Facts: Carl Cederström
Age: 43 years.
Live in Stockholm.
Family: Särbon Karin af Klintberg, two children.
Occupation: Author, docent in business administration at Stockholm University.
Current: With “Guldmunken – A love story” published by Albert Bonnier’s publishing house.
Carl Cederström’s text will be published in the spring of 2020 “A year without sex – crying like when I was a child” in Svenska Dagbladet. In it, he describes how, after a divorce, he has lived in self-chosen celibacy for a year – a feat that qualifies him for the title “Golden Monk”. Also, he has taken to cleaning in a way that brings to mind an American housewife on Marie Kondo steroids.
But just as Cederström has got his life in order, he receives an email. It is the TV producer Karin af Klintberg (only referred to as “K” in the book) who introduces herself as his “city soul mate”. She has read his attention-grabbing text and wants to make a television program about cleaning together with him.
Not brave
“The Golden Monk – A Love Story” is about giving in again. About daring to open the door to love. But it is also an insight into the most private: a divorce, the need for control, the difficulties of a new relationship and how the socks are arranged in the dresser drawer.
— But it is a book about love, more than anything else. What I am most satisfied with in the book are the chapters where this new love relationship appears, says Carl Cederström.
On the other hand, writing autobiographically about the most private matters is not very brave. For him, the most private is that in which a reader can identify.
— It does not necessarily mean that it is the most private thing for me. Admittedly, I’ve never written anything before where I felt so much was at stake. But to me it is not brave. It is, however, another question when it comes to choosing to publish it, he says and continues:
— On the other hand, you catch me now when I’m sort of in the air and the book is just about to be published. If a week ago I was standing on a ten-meter trampoline and shaking, now I’m already in the air and then it’s a little too late. Next week, the answer might be different.
Shadow figures
In “Guldmunken” not only the new love relationship is depicted, but also an eyebrow-raising drama in which Carl Cederström’s ex-wife becomes together with K’s ex-husband. But it was important that the others in the drama were allowed to assume the form of more blurred shadow figures without appearances and clear characteristics.
— Instead, I wanted to try to portray it from my and K’s perspective, how it affected us. That is what is interesting rather than exactly how the others involved are as people, he says.
K, on the other hand, is both tenderly and thoroughly described. What does she really think of the book? She likes it a lot, is Cederström’s immediate answer. Had she not done that, it would never have been published.
But writing about another person entails a great responsibility, he states:
— When I write about myself, I can take enormous liberties, but when it comes to others, there are ethical principles I need to adhere to.
At the end of “The Golden Monk” there is an excruciating conflict between K and the narrator’s self. It was a passage that Carl Cederström waited a very long time to write. Otherwise, he usually wrote in the moment as the relationship developed, but this battle had to be completely over before it could be put into words.
— If you are to describe a conflict between two adults in a relationship, you must give the other person as much, or preferably even more, understanding. You can’t just hammer home that she’s stupid in the head, that she doesn’t understand me, or that she’s done something petty. It must be designed so that you can understand both people, he says.
“I hope that those who read my book will feel that they dare to fall in love again,” says Carls Cederström. Powerful action
Even Carl Cederström’s children and the friends who figure in the book have read it before publication. A matter of course, according to the author, because profuse descriptions can feel intrusive.
— Drawing a portrait of a person with a swaying hair or a speaking mouth is quite a powerful act. Many would feel uncomfortable being embodied in that way. Therefore, it has been extremely important to me that everyone has felt that it has been okay, he says.
The relationship survived the conflict in the book, and when asked directly, Carl Cederström replies that he is happy. But what about the cleaning? Does his happiness and peace still depend on all the plastic bags in the kitchen being folded into perfect little triangles?
The need for control, which characterized his life during the four years during which the book takes place, does not remain in the same way, is the answer.
— However, I can say that cleaning is about systems, and God, I’m glad that there are systems in this apartment. I dare say that my children also agree – that everything becomes simpler and easier. So the system remains, and evolves from time to time, but no longer in a convulsive way.