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P(er) C(hristian) Jersild (1935-) |
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Swedish writer and medical doctor, who stirred much debate with his books on bureaucratic follies and absurdities of the welfare state. Jersild's best-known works include Babels hus (1978, House of Babel), a novel about inhuman treatment in a giant hospital near Stockholm. Many of his novels reflect the problems of the high technology nursing and medical research. "Den finaste utmärkelse en läkare kan få är inte Nobelpriset - det är i stället att få en sjukdom uppkallad efter sig. Pristagare glöms ofta lika snabbt som den filmstjärna som dalade i fjol. Men praktiskt taget alla sjukdomar består. De inte bara består, de ökar. Ju fler människomiljarder som föds på jorden, ju fler sjukdomsmöjligheter. Läkarvetenskapen mäktar inte hålla takten när många miljoner nya människor varje år väller in i den ormgrop där över 7 000 olika WHO-registrerade och numrerade sjukdomar väntar." (from Djurdoktorn, 1973) Per Christian Jersild was born in Katrineholm, but grew up in Ängby, a
middle-class suburb of Stockholm. His father was an editor and a pastor of Helgelseförbundet (the Sanctification Union); Jersild himself abandoned Christian faith as a young teen. At the
age of 15, Jersild wrote his first novel. As a short story write he debuted with Räknelära,
which came out in 1960. In the same year he married Ulla Flyxe; they had two
sons. In 1955, Jersild entered the Karolinska Institute, receiving his Licentiate degree in 1962. In his studies he specialized in social medicine and psychiatry. From 1963 to 1966 he was a staff member of the Institute of Social Medicne in Stockholm. He then worked at the Stockholm Civil Service Welfare Department and from 1974 to 1978 as a social psychiatrist at the Huddinge Hospital. He has also been an assistant professor of social and preventive medicine and a medical adviser to the National Government Administration Board. These experiences gave the author insight into the world of bureaucratic institutions, which he later satirized in his books. From 1977 Jersild devoted himself entirely to writing. He has received several literature prizes, including Swedish Society for Promotion of Literature grand prize in 1981 and De Nio prize in 1998. Jersild's columns have been published in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Wider attention Jersild gained in 1967 with his television play Sammanträde pågor, about man's vulnerability in an impersonal bureaucratic society. Jersild's novel Grisjakten (The Pig Hunt) was adapted into screen in 1970. The story focused on a respectable government official, Lennart Siljeberg, who is given the assignment of killing all the pigs in Sweden, starting with the island of Gotland. Through Lennart's diary the reader follows the consequences of duty-bound obedience, which leads thoughts to the case of Adolf Eichmann. Lennart do not question his orders. His bureaucratic jargon Jersild mixes with authentic documents. One of the Jersid's models was Rudolf Höss diary, who was the commandant of Auschwitz and was tried and convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and executed. After realistic social novels Jersild started to developed his stories into a more fantastic direction. In Till varmare länder (1961) a housewife starts to receive letters from her old friends and her visions of warmer climates turn out to be hell. Ledig lördag (1963) tells about a company party, where two of the participants are trapped for a week in a subway train on their nightmarish way back home. The story presents one of Jersildt's favorite themes: something absurd happens on an ordinary day and changes everything upside-down. Prince Valiant och Konsum (1966) is about a girl's dreams of a comic-book hero in the monotony of a Swedish grocery store. In 1965 Jersild published Calvinols resa genom världen, a combination of Voltaire and Italo Calvono's fables, where Calvino's mythical, immortal figure witnesses the turning points of European history. The burlesque novel was described by the author as "an ecstatic writing experience." Djurdoktorn (1973), set in 1988-89, demonstrated how humanitarian concerns are nullified in a society where big business and social democracy have united. The protagonist, a vetenarian named Evy Beck, unsuccesfully protest a purposeless experiment with animals at the Alfred Nobel Institute for Medical Research. Man's struggle with the structures of society are dealt in Vi ses i Song My (1970), in which the protagonist believes he can change the Swedish military bureaucracy but is instead manipulated by it, and Stumpen (1973), about an alcoholic bum who thinks he is worthless and should be eliminated by society. Jersild wrote the book originally for the radical magazine FIB/Kulturfront. Vi ses i Song My and Uppror bland marsvinen (1972) were published by the leftist publishing company FörfattarFörlaget. As a 'humanist socialist' Jersild has often criticized the big business. In House of Babel his target is the pharmaceutical giants. Primus Svensson, and elderly man, who suffers arteriosclerosis, is swallowed by a large hospital, suffers a heart attack and eventually dies. Through his fate and in the microcosm of a hospital, Jersild shows the whole picture of loneliness and isolation in modern Sweden. Jersild's novels En levande själ (1980, A Living Soul), told in first person by a disembodied human brain, the "living soul" of the title, and Efter floden (1982), set 30 years after a nuclear catastrophe, are science fiction stories, dystopians of future society. Efter floden (Eng. tr. After the Flood, 1986) depicts the world after nuclear holocaust. In A Living Soul the protagonist is a human brain, known as Ypsilon, without memories. Is it a human being? Is it only a laboratory project? In Holgerssons (1991) the author made fun of an icon of Swedish's children's literature, Selma Lagerlöf, taking Nils Holgersson from The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and describing his adventures in more recent Sweden. Barnens ö (1976) was about a young boy, Reine, who do not want to grow up and especially to go to summer camp. He searches in Stockholm meaning of life. Violence baffles him, the Vietnam war, costs of living. "And another thing: he had learned at school that people really see the world upside down; that was how their eyes functioned. But very early on in life you learned to turn the picture right side up in your head. It sounded a bit odd, but it was true. Reine didn't want to have anything to do with that kind of trick; he wanted to see the world as it really was, just as you'd seen it from the start when you were born, upside down." Den femtionden frälsaren (1984) is a historical novel, set in the 18th-century Venice. The narrator, young Ciacco, is a clerk, who meets people from different levels of society. The central character is, however, the strange Magdalenus, a time traveler, who sees a vision of the future. He describes submarines, lifts, and modern toilets. Magdalenus claims, that he is a direct descendant of Jesus. Sena sagor (1998) was set in the near future. In the playful story a doctor meets representatives of our own time. For further reading: Maktens verktyg by Inge Johnsson (1978); Swedish Book Review (1983, supplement); 'Dehumanization and the bureaucrazy in the novels by P.C. Jersild' by Ross Shideler, in Scandivavica (1984); Närvarande frånvaro by Bo Larsson (1987); Förnyftets brytpunkt by Jonas Anshelm (1990); Contemporary World Authors, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1993); Den svenska litteraturhistorien by Göran Hägg (1996); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Vol. 2, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Vem är vem i svensk litteratur by Agneta and Lars Erik Blomqvist (1999); Das Sinnvolle im Unsinn: eine intertextuelle Analyse ludistisch-parodistischer Textkonstitutionen in Calvinols resa genom världen und Holgerssons von PC Jersild by Susanna Albrecht (2009) - See also: Peter Nilson and other modern Nordic writers, who have published science fiction Selected works:
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