Axel Thormählen - Though we are drained, hunted to death, and out of breath, are we not all, happy men?

Axel Thormählen, A Happy Man and Other Stories or/oder Der Glückliche und andere Erzählungen, Trans. By Marianne Thormählen, Les Figues Press, 2008.

"A Happy Man and Other Stories or/oder Der Glückliche und andere Erzählungen draws together nine short stories by German author Axel Thormählen. Jochen, the title story’s hero, is a man content in the face of others’ discontent and their foolish fear of mortality. Like Jochen, many of Thormählen’s characters live within deceptively simple, but impossibly profound movements, accepting the happy limits of life. Judith Freeman asks in her introduction, “though we are drained, hunted to death, and out of breath, is [Jochen] not still, are we not all, happy men?” Thormählen’s great achievement is that his stories move as much toward the answer as the question, but in the end leave both untouched and unrelenting."

"The unique quality of Axel Thormählen’s stories lies in their integrity of subject, action, and expression. They refuse to be dissected or peeled like an onion. Each is a jewel in one’s hand, a luminous presence to be acknowledged whole." – Thomas Vargish

“A delightful, unusual, highly individual book, with a gentle wisdom, sometimes disturbing or amusing or both, but always very distinctive. I enjoyed it, story by story, greatly, but the total atmosphere exceeds the sum of its parts.” – Claude Rawson

"This collection consists of nine stories in all, with English translation and German original offered respectively on the top and bottom of each page. Axel Thormählen, a German writer who lives in Sweden and translates from Swedish to German, writes carefully constructed, almost peaceful sentences that feel at once natural and weightless; the resulting stories have an effortlessness to them that belies the sometimes profound meditations lodged just below their seemingly straightforward surfaces. In “23 December,” a man searches for Christmas tree on land where the boundary between the physical and the metaphysical seems to have subtly shifted. “Visiting Hour” and “The Water Tower” give a view of ordinary life through individuals who have stepped, in one way or another, out of it. “Dyke Crest Lane No. 1” crystallizes a moment of childhood in which everything desired is suddenly lost, but everything unexpectedly gained is suddenly desired. This story’s tone seems to shiver between the idyllic and the ironic in a way that touches at the very structure of our sense of connection to those we love. In “The Construction Worker,” a man imagines that one person has followed him around all his life, constantly disturbing him with noise. “In the Course of Things” creates a subtly moving portrait of life in a hospital ward, while the title story is a character sketch of a man who manages, despite the state of the world, to remain simply content. These are stories that are easily read but which linger in the mind, over time starting to reveal hidden complexities. A Happy Man is a strong and worthwhile addition to Les Figues’ TrenchArt: Parapet series." - Brian Evenson

"One of many to-be-desired releases in Les Figues' TrenchArt: Parapet Series (among others such as I Go to Some Hollow by Amina Cain and God's Livestock Policy by Stan Apps), this special compilation of nine well-crafted short stories by German author Axel Thormählen exceeds any careful reader's expectations - they are gems to be marveled. Though these stories are similar in tone and in literary design, the subject matter in which they investigate, explode or agitate is such that any receptive soul must harbor the ability to linger appropriately with each one, and a safe haven is needed for the reader to engage in Thormählen's highly subjective, poetic fiction. Thormählen does not avoid uncomfortable subjects, and because of this, his fiction is - at times - philosophically cumbersome. His stories do not shy away from our mutually shared experiences, and they display internal worlds of his characters with a selective eye - keen in observation, precise in both their secular and otherworldly guises.
Each world is true, accessible and clean, providing us with the consolation that we often feel comparative sentiments towards life, living and sometimes death and dying -- that some of us spend our lives searching for happiness, but only a few of us, like Thormählen's "happy man" Jochen (the word "happy" in German in somewhat synonymous with "lucky") are privileged to have and to hold such a blessing. And yes, the few of us who have a tight grip on this sought-after emotional commodity, even they cannot explain where it comes from and what it wants from those who covet it. Just as perplexing as this concept of happiness is the recurring notions of absurdity and chance (in the midst of what might or might not be seen as natural milieus) that punctuate Thormählen's stories. For example, in his story 23 December, the protagonist goes about his own business - initially undisturbed by what most of us consider to be society -- searching for the loveliest of trees for the Christmas holiday, but he is interrupted, ambushed in a mysterious forest by strange figures probing with questions, having no answers for them in return. He is stumped by their tenacity, pushing him for answers in the midst of a winter void, for why would he know the answers to such questions, and why should they expect answers from a stranger? Questions such as: Have you seen my child? Have you got anything to drink? Don't you recognize your Christel?
And as with life, we are often expected to give something we don't have and we are placed in curious, unexpected situations like Thormählen's endearing, kooky scenarios. Above all, it could be interpreted that Thormählen is interested in the transitory, the boundaries between language and expression, methods of release and catharsis, coping with what we have and what we can't have -- even though we are surrounded by beauty. Or in Jochen's words: "Nobody should search for the absolute, for perfection, because the quest will be unsuccessful and bring nothing but unhappiness." And after all, as Thormählen writes: "The happiness that has fallen to his [Jochen's] lot and still does, how should he know whether there is a power that determines, or even distributes it? It happens, that's all there is to it." And much like happiness, sublime fiction “happens” as well - both inexplicable to those untouched by a muse." - Jacquelyn Davis

