I read Maria Schottenius chronicle of autofiktion ( DN 25/2). How are samtidslitteraturen? Why is it so self-centered? Where are the big samhällsbeskrivande stories?

First, I emailed her (we’re a little familiar), to say that I agree with. To read Vilhelm Moberg, and Per Anders Fogelström feels like to drink a glass of cold water, after a samtidslitteratur stissigt high in caffeine. But upon further reflection, I wonder if the problem is not a different than what she describes.

Maybe it is not samtidslitteraturen that is weak, but alltidläsaren?

What is the difference between autofiktion and samhällskommentar? If you look at the actual text? To revoke the ”city of My dreams” is not primarily to revoke a samhällsskildring. Rather, it is to withdraw its components. What are they then? Stockholmsskildring, biographical, atmosphere. Language.

Set this to a text that is not primary is called samhällsskildring, for example, Hjalmar Söderberg’s ”The serious game”. What is the text? Stockholmsskildring, biographical, atmosphere. Stylistics. Continue with any of the autofiktiva works Schottenius invoke (we allow those who currently or have recently been on kritikerlistan here next to be, not to snåra to it in the debate). Take Carina Rydberg’s ”The highest caste”. Ingredients? As above.

Move the perspective from the English literature – Virginia Woolf, or Richard Ford or Nadine Gordimer boils his soup on the same spikes. Move the needle backward, and the Bellman plays the same song.

everything before the novel’s emergence and after its decomposition, a fiction that works in a different manner. Essay without biographical, poetry freed from the place, etcetera. But if we play with the idea that the particular novel usually consists of the person(s) performing the actions in a not too abstract environment – what is it then, that distinguishes ”the broad samhällsberättelsen” from ”the narrow-minded jagporträttet”?

We, the readers, might. Maybe we are responsible for the difference, as a co-creator to the text: we make it what it is, by what we put in the gaps the author left. We have prior knowledge about those who produced the text (woman/man, fine writer/ful writer, fine publishers/ugly publishing house, found in the billighetshyllan at the store/found on the second-hand bookshop in Tuscany, seen reviewed in the newspaper/seen referenced in school textbooks, etc.).

in Addition to this knowledge, we have our knowledge of the different situations. We have our own experiences, our perception of how it is reasonable to feel/act. All of this we stop in the text. When we read, we ask two things: what do I think of it as written, and tally the book with my experience?

our pre-understanding, when a fresh book of mormon is presented as autofiktion? We will know, probably, as it’s usually called the author’s character. Who he separated from, who he is angry at, who he renamed. We will also have a meticulous approach to his protagonist, as we share his experiences. We know how it is to ride the green line, we know how much you get in a cash, we know what they say at the clinic when you have a pain in my stomach. We will concentrate on how these details are depicted, rather than on what samhällstolkningar that can be done around just the green line.

When we read the old heroes is our entrance to a completely different. On the basis of the distance in time and debate, we are free to think that they wrote about something other than themselves. We can count their fyllor and concubines. We can fill their texts with the knowledge we have of a historical context and count, and their private disappointments, private feuds. In addition, we can see their characters from a different perspective than the myopic contemplation of someone who is close to us. We can feel a connection on a deeper human level than in the direct comparison with our own lives because their so concretely different from our own. Freed from the green line schedule.

in short, We are more prepared to recognize ourselves in a man who had emigrated to America because of potatissvälten, than in a woman who crossed the same street as we crossed, if she has not crossed it in the exact same way.

will samtidslitteraturen always be worse off than dåtidslitteraturen. Literature written today will be read as self-portraits, literature written in go as a historical document. No matter what day it is today.

So, perhaps we should not ask what samtidslitteraturen can do for us but ask what we can do for samtidslitteraturen. Personally, I would wish that I could stop looking for myself in the texts. I’d read Isabelle Ståhl, Aase Berg and Johanna Peace with the same interest for the differences in experiences between myself and my contemporary neighbors, which the interest I feel for spinnhusväverskan, byhoran, and frimicklarpastorn. Regardless of how they cross the street.

My wishlist as samtidsförfattare, would be, on the other hand: please add me to the side, and pick up my book. Read to me that YOU, the reader, in relation to the text, is more interesting than I, the author, in relation to the text.

Read me as if I were dead and buried.

Read more texts by Agnes Lidbeck , for example, about why there is no skitdröm want to have it nice at home .