The 1990s in Swedish literature remains an unwritten page

Seeking acquaintance with dedicated critic

BY GABRIELLA HÅKANSSON

On the bottom shelf of the bookcase in my office, there is a worn old binder labelled 'Kritik', literary criticism. It contains newspaper clippings, reviews and literary debate. One of the oldest clippings is a Bourdieuesque analysis of the climate of literary criticism in Sweden in 1984.

Donald Broady, a professor of the sociology of education, analyses recent events, claiming that new young critics such as Mats Gellerfelt at Svenska Dagbladet and Horace Engdahl at Dagens Nyheter have made a name for themselves by opening up new fields. According to Broady, they highlight the intrinsic value of the text itself rather than examining its political aspects as before, and in this way, they create an entirely new literary climate.

With hindsight, we might say that the 1980s were a strong decade. Not because more good literature was being written, but because a number of critics came onto the scene who considered it their task to create a new literary agenda. Compared with the 80s, the recently ended 90s seem much more diverse. There are few people today who can point out and analyse literary trends in recent years, and for want of overview and insight, people accuse the writers. A poignant example of this is an inter-Nordic meeting of literary critics arranged by the magazine Ord&Bild at the start of the new millennium. The starting point was that Nordic prose and literary criticism focusing on prose were in crisis, and that the new writers lacked ambition. We were four critics and writers -- Bror Rönnholm, a Swedish-speaking Finn, John Erik Riley from Norway, Erik Skyum Nielsen from Denmark and myself -- who had gathered together to discuss the matter, and when you read the resulting article, it is surprising that all of us were almost unanimous when it came right down to it. The new Nordic literature is doing well! Names of writers come quick and fast, any talk of crisis is remote. Riley sums up the discussion saying: "I think that Norwegian literature in the 1990s has been far more political than writers themselves realize. It would be interesting if a critic were able to point this out."

The same is definitely also true of much of Swedish literature in the 1990s. In the absence of dedicated and loud criticism it has been considered - and this is perhaps particularly true of subtle women novelists and writers of short prose - uninteresting, apolitical or just bad. If one had to define the relationship between critics and writers over the last few years, one might say that the critics have been bland and the writers silent. A browse through the binder in my office proves that, as a consequence, literary debate centred on how bad and bland everything was, and that includes publishing, criticism in daily newspapers and cultural policy in general. And surely the word 'crisis' has never been unfairly applied so often to contemporary literature as in the 1990s. I should know, because I myself was one of the many who loudly vented their dismay without being able to see that a great deal of exciting literature was being written, and that what this literature needed in order to be properly appreciated was not moans but new dedicated interpreters. Today, when the 1990s are over, I have a feeling that the lack of dedicated and vigorous criticism and strong and dominant key figures is about to lead to something of a disaster. I say this, because as far as I am aware, there has not been a single critical overview, study or analysis of Swedish literature in the 1990s in book form. In Jag själv ett hus av ljus (I am a house of light) from 2002, Åsa Beckman wrote with insight about ten women poets from the 1980s and 90s, but there has been nothing else. What I would like to see is Swedish counterparts for some recent Danish works, Marianne Stidsen's anthologies Ankomster - til 90'erne (Arrivals - in the 90s' and Udveje - fra 90'erne (Exits - from the 90s' , and Erik Skyum Nielsen's Engle i sneen (Angels in the snow). Here we have personal, sharp analyses of individual writers' work as well as general trends and movements. I also miss an obstinate champion of literature such as critic Lars Bukdahl, who writes with dedication about the literature of his own generation, and who is soon to publish a voluminous work on the 1990s in Danish literature.

In Sweden, we have only a few critics who have followed contemporary literature continuously. Aside from Åsa Beckman, Jonas Thente may be the most diligent in this. Others who have been influential have only kept up for a short period and then passed the baton on to the next person, breaking the continuity which is so crucial for an overview. I can only speculate about the reasons for this: the turbulence at the Swedish dailies during the 1990s and the economic crisis of the cultural journals. Repeated overhauls of arts sections, frequent replacements of arts editors (resulting in critics changing newspapers, losing status or changing their subject area) and a general economic slowdown have undermined the potential for young critics to create the same kind of platform for themselves as before. They seek other paths and never reach the position required for writing overviews or publishing literary essays. Perhaps this is the reason why Swedish literature from the 1990s remains an unwritten leaf.

Now we are in the 21st century and new trends are on their way. When the next generation of writers emerges, I hope that they are followed by a bunch of dedicated literary critics. It is not that literature cannot manage without criticism - it always will - but it is so much more fun if there is a mutual interest.

Gabriella Håkansson is a writer and critic

Translated by The English Centre/Nicholas Mayow and Monica Sonck