"This is a curious collection of nine stories that engage with their dry humor and absurdist play, but also distance with their tendency toward abstraction, and the absence of a fully inhabited physical, sensual world. They often read less as stories, and more as a mixture of parable and philosophical tract and comic monologue—all poured into a soup pot and stirred by the likes of Calvino or Kafka or Bruno Schulz. Distinctively designed by the boutique Los Angeles Press Les Figues, the book even looks like a pamphlet. Each page is split, with the English translation above and the original German below.
The first story, 23 December, begins as a straightforward search for a Christmas tree (in that season “full of anticipation in which hope puts its feet so doggedly against darkness”); but then veers off into existential parable, the woods full of wandering pilgrims looking for lost things.
Dyke Crest Lane No. 1 is one of the more emotionally engaging stories, and follows the afternoon of a young schoolboy with a mad crush on a girl, Ingrid. For him, “life is made up of nothing but heartbeat and the wild desire to meet her at last, or even just see her.” The story broaches philosophical concerns as well (the boy is influenced by his older brother’s pre-occupation with “the spiritual and mental currents that flow between human beings”), but feels securely grounded in character.
The Construction Worker is perhaps the book’s most successful piece of absurdism. “There he is again with his hammer-drill, and I might have known he would be,” the story begins. A single construction worker haunts the narrator his entire life: drilling holes in the hospital’s delivery wing during his birth; tearing down school walls while as a boy he is attempting to learn physics; and later in life even following him on holiday. In desperation, the man and his family retire to the countryside—where (at least our narrator imagines) his tormenter shifts tactics and orchestrates the passage of mooing cows and cawing crows.
In The Churchgoer, the narrator contrasts his own profoundly mediocre existence with those who might be viewed as examples of success, briefly considering Goethe and Shakespeare, and (in a hilarious passage) Winfried Posch, the inventor of the screw seal. Ultimately he determines that only one man, Jesus Christ, can be declared a complete success; and he embarks on an investigation of those qualities that set Christ apart by studying His representation in churches around the world. The story is sad and funny in equal parts.
Elsewhere, philosophical abstraction gets the better of the stories—such as in A Talk with Thomas (which also takes place in a church), where the narrator ruminates on the “riddle of human existence” finding a “self-evident expression.” Or the title story, where a character remarks how “our entire lives consist of unintentionalities.” At such times the voice became, for me, just too disembodied; the story observed from too great a remove; the world of the story not inhabited in a satisfying way.
It should be noted that a certain theoretical bent is present in the larger series of which A Happy Man is a part. Each year Les Figues Press issues a subscription “TrenchArt” series in which works by two prose writers and two poets, as well as a more theoretical introductory book, form a “larger discussion of contemporary aesthetics.” A little dry to my taste; but those with an interest in poetics and aesthetics are encouraged to check out other offerings. Each Les Figues title is introduced by a noted author and critic. A Happy Man features an introduction by Judith Freeman cleverly written in the manner of a Thormählen story." - Scott Doyle

