The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization 1800-1890

E'VERYONE should welcome this reissue of the English translation of Ole Itelvaag's fourth novel: it has long been out of print and has never before appeared in a paperback edition. Most literary scholars regard this as one of Ralvaag's best, second only to Giants in the Earth. The writer himself called The Boat of Longing his favorite work. "I have put more of myself into that book than into any other," he stated. The novel was published in Norwegian in 1921; the English translation by Nora Solum came out in 1933, two years after Rolvaag's death. Minnesotans will flnd a special appeal in this book since over half the action occurs in Minneapolis and other parts of the state. In the novel Ralvaag brings Nils Vaag, a young Norwegian from northern Norway, to the streets of Minneapolis in 1912. He lives in a rooming house called Babel on the corner of Fourth Street and Thirteenth Avenue South and finds odd jobs sweeping floors in saloons and grocery stores on Cedar Avenue in the Seven Corners area. Later Nils works in the woods up north and on the railroad. His favorite spot is the Bohemian Flats, an immigrant settlement beside the Mississippi beneath the Washington Avenue bridge. There he meets an old lady from his own district in Norway and finds contentment playing the old native tunes on her deceased husband's violin. The Boat of Longing is not, however, a narrative about the immigrant's realization of his dreams in the New World. Rather, it alerts the reader to the loss, the emptiness, the uncertainty that faced the immigrant. The reality of the life Nils Vaag encounters in Minnesota turns out to be something far removed from his American Dream. There is no plot structure in this novel. Instead, Itelvaag creates a series of scenes or what he calls "moving pictures" that reveal the immigrant in a variety of situations. These events are placed in a framework of life in Norway, and the structure tends to highlight the prosaic nature of the immigrant experience in contrast to the romanticized allure of the homeland, Rolvaag begins the novel with a depiction of Nils's early life beside the sea in Norway, Sections two and three are set in Minnesota, chiefly in Minneapolis, In the fourth and final section Rolvaag takes us back to Norway to the lonely parents left behind. In the flrst and last sections the prose is heightened, more poetic. This forces the reader to view the immigrant's life against a backdrop of ultimate meanings, to ponder the immigrant's pursuit of the American Dream in the context of the depth and mystery of life.