But all in all it was a good experience. I'm really happy with the paper I presented, though I can still see all kinds of micro-flaws in it. Mostly they are errors of omission. When I discovered something I couldn't support, I took it out, which is kind of a cop out.
I had some good conversations. I forced myself to introduce myself to some people who intimidate me--people who either have a reputation for being merciless or who come across as arrogant--and that went pretty well. I was disappointed that so few people came to my paper, but I am hoping that it was less a factor of my reputation and more a factor of it being scheduled at an impossible time. Even though this experience brought out all the worst of my social and professional anxiety, in the end I learned a ton and am a better scholar for having done it.
After three or four frantic last minute rounds of revisions (very unlike me! I'm usually done weeks in advance of a conference) the paper is very polished and almost ready to submit for publication. I found out at the dinner last night that the first editions of the novels I wrote about have been digitized and are thus available (and searchable!) on line. The last thing I need to do on the paper is get the quotes from the first editions (rather than the later modernized editions that I used, since that's all that is available in the library, or so I thought). I'm excited, and so wish I had know about the digital versions earlier. I spent a lot of time doing things the old fashioned way--reading and rereading the texts again and again looking for certain references. It will be fun to see if I find even more support for my argument.
The dinner banquet was held at Gyldendal publishing house's recently (2007) renovated office building. It was an amazing space designed by Sverre Fehn (one of my favorite architects), with only the exterior facade and an interior fragment of the original building preserved. This photo doesn't really do it justice--the atmosphere (especially at night) was amazing, and not nearly as 70s shopping mall as it appears here:
The photo is borrowed from this blog. The director of Gyldendal explained the presence of this old building within the new one during his welcoming speech. Apparently, when Danish Gyldendal set up its branch office in Norway, they built a little addition off the back of their building that was a replica of part of their Copenhagen office. It looked out over the "bakgård" (the enclosed outdoor area behind the building) and this outdoor space was where Gyldendal held its parties. The Gyldendal of today needed a lot more space, so the new building appropriated all the exterior space of the bakgård. Fehn built a new replica of the old addition on exactly the same spot, incorporating the original windows. It now serves as gallery space (Hamsun letters and first editions were on display there last night). I loved it because it's a textbook example of a simulacrum--doubly so since the original structure was already a simulacrum. A colleague thought it was a disturbing way of preserving history, and on one hand I agree. It is kind of a fetish object (to use a phrase that was bandied about a lot at the conference), but I guess that doesn't bother me.
