Image by https://unsplash.com/@linalitvina
I’m a bit of a Swedophile. Back in the mid nineties my family were invited to have a holiday with Swedish friends. Since then, I have travelled to Sweden several times. As a reader and writer, I keep my eye on Swedish authors that may deepen my understanding of the culture.
In 2014, I read Henning Mankell’s nonfiction work Quicksand: What it Means to be a Human Being. It was a watershed moment for me; I had a deep desire to write about my life, but I harboured mixed feelings about how interesting it would be. These essays planted in me ideas of a different way of writing memoir.
Quicksand, Mankell’s final work before he died, covered the months after a terminal cancer diagnosis. My first impression was the essay titles. Themes such as “The Raft of Death” and “Turning Time in a Different Direction” were captivating. He filled the 67 personal essays with fascinating facts, philosophy, environmental issues, and cavernous musings. The intimacy of his first-person, active sentence structure made me feel he granted me the honour of sitting beside him like a child as his wisdom and literary prowess unfolded.
In all his essays, there is conspicuous lucidity and efficient syntax as a stylistic default. The language is spare but riveting in its beauty. Like a seasoned poet, words are carefully selected. Adjectives and adverbs are minimal. Strong verbs are relegated to the rear of the sentence, and passive sentence structure is sparse. He has this ability to crystallise deep concepts. These factors were all important to me. As an academic essayist in Social Psychology and English literature, I failed to produce encouraging results due to a lack of clarity. “Too much verbosity,” a tutor kindly pointed out. Mankell was influential in giving me the confidence to enter creative writing with faith in my ability to overcome past error and write clear work, but at the same time, keep the reader captivated.
The person projected, or the persons that Mankell has chosen to project throughout the sixty-seven essays are those of whose tone John Burnside of The Guardian described as “serious” (Burnside, 2014). Mankell writes, “Your identity is formed when you decide your attitude towards serious questions. That is something known to everyone who has not forgotten all about their childhood” (2014, p.14). This earnest tone has merit, as it best portrays Mankel’s subject matter. However, seriousness is not to be confused with gloomy or depressing. Essays that deal with a fatal cancer diagnosis, nuclear waste disposal, premature death, and wider issues concerning man’s irrational choices could by all intents and purposes gravitate to the negative, but this work is by no means an author driven by a Cassandra Syndrome, rather, amidst a debilitating, or what would be for many, a debilitating diagnosis, Mankell maintains a positive, uplifting literary decorum.
“I’m in the middle of something” he writes (2014, p. 8). This suspended state that he finds himself in is crucial in the development as an organising principle in his book. Quicksand, the title essay sets the motif that structures the entire work. I recall a reflective question on my MA Creative Writing module posed to the reader to choose three essays and explain what makes them essayistic? Interesting. I looked at Quicksand’s title essay. I broke it down to its components and scenes:
The shrinking realisation that cancer encroaches on life.
The first realisation from a childhood memory that death is a serious business.
Another childhood memory of seeing a village girl falling and dying through ice.
The reaction of parents of the girl and the community at large.
The author’s worst fear, the fear of falling into quicksand.
The myth of quicksand challenged (2014, pp.14-17).
These essayistic digressive forays come at all angles as he appears to move in a seemingly discursive way, but masterly calculated as he brings them to a conclusion. Additionally, his choice of narrative framing and structure, including flashbacks and flash forwards to his childhood self and present self, work to create arcs and control pace and tension and ultimately surprises the reader.
Part Two Tomorrow.
