Machine

by Peter Adolphsen

A mind-bending fable of science, philosophy, art, history, and love. Fifty-five million years ago, during the early Eocene period, a sudden burst of lightning frightened a herd of small prehistoric horses. In the ensuing panic, one of the horses, a five-year-old mare no bigger than a fox terrier, fell into a lake and drowned. On June 23rd, 1975, in Austin, Texas, a drop of oil combusted in a car engine. This tiny explosion happened just as the Ford Pinto, driven by a one-armed hitchhiker named Jimmy, pulled into the parking lot of the Timber Creek Apartments, home to the young woman in the passenger seat, a twenty-two-year-old biology student named Clarissa Sanders. Machine is the story of the hidden connections between these two seemingly unrelated events. Omnivorous in its pursuit of knowledge - every single one of its eighty-eight pages a daring mixture of fact and fiction, science and art - this short novel relentlessly pursues one of life s great where does Fate end and coincidence begin?

Genres: Fiction, Denmark, Danish, Literature, Scandinavian Literature

85 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 2008

About the author

Peter Adolphsen (født 1. september 1972 i Aarhus) er en dansk forfatter. Han er uddannet fra Forfatterskolen (1993-95), hvor han også var ansat som lærer 2008-2010. Debuterede i 1996 med Små Historier. Siden er udkommet Små historier 2 (2000), kortromanerne Brummstein (2003) og Machine (2006), form-eksperimenterne En million historier (2007) og Katalognien. En versroman (2009, skrevet sammen med Ejler Nyhavn). I 2013 udkom den post-apokalyptiske kortroman År 9 efter Loopet.

Adolphsen forsøger i sin prosa at videregive et koncist og mættet indtryk uden for mange uvedkommende omstændigheder. Inspirationen fra Per Højholt, Peter Seeberg, Franz Kafka og Jorge Luís Borges er tydelig. Adolphsen forener en eklatant, tilspidset, men omflakkende, urolig handling, hvor det er en pointe, at det skete bevæger sig i (for mennesket) uforudsigelige og besynderlige retninger.

Adolphsens Små historier er også små i lyotardsk forstand, og kan derfor anskues ud fra et postmoderne perspektiv, idet de ikke foregiver at formidle en fuldstændig, aflukket verdensanskuelse, men punkterer ethvert tilløb til en sådan gennem et bredt spektrum af genrer og synsvinkler. Verden er ikke til at forstå, forstås. Formen er på den måde vigtig for forståelsen af teksterne.

Narrativerne er minimale skiftinge, som ironiserende væver sig ind og ud af populærkulturen, de vil netop adskille sig fra hinanden, vise tilhørsforhold til de forskellige genrer, som kommer til udtryk i tidens massemedier. Disse står i forfatterskabet i et symbiotisk forhold til hinanden: Soap, dokumentar, satire, tragedie, æstetiseret pop.

I sine to romaner Brummstein (2003) og Machine (2006) fremstår Adolphsens budskab mindre svævende (end i Små historier 1 og 2). Begge romaner tager udgangspunkt i hvordan noget der skete for millioner af år siden får indflydelse på forskellige menneskers liv i nutiden (eller i den nære fortid). Den ateistiske Adolphsens pointe er vist nok at det vi mennesker ikke kan forklare (som fx pludselige dødsfald) ikke skyldes guddommelig indgriben, men derimod en årsagssammenhæng der går ud over vores forstand. – Og som altså kan ledes helt tilbage til alpernes tidlige orogenese (Brummstein) eller sågar Big Bang (Machine)! I 'Machine' henviser fortælleren til Aristoteles' opfattelse af tilfældighedsbegrebet netop som en begivenhed, man ikke kan placere i en årsagssammenhæng.

I sine to romaner benytter Adolphsen sig ligesom i de små historier af mange forskellige tekstlige virkemidler. Fælles for romanerne er desuden fortællerrollen, en fortæller som Adolphsen selv kalder "Hyper-olympikeren". Den super-alvidende fortæller som ved stort set alt om verdens gang og de medvirkende personers tanker.

