Dan Turèll

Dan Turèll

Portrait of Dan Turèll from the early 1980s
Born (1946-03-19)March 19, 1946
Vangede, Denmark
Died October 15, 1993(1993-10-15) (aged 47)
Occupation Writer

Dan Turèll[1] (March 19, 1946 – October 15, 1993), affectionately nicknamed "Onkel Danny" (Uncle Danny), was a popular Danish writer with notable influence on Danish literature.

Overview

Dan Turèll grew up in Vangede, which at that time was a town outside Copenhagen surrounded by fields; today it is a part of Greater Copenhagen. He died from esophageal cancer[2] and is buried at Assistens Cemetery. On Sunday March 19, 2006, on what would have been his 60th birthday, part of the town square of Halmtorvet in Copenhagen was named Onkel Dannys Plads (English: Uncle Danny's Square) in Dan Turèlls honor and remembrance.

Turèll was unruly, modern, and experimental when it came to both content and form. He might probably himself have claimed to let the form at all times be a consequence of an interaction between theme and subject, which inevitably would lead to a flood of crossing genres; delightfully difficult to fit into a box.

There is often a touch of autobiography, or perhaps rather self orchestration, to his works. He was very conscious of his own image. Many will remember him for his black nail polish. Thus his major breakthrough was the autobiographical novel, Vangede Billeder (English: Images of Vangede) from 1975. He shares subjects with the American Beat poets (mainly Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & William S. Burroughs): jazz, metropolis, drugs, and zen. He has an eye for the aesthetic dimensions of decline and degeneration, which he cultivates not least in his series of crime novels. Other recurring topics include Copenhagen, Malta, the teachings of Donald Duck, icons of American culture and the Americanization, which the U.S.A., for better or worse, had on Denmark.

Turèll loved his city of Copenhagen, its life, its noise and perhaps especially the little stories, that lurked everywhere. This love for the city is portrayed in many of his stories. It must be said, however, that his portrayal of Vesterbro is considerably more romantic than the Vesterbro of real life.

Turèll published quite a bit of his material himself, especially early in his career. He wrote in both Danish and English and has been translated into Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Norwegian, Swedish and Serbian.

Bibliography

Dan Turèll was a highly prolific writer, and this bibliography[3] is in no way complete. He has contributed to numerous anthologies in his time and collections of his works are still being published to this day. He has also written a vast number of articles and essays for newspapers and various magazines on countless subjects. His wrapsheet is breathtaking. Danish literary critic and writer, Lars Bukdahl, put it this way:[4] He only lived to the age of 47, and it is as though he knew he had to hurry.

Cut-up literature

Novels

The Murder Series

The so-called Mord-serie (English: Murder Series) is Dan Turèll's series of crime novels inspired by American crime writers like Raymond Chandler among others. It has no continued timeline, so it can be read in any order one chooses. A chronological reading will however provide a sense of development and depthening of both setting and characters.

The series primarily takes place in an alternate version of the borough of Vesterbro in Copenhagen, which serves as a backdrop for considerably more criminal endeavours than real life will probably ever match. Also certain aspects of the city's geography has been altered. Certain streets lie differently, for instance.

The series follows a nameless reporter working freelance for a fictitious Copenhagen newspaper, plainly called Bladet (English: The Paper). In each novel the protagonist is hurled into a new murder mystery along with other recurring characters, mainly Politiinspektør Ehlers (English: Inspector Ehlers).

Poetry

Prose

Spoken Word Recordings

Works in English

The following poems of Dan Turèll have been published in English since 2009 when the American writer, Thomas E. Kennedy, began to translate and write about Turèll with his widow’s permission: Three poems from Storby-Blues with essay, “Uncle Danny Comes to America,” in New Letters, 73:2&3 (2009):126-39; four poems from Storby Blues, with essay, “Smoking Dan Turèll’s 27-year-old Cigar,”in Absinthe: New European Writing 12 (2009):34-58 {Reprinted in Perigee: Publication for the Arts, Fall 2012.] “Deep Frost Film,” Poetry Wales, 46:2:6-7 (Autumn 2010); “My TV Drama,” in Ecotone 12 (University of North Carolina, Wilmington), Fall 2011, p. 73-75; “Total Euphoria,” “It Isn’t Easy,” “I Should Have Been a Taxi Driver,” “Today’s Sermon According to Disney,” and “Charlie Parker on Isted Street,” with an “Introduction to Dan Turèll” by the translator, in Poet Lore, Vol 107, Spring-Summer 2012, No.1-2, pp 96-114; . “Autumn Blues,” “Midnight Mass,” and “Teddy Bear” in McNeese Review: 50 (2013):22-28; “Too Much, Man,” in Epoch, Cornell University (forthcoming).

Adaptions

Legacy

The squareDan Turèlls Plads in his native Vangede was named for him on 9 March 2007.[5] Onkel Dannys Plads (Uncle Danny's Square) in the Kødbyen area of Copenhagen's Vesterbro district is also named for him.

References

  1. ↑ This article is based on the article on Dan Turèll in Danish Wikipedia
  2. ↑ dk4 - Udfordrende tv 24 timer i døgnet
  3. ↑ The bibliography of this article was researched by way of the following online resources: National Danish Online Library Database (https://bibliotek.dk), Danish Literature Centre (http://www.litteraturnet.dk) & The Turèll Collection (http://www.turellsamlingen.dk)
  4. ↑ In The Danish Literature Centre's biography of Dan Turèll; see direct link under External links
  5. ↑ "Dan Turèlls Plads". Gentofte Kommune (in Danish). Retrieved 1 March 2017.
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