Roman som skuespill: Sjangerhybriditet i Erlend Loes Stille dager i Mixing Part

Abstract Erlend Loe’s novel Stille dager i Mixing Part (2009, Quiet Days in Mixing Part) focuses on a marital crisis of a Norwegian couple on vacation in Germany. The husband, Bror Telemann, is a dramaturg who dreams of writing a major play, and he tries in vain to begin to write one. The novel is a third-person narrative, but it actually contains few narrative passages: most of the text consists of dialogues. The text is, in fact, a hybrid of two genres – part novel, part play. This seems to be a consciously chosen aesthetic strategy on Loe’s part. The main thematic aspects of Stille dager i Mixing Part are tied up with drama and theatre in various ways. This article shows how genre hybridity, aided by intertextual allusions, contributes to representing these main aspects.