Både 'Brummstein' og 'Machine' skildrer forholdet mellem østens kommunisme og vestens kapitalisme. 'Brummstein' handler om Tysklands historie i det 20. århundrede som oplevet fra mange forskellige personernes synspunkt, mens det nærmeste man kommer en hovedperson i 'Machine', Djamolidine Hasanov/Jimmy Nash, filosoferer over kulturforskellene mellem sit barndomsland, det sovjetiske Aserbajdsjan, og sit nye land, USA, som han i frustration flygter til i løbet af romanen.

Sammenlagt er disse to korte romaner oversat til ti sprog, bl.a. engelsk, tysk, nederlandsk, spansk og fransk.

En million historier (2007) indeholder præcis en million forskellige historier, er inspireret af den franske digter Raymond Queneaus digtsamling Cent mille milliards de poèmes (1961). Bogen er på ti sider, hver skåret i seks vandrette strimler. Der er derfor ti forskellige begyndelser, der hver har ti mulige fortsættelser osv. Strimlerne er nummereret 0 til 9. Et tal mellem 0 og 999.999 angiver en konkret tekst.

Sammen med Ejler Nyhavn har han i 2009 udgivet 'Katalognien. En versroman' (Samleren), hvor blandt andet idéer fra gruppen Oulipo er benyttet. Bogen er en mosaik-roman af i alt 33 forskellige faste, lyriske former (fx alexandrinere eller hexametre), i alfabetisk rækkef

Reviews

[Rhea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really strange and I can't really compare it to anything I've read--though that may not be an entirely bad thing.

The story of a drop of gas, the story of a horse, the story of people. I'm not even sure how I would explain this book if someone asked me what it was about. Then again, it's less than 100 pages, maybe I could just brandish it at them.

[Günter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bitte lest das alle! 7 Sterne. Und den Brummstein auch gleich. Das ist absolut großartig und komplett anders. (Leider als eBook nicht zu kriegen; aber auf Spotify als super Lesung verfügbar.)

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Machine seems like a literary narrative exercise in six degrees of separation, though it sometimes reads more like a technical document or science text. I feel this is more a concept book than something to be enjoyed, nonetheless it is kind of quirky and fun and interesting at turns, and at only 85 pages a real breeze - I read it on my morning commute. Don't expect to care about characters, or to be involved in plot... this 'novel' is more an examination on chaos theory and coincidence, and a sort of experiment in style and content. I imagine it was fun to write. It certainly was fun to read. I was expecting a bit more philosophical musing or sense of depth, but then in the end did not feel so disappointed that Adolophsen didn't try to explain any of the coincidences with anything other than the most raw of facts. In fact I think the point of this book - without delving into any kind of 'all is meaningless' rationale or taking any fun out of the connect the dots romp by being didactic - is that there is no attempt made at all to interpret or understand any of the events, just to relate them - and not in a pastiche 'we're all connected' way, either. Absolutely no reason is given as to the how (i.e. how the narrator knows some of the details he knows) or the why - it just is. Machine is almost kind of Zen in this sense, through its constant awareness to detail without any pretension of overt consciousness.

From what I can find about him online, Adolphsen seems to enjoy these brief and dense experiments and I look forward to reading some of his other works.

[Alaíde Ventura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Digno y grandioso representante de esa literatura de casualidades, efecto mariposa o bola de nieve, como quieran decirle (otros que se me ocurren: David Mitchell, Jorge Comensal... Sebald no).

[Vilde Roos · Rating 5 out of 5]

ombestemte meg mens jeg jobba med den til eksamen, må jo være klink 5/5! rar og kul og fascinerende og rett og slett dødsbra

[Barış · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bu novella kısa bir anlatıda dili sakınarak ikame etmenin güzel bir örneği oldu. Elli dört milyon yıl önce bir dişi Eohippus’un ardından kalan fosilden çıkan bir damla petrolün hikayesi. Tam bir tuhaf metin.

Bu dünyada ölümün olmadığını anlatmaya yelteniyor. Tarih öncesi bir at leşinden yola çıkıp, Sovyet döneminde yetişen bir bisikletçinin mültecilik yol hikayesine dönüyor. Yazarıyla yıllar önce konuştuğumuzda Türkçeye çevrildiğini söylemişti, kaldı herhalde, göremedim. Altı kitabı toplamda 300 sayfayı zor buluyor. Yerinde.

