#termush

[electricthursday]

Outside the sea is still; there is no darkness and no light.

Sven Holm, Termush

[clavainov]

We gaze at the dark mass, where buildings, streets, trees, hordes of people, wide stretches of country with farms and herds of cattle are set solid like flies in amber; a hand has gripped a bottle of beer and one can no longer tell the difference between the hand and the bottle; one face has turned to another and the two faces are forever grafted together; two outstretched arms are ready to hold the child that is running towards them and the child is ready to run to the outstretched arms; a kitchen knife is stuck in the middle of the loaf, even though the person holding the knife had thought through to the end of the slice; water streams out of the taps and the cars are piled up in the streets and nothing of this can be changed; the world has spun full circle and the survivors must exist without it.

Termush, Sven Holm (tr. Sylvia Clayton)

[clavainov]

Everything has changed, yet we search for one single detail which has in fact been altered. It is like a wavering convalescence between sickness and death.

Termush, Sven Holm

[joshcockroft2]

Termush – Sven Holm

24.1.2025

It was serendipitous to begin reading this after the recent LA wildfires, where the rich are soliciting for private firefighters – money for safety. This was very good, terse and relevant. I was surprised by how old it is and that it isn't more widely discussed.

[megs-book-reports]

I was instantly drawn in by the premise of Termush, I think most people would be in this post-Covid world; but I was left feeling unsatisfied by its delivery. My main thought when I finished this read was that this story would have been far more compelling had it been told from the POV of any of the other characters. The doctors story in particular really drew me in, or if we want to stick with a guests POV then Maria would have been a good candidate. I felt like our unnamed narrator had a certain apathy to him that made it hard for me to get interested in the things that were happening to him. Of course this is just my opinion, everyone has there own preferences about these things. Regardless I still enjoyed my time reading it, and even if I didn’t quite enjoy the story as much as I hoped I don’t regret picking it up.

[orclnght]

an unmanageable fatigue

“Suddenly I feel I am in the space between two breaths, in the moment of time it takes to stretch out a hand to another person, in the second when the heart beats and braces itself to beat again. I stand and wait with nothing to wait for. Am I on board a ship at sea, in a house in a park, in a town in a country? Is nothing changed, can everything be swept away as a dream is swept out of the conscious mind in the morning?” 

Sven Holm, Termush