Sweden post welfare state

Neither writers nor readers behave the way they used to; for better or for worse, literature faces specialization and fragmentation.

By Daniel Sandström

What has the early 21st century been like in Sweden in terms of literature? That depends on who you ask. I would venture to say that a publisher at one of the larger Swedish publishing houses might look back on the past five years and say that the cut in the value added tax on books is probably the best thing that has happened to Swedish literature for a very long time. This tax subsidy and the continuing paperback boom have certainly cheered up the publishing industry. A win-all situation, is the conclusion.

It is true that even literature with a narrower appeal seems to sell better when the prices go down, but the publishing sector in Sweden today has become increasingly divided. Above all, the bigger publishers have got better at selling more copies of fewer titles. Marketing focuses on a few winners, at the expense of the kind of title that used to be published for purely literary motives. Meanwhile, smaller publishing companies that lack the muscle for that kind of business are increasingly left to deal with literary 'charity work' and 'eco-system maintenance'. But that, too, can prove profitable on occasion. When the small publisher Atlas decided to take on Joan Didion, who had long lacked a Swedish publisher, they had no idea that she would turn out to be the big name in literature in 2005.

Today, then, quality literature is by no means taken for granted at the bigger publishing houses, especially as the lucrative genre 'suspense' seems to be taking up a bigger and bigger portion of their catalogues. Then again, we are not entirely sure what 'literary quality' means here in Sweden. Why is that? Because here in Sweden, we are literally in a state of post Modernism. Our aesthetic values have been shaped by the well-meaning but patriarchal pointers supplied by the Swedish welfare state, so perhaps it is no surprise that Swedish literature is both a product of and a reaction against modernity. But just as society at large seems a mite confused in today's new globalized reality, so indigenous Swedish cultural policy and literary criticism (consider that in Sweden, the discipline 'comparative literature' is in principle synonymous with the history of Swedish literature) do not quite seem to know what to make of a new situation where the distinction between high-brow and low-brow is not as easy to make as before, and where literature can no longer take its position as the jewel in the crown of culture for granted.

The end of History
Life was more convenient in the old days. Conservatism (if that is the word I want to denote a lack of fresh thinking) is evident in the view taken of the history of literature. Unlike Denmark, where the debate about the literary canon has been both political and intense, no-one dares to question the literary canon in Sweden -- that would force people to express opinions that might threaten the cultural consensus whereby all things are considered important even though nothing must be changed. As a result, literature students at our universities are stuck with textbooks on the history of literature written before the fall of the Berlin wall. The fact that the view of literature has been changed by globalization, feminism, postcolonialism, culturalism and universal issues of identity is something that it is apparently preferable to ignore. Sweden is sometimes bewilderingly like that country Francis Fukuyama referred to when he spoke of the end of history.

Cultural policy is also finding it hard to come up with contemporary formats for literature. One example is the quality assessment principles laid down by the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs for the purposes of allocating State funding for literature: "intensity, originality, complexity; innovation or independence in terms of literary technique". Aside from the fuzzy concept 'intensity', these are not particularly original criteria for what literature should be; they have been the norm for nearly fifty years now and they are among the standard props in Modernism's hall of mirrors. To "set up problems for debate", as Georg Brandes once argued was the purpose of literature, seems to be less in demand. That is, except in feminism, which has long been the only ideology that has truly had an influence over Swedish cultural life in terms of encouraging change. The success of Monika Fagerholm's August Prize novel Den amerikanska flickan ('The American Girl') cannot be put down to ideology, of course, but it is important not to underestimate Fagerholm's influence on the younger generation of Swedish prose writers. Her novel embodies a use of language and a way of reasoning about popular culture, identity and gender that is different from the 'classic' questions in contemporary Swedish literature, such as "What was the cost of developing the welfare state?" and "What was lost through industrialization and urbanization?" But naturally, these questions still live on. Sweden has seen many great, even excellent storytellers -- Kerstin Ekman, Sara Lidman, P O Enquist, Sven Delblanc -- who all took modernity as their topic and who coupled the more public norms of Modernism with a wide, socially oriented expression. Kerstin Ekman and P O Enquist have continued to hold their prominent positions during the 21st century (as has Torgny Lindgren, though he is too much of a loner to be fitted into this pattern).

Postmodern modernism
However, the search is on for their successors. The huge success that a writer like Lotta Lotass has had with the critics ever since her debut six years ago probably has something to do with the fact that she writes in a tradition that is so well-known to the Swedish literary establishment. It should also be noted that she has mastered this tradition to perfection (her novel skymning:gryning ('dawn:dusk') is an example from 2005). However, her breakthrough is not of the kind that brings anything new and unexpected to our aesthetic values. The most you could say is that there is Modernist irony in the fact that a tradition with such a focus on the future and on breaking with old traditions is now the object of classic veneration. Therein lies something new: postmodern Modernism.

Beyond that, literary postmodernism in Sweden has generally been a reaction to the great narrative of modernism in this country. For the longest time, the postmodernists persisted in not telling a story, that is, in questioning the potential of language as a means of communication. In poetry, metaphors were banned and linguistic materialism reigned supreme. Prose, on its part, was to cast realism and plot on the dung heap, on the pretext that it was naïve to believe that the world could be reflected in a trifling thing like language. It did get a little tedious: artistic Swedish prose has always been very particular about its artistic quality, but in the early 21st century issues of form were elevated to a position above all others. Who wants to discuss Bush with the world when you can discuss the metaphor content of your own poetry with your colleagues?

