Oslo, Ep. 2

September 15, 2012 — In a dazzlement of Norwegian riches at the brilliant Oslo Bokfestival, a pitch-perfect night ended with a down-to-the-wire Pin the Mustache on Hemingway finish, in which Team Kristine Tofte (author of the Song for Eirabu series) outdueled Team Marianne Clementine Håheim (author of the poetry collection Murmurs) to win the Literary Death Match Oslo crown by a narrow 3 centimeter margin. 

But before the finale was even a thought, the night kicked off with Flu Hartberg (author of Fagprat and Horgan, and member of the Dongery cartoonist community), who had the crowd in hysterics as he picked tidbits of story of varying length from a basket at random. Up next was Marianne Clementine Håheim (author of the poetry collection Murmurs) who followed up with a haunting story of a woman slowly cutting her boyfriend to pieces. 

The mic was then handed over to the trio of all-star judges: author/screenwriter Erlend Loe (author of Naiv Super, and Stille dager i Mixing Part), theatre director and actor Terje S. Naudeer (featured in Himmelblå), and comedian/radio host/columnist Shabana Rehman. The trio shot off whimsical and brilliant commentary about each reader, before making the difficult decision that it would be Håheim that would advance as the night's first finalist. 

Then came Round 2, in which psychologist/fantasy writer Kristine Tofte (author of the Song for Eirabu series) led off against former Rød Ungdom leader and author of De superrike, Mímir Kristjánsson. Tofte relayed the true tale of an underwhelming one-night stand between two bored, disinterested parties. Kristjánsson read several pieces, all which had the audience tittering with delight. 

Again, the mic was handed over to the judges, and again they rattled off a series of fantastic statements that had the crowd in throes. Finally, they huddled, another impossible decision before them, and opted, in the end, to advance Tofte as the night's second finalist. 

Then LDM creator Adrian Todd Zuniga took center stage, as the audience witnessed a Oslo first: Pin the Mustache on Hemingway. Four volunteers from the crowd were teamed with the two finalists, and all were blindfolded while trying to get famous writer's mustaches — Faulkner, Rushdie, etc. — where Hemingway's mustache should be. It all came down to the final pinning and in a shock finish (a stray pencil used for measurement) it was Tofte who won the Literary Death Match medal, and literary immortality to go with it. 

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Comments

[christmas gifts]

It is really a humor-centric reading..