Funeral Music for Freemasons: Novel

by Lars Gustafsson, Yvonne L. Sandstroem (Translator)

Lars Gustafsson’s  Funeral Music for Freemasons  (1983), the Swedish writer’s fifth book of fiction to be translated into English, follows the lives of three free spirits of the 1950s, from their aspiring student years in Stockholm to their present realities, so different from their youthful imaginings. Jan Bohman, a brilliant poet become smalltime African merchant––a latterday Rimbaud––is about to be deported from Senegal. Hans (“Hasse” to his friends), an idealistic research physicist, is now a professor at Harvard, leading the protected surburban life of an American academic. Ann-Marie Nöhme, the promising Mozartean soprano in the bonds of whose love both men agonized, has had a failed career in a provincial repertory. How could so much talent have come to so little? Was there something in the Sweden of their youth, and by extension the whole of the industrial West, that prefigured the death of creativity? Or might it have been spent, drained away in love’s passion? Then again, perhaps these years never did in fact happen, memory following one time-line, existence another, so that their real lives seem to have gone unlived. With his customary psychological delicacy and philosophical aplomb, Lars Gustafsson has composed a novel in  Funeral Music for Freemasons  that, like the Mozart Trauermusik the title invokes, sings a moving dirge for an age.

Genres: Swedish Literature, Fiction, Novels, Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Lars Gustafsson was a Swedish poet, novelist and scholar. He completed his secondary education at the Västerås gymnasium and continued to Uppsala University; he received his Licentiate degree in 1960 and was awarded his Ph.D. in Theoretical Philosophy in 1978. He lived in Austin, Texas until 2003, and has recently returned to Sweden. From 1983 he served as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught Philosophy and Creative Writing, until May 2006, when he retired. In 1981 Gustafsson converted to Judaism.

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

So here’s a Swedish fairytale: Once upon a time in the 1960’s three college-aged Swedes, two men and a woman, bounce around Sweden trying to figure out what they will be when they grow up. All are talented: one man is a scholar, one is a well-published poet and the woman is an opera singer. Both men are on-again, off-again lovers of the woman. They grow up. The scholar moves to the USA and becomes a college professor with two kids a house in the suburbs. The poet is an adventurer. He moves to Africa where he becomes a bisexual gigolo and runs various shadowy and illegal operations. The woman sings opera but only gets as far as touring the provinces and being a back-up singer to the stars. Eventually she is forced to retire. Neither of the men ever returns to Sweden except briefly. The professor returns once, seeks out the woman, and converses with her without ever revealing who he is. She doesn’t recognize him after so many years. He returns to the states. Pretty much end of story. Since the book is translated from the Swedish, I’d say it’s about angst.

[Simon Granqvist · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stundtals trollbinder Gustafsson läsaren sådär som bara han kan, men dessvärre sker detta lite för sällan i denna något oklara bok. I slutändan lämnade den mig med fler frågor än svar och man undrade lite vad som egentligen hade hänt.

[Karsten Karpius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tre livsöden i LG:s egna femtiotal: unga gogetters på väg någonstans i livet. Två intellektuellt brådmogna gossar kivas om en kvinnlig sopran. Klipp till ett grått, sosseborgerligt grynande åttiotal och de tre har tagit olika vägar i livet. Gustafsson kritik mot den stora staten fortsätter, en av protagonistera är ett florstunt dolt självporträtt som brukligt. Det händer inte jättemycket, styrkan ligger i dialogerna. Så svårt att få till, så snyggt när det sitter.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very odd.

[L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has some novel bits scattered throughout, I enjoyed reading something other than Western or Russian literature.

[Marc Nash · Rating 3 out of 5]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LHwO...

[Katrinka · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really have no idea how to rate this novel; familiarity with the culture and the time in which it was written probably would have gone a long way in helping me determine what to say about it. Still, the questions throughout about where the years go; how we interact with ourselves and others; how and why we come to be where and who and how we are, especially as products of a certain time and place-- all of those inquiries, I would wager, are widespread enough to make this book a valuable read for anyone.

[Karla Huebner]

Interesting; I'm not altogether sure what I think of it yet.