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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

Jo Nesbo and Nordic Noir

May 20, 2011 by Scott Timberg

FOR years now we’ve been hearing about a charismatic Norwegian crime writer whose novels were plotted with verve and driven by a weirdly compelling alcoholic detective. With the success of  Stieg Larsson’s Girl trilogy, the time may be ripe for Jo Nesbo, whose sometimes horrifying new novel, The Snowman, kicks ass.

I spoke to Nesbo from his home in Oslo recently for a profile in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. We had a lot to talk about. Besides the writer Jim Thompson — whose The Killer Inside Me inspired him to become a crime novelist — Nesbo and this blog share an interest in American alt-country: He told me about a club in ’80s Oslo that brought American cowpunk bands, and at least once, R.E.M., to town. (His novel namechecks Ryan Adams, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings and Willie Nelson.) He’s also into graphic novelist Frank Miller.

Will Nesbo repeat the stateside success of Larsson, or even Henning Mankell? His publisher, Knopf, is certainly hoping so. When I asked Nesbo if he felt much in common with other Scandinavian noir writers, he told me, “Not really. I mean, they’re writers. But not because they write crime of because they’re Scandinavian. I do admire Karin Fossum — she writes great prose, it’s beautiful to read her. I think we’re all very different writers. When I started writing crime fiction, I hadn’t read any of the Swedish crime writers.”

A lot of money rides on the question of whether American readers agree.

Nesbo is in LA next Tuesday.

Filed Under: alt-country, literary, noir, nordic

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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