Benny & Shrimp (20 page)

Katarina Mazetti was born in Stockholm but grew up in Karlskrona, a naval port in south Sweden. She went into journalism, starting off working on local papers. She took an MA in Literature and English at the University of Lund and worked as a teacher, later as a radio
producer
and reporter. For 20 years she lived with her husband and four children on a small farm in north Sweden. She now lives in Lund. Over the years, she has written books for all ages as well as literary reviews, lyrics, sketches and columns for papers and radio.

Benny & Shrimp
(or
Grabben i Graven Bredvid – The Man
at the Grave Next Door
, as it is called in Sweden) was her first novel for adults and has been translated into 22
languages
. It was based on her experiences as a farmer’s wife. It sold 500,000 copies in Sweden, and has sold 200,000 copies in France. In 2002, it was made into a popular film, seen by more than a million Swedes. 

Q. What was the original seed or
inspiration
for this story?

A. Actually, a funeral. I was living on a farm at the time, married to a farmer. One of our neighbours died a horrible death, crushed under a tractor. It was a tragic funeral, but I knew that his wife had been considering a divorce. I thought, “Can you really grieve for someone you were about to leave, or would you fake it?”

One day at work I was expecting a phone call from abroad and could not leave my desk. Slowly I started writing a short story about a woman who is ashamed that she cannot grieve for her husband properly. Suddenly, there was this man sitting on a bench nearby on the cemetery… And the book started writing itself. I think he entered the story somehow because I was getting more and more annoyed that town people know so
little
about the hard work of farming and ask stupid questions like: “So tell me – what do farmers do during the winter?”, as if dairy cows go into hibernation!

Q. Each chapter begins with a bit of
poetry taken from Desirée’s notebook. You’re a poet yourself; did you begin this story with the poems, or did they come later? How difficult was it to write poetry in Desirée’s voice, as opposed to prose?

A. Actually, like Desirée, I am quite a mediocre poet but I am willing to fight for everyone’s right to write even bad poetry! In fact, neither Desirée or I had really any plans to publish; writing it is really more a state of mind; a relief, a consolation or a way to cope with everyday life, and it need not be published. Excellent poetry would really have been out of place here…

Q. Did you do a lot of research about the daily lives of Swedish dairy farmers? Do you have a personal connection to
farming
yourself?

A. Yes. I lived on a small dairy farm in the north of Sweden for nearly 20 years, while working as a radio producer. But the book is not really
autobiographical
– like most books, it is compost, “decomposed remnants of organic matter”,
experiences
and ideas…

Q. Benny and Shrimp each seem like real, complex individuals, while at the same time they are representatives of certain “types,” the taciturn farmer and the
blue-stocking
librarian. Are either of these characters based on people you’ve met?

A. See the answer to the question above! All characters are of course based on people I’ve met, sometimes in the mirror.

Q. Desirée’s ambivalence about her
husband’s
death and her real feelings for him might come across as rather
unsentimental
to English readers. Do you think there are cultural differences in how the
emotions
of characters (particularly female characters) in novels are portrayed? Or is this ambivalence unique to Desirée?

A. Desirée does her best to be a good wife and to grieve properly for her husband; would English readers really blame her that she can’t? Do they think feelings can be strictly controlled? (That is not the impression you get from reading great English literature…) But in a general sense – yes. I do think there are cultural differences in what emotions readers expect from characters in a
book. (Russian men, for example, tend to find this book horrifyingly feminist!) Though in most cultures women are expected to be more
sentimental
and soft-hearted than men, I find that in real life, men are often the more sentimental ones…

Q. Desirée’s library colleague Inez has an unusual role to play in this love story – how and why did you develop her
character
and her impact on Desirée?

A. I am glad that you asked that question! Inez is really my favourite character – a spectator,
someone
who watches human life like a bird watcher – she does not really feel she is a participant but she finds it very interesting. And she has no hidden agenda. This makes her a reliable observer, not in the least sentimental. Desirée feels this and trusts her judgement. I have met Inezes, though they are quite rare. I should like to become one myself one day.

