Tag Archive for 'copenhagen'

Rikke and I took off early from work on this glorious summers day, to attend the Copenhagen Litterature Festival ’08, where we had one-day passes and a couple of tickets for the pay-for talks. One was with Henning Carlsen and Paul Auster on the book and film ‘Hunger’, and how it affected Paul Auster’s authorship, and the other was with Naja Marie Aidt and Siri Hustvedt, on their latest books and their shared fascination with the concept and idea of ‘evil’.

In-between the two, we caught a talk between a norwegian author, Espen Haavardsholm and Ib Michael, the latter of whom is a well-known Danish author, the subject being inadvertent similarities between the two people and their latest respective books, both of which were fictionalized autobiographies.

Now I regret to admit that I am in fact a horrible reader. I have all of the best intents and joys of reading, but with all the other things I seem to constantly get myself involved in, I never seem to have the time to take. And when I do take the time, I regrettably often find myself disappointed with the books I pick.

But I studied for the event by reading Auster’s City of Glass (which was good I might add), watching Sult and afterwards reading Auster’s essay, The Art of Hunger, and luckily doing so gave me enough of an anchor to feel less like an intruder.

Of what we saw of it, CPH.LITT.08 was a most welcome event here in Copenhagen, which often feels as if the introvert has lived for far too long in the shadow of the obnoxiously extrovert. If nothing else, it was a most enjoyable event; as any event where intelligent articulate people articulate intelligent things usually are.