The Ungodly Farce

Den ugudelige farce (English: The Ungodly Farce) is a 2002 novel by Danish writer Svend Aage Madsen. Like most of Madsen's novels it hasn't been published in English.

The Ungodly Farce
AuthorSvend Aage Madsen
Original titleDen ugudelige farce
CountryDenmark
LanguageDanish
GenreNovel
PublisherGyldendal
Publication date
2002
Media typePrint
Pages185
ISBN87-02-01824-1
OCLC249597729

Plot summary

The novel's protagonist is Jesper Fegge, a young jazz enthusiast and wannabe writer who after meeting an American woman named Mabel and hitting his head several times loses his unconscious mind.[1] This means in the book that Jesper can't make any decisions unconsciously anymore and it also gives him the ability to see various outcomes of every decision he makes or doesn't make. So at the beginning of the book he either can take his violin or his typewriter to America because of the size of his bag and this decision affects all his future life. Over the course of the novel Jesper can get married and settle down, found a new religion, get beaten up repeatedly, commit adultery, search for the meaning of life and do various other things. Some of the people with whom he interacts in various paths of his life can also sense their complicated relations with Jesper. In the end he has to choose a path of his life that would do the least harm.

Writing style

Since the book concerns with alternate possible realities some parts of it can't be read in the traditional order. Several chapters are alternate takes on the same event with different actions from Jesper or other characters. Those are printed either one after another, with Jesper sometimes in the middle of the chapter already deciding that he wouldn't be taking this path, in other cases the variations are printed one next to another in parallel columns or even the versions are mixed between the lines of the text. The most explicit example of parallel stories technique is used in the chapter where Jesper visits a psychologist and splits his story in four different variations.

Genre classification

Despite the contents which could imply The Ungodly Farce being a science fiction novel, in fact it isn't science fiction at all. It could be better described as a partly comical free jazz piece in the form of novel - with several themes coming up repeatedly in different parts of the novel and transforming into something different again and again. The real jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker and his fictional follower Linus form one of the innumerable subplots of the novel.

gollark: ```luafunction _G.potatOS.potatoNET() local chan = "potatonet" print "Welcome to PotatoNET!" write "Username |> " local username = read() local w, h = term.getSize() local send_window = window.create(term.current(), 1, h, w, 1) local message_window = window.create(term.current(), 1, 1, w, h - 1) local function exec_in_window(w, f) local x, y = term.getCursorPos() local last = term.redirect(w) f() term.redirect(last) w.redraw() term.setCursorPos(x, y) end local function add_message(m, u) exec_in_window(message_window, function() local msg, usr = preproc(m), preproc(u) if msg == "" or usr == "" then return end print(usr .. " | " .. msg) end) end local function send() term.redirect(send_window) term.setBackgroundColor(colors.white) term.setTextColor(colors.black) term.clear() local hist = {} while true do local msg = read(nil, hist) table.insert(hist, msg) add_message(msg, username) skynet.send(chan, { username = username, message = msg }) potatOS.comment(username, msg) end end local function recv() while true do local channel, message = skynet.receive(chan) if channel == chan and type(message) == "table" and message.message and message.username then add_message(message.message, message.username) end end end skynet.send(chan, { username = username, message = "Connected" }) parallel.waitForAll(send, recv)end```
gollark: Yes.
gollark: Minecraft arguably does have four spatial dimensions if you treat the nether/end/overworld as stacked.
gollark: That would be wise.
gollark: No, I meant what format would the chat boxes be able to transmit to chat?

References
  1. The Ungodly Farce review


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