Louis Jensen

Louis Jensen in Decorah, Iowa 2008

Louis Jensen (born 19 July 1943) is a Danish author who is an innovator in the international literary trends of flash fiction, metafiction, prose poetry, and magical realism.[1][2][3] While he has published more than 70 books for both adults and children, he is best known for his children's books, which include picture books, short stories, flash fiction, creative nonfiction and novels.[4] His work is characterized by wordplay and playful experiments in form and structure, which have led critics to draw comparisons to Borges, Calvino, Gogol, and the poetry of the Oulipo movement.[5][6] His work is also rooted in the fairy tale and folk tale tradition, and is deeply influenced by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen.[7]

In 1992, Jensen embarked on his "Square Story" project, to write 1001 very short stories, each in the shape of a square. In 2014 he published his ninth volume of 100 stories; he plans to publish a tenth volume of 100 stories, and an eleventh volume with a single, final story.[8] This work in progress has been called "one of the most radical literary projects in all of Danish literature,"[9] and the square stories have found an enthusiastic audience among adult readers as well as children.[10][11]

Jensen has received multiple awards and prizes. He has been nominated several times for both of the most prestigious international awards in children's literature, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award[12] and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. In 2010, he made the short list (5 authors, nominated from 34 countries) for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.[13] In 2002, he was chosen by the Danish National Art Foundation to be included on the roster of 275 Danish artists who are awarded an annual stipend for their lifelong contributions to the arts and culture of Denmark.[14] In 2014, he was nominated for the Nordic Council Children and Young People's Literature Prize for his eighth collection of square stories, published in 2012. The Nordic Council praised the "humour and seriousness" of Jensen's work, suggesting that his stories have "brought greetings from Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll and E. T. A. Hoffman and other great poets to all the children and adults who just wanted to read along."[15] In 2016, he again made the short list for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.[16]

Life

Louis Jensen was born in Nibe, Denmark close to the Limfjord in northern Jutland. He describes his mother's childhood in the biographically based book, "En historie om seks søstre" ("A story of six sisters," Gyldendal, 2009).[17] His family moved from Nibe to Beder, south of Aarhus, when he was 12. The move was painful for Jensen; he missed his friends and he longed for the woods and waters of his childhood home.[18] Memories of his childhood in Nibe are found in many of his works, including his 2014 collection of short prose pieces, "Elefanterne holdt hver gang med Tarzan" ("The elephants always sided with Tarzan"), which "turns the story of Jensen's childhood into mystic stuff, into literature."[19] As a young man, Jensen studied to be an architect, with a specialty in urban planning, and he worked as an architect and city planner for a private firm next to the Aarhus townhall.[20] He published his first poem in 1970 in the literary magazine "Hvedekorn," and his first book of poetry in 1972.[21] His first novel for young readers, "Krystalmanden" (The Crystal Man), was published in 1986. Since 1992, he has worked full time as an author.[22] He lives in Aarhus, Denmark, with his wife, the painter Elisabeth Wegger. They have three grown children, and several grandchildren.

Works

Square Story Project

The Square Stories are Louis Jensen's invented literary form: very short microfictions, formatted in the shape of a square block of text, and printed one to a page. Jensen has published nine collections of 100 stories. He plans a tenth volume of 100 stories, and a final book with one story, to reach his goal of 1001 stories.

The 900 square stories published so far share several formal features. They are all brief, generally 100 words or less, and they are all squares (with the exception of one triangular story in the fourth volume). The stories are each numbered--not on the page, but within the story itself. The first begins "engang der var," or "once there was," a variation on the traditional opening of a Danish fairy tale "der var engang," which is the equivalent of the English "once upon a time." The stories that follow each have their own number: a second time there was, a third time, and so on, all the way up to "a nine hundredth time there was." Each of the nine published volumes of stories also includes a final, unnumbered story, that begins "en helt anden gang," or, "another time altogether."

According to translator and critic Lise Kildegaard, the enumeration of the stories "has a complex effect on the reader's experience." The numbers both indicate the scope of the 1001 story project, and, by identifying the order of the stories, they locate the reader precisely within it: "By assigning each story a unique place within the collection, the simple enumeration of stories places into tension the whole and the part, the general and the specific. The reader simultaneously grasps the 1001 story project in its grand ambition and the individual iteration of a single story in all its local particularity."[23]

In theme, style, and content, the stories are diverse. Some are like fairy tales, with familiar characters like kings, queens, and dragons. Other stories feature human characters, animals, or animated natural beings such as trees, bushes, or grass. Several stories include inanimate objects as characters, such as forks, frying pans, and rubber balls, in the tradition of the Scandinavian "tingseventyr," or "object fairy tales." Several metafictional square stories make characters out of the alphabet letters, the words, and the stories themselves.

