Nina Lykke: Infidelity and Overcorrection

It's been a long time since writer Knut Pettersen, who is about to turn 60 and has been a fixture on the Norwegian cultural scene for decades, was invited to a lecture at the country's largest literary festival. The last time he spoke to a group of people was when he visited a class full of listless, listless young people at a high school on the outskirts of Oslo . Until an all-expenses-paid invitation arrives—not bad for someone who has been surviving on toast, eggs, and canned sardines in recent months.

The topic of the roundtable is "Infidelity in Life and Literature." It sounds like a joke: the other panelists are his ex-wife's new husband and a young writer who, in her latest work, portrays Knut as a stalker. "Lately, he's realized he needs to get back out into the world. There's no other way. His bank account is empty and he's started using his credit card," reads Nina Lykke 's " We Didn't Come Here to Have Fun ," a magnificent novel about everything surrounding writing, just like Gabriel Báñez's " Cultura " and Pola Oloixarac's " Mona ," where pathos and absurdity carved a bitter yet darkly humorous perspective on literary creation and its fringes.

Knut watches videos about testicular cancer on YouTube and thinks about how depressing it would be to go back to work as an assistant in a nursing home, where he changes diapers to earn a few bucks. His books, although they don't sell much anymore, are still bought by the Arts Council. But he's not thinking about a new one yet; he's lonely and somewhat old, with little contact with the outside world except for chats with his neighbor Frank, preoccupied with his strenuous relationship with his lover, who listens to him without looking at him while he finishes his design work on his computer at night.

The writer is lost in a labyrinth, far from the figure everyone remembers for the bestseller he published 20 years ago. He needs, for now, a couple of good listeners to help him escape the tedium. “Everything he thinks about these days ends up becoming a dead end, and he buzzes around them like an angry bee,” is the sound in his mind when he accepts the challenge and attends the festival. What can a white, middle-class writer, about to be canceled, say to the ultra-modernized exhibitions of vegetarian writers, trans speakers, African poets, and Arab feminists? Will he be able to control himself and not explode? Or will he lose his mind and stop caring about everything?

With the sharp sense and masterful handling of irony that characterizes her previous work, State of Discomfort, Nina Lykke constructs a scenario where any artistic rebellion or transgression seems to be accepted if it is subject to a series of rules, agreements, and protocols in exchange, in a paradox where what is known as “real-life literature” prevails, that cosmos that, in the words of the protagonist, is something like “using reality to sculpt your shitty, self-pitying fantasies.” There is a paragraph where Knut dissects the inbreeding and farce of literary hierarchies, between witty conversations with his editor: “Since writers of fiction based on real events want to keep their spouse, their children, their circle of friends, and their real estate, they usually walk on eggshells so as not to alienate anyone. Therefore, fiction based on real events is the most mendacious genre of all.”

Where does one find the time to write, amidst “the internet and social media, which now rob Knut of much of his time and soul,” in a world far removed from Ibsen’s maxim of “sit down and stay seated”? What value does reading have where books are left lying around in old buildings and everything seems so overstimulated that no one can bear to be bored? “Inner peace doesn’t exist. All that exists is nerves or death,” is an opening quote from Fran Lebowitz, which may well connect with another glimpse of Knut’s soliloquy: “If everyone did the right thing, everything would grind to a halt. If no one did the right thing, everything would grind to a halt.”

We Didn't Come Here to Have Fun , by Nina Lykke. Trans. by Ana Flecha Marco. Gatopardo Editions, 256 pages.