Menu

Don’t Mute the Post Horn | Letters
📰
0

Don’t Mute the Post Horn | Letters

Reading 0:00
15s threshold

Letters The Editors Don’t Mute the Post Horn The Post Horn Always Blows Twice Dear Editors, I was delighted to read Gemma Sack’s thoughtful essay on five novels by Vigdis Hjorth (“Officially Good People”) in Issue 50 of n+1 . Sack is right to focus on Hjorth as, among other things, a writer of Scandinavian social democracy, a perspective that works particularly well for A House in Norway . I also like the way she brings out the psychoanalytic preoccupations in Hjorth’s texts. However, Sack misses a crucial dimension of Hjorth’s 2012 novel Long Live the Post Horn! , namely the way the novel responds to the most horrific event in Norwegian history after World War II. This is not a criticism of Sack, for most foreign readers wouldn’t necessarily see the connections. (I didn’t immediately see it myself when I first read the novel in North Carolina. It took a trip to Norway to enlighten me.) Yet the aftermath of that historical moment permeates the novel.…

Continue reading — create a free account

Join HashtagPLUS to read full articles, follow hashtags, vote, and join the conversation.

Read More