Free Shyness And Dignity by Dag Solstad

Essentially he was a spectator. He did not go in for sports very much himself, but he was hungry for sports as a spectator. He was happy in the terraces at Bislett, and most of all in Jordal Amphitheatre, among the diminishing band of Gamlebyen fans, and in front of the TV set when the great downhill races in the Alps came into our living rooms up here in the extreme North. For Johan Corneliussen, living room in this case invariably meant Krølle, the basement restaurant in the immediate vicinity of the Uranienborg Church where he and Elias were very often to be found at the same table for two for several years to come, seated in the same position as the first time they met, Johan with his face turned towards the telly up on the wall, Elias with his back to it, half turned, so that he partly watched the skiers set off down the hill, partly listened to Johan Corneliussen’s expert and confident commentary. It was not the fact that Johan Corneliussen was interested both in philosophy and sports which fascinated Elias Rukla, because that was true of many, not least Elias himself. It was that he did not grade his interests, either emotionally or intellectually. He was equally enthusiastic about a well-executed downhill race as about a well-made film by Jean-Luc Godard and plunged into both with equally great analytical passion.
    With Elias Rukla he discussed philosophy very little, and only when Elias was looking for some useful tips about his approaching examination in basic philosophy. He was reluctant to talk about Immanuel Kant. But Elias Rukla knew with what sense of expectancy his PhD degree (which was a thing of the remote future) was awaited. Hence Elias Rukla thought (often) that there was something incomprehensible about him. He felt that Johan Corneliussen was wasting his time by being so much together with him, doing so many things outside his field of study and, not least, expending so much energy and enthusiasm on what he did. He often had to admit that he could not understand his appetite for life. What had made a young man with such hunger for life throw himself into the study of philosophy? Do those with the greatest zest for life often choose to study philosophy? If that is so, why do the ones with the greatest hunger for life choose human thought as their field? Instead of, say, studying to be engineers? When Elias Rukla thought about this, it struck him that those of his classmates from secondary school who had begun to study engineering were not noted for any exceptional zest for life, even though they had chosen a profession which would set them up for becoming men of action. They were the ones who would construct and build, get the wheels to roll and the machines to run, and make the people under them obey their orders, because unless they were obeyed, the wheels would not turn, the machines not run, and the buildings not be built, one might say. But on reflection, Elias found that the classmates who had now become engineers possessed no particular appetite for life at all, they were merely good in school, but essentially quite unimaginative, well, quite conformist, and that was true about all of them, without exception, Elias thought. The only trace of imagination he had discovered among these would-be engineers was a general predilection for telling jokes and singing songs from the student revues in Trondheim. But Johan Corneliussen neither told jokes nor sang ditties from student revues. He was simply stuck on life. And he had plunged into a demanding study of the great philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the brief reports he had leaked to teachers and fellow students about his discoveries had aroused their highest expectations. This (still) young man, who wanted to take in everything, who did not let a party in the student village at Sogn that he knew of take place without at least dropping by, if only for a few minutes, to see what was going on, whether he was missing out on anything , and who, if he was