Tramp (Or the art of living a wild and poetic life)

Walking. Setting out on foot, out onto the open road; a romantic venture, yet filled with tough experiences: sleeping outdoors, losing one’s way, confronting one’s limitations, meeting people, passing through wilderness and town, drifting through the streets of Paris and Istanbul, crossing bridges and borders, walking in foreign lands and unknown regions. The walker has neither protection nor home, he travels without haste or fixed destination, he walks to be nearer to the things he comes across on his travels. He aims to live the wild and poetic life. He follows his own routes, but also takes detours in the footsteps of the famous literary wanderers; Rousseau, Wordsworth, Hölderlin and Rimbaud; he reads the poets and the philosophers in a quest to teach himself the art of what it is to walk.

Foreign sales: Czech Republic, Havran Denmark, Batzer France, Actes Sud Germany, Matthes & Seitz Iceland, Bjartur Italy, Ponte alle Grazie Poland, Draft Russia, Corpus Spain, Siruela Sweden, Lindelöws UK/US/India, Seagull Slovenia, Beletrina

Please download sample translation:

Espedal - Go_Sample Translation(pdf, 35,94 kB)

Aftenposten, 08.10.2006:

THE ART OF WALKINGThe language and inventiveness of this novel are quite unique in modern Norwegian literature.

by KNUT ØDEGÅRD

Serious walking can be quite different from going for a stroll; walking can be an immense stimulation of ideas and perceptions, but it can also be, quite literally, bloody hard work.

The many possibilities opened by walking are the theme of Tomas Espedal’s new book. The art of walking has had vociferous advocates from the fields of philosophy, art and particularly literature. It was a very highly prized discipline in the Romantic period. The whole of our cultural heritage is full of paths and possibilities, walkers and discoverers who have given our civilisation heightened insights.

Rebellion and Reaction.

Espedal’s book is as much a portrayal of physical walks in Norway, and further south, usually long, usually strenuous, complete with blisters, blood and sweat, as it is a journey in civilisation and culture. The language and inventiveness of this novel are quite unique in modern Norwegian literature. Stylistically, the finest parts are eloquent lyrical prose and we hark back to the silver clarity of Hamsun’s writing, but we can also hear the harsher tones of Hamsun’s criticism of modern, nouveau riche society. I am not implying imitation here but kinship (which Espedal would probably have rejected). Even walking, leaving a place behind you, can be seen as a departure from that which is established, and the walker as a rebel against stubbornly held positions and attitudes. The book is situated somewhere in the mist between rebellion and reaction.

Evocative Language

The Art of Walking is also a journey through the history of literature and ideas, and it works on three levels, which are difficult to disentangle: autobiographical, fictional/poetic and essayistic, which in turn are interwoven into a book which defies categorisation. And how does defining the genre help us, when we have a book to empathise with and, indeed, to move us? Of course it is the language that moves us and Espedal is very aware of how fiction and life can converge. He showed that in his previous books, in Biografi [Biography], Dagbok [Diary] and Brev [Letter] (1999-2005), which I suppose may be called a series of novels. Presumably Kunsten å Gå [The Art of Walking] would be considered part of this series, as there are a number of references in it to the Tomas, the ex-big brawler and boxer, the novel’s ‘hero’ with the same name as the writer, who also writes and walks.

Intense Artistic Writing.

I have underlined and added exclamation marks to several paragraphs, sentences and phrases in this book as glowing examples of art and surpass the majority of what is accepted as zeniths of modern Norwegian literature. It is quite incomprehensible to me that Tomas Espedal is still an unfamiliar name to both the reading public and otherwise well-informed high school teachers of Norwegian. However, the chance is still there to read something new, something sensational, intense artistic writing matched with great erudition. For we are also offered wonderful mini-essays about Rousseau, Rimbaud, the Lake District-writers (Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc), Olav Nygard, Kierkegaard and the Greek philosophers, Kant and Nietzsche, Hölderlin and Baudelaire – just to mention a few of the poets and thinkers Espedal muses on while walking.

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Bergens Tidende/Bergen: …an original and self-revealing travelogue with great vulnerability and great humour. (…) The novel has both a pace and a calm in it that makes it a lovely, slowly pulsating reading experience.

Adresseavisen/Trondheim: Sparkling, dandyish book about the beauty of roaming about. One of those reading experiences that needs the company of wine and plenty of time. (…)The writer is a bohemian, a dandy walking in the mountains with white shirt, suit and Doc Martens shoes, in all kinds of weather. (…) There is a wonderful rhythm in the book, like sampled birds’ song, but also the lovely sound of glasses and voices in a bar in Bergen or in a village in Greece or Turkey. The athmosphere is free and frivolous, confessing and open, but also melancholy. Several times during the reading of the book I came to think of Henry Miller’s literary sensuality, even if he mostly strolled the streets of big cities. If you love Hamsun’s wanderer trilogy about August the vagabond, you will also love this book. But hedonistic lazybones will perhaps get the most out of the book, filled with the internal pleasures of life as it is.

Stavanger Aftenblad/Stavanger: (…) In many ways Espedal is a full blooded romantic, believing in adventure, in the road and the wandering, in the longing for far away places (which according to Novalis always also is a longing home). (…) This is improvisations on a walking foot, about tramping and fabulating, the essayistic vagabonding hither and thither, where the associations and digressions dictate the direction. And the very rhythm of the walking seem to reproduce itself in the rhythm of the writing; there is something compelling and stimulating about this book, which makes the eye rush along the lines and the fingers impatiently turn the pages. At the same time it would be an insult to writing of this fine calibre to call the book a “page turner”. The qualities of the text rather demand us to slow down and take a break.

Dagsavisen/Oslo: “… a featherlight and elegant invitation into the simple, but challenging joys of life and literature.”

Dagbladet/Oslo: ”To live is to walk – a light, but charming walk. Tomas Espedal’s Tramp is both a novel, a travelogue and an essay. In this book the protagonist is starting on several new journeys on foot. Wearing a slightly comical suit, with a shirt and Dr. Martens boots, he walks between the fjords of Western Norway, along the boulevards of Paris, in the mountains of Greece and Turkey. At the same time he recalls previous walks, and is reflecting upon the art of walking. To walk is about lonliness, restlessness and homelessness, about breaking up and leaving something behind, about forgetting and starting anew. In our society the act of breaking up and starting on a long journey on foot is often regarded as a protest against settling down and belonging somewhere. In the more essayistic parts of the novel, the narrator is exploring the ideas and literature connected to walking, from Aristoteles to Bruce Chatwin: Rousseau, Kierkegaard, Hölderlin and Throreau. The narrator is himself of a distinct romantic disposition, and enjoys to offer extensive descriptions of the landscapes he walks through.Tramp is a charming book.”

NRK2/ Oslo: “The author Tomas Espedal is born in 1961 in Bergen. His new book is a rare and marvellous mixture of self-revealing confessions and travelogue writing. It is a wonderful and cool book.”

Fredrikstad Blad/Fredrikstad: “Espedal moves effortlessly in the wake of the Beat poets, and writes an extremely good prose that carries the reader away. Dramatic events are conveyed in the same rhythm as the descriptions of nature. The characters of the book are many, and offer an impression of having been vagabonding in Europe for several weeks. An enjoyable book.”