[Malazanth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bite-sized bit of existentialism that'd make a good animated short film. Not treading any profound new ground but presenting some popular scientific truths (you're breathing Caesar's balls! Woah man!) in a compelling way. For better and worse it reminds me a bit of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance, but about 10 times less convoluted and self-important.

[Claus Willumsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sådan set en fin historie, om tid, skæbne, accidens (i tilfældig orden), en urhests historie fra hest til udstødningsos, og to (eller er det tre?) menneskers liv, der væves sammen af tidens tand.
Men jeg savner hjertet (om jeg så må skrive) . . .

[Harry Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Machine by Peter Adolphsen—originally written in Danish and translated by Charlotte Barslund—is a demanding yet richly rewarding read, full of unexpected insights and moments of profound clarity. It’s not a novel for those seeking escapism or high-octane thrills; rather, it’s something altogether more intriguing—a narrative steeped in wonder and philosophical mystery, designed to catch readers off guard with its sharp intellect and surreal turns. Adolphsen compresses an immense 55-million-year timeline into a mere 88 pages, opting not for exhaustive detail but for a lyrical, almost abstract meditation on time and causality. The narrative begins with an apparently trivial moment in 1975—a droplet of petrol igniting in a car engine. From this small spark, a ripple of interconnected events unfolds, linking that single instance to the journey of a couple and illustrating how even the most fleeting moments are woven into a much larger cosmic web.

[Erna Juhl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stærkt lille værk om hvordan alt er tilfældigt og alligevel er forbundet.

Hvis man er til Adolphsens unikke skrivestil, så er den værd at læse trods en lidt ting start.

[luisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

puh

[Aleck Karis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unique. Short enough to read in a sitting. Very quirky, but also wonderfully unpredictable. The ending did not go where I expected and made me rethink the book.

[Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Machine isn’t the sort of book you settle down with for thrills or step-off-the-page characters, but as a literary exercise it works on its own terms. Its narrative delivers bald facts of life with cold scientific terminology, but even in the vastness of time, within the complex structure of coincidence, there are moments of warmth that shine through and find meaning in the ultimately meaningless."

https://www.booklit.com/blog/2021/01/...

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 85 short pages, Peter Adolphsen manages to trace the complete history of a drop of oil from its origins in the early Eocene through a story of the last moments of a Hyracotherium (a tiny prehistoric ancestor to the horse) where this drop of oil started in this tiny animals beating heart, through its geologic development and migration, its extraction and refinement into gasoline, and finally through the combustion process of 1970s Ford Pinto where this single molecule will find its ultimate destination, drastically altering the life of one of the passengers.

Adolphsen plays with the idea of Chaos Theory and coincidence throughout the novel tying what seems like a series of highly improbable events into a single narrative history told in unique almost omnipresent first person. Throughout the narrative Adolphsen is preoccupied with the science that makes these series of events happen from life and death, to the creation of oil from living matter, to the brain on drugs and the combustion of a car engine. In fact, the majority of the book is concerned with these in my estimation fascinating scientific details. What you'll find with Machine is a novel less concerned about the characters and their individual story, instead the focus is more about the external processes that shape them that constantly apart of their lives but largely unnoticed. I realize that all the precise scientific detail and jargon might come off as a bit dry and boring, and is not seamlessly integrated with the story as some would like, but I found Machine to be interestingly straightforward and at times beautifully written book exploring big ideas in a way fictional setting that I understood. It certainly isn't a book for everyone, but I'll definitely be rereading this one again.

