysterious nature and because he actually couldn’t deny that he felt rigid with embarrassment at having to relive them.
At the time when this book opens, he had seriously begun to brood over what this meant for his life. When this book starts, Singer is in the process of moving permanently to Notodden. He is thirty-four years old and about to take a job at the Notodden library. His youth is over, and he has survived it. But these shame-infested images are now threatening to tear apart the whole mythology of his life. If they are true – which they are in the sense that they keep popping up in his consciousness, a fact that makes them seem sharply accurate – they must have a certain meaning for his life; he realises this now, at the age of thirty-four, having embarked on remarkably late training as a librarian.
Before he turned thirty he was able to shrug his shoulders at the peculiar shame he suffered on his own behalf, in brief glimpses, and he didn’t need to view these incidents in the context of his life as a whole. So they hadn’t tormented him beyond those stubborn moments, or seconds, when they arose. Now they became part of his brooding about life. What did it all mean? That they had significance was something he couldn’t deny. He was forced to see that the shame he felt once again reliving it meant that it was real, it was a shame he couldn’t get rid of. It was his, in a strange and inexplicable way. But how much had it marked him? He had to assume that, in its incongruous way, the shame must have corresponded to the general pattern of his life, perhaps even determining the pattern. Could the fact that he experienced this as so unpleasant, so unbearably embarrassing, have made him devote so much of his time, in some sort of unconscious twilight landscape, to acting instinctively, almost with an automatic pilot in his blood, in order to avoid landing in new, embarrassing situations, which later, as we have seen, would constantly pop up in his consciousness? The threat of danger is always there, as we have seen. The possibility of being observed, unintentionally laughing too loudly, or making himself guilty of misunderstandings or mortifying mistakes in identity is ever-present, especially because chance acquaintances – whom he was constantly running into because of his sociable nature, even though he is a reserved person – played such an important role in triggering these embarrassing incidents, and that means that at any time and anywhere he might be at a point where the next step he took was linked to the greatest danger of being exposed, stripped bare. Each step carried the germ of an embarrassing moment, infested with a shame that could never be erased from his consciousness. A person like Singer was in danger wherever he went; and he had to be on guard at all times. A glance, an astonished look, a brief, searching stare, a so-called observation, was enough for Singer to collapse completely inside. Wouldn’t such a person use all the instincts of his being to defend himself against the occurrence of these types of incidents, and not only against the incidents themselves, but against any possibility that such incidents might occur? The loneliness of a person who has to be on guard like this at all times, wary of the demeaning feeling of shame potentially inherent in ordinary incidents, as is the case for Singer, must be elemental. It must be profound. He can’t seek solace from others. Not at all. He can’t confide in a friend. He cannot subject friends to his own terrible, internal collapse, he can’t even subject himself to that. And peripheral acquaintances are directly threatening. Was that the state of things? Was that how his youth had been? The suspicion that it had indeed been like that made Singer inexpressibly sad.
Because what did that signify? That he had mythologised his youth out of fear for his own shame-infested being. What had given his youth value was not the outcome of free choice but a necessary precaution to protect himself from being exposed in embarrassing situations of mysterious origin. He had believed that he’d freely chosen his youthful attitude as an ironic observer of life. That was how he was seen by others and how he saw himself. And that had pleased him because it’s expected of young men that they should be anything but observers of life. It does seem a jarring denial of life; because if you can’t be a participant in life when you’re in the full bloom of youth, when can you be? If someone refuses to make use of the gifts that youth grants him, that will provoke distress in someone who has the pleasure of observing the youth of the next generation. The passive young man is and will always be a repellent sight, and it was just such a sight that Singer, with eyes wide open, sought to become. He didn’t give a shit. He didn’t give a shit about anything. He squandered his life by observing it, and all the while time passed and his youth did too, and Singer didn’t lift a finger to hold on to or enjoy youth’s enviable state. He was a spineless brooder, a denier of life lacking all identity, a purely negative spirit, who observed everything in an almost selfeffacing manner. He allowed himself to be carried along with such tremendous indifference that it might have given him a liberating sense of freedom or independence. He was an anonymous and impractical wanderer on life’s highway, walking stooped forward and staring at the ground, in the midst of the springtime of his youth, year after year.
He hadn’t managed to decide what he would be, and he’d displayed a certain joy in this indecisiveness of his. Indecisive both in appearance and when it came to creating a future. Not until he turned thirty-one did he feel it was time to make a decision. That was when he enrolled in the Oslo College of Library Science of all things. The time of his youth was irrevocably over, and with each day Singer distanced himself more and more from his own attitude as a young man, and as each day passed he was another day older; he’d even noticed when he looked at his own face in the mirror that a thin streak of grey had shown up in his beard, and so it was time to make some sort of decision, and he applied to library school, where he was admitted based on gender quotas. Before then he’d drifted from one thing to another. Officially he’d been a student. From the time he’d come to Oslo at the age of twenty, after completing his obligatory military service as a NATO soldier in northern Norway, he’d been enrolled at the university as a student. He took his entrance exams that same autumn and then cheerfully began studying social anthropology. That was in the spring of 1971. The reason that he ended up being such a late bloomer was not because he was vehemently and passionately immersed in his own time, the so-called seventies era. He wasn’t. He didn’t get caught up in the political conflicts; he had friends in all camps and didn’t take sides, because he wasn’t sufficiently interested. The reason he let things go so late was because he didn’t want to bind himself financially, meaning take on student loans. He knew that he, with his peculiar attitude towards life, shouldn’t take on that sort of obligation, because then he would lose his independence. Besides, there was no specific goal for his studies, and that’s something you need if you are going to enter into a financially binding contract with the nation itself. So he had to take jobs once in a while, to pay for his goal-less studies. He did all sorts of jobs. He worked the night shift at a hotel, then as a daytime desk clerk at the same hotel. He was a proofreader for the newspaper Dagbladet. He supported himself for long periods as a translator of Western romances. He was even a sales assistant in a state-run alcohol shop, and on two afternoons each week, from the age of twenty-three until he turned thirty-four, he worked as a totaliser at the Bjerke Racetrack. He found these jobs through other students who introduced him to their employers. All of these side jobs were in high demand among the students, so the fact that Singer got others to recommend him says a lot about the friendly – meaning self-effacing – manner that Singer presented to those around him.
