I’m testing how little is needed.

By : Karen Syberg

Helle Helle’s talent is in her ability to present a situation that contains a whole life and to depict a whole person in a tiny glimpse. For the most part her stories are lacking in external events; the action takes place in the perspectives, in the reader’s perceptions, rather than in the narrative.
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   When I characterize her storytelling art as psychological portraits, Helle objects.
   "Of course I think along psychological lines, but I don’t give unequivocal answers when I write. I interpret and reproduce, I write what is visible and audible. Rester is an attempt to write a book that resembles the way we are treated as human beings: There too we’re reduced to drawing our conclusions from outside, what we hear and see, without receiving psychological explanations. Even people’s statements about themselves are filtered, depending on how they want to present themselves."

What’s left behind
"With Rester I tried to simplify my writing. I pared away the superfluous and magnified certain details so they would be stand out. For example, in "Pheasants," the first story in Rester, there’s one image that’s especially strong. It’s a dead pheasant on the steps at the end of the story. The pheasant is the only thing in the story that is given any color: its feathers are brown and green. There are no other colors in the story. I didn’t notice that until after the book was published, but while I was writing it, I was of course aware that I was constantly simplifying rather than embellishing.

"The collection is called Rester because all of the stories have something to do with remnants -- something that was left behind, forgotten, abandoned. The man in "Pheasants" has been removed from some of his things; in "One Time in the Spring," a woman abandons her infant for days on end, and so on.

"But the book is also about encounters between people and the remnants these encounters leave behind inside them. Of course you might also say that there are remnants of me in the book. When I go out and give talks at high schools, I’m often asked how much of myself there is in what I write. I usually say ‘nothing,’ because I don’t tend to write about my own experiences. But of course there are remnants of me in what I write, in the same way that dreams contain remnants of the day. When I switch off my brain, the remnants come out."
   - But they’re also full of cruelty, aren’t they?
   "It’s funny: People often say that something I’ve written is cruel, but if you look closely, the cruelty doesn’t happen! For instance, the man in the story "Mobil" ("Mobile") who has a car accident isn’t injured. It’s his wife’s fear that I’m interested in; it’s everything else that’s interesting, not the accident itself. In general I don’t think it’s interesting at all to elaborate. I’d rather see how little is needed before uneasiness sets in."

The characters are willing
- You yourself admit that your stories are disturbing, don’t you?
   "Yes, in the same way that it’s disturbing to hear an ambulance siren.
   "Maybe my stories are basically about how hard it is to make contact. Most of my characters are willing in some way to reach each other, they just can’t understand each other, don’t know what they’re supposed to do, or else do something all wrong, like the woman in "Mobil," who starts cooking for her husband instead of sounding the alarm when she hears that he’s been in an accident."

Extract from an interview with Helle Helle published in the daily newspaper Information on Thursday, January 15, 1998.