Q. You write from the perspective of both the man and the woman in this love story. How did you, as a woman, get yourself
inside Benny’s head in order to portray him so realistically? Is there a stereotype of the “bachelor farmer” in Sweden that you were playing with?

A. One of the things that has amused me very much is that male readers often ask me who has helped me with “the Benny bit”. “That is exactly how guys think”, they say. But I have had no expert male to help me, I just tried to imagine how I myself would feel and act in Benny’s
situation
, being reared in a certain gender tradition. (Something like what Flaubert might have meant when he said “Madame Bovary,
c’est moi
!”) Their reaction tells me, though, that there is no real
difference
between how men and women think, it is all a matter of upbringing. (Simone de B. would have agreed…)

Q. Did you struggle with how to end the story, or did you always have this
particular
ending in mind?

A. The whole book was more like a rodeo ride! I tried to stay in control but towards the end, it got out of hand. And suddenly it was all over. (That’s why I felt I had to write a sequel, a few years later.)

Such lists are really impossible: if you had asked me on another day, they might have looked quite different…

5 favourite films

1) Fellini's
8 ½

2) Tarkovskij's
Andrej Rubljov
. (Both obvious choices – it's like saying that Shakespeare is OK)

3) Roy “better than Bergman” Andersson's
You, the
living

4)
Gone with the wind
. Any woman who does not include that film in her favourite list has not seen it, or is a liar.

5)
Rose-Marie
. A musical from the fifties with Ann Blyth – complete with Canada, mounties and trappers in buckskins! (Rose-Marie is made to wear a dress and she resists. I was eleven and realised that I, too, preferred leather fringed
jackets
to dresses.)

5 favourite inspirational people

1) Vandana Shiva and 2) Wangari Maathai,
environmenta
l activists and feminists.

3) Naomi Klein (
No Logo, Shock Doctrine,
etc)

(Yes, these three are “politically correct” choices – but I get suspicious when people look down their noses at what is “PC”. They usually prefer
reactionary
alternatives, though they don't like to say so.)

4) Eddie Izzard. Can't help it.

5) Aviator Harriet Quimby, who flew her white plane in a plum-coloured overall that could be turned into an evening dress. 100% free spirit, 100% woman.

5 favourite books; general

Dostoyevsky:
The Idiot
Astrid Lindgren:
Pippi Longstocking
William Thackeray:
Vanity Fair
Joseph Heller:
Catch 22
Wyslava Szymborska:
Poems

5 favourite books; love stories

Thomas Hardy:
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Boris Vian:
L'écume des jours
Christiane Rochefort:
Warrior's Rest
Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
Love in the Time of Cholera
Selma Lagerlöf:
The Emperor of Portugallia
(a father's love for his daughter)

5 favourite Songs

Bob Dylan: “All I really want to do”
Dvorak: “Rusalkas song to the moon” (from the opera
Rusalka
)
Edith Piaf: “
Mon Legionnaire
”
Nellie Lutcher: “Cool water”
“Will ye go lassie go”, a beautiful Irish ballad

Benny & Shrimp
presents some hard truths about modern relationships in a
fairy-tale-like
setting (or maybe it’s the other way around). What are some themes,
characters
or images in the book that seem to come from fairy tales and what seems
distinctly
21st century to you?

From the author:
An important fairy tale theme is the longing for a child (such as in
Dornröschen
, or “Sleeping Beauty” in English. And quite a few other traditional tales). But in the 21st century, men can also feel that longing, like Benny does. There is an element of “Beauty and the Beast” too – though who is the beast is an open question – modern life or traditional ways. Inez may be the fairy godmother in her own bizarre way – she also helps Desirée against teasing colleagues.

