Writer Solvej Balle (On the calculation of space): ‘Apparently people like strange books’

Tomorrow, Solvej Balle (61) says it visibly satisfied, she will exchange Copenhagen for her island Aerø and she can continue with part VI. In the Netherlands we have just reached the third of the seven parts that her On the calculation of space will count – issues I, II and III were jointly awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2022. For issue V she received the Danish Critics’ Prize this year.

The success of the series leads to travel for interviews and lectures. But she prefers to continue plotting at the round table, where she uses colored stickers in seven areas to figure out the themes and storylines of the novel series in which time stands still, but for which her brain is working overtime.

In the first part, Tara Selter, who deals in antiquarian books with her husband Thomas, returns to their home in Clairon-sous-Bois in Northern France after a short business trip. But she woke up, just like the day before, on November 18 – the day that will repeat itself from now on while she continues but the world stands still. Her life in Clairon proves untenable, so in the second part Tara travels in search of the seasons she misses so much – and for intellectual challenges.

Recently published in Dutch translation On the calculation of space III turns out she’s not alone. “I met someone who remembers yesterday,” Tara writes in her journal on day #1144. “That is, I met him yesterday. But he also remembers yesterday. He remembers we met yesterday.” This imposes new relationships and obligations.

You will be confronted with the film to the point of madness Groundhog Day from 1993 with Bill Murray, which also repeats the same day. When I tell people about your series, they immediately come up with it.

“I had my idea a long, long time ago, back in 1986. I had just published my debut novel about a woman on a desert island, in which I played with the expansion and contraction of time. Even then I knew I wanted to do something with a day that would stretch on forever. I kept talking about it and collecting material all this time. Other books came in, but it was like a stew simmering on the stove.”

“When Groundhog Day came out and became such a success, I thought for a moment: now I can shake it. And I didn’t want to see the film at first, because I thought it would spoil the images I had in mind. But that wasn’t the case, and on balance the idea is far from unique. There is a Scandinavian fairy tale from 1892 in which a little girl makes a wish that comes true: that every day is Christmas. And there is a Danish writer who wrote a book with a three-week loop that repeats itself over and over.”

“I wrote the part of Part I in which Tara hides in the guest room of her own house to avoid having to explain to Thomas why she is there, while he thinks she is still in Paris, in 1999. I knew I would continue with that book someday, but I didn’t know it would take up so much of my brain power for so long. It is a strange book and has its own slow passage of time in my life.”

You say ‘book’, of course the title keeps repeating itself, just like November 18th. When did you know it would cover seven parts, each of which is a new thought exercise and has its own atmosphere?

“I only realized that when I finally started writing for real in 2005 or 2006. Then I saw how much material I had collected over the years and started organizing it. At first I thought: two parts. Oh no, four. Oh no, seven.”

What did your publishing house say? About the calculation of space, the first part of which appeared in 2020, is now being hailed as your great comeback in Danish literature. But I imagine some eyebrows were raised: seven books in one day?

“I self-published them. I wasn’t away from literature at all, but I had moved to my island, had a child. If you left Copenhagen, they would think you were dead. But I just kept writing. I wrote short prose, often with a philosophical slant, books of which you don’t sell many. And at traditional publishers it happens that a book that does not become a bestseller is withdrawn from the market. It happened to me that a book was destroyed without my prior knowledge. I didn’t want that anymore no way! As if you spend years building a house that is then demolished after two years.”

Balle holds up the Danish editions in front of the camera, only in color can parts I to V be distinguished from each other. “I wanted to make the simplest books possible: no promotions on the cover, no author’s photo, no ‘Balle wrote earlier blablablabla,’ no blurb with explanation. Books that you open, start reading and then decide whether you like them or not. That’s how I like to choose books when I’m in a bookstore: with my eyes closed.”

And then it turned out that you had an overwhelming success on your hands.

Wide grin. “I thought: I’m going to sit on my island and write those seven books very quietly. But it went quickly and the new parts are now almost being pulled out of my hands. Apparently people like strange books.” Even wider grin. “The foreign publishers that On the calculation of space have purchased, but maybe I shouldn’t say that, they are all quite strange people. Or well, not strange but fun.”

Why did it take so long for you to finally start working on the series?

“I knew I wouldn’t be able to escape it for a long time. So I had become a bit wary of it too. And once I started, and got a sense of who Tara was, what her hometown of Clairon-sous-Bois looked like, and realized that it had to be written in the first person, I at first couldn’t find the balance between her and my way of thinking. Then it turned out that I first had to write another ‘I’ book, the one about myself and my family. A story that goes back to the farmers in Jutland at the end of the seventeenth century. That had to be removed first to give Tara the space to grow.”

Why did she have to live in France?

“Good question. Denmark didn’t work. At first I had a real place in France but that didn’t work either. I made up Clairon. Somewhere in the middle of Europe suited me, and perhaps I should give her a French start to distance her even further from myself. I was an au pair in France when I was seventeen, but I never really mastered the language. Everything remained fragmentary, that’s how strange French feels to me. But Tara is ultimately very Scandinavian in her way of thinking and acting, while I gave her a Belgian father, an English mother and a French husband. Let’s put it this way: at least she is not bound by her nationality.”

And why November 18?

“I originally had October 17th, but that didn’t work when I wanted Tara to travel through Europe in search of snow and sunshine. In the end, November 18 turned out to be the perfect day. It is also the anniversary of the deaths of French writer Marcel Proust and Danish physicist Nils Bohr; it is the Greek name day of Plato. But I only discovered that later, I don’t know why: it was intuition. And people now come up with all kinds of ideas, 18 would be the number of the angels and there would be a connection with her name, and so on. Oh yes, the 8 as a number is of course also an infinite loop.”

In part I Tara loses her future and identity over time, in part II she tries to build a new identity, in part III the promise of a new future comes with fellow sufferers. But it also brings a burden: because they know what kind of accidents will happen on November 18, they have to try to prevent them. How did you come up with that?

“And if she doesn’t see an accident because she is distracted by something else, she feels guilty about that too. Yeah, it’s like she has to take responsibility for the whole wonderfully ignorant world. Perhaps it is a feeling of mine that has ended up in this part: sometimes I feel guilty that I am sitting on my island writing books while the world is collapsing. That’s one of the funny things about this series: I’ve tried to get myself out of Tara’s way as much as possible, but sometimes she gets in my way. Then she points at me: ‘You see, it’s about you again! Don’t think you can escape!’”