"I found myself in a dark wood, the direct way lost . . . "

 I'm not sure what to make of Jon Fosse's short novel A Shining.

Fosse is a Norwegian author, translator, and playwright. He was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in 1959, he has written over seventy novels, poems, children's books, essays, and theatre plays which have been translated into over fifty languages. 

Several of his novels have been described as post-modernist and avant-garde literature due to their minimalism, lyricism and unorthodox use of syntax. The Bergens Tidende reported in 2005, "Few and often nameless characters, little external action and a great deal of linguistic repetition, Jon Fosse writes in all literary genres, but his drama in particular has enjoyed fabulous international success." A Shining is a relatively painless introduction to his work if only because it's short.

We spend all 74 pages in the head of a nameless character who, bored, drives aimlessly until his car becomes stuck on a narrow forest road. He does not know where he is. He does not know where to find help. He has no cellphone. It's cold. It grows dark. He leaves the car but does not follow the road but wanders aimlessly in the forest until he's lost. It snows. He sees a shining . . . something. He sees his dead parents and talks to them. He sees a figure in a black suit, white shirt, black tie and barefoot. He somehow becomes barefoot himself. The book stops.

The language, a translation by one of my favorite translators Damion Searls, is relatively bland. Here is a sample taken at random: "For the shining presence's arm, if that's the right thing to call it, now felt something inseparable from my body, and to find out whether it was or not, to be able to find out, I would have to move, and that's exactly what I had no desire to do, or what it felt like I wasn't allowed to do. And this prohibition was binding and unalterable, that's how it felt." 

Because Fosse tells us so little about the narrator—his age, background, character, hopes, fears—the reader has none of the usual markers we use to understand the story. Because Fosse gives us so little and the narrator questions what he does think, we have to make up or own story (or throw the book against the wall). And perhaps that's the point. Rather than the author leading the reader, the point is offer conflicting, inexplicable clues and force readers to make of A Shining what they will.

It reminded me of, "In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost . . . ." Among the difference between Dante and Fosse is that Fosse's narrator has no guide—which I take as a comment on modern society—and no hope of redemption. He mentions God, but does not seem to believe that God (or a Virgil) can help him find his way.

A Shining provoked more thoughts and questions than most books. It is probably worth rereading and more thought, but there are so many other books I want to read, so many other things I want to learn, that once through was enough for me. Others will feel differently.