Episode image is a detail from the cover of The Secret History by Donna Tart, published in 2006 by Penguin.

Episode image is a detail from the cover of The Secret History by Donna Tart, published in 2006 by Penguin.

For the 40th Second Hand Book Factory, Charles Adrian is joined by writer, musician and ex-footballer Martin Bengtsson, aka Waldemaar. They discuss minimalist writing, the mythologising of friends and a letter novel that is not exactly a novel.

Warning: this interview was conducted over Skype and there is occasional distortion due to a bad connection.

Martin’s book In The Shadow of San Spiro has been turned into a film called Tigers.

Paula Varjack, who is mentioned here, appears in Page One 53.

Another book by Donna Tartt, The Little Friend, is discussed in Page One 142.

I Love Dick by Chris Kraus is also discussed in Page One 171.

This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.

A transcript of this episode is below.

Episode released: 12th November, 2013.

Book listing: 

A Fable and Blue Notebook #10 from Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings Of Daniil Kharms by Daniil Kharms (trans. ?)

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I Love Dick by Chris Kraus

Links:

Tigers on imdb

The Last Song by Waldemaar

The Bohemian by Waldemaar (video features Paula Varjack)

Page One 53

Page One 142

Page One 171

Charles Adrian

Episode transcript:

Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 50th [sic] Page One. This is the 40th Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and today I'm talking to Martin Bengtsson over Skype. Hello Martin.

Martin Bengtsson
Hello Adrian.

Charles Adrian
[laughing] Hello. So shall we start with some music?

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah, let's do that.

Charles Adrian
This is your choice. This is your first choice. I'm going to play Sebastien Tellier with Divine.

Martin Bengtsson
Great.

Music
[Divine by Sebastien Tellier]

Charles Adrian
So that was Sebastian Tellier with Divine. That's great. I was dancing a little bit in my chair here.

Martin Bengtsson
[laughs]

Charles Adrian
[laughing] I love that. So thank you. Okay, the first thing I'm going to ask you, Martin, is to describe yourself. And I'm really... I'm actually particularly interested in this because we don't really know each other. We've been introduced to each other by Paula Varjack – who I interviewed a couple of podcasts back, listeners. So how do... Yeah. Martin, who are you? How do you describe yourself?

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah, maybe we start with Paula basically, because I met Paula in Berlin for 2008. And I was a very lost man in Berlin, sitting in a bar, trying to make contact with people basically, because I was all alone there. And I guess that's where what I came to do there, to be alone and to think and to start a new life. And that's where I met Paula. And I had a background as a football player. Before, I was a football professional in Inter Milan, in Italy. And after a career that lasted, I think... yeah, it ended when I was eighteen or something because I got depressed in the football world, I started to write instead and worked a little bit in journalism and television and I also made some children's radio. And after that, I wrote a book called In The Shadow Of San Siro – that was a book about the inside of the football world and so on. And after that book I started to do a lot of lectures so I had a chance to actually quit work for some time and just do something for myself and to find out what I wanted to do. That's why I ended up in Berlin and at this cafe where I also met Paula. So that's the short story.

Charles Adrian
It sounds like you've already had... yeah, like ten or twelve different existences.

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah, it was some intense years between sixteen and twenty-two, later. Lately I've been... it's gone a little bit slower. But nowadays I'm doing studies in Gothenburg University, and they have a course in literary composition for Scandinavian fiction writers, basically. So that's what I do now.

Charles Adrian
And is that where you are now? We're doing this over Skype – that's for the benefit of my listeners. Occasionally you'll hear the connection is a bit strange. So are you in Gothenburg at the moment?

Martin Bengtsson
Right now I'm actually in Malmö because I helped a friend to move here. So...

Charles Adrian
Ah okay.

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah.

Charles Adrian
Now, let's talk about the book that you like. So the first book that I've asked you to bring, as it were, is just a book that you like. What have you brought?

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah, what brought – or what I will send to you – is a book called Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms. And Daniil Kharms have a special place in me because it was a book we had when I was younger that my dad showed me – when I was ten or something. And when you translate it from Swedish – that title – it's called Art Is A Closet. And it's basically...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Art Is A Closet?

Martin Bengtsson
Art Is A Closet, yeah. So it's basically... This guy Daniil Kharms is from Russia and he lived between 1905 and 1942. And he was an absurdist poet and also wrote some dramatics and was part of... or a founder, actually, of a, like, avant garde Russian futurist movement called OBERIU that was, like, doing a lot of futuristic stuff and... yeah, for stage but also in poems and stuff. But then what's special with him was that when the Soviet literature became more and more conservative in the 1930s, Kharms turned to do a lot more, like, children's literature to be able to get money in because it was harder to do the regular literature work that he did before because it was so, yeah, conservative. So through this working with the children's literature and this short kind of prose, some kind of very strange, humorous, grown-up prose came out. And this was something I was very fascinated about when I was younger. And then when I started my creative writing course, I turned back to Daniil Kharms to try to understand a little bit what was special with it and why I liked it. So I'm still in... Yeah, I'm still in a process of figuring this writer out and find out what I actually think is funny or good about his writing. But I have... Yeah, I could read maybe two pages because they're quite short. So then maybe you also can say if this is funny or not...

