slabs of dark chocolate. If visitors came in the morning,
they'd have tea and fresh rolls with vegetable mayonnaise,
and if it was an extra special occasion, they'd buy French
sticks and make great open sandwiches with roast beef,
prawn salad, ham and liver p�t�.
My mother assumed I listened to Children's Hour because I
thought it was fun. She didn't realise I was sitting there
wrapped in my own thoughts. She didn't realise that
I was sitting on the pouffe working out how Children's
Hour might be vastly improved. If radio was claiming the
attention of every Norwegian child for a whole hour each
week, I thought the quality of the programme should be
impeccable. I put together an entire raft of good programme
ideas - with everything from listener competitions, jokes
and ghost stories to sketches, animal tales, real-life stories,
fairy tales and radio plays, all of which I'd written myself. I
timed each piece and always kept within the sixty minutes.
It was instructive. An impressive amount could be slotted
into sixty minutes - it merely required an iota of critical
faculty. That's something I've always possessed, but un-
fortunately the same couldn't be said of Lauritz Johnson.
Even a man of Alf Proysen's stature ought to have asked
himself how many times we'd want to hear that he'd put a
two-ore bit in his piggy-bank. Walt Disney had a critical
faculty, he was divine, he had created his own universe. In
fact, Walt Disney and I had several things in common. In the
days before he'd created his own Disneyland, he had also
been inspired by the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. I
worked out several great Donald Duck stories, intending to
send them to Walt Disney, but I never got round to it.
I didn't send in my suggestions to the Norwegian Broad-
casting Corporation, either. If I had, they would certainly
have acted on them, but I didn't want to listen to an entire
Children's Hour that I'd already worked out in my head. And
so I kept all my sprightly ideas to myself. Not everyone is so
restrained as that, as splendidly exemplified by the develop-
ment of television.
When Norwegian television made its first official broadcast
in 1960, I was visiting a neighbour and heard the Prime
Minister's inaugural speech. Prime Minister Einar Gerhard-
sen pointed out that many people understandably feared
that television would become a distracting intrusion into
childhood and family life. They were worried, he said, that
watching television would adversely affect children's home-
work and recreational activities in the fresh air and sunshine.
'The development of television will probably be similar to
that of radio,' the Prime Minister declared. 'When some-
thing is new it's natural that people want to get as much of it
as they can.' But Einar Gerhardsen thought this would right
itself. Gradually we would learn to be choosy. 'We must get
better at selecting things with special value,' he said, 'we
must learn to switch off the programmes that don't interest
us. Only then will television become really useful and en-
joyable.' Gerhardsen hoped that television would become
another tool for teaching and general education, and a
further channel for disseminating knowledge throughout
the country. He expected television to be a key to new
values of heart and mind, and he emphasised that there
ought to be strict quality controls on programmes for
children and young people.
Einar Gerhardsen was an inveterate optimist. He was also
a good man who fortunately never lived long enough to see
how television as a medium degenerated. If Einar Gerhard-
sen had been alive today, he would have been able to flick
his way through a rich flora of soap operas and fly-on-the-
wall documentaries on a host of different channels. He
would have witnessed just how keenly television companies
compete for quality, especially as regards programmes
watched by children and young people. He would have
seen how clever we've become at selecting what is of special
value.
I'd actually invited myself over to a neighbour who'd
bought a television set. I wasn't shy about inviting myself -
I was eight, after all. The summer holidays had just ended,
and I was now in the Second Form. This new medium was
something I had to be in on from the start.
This neighbour hadn't any children, that was what was so
good about it, and I don't think he had a wife, either - at
least I'd never seen him with a woman � but he did have a
big Labrador called Waldemar. I made sure I got there early
enough to play with Waldemar a bit before the first, official
television broadcast began. My neighbour appreciated this. I
asked if he thought dogs could think, and he was quite sure
they could. He explained that he could tell by Waldemar's
eyes if he was dreaming or if he was just asleep. He could
read this from his tail as well. 'In that case, he only dreams
about bones or dog biscuits,' I interjected, 'and maybe
bitches as well, but I don't think a dog can dream a whole
play. Dogs can't talk,' I pointed out, 'so I don't think they
can have very strange dreams.' My neighbour believed
Waldemar could clearly signal when he was hungry or
when he wanted to relieve himself, nor was it hard to see
when he was happy or sad or frightened. 'But he can't tell
fairy tales,' I insisted. 'There isn't enough imagination in his
head for it to overflow, and that's why he can't cry either.'
My neighbour agreed with me there. He said he had to
make sure he took Waldemar out for a walk so that he didn't
pee on the living-room floor, but luckily he didn't have to
worry that Waldemar might suddenly build a puppet theatre
out of sofa cushions or start drawing Donald Duck cartoons
on the walls. 'Dogs aren't as communicative as us,' he said,
'perhaps that's what you mean.' And that was exactly what I
meant. I said: 'Even so, they may be just as happy.'