On the international scene, this trend in language criticism was never as strong and -- above all -- never as deathly serious, but in the early 21st century it is no longer possible to talk of postmodernism and deconstruction as living concepts where Anglo-Saxon literature is concerned; the issue is now more of 'post-postmodernism' or 'reconstruction'. This has meant a revival of socially conscious narratives in an everyday setting (Zadie Smith, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen), where many of the commonplaces of postmodernism have been included in a more traditional novel form. One of the very few Swedish examples of this 'reconstruction' is the best Swedish novel of 2005: Härifrån till allmänningen ('From Here to the Common Land') by Steve Sem-Sandberg, a novel about a fictitious suburb, Venby, in the year of change, 1968. But apart from that, things like e-mail, MP3 players, skyrocketing workplace absenteeism, pension scandals, the gradual decay of the welfare society, class distinctions, segregation, vegans, independent schools, terrorist threats, the war in Iraq, debate on globalization or headscarf bans are nothing you would normally come across in a new Swedish work of fiction; instead, these things exist in the country's abundant crime fiction. This steadily growing genre has come to provide an opportunity for commercial 'crop rotation' for writers and poets who could never attain similar success with their literary works, but this development has also given rise to a sort of double entry bookkeeping when it comes to defining what is art and what is commerce. Social debate has often been expressed in commercial crime fiction (which is written by former journalists, something that has caused the term 'journalism' to become a counter-productive term of abuse in certain literary circles), while novels with literary ambition should preferably deal with topics such as the Swedish 19th century poet Esaias Tegnér or Saint Birgitta (the bigger publishing houses today prefer publishing novels about classic Swedish authors to publishing works by those authors). Publishing in 2006 so far shows that the trend continues.

Children of Globalization
At the same time, it should be noted that Swedish fiction has nevertheless moved in a more international and globalized direction. Before the new millennium, we were aware that in other countries, there were books about cultures that mingled, following globalization and migration. We might have been able to spell 'postcolonialism' and 'integration', but we saw very few Swedish books dealing with these issues. Today, however, literary Sweden can boast a certain multiculturalism. Writers such as Jonas Hassen Khemiri (Ett öga rött/'One eye red' and Montecore), Johannes Anyuru (Det är bara gudarna som är nya/ 'Only the gods are new'), Marjaneh Bakhtiari (Kalla det vad fan du vill/ 'Call it what the hell you want') or Alejandro Leiva Wenger (Till vår ära/ 'In our honour') are all children of globalization and write postmodern, stylistically heterogeneous stories about a heterogeneous and postmodern reality. Unfortunately, they are often lumped together in an inappropriate way (a bit like I am doing now). People say 'immigrant writers' (although they are all Swedish) or refer to 'Rinkeby Swedish' (as if they did not, in fact, write in Swedish), and people are generally a little too reluctant to consider these books as literary works, focusing instead on their 'authentic' character. And people also refuse to see all the things that make these writers different from each other. It is a bit like lumping together Salman Rushdie and Kazuo Ishiguro because both are 'Asian'.

Personally, I think that popular culture is a much more prominent shared factor than the 'suburbs' for these younger writers who have attained popularity on purportedly cultural grounds; it is striking how they incorporate elements from hiphop and TV in their works. Their success is also not specifically due to their eye (or ear) for immigrants or native Swedes. They have eyes and ears for the way Sweden looks and sounds today. If they had a typically Swedish name like Andersson we would still read them. At the same time, it seems clear that the new public arena (a word which perhaps should not be written in the singular in these online times) has brought a new role for writers. As we gradually give up the Modern dream of one single public sphere, the debate becomes increasingly stratified: in a culture where writers are provided for by the market (and library readings and other media events) and by the grants system, there is less and less need for writers to review the works of colleagues who might take their comments the wrong way, just for the money. As a result, writers have become much less visible in public debate. Meanwhile, the fact that the literary journal BLM was discontinued after a hip resuscitation attempt a few years ago is proof that an educated middle class with a given identity and a given frame of reference can no longer be mustered.

In short, neither writers nor readers are behaving as they used to. For better or worse, specialization and fragmentation are what awaits literature, and this trend can only be intensified by the fact that much of the new debate on literature has gone online, with blogs as a new but probably robust medium for literary debate.

Group mentality
It is an entirely different question whether this diversity will result in real diversity. The heterogeneity of the web seems to turn into homogeneity on an underlying level: in the old public sphere, everyone struggled for its limited space and this was good for debate. Today, linguistic materialists or science fiction fans can find like-minded souls without ever passing through the needle's eye of the traditional media. And without ever having to meet each other. Admittedly, cliques are nothing new in Swedish literature, where the distinctions between generations have been so consciously maintained throughout the history of literature. The new thing is surely the way these gangs are formed; writing courses are another example, in addition to the Internet. They are sure to have brought many benefits in the sense of increased professionalism, but at the same time, some of the most popular ones (Göteborg University and Biskops-Arnö Folk High School) have taken on a somewhat similar function to the foremost Swedish drama schools. They are creating centralized norms for how art is supposed to talk and sound in order to be real Art. The rich harvest of language-centred and poetic prose in recent years is a clear example of the distinct group mentality in literature by young writers today. In some cases, it is possible to see true innovation in this trend (e.g. Personliga pronomen ('Personal pronouns') by Daniel Sjölin, a linguistically innovative but also very suitably rebellious 'settlement of accounts' with the middle class), but it is also possible to discern a certain clique mentality which will have unfortunate consequences. Questions of form take on great importance, homogeneity seems imminent, everyone is checking what their colleagues are doing. The resulting books may turn out to be good literature in some conventional, artistic sense. But will they make interesting reading about our turbulent world? I'm not so sure they will.

Daniel Sandström is arts editor at Sydsvenskan.

Translated by English Centre/ Monica Sonck