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Jun. 5th, 2020 01:26 pm
Let's call this an essay
In junior high school I had a really good teacher in Swedish and social science. He actually was, and is, married to my first teacher, grade 1-3. A few years after junior high, then I was 20, I met him while walking home and I told him that he was great. Then I didn’t see him or his wife in a long time. This spring, weeks ago, then taking a walk, I heard someone say my name, it was an older couple, my old teachers. I didn’t recognize them. Despite an whole work life of pupils they remembered me, and he remembered what I had said to him on our previous meeting. Teachers are amazing.
Having him as teacher in those years means I got a lot of my views of literature and how society works from him. One piece of literature that come up in schooln was The Emigrants (Utvandrarna) by Vilhelm Moberg (1898-1973), following 19-century emigrants from Sweden to the US. It’s a novel serie I really want to write more about, another time perhaps. Right now, one reason the people in Mobergs work of fiction emigrate was because of the enormous inequality in Sweden. Today it’s the other way around, the US being more known for economic inequality than Sweden. However, economic inequality has here increased every year since the early 1980’s. Without knowing anything about what’s going on in the US, is it possible that things can start changing so much that it’s not long until the US is again the more equal society?
More Swedish literature we learned about back then was crime stories by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. One of those stories is called The Abominable Man (Den vedervärdige mannen från Säffle). The abominable man is the murder victim starting the story and a bad police, who got away with being a bad cop thanks to esprit de corps. One of the things making him a abominable was that he suggest that riding police officers with drawn sabers should attack proteste. Yeah, that makes us come back to the US today. Was riding with drawn sabers the 60s versions of using military vehicle to disband protesters?
Then I can make a point of that we consume extreme amounts of American entertainment, including popular culture about violence. Still the situation in America (that I again know very little about) makes me think about Swedish literature.
Having him as teacher in those years means I got a lot of my views of literature and how society works from him. One piece of literature that come up in schooln was The Emigrants (Utvandrarna) by Vilhelm Moberg (1898-1973), following 19-century emigrants from Sweden to the US. It’s a novel serie I really want to write more about, another time perhaps. Right now, one reason the people in Mobergs work of fiction emigrate was because of the enormous inequality in Sweden. Today it’s the other way around, the US being more known for economic inequality than Sweden. However, economic inequality has here increased every year since the early 1980’s. Without knowing anything about what’s going on in the US, is it possible that things can start changing so much that it’s not long until the US is again the more equal society?
More Swedish literature we learned about back then was crime stories by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. One of those stories is called The Abominable Man (Den vedervärdige mannen från Säffle). The abominable man is the murder victim starting the story and a bad police, who got away with being a bad cop thanks to esprit de corps. One of the things making him a abominable was that he suggest that riding police officers with drawn sabers should attack proteste. Yeah, that makes us come back to the US today. Was riding with drawn sabers the 60s versions of using military vehicle to disband protesters?
Then I can make a point of that we consume extreme amounts of American entertainment, including popular culture about violence. Still the situation in America (that I again know very little about) makes me think about Swedish literature.
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