He also had other, less attractive jobs, as a telemarketer and interviewer for marketing research companies. That was how he financed his university studies, though he frequently took long breaks from the classroom. He might be away from the university for an entire term. And occasionally he would interrupt his studies halfway through in order to take a job. Other times he would show up in the classroom long after the term had started, and then leave again before the term was over. Only when he got so far as to prepare to take exams did he follow the term’s regimen to the letter, except for one time when he withdrew from the exam altogether. But eventually he passed his exams in both history and comparative literature. When, at the age of thirty-one, he broke off his university studies for good, he was in the process of preparing for another exam in comparative literature. If he had taken that exam in the autumn when he started at the College of Library Science, he would have needed only one more course, for example in social anthropology, before he could call himself a graduate with a university degree and thus be qualified to take a teaching position, after an additional six-month pedagogy course, most likely a whole year before he graduated from the library school.
But Singer abandoned his studies. He regarded himself as an eternal student, which no longer amused him. He wanted to find something permanent; he was no longer a young man who could waste the precious time of his young life. Time had passed, he had squandered his youth on an anonymous pleasure that had no purpose. During all those years he’d had only one constant point in his life, one goal: he wanted to write, he wanted to be an author. But even that cannot actually be described as a point in his life. Maybe the only real point, though a vague point. Yet this vague point in his life was his secret calling, though it was too vague for him to mention it to anyone, even to Ingemann, his best friend. None of Singer’s shifting friends and acquaintances, including his childhood friend Ingemann (who has been given the initial A to identify him in the first pages of this book), had any idea that this was what preoccupied the reserved and rootless man. Yet that was indeed what preoccupied Singer. Steadily and regularly, making no progress whatsoever. Because he never really got started. The young Singer never got started. And so, approaching his thirty-first birthday, he had to admit there was no secret calling in his life. He had to admit defeat, and so he enrolled in the College of Library Science, where the eternal student was admitted because of gender quotas.
When it came right down to it, all his attempts to become an author consisted in fine-tuning a single sentence: ‘One fine day he stood eye to eye with a memorable sight.’ That was how the sentence was formulated when he was twenty, and over the next years – at the height of all his years as a young man – he brooded over and revised that single sentence. ‘One fine day he stood eye to eye with a memorable sight.’ Why one fine day? Did it have to be a fine day? Couldn’t it be an awful day, a day with a snowstorm, for example? ‘One fine day he stood eye to eye with a memorable sight in a snowstorm.’ Yes, a memorable sight in a snowstorm. What kind of snowstorm? What did he see? What was it he stood eye to eye with? ‘One awful day, while the snowstorm lashed his face, he stood eye to eye with a memorable sight.’ Wasn’t that too dramatic? Surely it was possible to stand eye to eye with a memorable sight without having a snowstorm lashing your face. Also, ‘lashing his face!’ No, it could be a fine day, the important thing was the memorable sight; it was completely irrelevant whether there was snow or rain, sunshine or not. So, one fine day … but that was a cliché, a completely bland way of speaking. He couldn’t start off his writing career in such an ordinary way. No, it had to be more specific. ‘One fine day as the sun blazed yellow in the clear blue sky.’ That wasn’t it either. It was better than one fine day, but still not something he could use. Yet what was it he saw, a fine day or no fine day? What was he standing ‘eye to eye’ with? ‘Eye to eye’? Could he stand ‘eye to eye’ with a memorable sight? What did that mean? That the memorable sight was staring back at him? That there was an eye in the memorable sight staring back at him, just as he was staring at it? Apparently. But was that right? He didn’t know. ‘One fine day he stood before a memorable sight.’ ‘One fine day when the wind was howling, he stood before a memorable sight.’ ‘One fine day in a snowstorm he fell headlong, and as he fell he was overwhelmed by a memorable sight.’
Maybe that was it. He was overwhelmed by a memorable sight. As he fell. But why did he have to fall? Was the memorable sight linked to his own fall, which was a ‘headlong’ fall? Why was that? Couldn’t he witness a memorable sight from a standing position? He would at least have to try. And he did try. He liked the association of the fall with the memorable sight, but he couldn’t vouch for it. It included a snowstorm he couldn’t vouch for either. Because he hadn’t forgotten the phrase ‘one fine day’. ‘One fine day he stood before a memorable sight that overwhelmed him.’ Here he stood. He would be overwhelmed by a memorable sight from a standing position. ‘One fine day he stood before a memorable sight. It knocked him flat.’ Here he managed to get in both the fall and the opening with a fine day, that cliché he couldn’t let go of.
By then many years had passed, and Singer had turned twenty-eight, and you might well say that with his writing he had both walked a long road and gone far. He had learned from his own interior efforts to rely on a cliché, and he’d done so simply because he liked the wording. He had also managed to unite it with something else he’d come to love, meaning he had linked the memorable sight with