Known to don a cool cravat (do people say corbat in English?), Norwegian poet/playwright/novelist Jon Fosse (born 1959) is best known for his innovative plays and prose that give voice to the unsayable.
One of his favorite quotes because he really feels it, is from Gabriel Garcia Lorca, who was also a poet/playwright: "Theater is just poetry standing up."
But Nothing Happens
Jon Fosse is has been called a master of minimalism. As in "A River Runs Through It" and Maeterlinck, some readers complain "nothing happens." But the story is there. It's just not apparent, like a silent storm raging beneath a calm surface.
Fosse's French editor asked if he'd ever read Maeterlinck. No. Then you shouldn't, the editor advised, because it is very similar. Better to not be too self-conscious about your approach.
On His Writing Process
Although he can write a play in a week, it leaves him utterly exhausted. He prefers to write in a daily rhythm.
In an interview, Fosse confided, "When I write I try to think about nothing, to be honest. I just do the writing. Writing is a process of listening to something, I don't know what. To me the magic of what I write is new also to me. I just listen and the story comes. In a way, it's not ME writing."
"Who is it? God?" the interviewer asks.
"No, I don't say that. I don't know. Let's hope and pray. I don't know. I'm not visualizing."
Regain the child in you
When Fosse started writing at age 12, he said it felt like "a secret shelter, a place only for myself where I could get protection and hide in a way."
His first novels were very dark. So black he feels light shines from it. "The drama of his drama," he calls it.
Mysticism
Born in rural Norway, he feels very connected to the landscape and the language in this part of the country, which is similar to Old Norse.
"The most important things in life cannot be spoken." Jon Fosse long studied philosophy.
But the academic way of thinking, he said, is theoretical and totally different, totally opposed to the creative powers of the artist. The artist and the one who seeks God have much more in common than they have with the academic.
Fosse says he was influenced by the Quakers, who have a very interesting process, like a writer. They "listen for the inner life" during their Sunday worship services. He says writing is like praying because it is the pursuit of invisible knowledge.
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