Charles Adrian
[laughs]

Martin Bengtsson
... or if I was just [laughs] having... if I've just fooled myself my whole life. This one is called A Fable and it goes like this.

One man of medium height said: “I would give anything if only I were even a little bit taller.”
He barely said it when he sees a lady magician standing in front of him.
“What do you want?” says the magician.
But the man of medium height just stands there so frightened he can't even speak. “Well?" says the magician.
The man of medium height just stands there and says nothing. The magician vanished.
And the man of medium height started crying and biting his nails. First he chewed off all the nails on his fingers and then on his toes.

Reader! Think this fable over and it will make you very uncomfortable.

Charles Adrian
That's it? That's the whole fable?

Martin Bengtsson
That's the whole fable, yes.

Charles Adrian
Brilliant. [laughing] I love it.

Martin and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Charles Adrian
I love it. That's beautiful.

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah. And it's strange. It's something very strange with it. And he had this way of, like, building up a story but then just taking it all back. And I think that's what I like, that it's some kind of nonsense in it but it also has some kind of... yeah, it's... I don't know, it's... Can I read one more?

Charles Adrian
Okay, go ahead. Yes. Yes.

Martin Bengtsson
Okay, this one is called Blue Notebook #10.

Once there lived a red haired man who lacked eyes and ears. He was also lacking all hair, so he was called red haired only with a large degree of generalisation.
He couldn't speak as he was lacking a mouth. The same with his nose.
Even arms and legs, he just didn't have any. Nor stomach, nor backside, nor spine. And no intestine. He didn't have anything. Therefore, it's totally unclear who is being discussed.
In fact, let's not talk about him anymore.

Charles Adrian
[laughs] That's really great. I love it. Now, I'm going to play the second track that you chose, which is by Di Leva.

Martin Bengtsson
Oh yeah.

Charles Adrian
I've never heard of Di Leva before. Where..?

Martin Bengtsson
I think this is Naked Number One, right?

Charles Adrian
That's right, yeah.

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah, yeah. And this was also something... Maybe during the time I discovered Daniil Kharms I also discovered Thomas Di Leva.

Charles Adrian
Cool. Okay, so Thomas Di Leva, Naked Number One.

Music
[Naked Number One by Di Leva]

Charles Adrian
So that was Naked Number One by Di Leva. Okay, now, so the book that I think you should have is Donna Tartt's The Secret History.

Martin Bengtsson
Okay.

Charles Adrian
Have you ever come across this?

Martin Bengtsson
No I haven't.

Charles Adrian
Cool. Well then, it's... I mean, it's a book that everyone should read anyway, I think. It's a wonderful novel. But Paula gave me the idea that – or gave me the impression – that you're interested in the mystique of groups of friends, groups of people.

Martin Bengtsson
Uh huh.

Charles Adrian
Do you think that's kind of true?

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah.

Charles Adrian
She said that you... Because you wrote a song for her and you wrote a song for other people and you're interested in creating this kind of mythology a little bit?

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah. Yeah.

Charles Adrian
And I also share that. I very much feel that. Certainly when I was at university, my friends and I, we were very interested in this whole creation of some kind of story surrounding us, I think. And this is exactly what this book is about. It's about... Or it's about the dark side of that. It's about how things can go wrong.

Martin Bengtsson
All right.

Charles Adrian
And it's really... Yeah, it's just a really good novel, I think. So I'm going to read you the beginning, which is the prologue.

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah.

Charles Adrian

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. He'd been dead for ten days before they found him, you know. It was one of the biggest manhunts in Vermont history – state troopers, the FBI, even an army helicopter; the college closed, the dye factory in Hampden shut down, people coming from New Hampshire, upstate New York, as far away as Boston.
It is difficult to believe that Henry's modest plan could have worked so well despite these unforeseen events. We hadn't intended to hide the body where it couldn't be found. In fact, we hadn't hidden it at all but had simply left it where it fell in hopes that some luckless passer-by would stumble over it before anyone even noticed he was missing. This was a tale that told itself simply and well: the loose rocks, the body at the bottom of the ravine with a clean break in the neck, and the muddy skid marks of dug-in heels pointing the way down; a hiking accident, no more, no less, and it might have been left at that, at quiet tears and a small funeral, had it not been for the snow that fell that night; it covered him without a trace, and ten days later, when the thaw finally came, the state troopers and the FBI and the searchers from the town all saw that they had been walking back and forth over his body until the snow above it was packed down like ice.

It is difficult to believe that such an uproar took place over an act for which I was partially responsible, even more difficult to believe I could have walked through it – the cameras, the [...]

That's the end of the first page.

Martin Bengtsson
Mmm.

Charles Adrian
That's as much as you get for the moment. And then I will send this to you in Malmö or Gothenburg or wherever you want me to send it so [that you can read it].

