Reviews of Nu var det 1914 (1934) and related work
- Sequel: Här har du ditt liv! (1935)
- Sequel: Se dig inte om (1936)
- Sequel: Slutspel i ungdomen (1937)
- Adaptation: Here Is Your Life (1966)
Nu var det 1914 (1934
)
Eyvind Johnson (writer).
Read in 2023.
Born in 1900 and now almost 14, Olof leaves his foster parents and becomes an assistant log driver in Norrbotten, the far north-east of Sweden.
The first of four in the suite Romanen om Olof, a fictionalized autobiography of the author’s teenage years that started coming out soon after the Social Democrats had begun to rule the country. Johnson mixes hard-boiled documentation of working-class life with wry observations and a couple of fanciful stories Olof hears.
References here: The Ballad of Halo Jones (1984).
‣ Här har du ditt liv! (1935)
Eyvind Johnson (writer).
Read in 2023.
At 15, Olof attends his father’s funeral, works at a lumber mill, and begins to read in earnest.
This is a bit better in every way. In particular, the fanciful hypodiegesis of the story of Johanna is beautiful. It continuously plays both into and against contemporary melodramatic tropes, really working Johnson’s starkly realist counterpoint into its romanticism, until the melodrama finally wins out in the end.
‣ Se dig inte om (1936)
Eyvind Johnson (writer).
Read in 2023.
At 16, Olof gets a cleaner, less dangerous job at a cinema. He reads more, and with his new job in “culture” he forms an opinion of himself as a better-informed budding intellectual. However, he stays silent when his friends brag and lie.
The finale, where Olof confronts a possible criminal career through a fantastic vision of his larger context, is beautiful. At that point, “Skratt-Fredrik”’s boasts have been punctured, but Olof remains a suitably pathetic figure himself. It’s a moving examination of a young man’s delusions in the grip of economic competition; neither have changed much in the intervening 87 years. For example, Olof sells snacks at shows of Quo Vadis? (1913), and Johnson—making choices that seem brilliantly prescient for 1936—frames the movie through its ad copy, as the even bigger 1951 version would be framed, or the empty superhero blockbusters of a hundred years later.
References here: The Emigrants (1949), En kärlekshistoria (1970).
‣ Slutspel i ungdomen (1937)
Eyvind Johnson (writer).
Read in 2023.
Approaching the end of the decade, Olof is back to working a variety of menial jobs. He hopes for a revolution in Norrbotten, like the one in Russia. Eventually, he leaves for the south, along the same way he took to leave his foster parents in 1914.
This final entry in the suite completes the period of the Great War and of Olof’s youth, but it’s structurally weaker than the first three. Johnson briefly attempts Joycean streams of consciousness and imagines a version of Anabasis (ca. 400 BCE) where the Greeks had never heard of snow until they found it on their trek, but it’s a simpler realism that now dominates the narrative. Olof’s wry perspective is still present, but the hypodiegeses are abbreviated.
Johnson tries to make a point out of the pointlessness of the young man’s life. In the end, Olof’s little brother has turned 15 and is also working. Disillusioned, Olof—who began the series declaring to himself that there is no god—doesn’t know what to tell his brother. There is, of course, no revolution in Norrbotten. Johnson shows, from the ground level, why it isn’t possible. He does so with compassion, without chiliasm or conspiracy theory, and without Olof being saved by becoming the writer Eyvind Johnson. The suite is ultimately successful.
‣ Here Is Your Life (1966
)
An adaptation of Romanen om Olof as a whole, not just the second volume for which the movie is named.
References here: My Life as a Dog (1985).