The neighbours Violet and Bengt are really
stereotypes
, but the funny thing is that stereotypes do exist in real life, sometimes to a degree that you can’t write about them because no one would believe in them as characters! Then there is, of course, the Hans Christian Andersen saga of
The Princess and the Swineherd
. The princess kisses the swineherd for his magical gifts and everybody is shocked. When she realises he is really a prince
she wants him, but he rejects her because she did not appreciate the simple rose he gave her. I mean, Desirée discovers Benny is a prince under the dirt, but she cannot accept his farmer life and tries to change him. Then Benny rejects her. Too many readers think that is what happens and are irritated with Desirée, but to my mind, Benny does nothing to accept or like Desirée’s way of life either! And Desirée is modern enough to say so. As if the princess had said to the Swineherd: “But I am have not been brought up to appreciate a simple rose! Can’t you accept that I prefer exclusive things?”

The theme is: how much can lovers really expect each other to change?

Of all the seemingly irresolvable conflicts that Benny and Desirée encounter, which did you have the most sympathy for – and which seemed unimportant to you?

I do agree with Desirée that it must be a human right NOT to be able to make meatballs. A female right to keep your job, at least to the same extent that Benny does. It does not seem to have occurred to him that he might have to sacrifice something too. But if he realises that, all other conflicts could be solved.

Do you think one of them should
compromise
more than the other to make a life together work? If so, which one?

Women today help supporting the family – but men have not taken on the burden of housework to the same extent. Though something does seem to be going on among young people in Sweden today; men take “paternity leave” and share responsibilities at home. Statistics show that those marriages are the happiest ones, least prone to divorce. Interesting, huh!

Is it surprising to you that the barriers between Benny and Desirée are issues of class, money, and education, considering that the story is set in the present and in a country (Sweden) that is thought by many to be particularly egalitarian?

I don’t really agree that there is much of a class barrier between them. Desirée never thinks of Benny as “beneath her” and they have probably attended the same kind of school. Money is not the issue either – on paper, Benny might be seen as a rich landowner and a librarian’s salary is very modest indeed. (Her father is an officer, not very upper class in Sweden today.) The real barrier is
Lifestyle: intellectual or practical? Town or
country
? And above all gender: Desirée finds it hard to accept that she is expected to give up her own life in a traditional marriage.

Desirée’s colleague Inez archives the lives of the people around her. What does she represent to you in this story? Do her archives or her peculiar use of them
symbolise
something to you?

It is funny to note that French readers and critics are quite fascinated by Inez (“That is Kafka! You must write a separate book about Inez!”) Meanwhile, Swedish critics have not made any comments whatsoever about her. They are all quite sombre and had great problems with the fact that the book sometimes is too “funny.”

Marta, Desirée’s best friend, seems to be playing out an operatic version of Benny and Desirée’s own love story in the wings. How does the relationship of the two title characters compare to that of Marta’s with her “Grand Passion”?

Interesting observation! Yes, maybe it is all
composed
as an old fashioned musical “operetta”, with a serious couple and an amusing couple? But I think Marta’s passion goes to show that even she, being world-wise and cynical, can be blind in love. And she is also an example of the fact that you can survive an impossible passion.

Both Benny and Desirée were deeply influenced, though in very different ways, by their parents. How do those influences play out in their relationship? How aware do you think they are of those influences and their effects?

Desirée is very aware that her parents’ ice cold marriage has left her handicapped – she hasn’t a clue about what a loving relationship should be like. (That is why she makes the mistake of marrying a man she does not love.) But Benny has, because he has seen the love between his parents. But the picture of Benny’s parents
caressing
each other makes Desirée uncomfortable. Too personal! Benny realizes that even if his father’s tombstone is tasteless, all his mother’s love has gone into decorating it. It actually amused me to write a love story where the man understands true love better than the woman does. He is
emotional
,
even sentimental, where she is not.

Benny and Desirée’s attraction for each other starts off as primarily (and strongly) sexual – as opposed to Desirée’s
relationship
with Orjan or Benny’s with Anita. How do you think this beginning affects the way their relationship unfolds?

Well, when relationships are in trouble, strong sexual attraction is a good help to solve conflicts. But attraction fades when conflicts seem too big and then there is very little to lean on. Compare this to arranged marriages that start out without much attraction, but where you might have many other good reasons to stay together. I do think there is more between Benny and Desirée than sexual attraction. The ability to laugh together is a very strong bond.