We weren't able to say more because now it was Einar
Gerhardsen's turn. My neighbour and I shared a moment of
national celebration. Waldemar padded out into the kitchen
and occupied himself with something quite different.
The new medium had soon become a huge challenge.
Within a year I'd managed to persuade my mother to buy a
television set, and soon I was bubbling over with ideas for
programmes. I didn't send any of them in, but I was
constantly phoning up the television service telling them
what I thought.
One of the programme ideas I'd come up with was to put
ten people into an empty house. They were to be isolated
from the outside world and not allowed to leave before they
had created something totally new. It had to be something
of lasting significance for people the world over. It might,
for example, be a new and better declaration of human
rights, or the world's most beautiful
fairy tale, or a pro-
duction of the world's funniest play. The participants were
to have plenty of time - I think I reckoned on one hundred
days. That's a long time. That's more than enough time.
And when there are ten of you to fill the hundred days, it's
really a thousand days, in fact almost three years. If the will is
there, ten people can do quite a lot in a hundred days. One
prerequisite was that the participants had to learn to work
together. Each time they had anything important to
announce to humanity, they could ring up TV head-
quarters, and one of the well-known presenters would go
to the house with a camera crew to hear what they were
suggesting that was so important for mankind. At the time it
wasn't normal to use twenty or thirty different cameras to
make an entertainment programme. There weren't that
many cameras in the whole of the television service - it
was before we Norwegians had discovered North Sea oil.
You were also supposed to have something to say before
you appeared in front of a television camera. Not everyone
did, but it was at least regarded as desirable. Even in those
days there were programmes featuring meaningless gather-
ings of people, and we were served up things like the annual
school graduation trips to Copenhagen, but it would have
been unthinkable to film a gathering or graduation trip
that lasted a hundred days. It was a different age, a different
culture, and perhaps even something as remote as a different
civilisation. I don't say this in my own defence, but today's
television culture was beyond the bounds of my conception.
Soon I had a whole notebook full of good programme
suggestions, but the idea that it would become possible to set
new viewing records by making a television series hundreds
of hours long about a gang of giggling girls and itchy-
fingered youths, surpassed my wildest fantasy. It's unlikely
that Caesar or Napoleon had sufficient imagination to
envisage atomic weapons or cluster bombs, either. It can
be wiser to leave certain notions for the future. There's no
intrinsic merit in using up all the bright ideas at once.
*
I was much alone during my teenage years too. The older I
got, the more alone I became, but I loved it. I enjoyed
sitting on my own, thinking. Gradually, as I grew up, I
concentrated more and more on working out various plots
for books, films and the theatre.
As a legacy from my childhood and youth, I had notes for
hundreds of stories. They were rough drafts of everything
from fairy tales, novels and short stories to theatre and film
scripts. I never made any attempt to flesh the material out, I
don't think the thought ever occurred to me. How could
I possibly choose which novel I should begin to write when
I had a whole pile of narratives to select from?
I was incapable of writing a novel in any event, I've
always been too restless for that. While thinking and making
notes my inspiration was of such intensity that my own
chain of thought was constantly being interrupted as new
ideas presented themselves, often much better ones than
those I'd been working on in the first place. Novelists have a
special talent for slogging away at the same story for long
periods, often for several years. For me this is too inactive,
too distracted and preoccupied.
Even if I'd mastered the mental inertia for writing a
novel, I wouldn't have bothered to do it. I should have
lacked the motivation to write the book once the idea had
been born and had taken its place in notebook or ring-
binder. The most important thing for me was to gather and
earmark the greatest number of ideas, or what I later called
subjects and synopses. Perhaps I may be compared to a
hunter who loves hunting rare game, but who doesn't
necessarily want to take part in cutting up and cooking the
carcase, and subsequently, eating the meat. He could be a
vegetarian. There's no contradiction in being a crack shot
and a vegetarian at the same time - for dietary reasons, for
instance. Similarly, there are many sports fishermen who
don't like fish. But they still spend hours casting their lines
and if they get a big fish, immediately give it away to friends
or some chance passer-by. The most elite sports fishermen
go one step further: they cast off and reel the fish in, only to
return it to the water moments later. Good God, you don't
stand there fishing all day just to save a little money on the
housekeeping! The whole point of this august catch-and-
release fishing is that the consumer, or utility, element is
completely absent. One fishes because it's a balm. Fishing is
a game of finesse, a noble art. This analogy puts me in mind
of Ernst J�nger who wrote in one of his wartime diaries that
one shouldn't grieve over a thought that gets away. It's like a
fish that gets off the hook and swims down into the depths
again, only to return one day even bigger ... If, on the
other hand, one lands the fish, guts it and chucks it into a
plastic bucket, any further development of the fish has
clearly been curtailed. Precisely the same can be said of the
idea behind a novel once it is written out and set in more or
less successful aspic, or even published. Perhaps the world of
culture is characterised by too much catch and too little
release.