"At some point in our lives we all ask ourselves soul-searching questions to find out who we really are. We wonder if there is a God, should we or do we believe in him, will we be loved, what will death be like, what is the meaning of life or more succinctly, what is the meaning of ‘my’ life. We want answers. We want contentment. We want to know that we are okay despite it all. We want someone to tell us we are on the right path. We want to not think about these questions and know that is okay too. We want to fit in and be separate at the same time - an individual that is accepted and loved, but ultimately alone in life seeking our own truths.
And in Axel Thörmahlen’s collection of short stories, truths are what we find.
A Happy Man and Other Stories delivers nine philosophical tales that are taut, poetic and ruminative. This book, in fact, serves as a literary redemption for the reflective. For those of us resigned to finding the meaning of life, these stories should become a touchstone.
The collection begins with a man searching for a fir tree on December 23rd. It is two days before Christmas, and every year he chooses a healthy fir and cuts it down for his family. We follow him through the forest where he encounters a man in rags and several agitated characters who also wandering in the forest, but looking for a way out or a lost child or asking if he has brought a bottle of liquor along. While the narrator finds these people odd, he tries to help, tries to engage and understand. But ultimately feels overwhelmed by these ‘creatures’ and moves on quickly to find his tree. We realize that these thoughts are they are his and everyone’s and that there is no need to escape from them because as human beings they exist in all of us but do not constitute all that we are. “As we all know, exquisite objects have a way of screening themselves from view” and that is what Thörmahlen does so well. We know the thoughts that eat away at us but we still manage to be who we are and that, in itself, is exquisite. And when he brings the perfect fir tree home, his wife also recognizes “That one’s got substance to it, real substance.”
As does this whole collection. A mass of substance painted with the fine lines of allegory and symbolism that illuminates the world around us and our timeless existential preoccupations. God, progress and even our own ego being represented in the ranting “The Construction Worker.” The idea of Religious perfectionism and how we will always fall short when we compare ourselves to One Greatness, to Jesus Christ or in Thörmahlen’s Christ, a man called Winfried Posch. Mr. Posch was the perfect man teeming with great accomplishments and no failures. How are we to compete with him? We can’t and the mere attempt will always be the impetus for a life of misery. As our narrator states, “after all, nobody should be led to believe that he or she came into this world to enjoy themselves.” Towards the end of the collection, “A Talk with Thomas” gives us St. Thomas’ aerial view, from inside a tourist cathedral, on the suffering and exaltation of human existence.
The last story is a fitting to end to a collection of stories I did not want to leave. In “The Water Tower”, the spirit of a deceased woman, Martha, spurns the “beloved vultures” that come to raid her house after she has died but never appreciated her while she was living.
Is it possible to do both-be a vulture and appreciate something’s beauty? Yes, with "A Happy Man and Other Stories", it is more than possible. It is a must. They should be picked apart and ravaged for their substance, appreciated for understanding the trajectory of human existence and for showing us that we are not in this alone even though we may try to be." - Skylight Books

"How long did it take you to write all the stories in your collection?
- Every story calls for a different process of maturity. Some have been polished from time to time over a period of several years. Also, the translation process sometimes brings out individual points which need to be clarified or refined. It’s hard to say how long it takes me to write a single story. The basic idea normally requires a period of "tasting" before I launch into it. The degree to which the completed story ‘hits home’ only becomes clear after I’ve finished writing, but I can usually tell soon after completion whether it will stand up or not. Very occasionally, a story comes into being in its entirety in the course of a single afternoon, as happened with the story called A Happy Man – a rare piece of good fortune.
Did you have a collection in mind when you were writing them?
- Not, not to begin with. Whenever it turns out that a number of stories coalesce, the notion of forming a collection becomes appealing. But most of the time it’s hard to find a common denominator for the individual stories.
How did you choose which stories to include and in what order?
- I have my own system of A, B, and C stories. In a C story the idea might be all right in itself, but apart from that it’s unworthy of print (posterity, please note!). For A Happy Man and Other Stories, the publisher’s editor suggested an excellent order in which very serious stories and more relaxed ones relieve one another without breaking up the total atmosphere.
What does the word "story" mean to you?
- A story is the form in which an idea expresses itself, and if things go really well – this is the creative part – other ideas join it. Length and tenability are the results of that process.
Do you have a "reader" in mind when you write stories?
- No. Only when I move on to the revising stage, where the whole thing becomes a matter of craftsmanship, I sometimes wonder what my wife will say. She’s always the first reader, and she’s merciless.
Is there anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your collection, anything at all?
- Was it worth your while?
How does it feel knowing that people are buying your book?
- Are they? I haven’t seen it happen, so it’s hard for me to believe they’re actually doing it. Of course, it would be flattering to imagine that what you’ve written has an effect on what goes on in other people’s minds. But in my experience every reader reads and judges a story in his or her own way, and no two readers feel the same.
What are the three most recent short story collections you've read?
- Diickens’ Christmas Stories, Donald Anderson’s Fire Road, and a collection of stories by Joseph Conrad. Conrad’s Youth is my favourite story." - Interview by The Short Review

Born in Germany in 1945, Axel Thormählen has lived in Sweden since 1968, writing fiction and working as a translator. He has published three novels in German and one in Swedish, and two story collections in Swedish. Six of the stories in A Happy Man were previously published in English as The Water Tower (Holmby Press).