(by Paolo Petroni)

JOHAN HARSTAD, 'MAX, MISCHA AND

THE TET OFFENSIVE' (SELLERIO, pp. 1250 - €28.00 -

Translation by Sara Culeddu and Maria Valeria D'Avino)

A sweeping river novel with a narrative current that carries you along but never overwhelms, entirely enjoyable as an engaging existential voyage in which nothing exceptional or adventurous takes place, yet an everyday life grows which, through the affabulatory force of the writing and the richness of the storytelling, becomes life itself — thanks to the quality of the translation — made of moods and feelings, absences, desires and nostalgia. An ordinary existence that has led many to think of another large-scale novel, 'A Little Life' by Hanya Yanagihara (coincidentally also published by Sellerio years ago), but which here, given that Max Hansen, the protagonist and first-person narrator, is a director, finds its counterpoint, its mirror of the world, in theatre — in its metaphorical value and in its daily routine of rehearsals, performance, approximations, interpretation and vanity. And for lovers of theatre, this book is a true delight.

"I am not here" is a line near the end of the complex, experimental intellectual drama that Max follows on his tour across the United States, and he feels it to be true for its ability to unleash "every evening a sense of unease over the fact that it says nothing about where one might be. We only know that he is not here." And this disorientation, this rootlessness with which one must reckon, tied to the question of identity, is, I would say, the central theme of Harstad's novel in its narrative multiplicity, in its digressing and reflecting without any pretension, in its confronting and interlocking past and present, places and subjects, as if through free, subterranean associations — scenes of a great mosaic capable of often surprising the reader at their opening.

Max was born and raised in a small village on the Norwegian coast, home to those who work on offshore oil platforms, and his father, a pilot, uproots him from his world as a happy thirteen-year-old to bring him to the United States to live on Long Island in 1990, where he has been hired to fly large aircraft for American Airlines. Once a member of a group of friends who roamed freely, he finds himself alone and walls himself up in this solitude, rejecting the new world, until the encounter with Mordecai arrives — who will become a lifelong friend, through highs and lows, through betrayals (when he falls in love and loses his availability), provocations and deep sharing. Then comes Mischa, a restless Canadian girl, creative, an artist, who is said to look very much like Shelley Duvall (whose photograph appears on the book's cover), an actress greatly beloved by Robert Altman and a fragile figure, marked by her work with Kubrick on 'The Shining'.

Then comes the beginning of his acting career alongside Mordecai, the discovery of theatre, the engagement and struggle with texts as he becomes a director. Behind all of this, casting a significant shadow over the way of experiencing and feeling things, is his uncle Ove, who fought through it, and the historical trauma of the Vietnam War, of which Max has always heard his parents speak — pacifists and activists in the Communist Party, radical Marxists.

until the disillusionment with the ferocity of Pol Pot and "the unknown rebel with two shopping bags in his hands who stood in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square". There is the idea of a better world and disillusionment, there is the fascination with 'Apocalypse Now', a film that reveals how that war, like every war, is meaningless for the majority of those called to fight it, and leaves a mark on society and on individuals.

Max begins to write decades after his arrival in America, where successful immigrants are automatically credited to their new country and gradually forget where they come from, "while those who are less successful continue to belong to their country of origin indefinitely". He writes not because he believes he has lived through anything particularly significant: "It never was, neither then nor now. But they were our lives, they were intertwined, and I became terribly afraid of losing them. I have already begun to lose you". He writes to reach the ending of this love story for life, an ending that takes place in an airport, which he describes as a non-place that puts you in a spatial suspension with a day that has no beginning and no end, and there is "a board with a map of the terminal and the words 'You Are Here'. I am here". But now with a goal, a destination.

Just as the Tet Offensive in Vietnam was a series of simultaneous surprise attacks — explains Harstad, the author — so I tried to write all things simultaneously, "hoping that in the end the complete story of a life would emerge".

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