Drunk again – AWSoP in a Danish novel

Niels-Erik Mortensen reports

Niels-Erik Mortensen writes to 'Beyond the Pale':

'I'm not sleeping, I'm sitting next to the jukebox with the remnants of an export lager.'

Drunkenness and cruelty is one of the leitmotifs in Keith Reid's lyrics. But intoxication is, of course, not just a phenomenon in literature, but in real life, too. But there can be found curious examples of the way literature, music and real life merge into a new cultural product.

In his novel, Sommer ['Summer'], 1995, the Danish author Benn Q Holm (b. 1962) presents a kind of paraphrase over the AWSoP-lyrics. To make sure that everybody gets the hint, Holm makes his protagonist Peter hum the song trying to vomit in a pub loo. Sommer is a very witty description of his own generation, the thirty-something-yuppies employed in the mass media/cultural industry who confuse their own life with reality. Best comparison: Nick Hornby (they share an overwhelming passion for soccer and old records).

The introductory quotation was the first line of the chapter, the next one comes a bit later, as a mature lady is trying to seduce Our Young Hero (did I hear anyone yell, The Graduate? ):

'(…) she's similar to a Greek widow, black long hair with a touch of grey, skew teeth, and I had enough presence of mind to notice her doctor's ring on her nicotine-yellow fingers, I'm going to be sick, reeling out into the bathroom, but nothing happens, looking down into a filthy lavatory bowl which is totally clogged up, instead I take a piss while humming the tune from A Whiter Shade of Pale, trying to read the graffiti on the bathroom-wall, but everything is a blur, I can't focus (…)'

Illustrated: Benn Q Holm, author, literary reviewer for the newspaper Aktuelt. Holm himself doesn't reveal any particular interest for Procol Harum, as favourite reading he mentions Thomas Mann, Orhan Pamiuk, Graham Greene, David Bowie lyrics as well as bathroom graffiti, London-Copenhagen guide books and old papers on the bottom of packing cases.

More information (in Danish): here and here

The novel is not available in any language but Danish, but I've heard that my old university 'class mate' Iselin Hermann has published a novel in Britain and seven other languages...