A Secret Love Letter to America

At the Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara, Norwegian author Johan Harstad discusses his 2015 novel Max, Mischa and the Tet Offensive, with Ludovica Lugli. Originally published eleven years ago, the recent Italian translation by Maria Valeria D'Avino and Sara Culeddu has brought renewed attention to the story in Italy.

The novel revolves around Max Hansen, a theatre director touring the United States. Originally from a suburb of Stavanger on Norway’s west coast, Max immigrated to the US with his family as a teenager. While Harstad clarified that the story is not autobiographical, he takes inspiration from his own life.

Max, Mischa and the Tet Offensive spans from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Harstad encourages readers to view the novel through the lens of America as it once was, not as it is today. When he was growing up, Norway was highly Americanised, partly due to the influence of the U.S. oil industry. The author described the book as a “secret love letter” to a United States that no longer exists.

Lugli presses Harstad about nostalgia, which the Norwegian author claimed to avoid. He was drawn to writing about an era during which he came of age, the 1990s. Harstad laments that “the Internet is killing imagination”. With this novel, he wanted to capture a time before smartphones when meeting people felt more magical.

Discussing the novel so long after its original publication is “like revisiting an old friend”, Harstad says. A deeply personal work, he recalls feeling both relief and sadness upon completing it. He spent six years writing the novel, and the process ultimately felt effortless. The characters, he explains, seemed to write themselves: he knew them intimately.

Artists, in particular, are a familiar choice as cast of characters. Harstad compares creating art to building a home. Like Mischa in the novel, he himself delved into visual arts as a break from writing. To make the story feel more real, and procrastinate at the same time, Johan even created the artworks that appeared in Mischa’s life: paintings, posters, theatre programs. He even learned how to silk-screen. In such a multi-medial work of imagination, a classic question lingers: Does life imitate art or does art imitate life?