Anders Bodelsen (b. 1937) is a characteristic representative of the ´new-realism´ which broke through in Danish literature in the middle of the 1960s. As opposed to the predominant modernism of the time, which several quarters had called overbearing and divorced from reality, Bodelsen, like Christian Kampmann and Henrik Stangerup, created a more popular contemporary picture with ordinary people in typical states of conflict.
Bodelsen´s preferred genre is the individual-psychological short story and the social-realistic thriller. Anders Bodelsen is clearly fascinated by the contemporary commercial world, but at the same time he is alarmed by its ramifications. He shows how the rat race for status and the ensuing stress bloat our lives and mar fundamental human values. Right from the very beginning of his career, this perspective places him as a critically informed portrayer of the conditions of life for that particular social group which felt the increase in living standards and changed way of life which came with the ´60s: the educated middle stratum.
Anders Bodelsen literary début was the novel De lyse nætters tid (The Season of White Nights, 1959). In the collections of short stories Drivhuset (The Greenhouse, 1965) and Rama Sama (Rama Sama, 1967) he cultivate the Bodelsenesque realism by way of the problems faced by the individual in an attempt to adapt to a competitive society. A critique of children´s upbringing and social conditions is just around the corner, but explanations of the human predicament are predominantly found in the general-existential.
In his two most successful books, the thrillers Tænk på et tal (The Silent Partner, 1968) and Hændeligt uheld (One Down, 1968), Bodelsen deals with the ordinary middle-class person who becomes a criminal. According to the author, the key-word is identification. "Could it have been me?
Where other authors writing around 1968, under the impact of the youth and student revolution, politicise literature, Bodelsen gradually takes a sceptical distance to the contemporary rebellious tendencies. It seems to him that social critique is a bit too easy if it doesn´t go hand in hand with a discussion of moral questions: on the one hand the welfare state should not deprive the individual of dignity and freedom; but, on the other hand, freedom for the individual principally consists of the freedom to choose between right and wrong and being aware of one´s responsibility, including the responsibility to safeguard freedom for others. The science-fiction novel Frysepunktet (Freezing Point, 1969) thus draws a picture of a technocratic, Big Brother society, where the population is turned into functions.
Bodelsen´s books from the mid- and late-´70s return to the characters, conflicts and narrative form of his earlier works; for example, the story from The Silent Partner is further developed in Pengene og livet (Money and Life, 1976).
Bodelsen cultivated the particular genre of 1970´s realism -nostalgic retrospection in mammoth form - in the two-volume novel De gode tider (The Good Times, 1977) - År for år (Year By Year, 1979). It shows how a competitive and welfare society leads to a rootlessness and confusion in the individual´s life. The past is something to flee from, personal significance is lost and the individual is subjected to the random scheme of the times.
This ethical angle is given major weight in Bodelsen´s later novels - Borte borte (Hide and Seek, 1980), Over regnbuen (Over the Rainbow, 1982), and Domino (Domino, 1984). It is again distinctive that Bodelsen refrains from giving the reader unambiguously ´pure´ characters. His figures generally act from mixed motives. In the novel Mørklægning (Blackout, 1988), about unsolved murders during the German occupation of Denmark in the Second World War, national, political and deeply personal aspects are tightly intertwined, and when Bodelsen, in Rød september (Red September, 1991), elaborates on an actual case against a group of political criminals, it is not so much their revolutionary aims that interest him, but rather their disastrous choices in terms of personal human relations.
This presentation is a short version of the Anders Bodelsen portrait in Litteraturhåndbogen, Gyldendal 1996.