[Corey Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of this book looking up translations from Charlotte Barslund after finishing another one of her translations: "I Curse The River of Time." Minutes after finishing this book I have one word to describe this book. Genius. I really don't know how else to describe these 85 pages. The sentence structures are beautiful; varied not only in length (both long and short extremes), but varied in content. Adolphsen makes science something romantic, something desired and maybe even something left outside one's thought pattern-which proves to be the beauty of the language. The book, the short book, spans 55 million years. From an Eohippus' heart to a speck of dust resting in Clarissa's lungs, this novel can be read quickly or it can be savored. Read, say, 20 pages at a time and take in the language, the thought, the imagination that Adophsen has given us. Read it. Not too quickly. Enjoy the Eohippus tragic tale. Enjoy James Stewart's cycling and poetry reading (his favorite, of course: Seymour Glass). Enjoy Clarissa's LSD trip and that sentence from page 63-68. And enjoy the narrator's final musings. If I could read Danish, I run out to my local Danish bookstore and buy all his books and read them slowly, one by one. But alas, I'm just about monolingual. I'll have to wait for another translation.

[Milan/zzz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kakvo ludilo od knjige! Sve u vezi sa njom me je oduševilo. Počevši od slučajnosti zahvaljujuci kojoj sam uopšte došao do nje (na Sajmu knjiga u Beogradu "Danas" je uz primerak novina poklanjao knjigu po izboru. Ja sam uzeo ovu jer mi je bila najbliža a i najlakša (nije mi se vukla u rancu neka od 1000 strana s'obzirom da sam tek došao na sajam)) pa sve do poslednje strane. Ništa od iste nisam očekivao. Otvorio sam je istog dana i počeo da čitam, i čitam, i čitam (dobro, 75 strana u cugu i nije neki spektakularni achievement ali kakva je to roller-coaster vožnja bila!). S'obzirom da sam medicinar jako (jako!) mi se svidela fikcija na biohemijskom i molekularnom nivou. A onda juriš natrag na površinu tela. Tok priče me je podsetio na film "Grad izgubljene dece" ("La cité des enfants perdus") gde je svaki minijaturni detalj podjednako važan deo priče koja se priča.

[Tobias Cramer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Adolphsen er lidt en gimmick-forfatter. I Machine er der flere gimmicks i spil. Der er oliedråben, der følges fra dens opståen til dens overgang til gasstadiet æoner senere, så er der det videnskabelige sprog, der trænger sig på hvert øjeblik - hos Adolphsen er en spade ikke en spade spade, men et graveaggregat produceret i Kirgisistan af en legering af sortstål og tinmalm, der efterfølgende er lakeret med akrylt RAL-8165-maling.
Adolphsen demonstrer komplekse systemer og deres evne til at forundre, deres evne til at fremmedgøre og ikke mindst til at fascinere. Det hele bliver selvfølgelig også mekanisk og skematisk med de evindelige opremsninger, men der er en poesi og noget kraftfuld gemt i det. Det er en præstation, at det skinner så klart i gennem gimmicksene.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Billed as fiction, but doing very little of what fiction has traditionally done--a number of times the narrative of this book is interrupted by texty passages that feel like the driest of all high school lectures. After reading a third of it, I skipped to the end and laughed at the cop-out explanation for how the narrator could know the details of events that occurred 55 million years ago. Essentially, it's a dopey Darwinian fairy tale.

[Norsk Mew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ludoooo! Osećam se kao da sam trčala maraton kroz piščev mozak, što verovatno i jesam, ova knjiga je čisto survavanje kroz kombinaciju ludo kratkog romana toka svesti i neviđenog genija koji predstavlja majstora u povezivanju i vizualizaciji stvari koje su međusobno smotane u snoplje fantastičnih detalja od praiskona do danas, evo, upravo sad. `Nuff said.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Åd den rip og stub på en togtur. Elsker den måde hvorpå Adolphsen blander fiktion og fakta. Er med på at den har en lettere eksperimenterende struktur hvilket nok gør at nogen ville finde den selvoptaget. Men det skal de have lov til. Jeg synes egentlig det er meget hyggeligt.
Minder mig lidt om Kurt Vonnegut på en måde.

[Niina Pollari]

Very European, very densely packed and well-researched, and, since it is such a short novel, consequently very lyrical. I liked this book a lot. It's a book about coincidence.

[Nadia Noland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up because I liked the cover. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that eventhough it was short and an incredibly quick read, it was really interesting.

[Larissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review here:

http://www.rochester.edu/College/tran...

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most time covered in fewest pages!