There's another reason why I never wanted to write a novel,
or start 'writing', as people often say. I considered it far too
affected. Ever since I was a boy, I've been as scared of being
affected as I was that my father might begin expressing
gooey sentiments in that tunnel of love. If there was one
thing I really hated as a child, it was being patted on the head
or chucked under the chin. I found it unnatural, I didn't
know how to respond to such advances.
This doesn't mean that I consider affectation a bad
characteristic - not a bit of it � I love affected people, they
have always amused me immensely. The vain are only
eclipsed in my estimation by pure poseurs or those who are
in love with themselves. Such people are even more fun to
observe than the ones who are only moderately self-centred.
I've always been able to pick out the most inflated characters
in a crowded room. They are easy to observe, it's not hard
to notice the peacock once its fan is spread. I find it more
amusing to talk to the slightly vainglorious than to con-
verse with people whose inflated egos are partly or wholly
concealed by a cultivated interest in others. The vain
always do their utmost to be as funny and entertaining as
possible. They aren't lazy. They usually pull out all the
stops.
Unfortunately, I'm congenitally bereft of vanity myself. It
must be dull for the people about me, but it's something I've
had to learn to live with. I would never have permitted
myself to pull ou
t all the stops. This is doubtless a mean
attitude to life, I admit as much, but I've never allowed
myself to dance to another's tune. I'm not denying I'm
clever, but I couldn't have stood the thought of someone
telling me so.
I would never have managed to do anything as pretentious
as write, publish and present some novel or collection of
short stories, thereafter to clamber up on to a pedestal and
take my applause. And another thing: writing novels has
become all too commonplace. Only the naive write novels.
One day it will be as common to write novels as it once was
to read them.
Watching Limelight with my mother really brought home
to me the brevity of life. I realised that in a little while I
would die and leave everything behind. Unlike vain people,
I had the ability to think this thought right through. I had no
difficulty in picturing full theatres and cinemas long after I
myself was gone. Not everyone can do that. Many are so
intoxicated with sensual impressions that they're not able to
grasp that there's a world out there. And therefore they're
not able to comprehend the opposite either � they don't
understand that one day the world will end. We, however,
are only a few missing heartbeats away from being divorced
from humanity for ever.
I've never tried to embellish what I am by showing off to
others or posing in front of the mirror. I'm only on this
planet for a brief visit. It's largely because of this that I've
found it refreshing to talk to vain people.
Speaking to little children or watching a comedy by
Holberg or Moliere can have a particularly cleansing effect
on the mind. In a similar way it's been a benison to meet the
conceited. They are just as innocent as small children, and it
is precisely this trust that I've caught myself envying. They
live as if something can be achieved, as if something is up for
grabs. But we are dust. So there's no point in making a fuss.
Or as Mephistopheles says as Faust dies: What matters our
creative endless toil, when at a snatch oblivion ends the coil.
*
My mother died just before Christmas 1970, while I was in
my Sixth-Form year. Her illness came on quite suddenly. She
was sick for only a short while, a month at home attending an
Out Patients' clinic and then a few weeks in hospital.
My father and mother were completely reconciled in the
weeks before she died, even before she was admitted to
hospital. My father told me he'd wrecked my mother's life,
and she said exactly the same about him, she said she'd
ruined his life. And so they continued their lamentations and
reproaches right up to the last. The difference was that they
no longer blamed each other, now they only blamed
themselves. The sum total of all this woe added up to
much the same. It wasn't a matter of any great concern to
me if my mother and father tortured each other or if they
merely tortured themselves.
It was a fine funeral. My father made a long speech about
what a wonderful person mother had been. He also went
into what he termed "the great fall from grace' in their lives.
During recent days they'd managed to find their way back
to one another, they'd forgiven each other's shortcomings,
he said. And so they'd managed to fulfil the vow they'd once
made before the priest. They had had their better days and
their worse days. But they'd also managed to love one
another until death parted them.
There wasn't a shred of dissimulation in my father's
eulogy, he really did love mother in the weeks before she
died. To me it had seemed rather late in the day and I felt he
might have kept away for the few weeks she had left.
Perhaps he loved her even more in the days immediately
after her death. He didn't do it just to gain attention.
The idea was that I should say a few words by her coffin
too, but I couldn't do it. I was really broken-hearted. I think
I mourned her more than father, and that was why I
couldn't say anything, it wasn't the moment for witticisms.
If I hadn't cared so much about my mother's death, I should
certainly have made a moving speech. I didn't realise it
would affect me so deeply. I simply rose from my pew and
The Ringmaster's Daughter Page 5
