Henrik Bromander
Henrik Bromander is a published author who is proud to be self-taught and focused on the real world. His career as a storyteller began with autobiographical underground comics, which he published in various fanzines, and since then a number of critically acclaimed books and plays has been written. Meet a prolific author who depicts the reality behind our hopes and dreams and most definitely needs to become accessible to a broader audience.
Wooden figures by Hanna Petersson. Taken from the cover of “Smålands Mörker” (Galago 2012) Photo by Hinsides.
You´ve been active as a writer and comic artist long enough to be responsible for an impressive body of work. How would you describe your mission as a provider of stories in terms of style and content? What questions are you investigating and why are these of interest to you?
- I’m mainly interested in describing different forms of power, in society as a whole and between people. I’m especially interested in what makes a person normal/not normal, sick and/or wrong, different ways for the majority to keep the minority down. All of this is based on a marxist analysis of history, economy and so on that I bring to my stories.
You began to self publish autobiographical comics in the mid nineties and nowadays you also write novels and plays. What made you start writing your own stories and why comics?
- I’ve always been sort of a storyteller, when I was a kid I used to lie a lot, to my parents, to my teachers and so on. Not to be evil, just because I liked to tell a good story. As a kid I used to read a lot, mainly comics but also youth novels and so on. I was very fascinated with the ability to create new worlds that both was similar to ours but also completely different. My parents wasn’t negative against my comic reading, to the opposite they encouraged it, so comics was a really big part of my childhood and it was natural for me to start making my own comics as soon as I learned to write.
To self publish stories about yourself undoubtedly seems a little bit narcissistic but your way of telling a story has always felt urgent and rewarding nonetheless. Have you been paying a lot of attention of how to intrigue a reader and what factors are decisive for this purpose in your writing?
- In the beginning I knew nothing of dramaturgic tools and so on, and since I’m self-taught I’ve never really learned the basics of writing, drawing etc. In later years I’ve done some self-studies of books and other guides in how to write a classic script regarding three-act-dramaturgy and so on, and I’ve learned a great deal from that but I always try to include a raw sense of that anything can happen.
Photo by Hinsides.
The literary presence has been prominent in your way of telling a story since long. Did it feel like a huge step to write a completely literary work and what made you do so?
- Not really, since some of my comics almost felt like illustrated short stories. At that point I started getting some critique, that the pictures sometimes felt unnecesarry. So then I decided to take a step I always wanted, to try to write prose. It was really hard in the beginning, before I found my own style and voice, something to put in the text to make it feel alive when the pictures wasn’t there to help me. With my comics I’ve tried to minimize the words in later years and let the pictures talk as much as possible.
Comics are often looked upon as less important than literature in the hierarchy of different cultural expressions. How do you explain this imbalance of status and do you think it will change over time? Have you noticed another interest in your comics since you started writing novels and plays?
- It’s very obvious for me that my novels is met with much more respect and interest from crititics and other people in the cultural world than my comics was. Much has happened the last ten years regarding the status of comics for adults in Sweden, but there is still a fact that a graphic novel hasn’t been nominated for the largest literature prize, the August prize. I think that will happen in the future, but it will take time. There is a lot of conservatism still, and I think this is more so in Sweden than in other countries like the US or France.
Your stories often pictures characters with grand ideas of how to reform society with radical political actions and it seems like you want to explore the mechanisms behind those dreams of transformation on both a collective and individual level. Why are you drawn to such extremes and what purposes do they fulfill in your writing?
- Basically I think it is connected to my political analysis and my background in different extra-parlamentary socialist groups. I’m interested in processes of struggle, defeat and the rare victories. The people I describe doesn’t necesarry has to be lefties, I’m likewise interested in nazis, islamists etc. People who struggles for ideas that are greater than the single individual.
Photo by Jessica Segerberg
Physical and mental strength are recurring concepts in your stories that often suggests a despise for weakness together with an internal conflict based on self hatred. Is this something that you have experienced yourself? Does an admiration of strength has to be negative and what kind of insights have you reached by contemplating on this matter?
- I think a lot about this since I’ve trained muay thai for over ten years and martial arts is a big part of my life. When I was around 25 years old I kind of made a trancission of my habits and transformed myself from a bit overweight, chainsmoking guy to something more healthy. This was in part inspiration for my novel Riv alla tempel, which tells a story about a fat, bullied guy who starts to train himself in to a muscular gigant. As a part of the research for that book I started training in a gym and got quite muscular myself. A thing I noticed after awhile was that I started to look down on people who was unfit, unhealthy etc, which was quite scary. It’s obviously a kind of proto-fascististic way of looking at people.
The friction between reality and the ambition to influence it is something that is pervasive in your work. Do you sense that you write about what happens in society in a tradition of enlightenment?
- Since I read Foucault in my philosophy studies I have thought quite a lot about the Western world, modernism, enlightenment etc in contrast to power. I think it’s a misconception to view eternal progress and eternal economic growth as something to strive for, as the current ecological crisis clearly shows. I think there is something false with the linear view of history as a constant struggle for things like free enterprise, freedom of speach etc. At the same time, this is the viewpoint shared by the majority of people in education, media etc. In my work I somehow try to break down some of these ideas in to concrete stories about individuals and collectives.
“-Your mistake is that you cannot see beyond the surface. Remember what Codreanu said about the power of the myth;
if the myth is true or false is of less importance,
the key is whether it works or not to move the masses”
-Excerpt from dialogue in ”Smålands mörker”
Since you sometimes put a critical eye of how society handles unwanted behavior I´m curious of what you´d say is the best response to people who are dangerous to themselves and their surroundings?
- My experience working at mental hospitals has given me the belief that some people need to be put a way for a shorter or longer time, for their own and others protection. Working there I met pedophiles, rapists and murderers who was in clear need of many years of therapy and medication. At the same time, mental hospitals in Sweden doensn’t work very well, as with the welfare sector in general, due to many years of liberalization and neglect. So many people who need help doesn’t get it, and in some cases people who shouldn’t be locked up gets belted in beds and so on, it’s far from a perfect system. From a more philosophical view, the whole way of looking at normality and how we distance ourself from what we consider not-normal should be changed for this to be solved, but it’s not easy.
Music, Art and Literature. What could go wrong?
One of your stories holds a discussion about the craft of storytelling where the main character stresses that everything has to happen for a reason in order to push the narrative forward. Is this view equivalent to your own or do you possess a less stubborn attitude yourself?
- I don’t believe in fate, I think the world is quite chaotic. It’s easy to fall back to this kind of magical thinking when you view your life in the back mirror, thinking about the small coincidences that led to you meeting your partner, a special friend or when you just cheated death. It’s the material for storytelling, but real life is not as dramatic and planned as a story. It’s mostly more ugly and accidental.
Ok, last but not least, what are your greatest accomplishment as an author so far, and why?
- I’m proud of writing about people and subjects that Swedish literature usually looks down on or frowns upon. Working class people with real lives and real problems, not just big city upper-middle class people with relationship issues.
You´ve just read an excerpt from a interview with Henrik Bromander made by Hinsides Magazine. The conversation as a whole are soon to be published on paper in the first issue of this Magazine together with a lot of other exclusive and interesting content.
Pre-Orders of the limited (200ex) edition are being made here: