What Jon Fosse Reminded Me About Writing
Your writing can save lives
On October 5th, 2023, Jon Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” Having discovered Fosse at the start of the year myself, I was extremely happy with his winning the prize. I had been touting my love for Fosse — a little too much, I admit — and went on to explore more of his books. The more I read his work, the quicker Fosse was rising to the top of my list of favorite authors of all time. So to hear him win the Nobel Prize in Literature was confirmation that I had discovered something in him that I couldn’t find in other authors, which became even clearer when he gave his Nobel lecture “A Silent Language” and mentioned something that truly resonated with me:
“There are many suicides in my writing. More than I like to think about. I have been afraid that I, in this way, may have contributed to legitimizing suicide. So what touched me more than anything were those who candidly wrote that my writing had quite simply saved their lives.
In a sense I have always known that writing can save lives, perhaps it has even saved my own life. And if my writing also can help to save the lives of others, nothing would make me happier.”
