An empty life, depicted with brutal clarity and humor... but also great sympathy. According to some, fiction is meant to be all about the intensity of one's inner life. Luckily for those of us with very little intensity in our inner lives, Solstad is here to let us know that we, too, deserve to be commemorated in fiction, even if we're incredibly boring and probably don't deserve anything much at all. ( )

The idea of writing a book with a "black hole" for a central character

This book presents itself as an experiment: the principal character, Singer, doesn't have much character (he has less, for example, than "The Man Without Qualities"). He has little energy or daring, and he is easily mortified (Kafka's characters come to mind as comparisons). Several times in the book Solstad asks (in the authorial voice, as metafictional asides) why the book is centered on such a person; but those are rhetorical questions, because the novel is an experiment in an empty center.

Singer is necessarily an unreliable narrator, simply because there are people in his life who feel things strongly, and have wider interests and concerns, and he doesn't quite register them. But the novel isn't driven by the difficulties that unreliable narrators can present; we don't really need to figure out the characters that Singer can't, or won't, understand. It's a matter of trying to construct a novel around an absence. "T. Singer" shows how difficult it can be to stop readers from thinking too much about what the narrator gets wrong, and what sorts of people his friends and relatives really are.

The novel also demonstrates that it's not easy to create real blankness. Singer's character isn't as blank as Bartleby's; we get to know him, and once we're a couple of dozen pages in, we recognize his preoccupations. (He worries, for example, that when he's invited to a dinner with people he only knows slightly, that he'll be able to choose a chair that isn't hemmed in by people, so he won't bother them when he has to excuse himself to go to the bathroom.) He isn't a blank at all, despite the author's apostrophes, and Singer's enumerable qualities turn out to be good ones: patience, flexibility, social aptitude, consistency, affability, and a limited introspection.

A third problem with an absent central character is that his actions inevitably imply character. Solstad doesn't consistently present or control his character's absence. The last forty pages are full of pathos about Singer's relationship with his stepdaughter. At first she has no friends, since her mother has died and they've moved to Oslo. He can't figure out how to fix that, and he's enormously relieved when he comes home one day and hears his stepdaughter playing with another girl. These forty or so pages create strong sympathy for the character, but in the book's first half I think readers wouldn't feel anything stronger than affection or bemusement.

*

Appendix: a couple of questions

There's a crucial page right at the end of the book, which raises questions I can't answer. I set them out here in case someone who has read the original might help.

Singer is in his apartment with his daughter and her friends.

"Surrounded by spirited young ladies, with all their sweetness, we find ourselves together with Singer in a novel tht is like a big black hole. Why is Singer the main character in this novel?" [p. 219]

This is well put, and like Solstad's other metanarrative moments, well judged in tone and rhetorical address. However I don't understand what comes just before it:

"By the way, in every novel there is a big black hole, which is univerdal in its blackness, and this novel has now reached that point."

Is this intended to mean that no character can be fully known, so every novel is built around a vacuum? That seems implausible in the novel's own logic, because we've been told, and shown, that Singer has a singular absence of motivation, self-knowledge, empathy, and so forth. Why write a novel about such a person if everyone is like that?
I also don't understand a line that comes later on the same page:

"I wish I could have said something that Singer wouldn't be able to ponder... my language ceases when Singer's pondering ceases."

These are two different things, logically speaking. (They contradict one another.) In addition, the first sentence is clearly wrong on its own terms, because the narrator has told us many things Singer doesn't ponder. I wonder if this is a problem in translation.
If anyone can eludicate these, please leave a comment.

Bibliotekaren T. Singer er i midten av 30-årene da han bestemmer seg for å reise til Notodden for å begynne et helt nytt liv. Han ønsker å være mest mulig usynlig og sliter med skyldfølelse og skam for de utroligste og banale ting. Han lar ingen komme ordentlig inn på seg, kanskje ikke en gang ham selv.

I et kort blaff opplever han noe som kan ligne et mer levende liv da han får en venn. Men vennskapet er dømt til å mislykkes, fordi Singer har så mye angst og mistenksomhet i seg. Underveis forelsker han seg også, men uten at noen trang til å blomstre forløses i ham. Ensomheten ser heller ikke ut til å plage ham særlig.

Jeg ble veldig fascinert av denne boka, som også inneholder et viktig og eksisensielt spørsmål: Hvem er vi når ingen egentlig ser oss? Er vi fullverdige mennesker når ingen får innblikk i hvem vi er og hva vi står for? Kan man være et helt menneske bare i seg selv? Eller er det først når vi opptrer i relasjon til andre mennesker at vårt eget jeg har noen som helst betydning? ( )

Een Noorse schrijver, veelvuldig winnaar van literaire prijzen, die schrijft met humor en diepgang, die meermaals genoemd werd voor de Nobelprijs Literatuur, en waar ik tot drie dagen geleden nog nooit van gehoord had. Het is een schande!

Dat ik het dan lees - een wondermooi humoristisch boek, vol psychologische diepgang en literaire pretprikjes - over een bibliothecaris die voor één keer niet op zoek moet naar een moordend boek of het ware woord van Jezus Christus, een bibliothecaris dus die gewoon doet wat bibliothecarissen doen (of zouden moeten doen): dagenlang in de kelder van een bibliotheek zorg dragen voor boeken, en die daarnaast ook gewoon een twijfelend en alles in rekening brengend bestaan mag leven, die de eenzaamheid opzoekt, vindt en weer loslaat, en terugvindt. Dat mijn eerste reactie dan is (na amper vijf regels): ik koop het!

http://occamsrazorlibrary.blogspot.com/2008/08/t-singer.html ( )

Ibland är det konstigt.
Ingenting i Solstads historia "T. Singer" är anmärkningsvärt, egentligen. Ändå blir romanen - slutprodukten - anmärkningsvärd. Kanske beror det på författarens fullkomliga utnyttjande av romanformen. Historien han producerat passar så utomordentligt väl för att vara en roman... och endast en roman. Ofta kan man ju för sin inre syn "se" en film spelas upp när man läser, men i fallet "T. Singer" är det omöjligt. Jag kan inte tänka mig att den kan bli en pjäs heller. Inte kan den förkortas till novell heller.
Nej, formen, och språket, är den absolut största behållningen för mig. Ingen kapitelindelning, vilket gör att alla händelser liksom flyter in i varandra. Händelser, som inte alltid har med varandra att göra, åtminstone inte i förstone, glider omärkligt in i varandra, precis som i livet självt. ( )