Two things, above all, characterize Kirsten Hammann’s (b. 1965) temperament and style: She possesses an exquisitely grotesque black humor and a predilection for using the diary as a literary form. And when she succeeds in coupling these two things together, she puts on display feelings we normally view as private and intimate but are, in reality, something we all have very much in common: the angst of being who you are and how others see you.
In her breakthrough novel Vera Winkelvir (1993), Hammann allows every thought, every fancy, a perfectly free run through her alter ego: “My name is vera winkelvir. Somebody invented me. I’m down in a big red rubber handbag, and I am very sorry to cause any trouble, but would you mind letting me out and giving me some friends and a social life?” Vera talks and talks, like a neurotic black box, in an attempt to penetrate the existential feeling of being made up as a woman, a fictional figure, a person. But like her author, she tears down more than she builds up – vera destroys her place in the world by destroying language, narrative and life.
Even in her debut collection of poetry Mellem tænderne (Between the Teeth)(1992), Hammann cuts to the marrow of existence by describing the animalistic person who “becomes civilized in the morning” in front of the mirror but turns more and more bestial during the course of the day.
The mad, oversteering vera-language would come to control Kirsten Hammann’s voice to such a degree that, after seven years with vera’s constant grinding in the back of her head, she finally came to terms with her cult figure in Bruger De ord i kaffen? (Do You Take Words in Your Coffee?)(2001), which is both a novel and a poetics.
Having finally put the insane vera behind her, Hammann introduces in Fra smørhullet [The Diary of a Cozy Corner] (2004) Mette, who is catastrophically normal. Whereas vera had more than a little difficulty keeping control of herself, Mette wants desperately to interact with the disgusting and absurd world she experiences primarily through the television screen. But Mette falls into a total lethargy and drowns any danger signal from her body with sugar. Fra smørhullet is an attempt to engage in a form of arousal or a vivisection of the visionless times in which we live. But again: Kirsten Hammann is anything but homiletic – as an author, she is something of a killjoy. And as such, very welcome.
