A cell biography

"I get up and take a few quick steps around the cell, the walls shrink around me. A frustrated rage shoots up in me, I hit a couple of hard blows in the wall, it chases pain through my hands. I sit down and notice the apathy creeping in. ”

The protagonist, I-narrator Harald, is in custody of the smooth cell of the Oslo Police. He is suspected of having stored and sold hundreds of kilos of hashish. The book, which I would like to place in the borderland between fiction and professional literature, goes straight to the point.

Language and writing

“Echoes of steps far away, they are getting closer. Metallic sounds of a key, the cell door is opened. Two civilian cops appear. One is Andersen who was involved in the arrest, the other I have not seen before. " Harald is guilty, he does not try to hide his criminal deeds. What he thinks about most is whether he should confess – and even worse: whether he should keep quiet, the worst thing one can do in the world of criminals. While sitting in the smooth cell at the Oslo police station, he remembers his childhood and upbringing at Frogner in Oslo with his parents and three older sisters – yes, while sitting here he writes this book.

The present and the past are told about each other, sliding into each other in a natural and nice way. The storytelling technique is well-known and not very original, but still well-functioning – it suits the story, a story that is told in a simple language that at least in the book's first of three parts does not try to be trendy or distinctly slangy. Although the snout is the snout – and then of course he does not mean the front of an animal face, but living people in black uniforms with brass buttons.

In the last part of the book, the language becomes a little louder, a little more marked by Harald's life which moves more and more on the wrong side of the law. Authentic – yes, but not much more. Some words and phrases do better orally than in writing, good literature is art and as such consists of a constructed language, it is not enough to stick a microphone out the window. There are exceptions, but I will not address them here.

Shit

The narrator finds out early on that he wants to work on his own terms, not on the school's – and fails in Norwegian for the 7th grade exam. The exam shock made me forget Tine, I fell into a ravine of pain and more wonder. The adult society did not give me a chance. It seemed like there was no room for me in their world. I withdrew from my friends and took the defeat in solitude. "

In doing so we get what the book title promises us, we get the story of how he is gradually drawn into the illegal business: the smuggling, the hash use and the sale to friends and acquaintances. It starts nicely and neatly, but suddenly he sits in the dirt until just below the hairline.

Life was crap. "The more I had of black money, the poorer I felt. The more people who flocked around me because of cheap foxes, the more lonely I became. The stress of keeping everything hidden went beyond my creative business. I suspected I was living a lie. ”

Harald, on the advice of the lawyer, chooses to cooperate with the police. He shows them where he has hidden the hashish and the black money. The hope – the prize – is to get the mildest possible punishment.

In his teenage years, Harald's parents forced him to attend English boarding school. They wanted to take away the youth rebellion. It went as it should, it went shit it too. Pain should be dispelled with pain, it is called. But the ways of man are, as you know, invulnerable, so rarely do the parents say. In that sense, Harald was no exception.

Prisoners versus employees

This book serves as an educational novel. It is about growing up, about growing up. Harald thrives in the darkroom where he develops films and copies pictures. But the world itself is a dark room, Harald's life a movie to be developed.

Photography is the only thing he feels he can do, the only thing he likes to do, what he – next to life as a hash pusher – makes a living from for 20 years.

It is no secret that this story was written by an author who has experienced it himself. Still, I have chosen to take the witty subtitle seriously, I have chosen to read the book as a cell biography – not an autobiography. Because it is in a cell by Oslo prison that it is written down. The author will probably stubbornly claim that this is documentary material. He is right about that, but it is something more than that, it has, like all stories, clear fictional features.

"It must be the worst building in the city, this converted brewery which is Oslo's custody. It is said that it is the worst prison in Scandinavia, that is for sure. An underground tunnel leads to the capital's police station from here. There we are taken into custody for new interrogations while we are on a letter and visit ban. An eternal stream of prisoners between law enforcement officers and the prison, well out of sight of ordinary citizens. "

Here, as always within the walls, there is a great difference in perceptions between the inmates and the employees. The current director of Oslo Prison hardly agrees with Harald's description of the institution which he in the real world has on several occasions called "a prison with a soul."

Selvforsvar

Custody with a letter and visitation ban is no joke for anyone. And the narrator in this book does not get it easier when the ban is over. "All the fellow prisoners know who I am when I come out into the corridors after a two-month ban on Bayern. 'Silence' is howled from the windows as soon as I show up in the air yard. The prisoners are after me constantly. In here, I have become a symbol of someone who failed myself and my friends. A killer asks me to hang myself every time he meets me. He says it's the best I can do. ”

The book is also a lot about the hippie era and the '68 movement. However, the narrator is more related to Jimi Hendrix than to Che Guevara, the intoxication and rebellion are more psychedelic and musical than political. Several chapters in the book are also about a trip to India, a journey of formation there as well, a trip. And if we are to take the narrator at his word, this is by far also a drug policy manifesto. "I will be led to the marketplace, degraded and punished for selling a mild drug that stimulates something other than what the holy alcohol does. It takes love and consideration to solve the socio-emotional problems that illegal drugs are an expression of. Long sentences and more police are just desperate attempts at control. It will not help. ”

Part of the problem with this book is that it spans a lot, that it is so vocal. Thematically, it is a bit out of focus. But as professional photographers know: the best images are not necessarily the ones that are sharply focused. Here, however, it flows a little too much. The narrator's motto seems to be that self-defense is the best attack.

Must be experienced

The book is marred by some printing errors that the publisher must put on his coat. Or was it a rusty PC Harald was allowed to dispose of in Oslo prison, otherwise a privilege in itself as prisoners as a rule do not have access to PC on cell. Here he was at least prayed for.

There is no good rule for a reviewer to want a book other than the one available. But rules exist to be broken. In this book, I deeply missed a stronger experience of the narrator's captive life. Unfortunately, this aspect is greatly downplayed. It is a pity. Because very little has been written – both fiction and non-fiction – about this topic in Norwegian.

Could this be the reason: “After locking in the cell that night, I set up the math. 12 years of which a minimum of two thirds must be served. I calculate: 365 x 8 will be 2920 days. Suddenly I think of the leap years that come every four years. Two more days must be added, so there will be a total of 2922 days I will live through as a prisoner behind walls and windows with gratings. I have been in custody for 130 days, so they must be deducted. In other words, there are 2552 days left of this journey. It is impossible to imagine. It must be experienced. ”

Yes, it must.