Jensen also includes many stories that have no characters, plot, or action. These "ludic and lyrical" stories reveal Jensen's close observation of nature and his poetic appreciation of a world that combines in equal measure "familiarity and strangeness, commonplace reality and ecstatic vision."[24]

The first nine volumes of the 1001 Square Stories are:

Children's and young adult books

Picture books

Easy Readers

Poetry collections for adults

Novels and short prose collections for adults

Translations

Adaptations

Louis Jensen with the cast of Square Stories at Luther College, November 2008

Jensen's Square Stories have been adapted into several theater productions, including

Awards and honors

References

  1. ↑ Rasmussen, Line Beck (2008). "Playing with language and literature: Louis Jensen's 1001 stories". Bookbird 46 (3): 30–36.
  2. ↑ Sorensen, Henning Mørch (February 17, 2012). "Hjertets ambassadør". Information. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  3. ↑ Larsen, Steffen (November 18, 2010). "Prisbelønnet børnebogsforfatter rammer efter plet". Politiken. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  4. ↑ Löfström, Kamilla (May 14, 2009). "Op al den ting, som historier kan gøre". Information. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  5. ↑ Jensen, Louis (April 2009). "Square Stories". Skolebiblioteket 37 (3): 14.
  6. ↑ Rasmussen, Line Beck (2008). "Playing with language and literature: Louis Jensen's 1001 stories". Bookbird 46 (3): 33.
  7. ↑ Rasmussen, Line Beck (2008). "Playing with language and literature: Louis Jensen's 1001 stories". Bookbird 46 (3): 32.
  8. ↑ Finderup, Rikke; Ipsen, Max (April 2006). "1001 firkanter--om Louis Jensens firkantede historier". Passage 20 (52): 61.
  9. ↑ Finderup, Rikke; Ipsen, Max (April 2005). "1001 firkanter--om Louis Jensens firkantede historier". Passage 20 (52): 61. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  10. ↑ Beckett, Sandra L. (2008). Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives. New York: Routledge. p. 54. ISBN 0415879361.
  11. ↑ Larsen, Lauge. "It's hip to be square: Louis Jensen 100 Meget Firkantede Historier". Litteratur.nu. Statens Kunstråd: Danish Arts Council. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  12. ↑ "Candidates". Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  13. ↑ "2010 Hans Christian Andersen Awards Shortlist". IBBY: International Board on Books for Young People. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  14. ↑ "Modtagere af hædersydelse". kunst.dk. Statens Kunstfond. Retrieved 19 October 2014.
  15. ↑ "Nordic Council". Nordic Council Children and Young People's Literature Prize: Louis Jensen and Lilian Brøgger. Norden: Nordic Council. Retrieved November 6, 2014.
  16. ↑ "2016 H C Andersen Award". www.ibby.org. Retrieved 2016-01-29.
  17. ↑ Pedersen, Linda Vinding. "Louis Jensen: En historie om seks søstre (2009)". Rudersdal Bibliotekerne. Retrieved 19 October 2014.
  18. ↑ Rasmussen, Anita Brask (June 6, 2014). "Drengen skaber verden". Information. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  19. ↑ Rasmussen, Anita Brask (June 6, 2014). "Drengen skaber verden". Information. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  20. ↑ Jakobsen, Gunnar (1997). Forfatterskaber: Louis Jensen. Denmark: Gyldendal. p. 15. ISBN 87-00-30338-0.
  21. ↑ "Louis Jensen". litteratursiden.dk.
  22. ↑ Jakobsen, Gunnar (1997). Forfatterskaber: Louis Jensen. Denmark: Gyldendal. p. 15. ISBN 87-00-30338-0.
  23. ↑ Kildegaard, Lise (2014). "At Home in an Astonishing World: The Square Stories of Louis Jensen". The Bridge: Journal of the Danish American Heritage Society (Volume 37, Number 2): 67.
  24. ↑ Kildegaard, Lise (2014). "At Home in an Astonishing World: The Square Stories of Louis Jensen". The Bridge: Journal of the Danish American Heritage Society (Volume 37, Number 2): 72.
  25. ↑ "Nordic Council Children's and Young People's Literature Prize 2014". Norden. 26 March 2014. Retrieved 22 October 2014.

Further reading

External links

Media related to Louis Jensen at Wikimedia Commons

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