Martin Bengtsson
[speaking over] Yeah. Yeah, that's... I really like the language. It's very well written and...

Charles Adrian
Yes, yes. I think she's very careful with her language. It's very conversational but at the same time, yeah, she picks her words carefully.

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah.

Charles Adrian
So you will get that one day and you will find out more. And now the book that you have for me.

Martin Bengtsson
Yes. Yeah, so I have a book for you. I actually don't have it here because I have actually given it also to some other people. But there is one specific book that I recently have given away to different people and it's always a little bit controversial when they get it. Like, I had one friend in Berlin, for example, they had to cover the title because she couldn't have it on the subway and she felt embarrassed.

Charles Adrian
[laughs]

Martin Bengtsson
And the one I had at home now I gave to my little brother. And he got into a little bit of controversy with his girlfriend because who's going to read it first, and it was laying there. And then she took it, and then he took it back, and so on. So it has a certain power. And the book is I Love Dick. And it's written by Chris Kraus, who is a writer from Los Angeles and also a filmmaker. So, yeah, in the book you follow two writers and – two, yeah, writers and intellectuals – and it's Chris and it's her husband Sylvère and both get obsessed with an important critic and theorist called Dick after one of them – and that's Chris – that have spent a sexless night with him in the beginning. They've just been talking but it's been a tension there. And their common... They get a common obsession – Sylvère and Chris, that are in a relationship – they get a common obsession with this critic, Dick. And they start to write letters. So all this book is letters that Sylvère and Chris writes to this Dick. But I would read a little part so you get a sense of the language and so on. So this is one of the letters.

Dear Dick, It hurts me that you think I'm “insincere.” Nick Zedd and I were both interviewed once about our films for English television. Everyone in New Zealand who saw the show told me how they liked Nick's best [sic] cause he was more sincere. Nick was just one thing, a straight clear line: Whoregasm, East Village gore 'n porn, and I was several. And-and-and. And isn't sincerity just the denial of complexity? You as Johnny Cash driving your Thunderbird into the Heart of Light. What put me off experimental film world feminism, besides all it's boring study groups on Jacques Lacan, was its sincere investigation into the dilemma of the Pretty Girl. As an Ugly Girl it didn't matter much to me. And didn't Donna Haraway finally solve this by saying all femaile lived experience is a bunch of riffs, completely fake, so we should recognize ourselves as Cyborgs? But still the fact remains: You moved out to the desert on your own to clear the junk out of your life. [...] You are trying to find some way of living you believe in. I envy this.

That is a little section from the book.

Charles Adrian
Mmm. It's nice, thank you. I'm going to look forward to reading that.

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah. And it's quite big also. So it takes some time, but I... Yeah, it's something with the letter form as well that I like. I like the form of the letter and that it's the repetition of “Dear Dick” and so long from both. And it would be one thing [if] it was only, like, two people but now, because it's three people and they have the relationship between each other – Chris and Sylvère – it makes something very interesting. And also she – Chris Kraus, who wrote the book – have also told in an interview that this is real. It's all real.

Charles Adrian
Oh really? Okay. They really wrote these letters.

Martin Bengtsson
So Chris and Sylvère actually wrote this and Dick is an actual art critic and so on. And she wanted him to... She wanted him to love her and so she wrote two hundred of these letters. And then she... Yeah, she released the book and everything and I think he tried to sue her and it was a bit of thing there. But nowadays they come to peace. But that also brings another edge to it, that it's not fiction. It's actually real. It's real letters and so on.

Charles Adrian
Yeah, yeah. Wow. Interesting. Oh, cool. Well, thank you, Martin. Thank you for...

Martin Bengtsson
You're welcome.

Charles Adrian
... bringing that up. Okay, I have... We have to finish now.

Martin Bengtsson
Okay.

Charles Adrian
This is the end of the podcast. Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me over Skype.

Martin Bengtsson
Thank you for having me. It was nice.

Charles Adrian
I'm going to finish with the last song. This is yours. This is... So I've chosen this but it's your song – by Waldemaar, your band.

Martin Bengtsson
That's right. Yeah.

Charles Adrian
So is Waldemaar the name of your band or is Waldemaar a name that you assume when you're playing?

Martin Bengtsson
That's something I've been struggling with to define for a long time but...

Martin and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Martin Bengtsson
Now I've gone back to that it's just my rock and roll persona. It was a rock and roll persona, it became a band and now it's back to being a rock and roll persona. I think that's easiest for everyone so...

Charles Adrian
Okay.

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah, that's what I... That's my name on stage, basically.

Charles Adrian
Nice. Nice. I like that and I think it's a good name.

Martin Bengtsson
Thank you.

Charles Adrian
So you're touring later this week? Is that right? In Berlin?

Martin Bengtsson
Yeah. I go to Germany for a couple of shows this weekend so that would be nice.

Charles Adrian
Great. Well have a good... have some good performances. And we're going to go out on The Last Song. So this is Waldemaar and The Last Song. Thank you very much, Martin.

Music
[The Last Song by Waldemaar]

[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]