Title:: [[T Singer]] Authors:: [[Dag Solstad]] Tags:: #fiction Read:: [[2025-12-30]] Instagram :: https://www.instagram.com/p/DS6e42DDu8U/ ## Editions - Edition:: [[New Directions]], 2018 - Original Copyright:: 1999 - Pages:: 232 ## Purchase * Bookshop.org:: https://bookshop.org/a/94437/9780811225960 ## Cover Photo `` ## Annotations Loved this. I didn’t set out to read so many Scandinavian writers this year, but there’s something characteristic about them that pulled me in. The Norwegians, in particular, use the third person not simply to explain their characters, but to keep them at arm’s length. If you’ve read Fosse, you recognize this in repetition that functions as incantation. Solstad, similarly, relies on repetition, though more subtly, creating distance through recursive digressions, and through moments of self-awareness that verge on Ron Howard–esque asides. (Knausgaard’s My Struggle, a first-person outlier among the Norwegians I’ve read, may owe some of its original shock value to its lack of narrative distance). Solstad’s T Singer is much more than the sad story of a man it initially appears to be. It is also sentimental and genuinely hilarious, and it can be both only because of that narrative distance. There’s a scene in which Singer, a librarian, demonstrates how to care for old books: opening them, flipping through the pages, letting them get some air, and then slamming them shut. This is exactly how Solstad treats his subject, and it’s a real pleasure to read. Translated by Tina Nunnally.