In een komische cynische stijl beschrijft Strindberg de Zweedse maatschappij in het Stockholm van eind 19e eeuw. Ik stop het lezen na 100 van de 300 bladzijden. De stijl is ouderwets (tenminste die van de vertaling) en de 19e eeuw is ver weg. Toch leuk om kennis gemaakt te hebben met (de jonge) Strindberg. ( )

Den blir bara bättre för var gång man läser den. ( )

I absolutely did not like this book.
For reading, I switched to audio, which was okay in the beginning. But, the further I got in the book, the more confusing it got. I seem to have completely missed the subject, and why the characters did the things they did.
Happy to cross this one off to ever return to it! ( )

Röda rummet (or in translation The red room; I read this in Swedish) is one of the biggest classics of Swedish literature.

A funny, satirical look at 19thC bourgeois attitudes, The red room presents a loosely-connected group of counter-cultural artistic types and has them confront their counter-cultural and progressive ideals with those of conservative, mainstream society. Most of them are poor (well, poor bourgeois types), making ends meet by pawning each other’s possessions and taking on hack work that’s beneath their dignity. Their goal is to be recognized as master-level artists by the stodgy mainstream, without having to give up their anti-mainstream ideals.

Strindberg wrote funny observations of people and attitudes, and the situations he throws at his characters are frequently entertainingly absurd. Unfortunately, The red room will go no further: the book is more a loose collection of scenes featuring one or more of the main characters than a plotted novel, and I found its satire had a hard time rising above the level of the individual scene. Early chapters are great, but the lack of a solid central plot makes its flightiness annoying.

And then there’s the fact that the book is now (in 2017) almost 140 years old (it appeared in 1879): I found myself unable to appreciate it as a satire, but could only read it as poking fun at the mores of a society that no longer exists -- a historical artefact more than a novel.

So yeah. I’m glad I read this, but I won’t be reading it again. ( )

Neobično iskustvo s ovom knjigom. Pola sam je pročitala a pola odslušala. To ne bi bio problem da je prevoditelj bio isti. Ali sve u svemu ovo je odlična knjiga. Iako je napisana 1879. godine može se slobodno primjeniti i na današnje društvo.
Glavni lik je Arvid Falk, mladi intelektualac koji se ne snalazi najbolje u svijetu prevara, fiktivnih poduzeća, lažnih dobroćinitelja, kvaziintelektualaca.
Likovi su blago karikirani. Podjeća me na Branislava Nušića.

Jedan od interesantih citata:
"U ono vrijeme koje se sada smatra dobrim, iako je bilo za mnoge zapravo veoma loše, izvršeno je velikop otkriće-najveće u stoljeću: da je jeftinije i prijatnije živjeti od tuđeg novca nego od svog vlastitog rada."
( )