Jan Myrdal
Jan Myrdal was a Swedish author known for his strident Maoist, anti-imperialist and contrarian views and heterodox and highly subjective style of autobiography.
Family
Born in Bromma, Stockholm, in 1927, Jan Myrdal was the son of two of Sweden's most influential 20th century intellectuals, Nobel Laureates Alva Myrdal and Gunnar Myrdal, and the brother of Sissela Bok and Kaj Fölster. Through his sister Sissela, Myrdal was the brother-in-law of Dean of Harvard Law School and longtime president of Harvard University, Derek Bok.Myrdal married four times. His first two wives, Maj Lidberg and Nadja Wiking, bore him two children, Janken Myrdal and Eva Myrdal. Myrdal left both wives and their children at a young age, and, for most of his life, he would live with his third wife . A graphic artist and photographer, she illustrated many of his works. After Kessle's death, Myrdal married Andrea Gaytán Vega in 2008. They divorced in 2018.
As a matter of public record and, indeed, as noted in Myrdal's own writings, several family members severed ties with him after personal conflicts, due to his abandonment of their relationships, or in protest of his portrayals of the Myrdal family. His last book A Second Reprieve, drew criticism for its graphic depiction of his own and his past wives' sexual and adulterous relationships, although it also garnered praise as a work of unflinching introspection.
An animal lover, Myrdal and Kessle owned a succession of cats and dogs, which feature in many of his books.
Biography
As a young child, Myrdal followed his parents to the United States shortly before the Second World War. After the German occupation of Norway in 1940, the family feared that a Nazi invasion of Sweden could be imminent and decided to return. Jan initially protested, perceiving himself at that time as a naturalized American; he would later stress the role that his childhood in New York had in shaping his intellectual evolution.Relations between Myrdal and his parents were troubled, as he would later relate in several books. At sixteen, he dropped out of high school to focus on writing and politics. He initially had little success as a journalist and an author, which he attributed in part to his political views and to the influence of his parents, both of whom were leading figures within Sweden's ruling Social Democratic party.
Having adopted Marxist-Leninist ideas already in the mid-1940s, Myrdal was for some years a member of Democratic Youth, the youth wing of Swedish Communist Party.
"The Big Life"
Starting in the late 1950s, Myrdal and his third wife, Kessle, embarked on a series of journeys in the Third World. Myrdal referred to his abandonment of settled life and family, and his henceforth complete dedication to intellectual and political pursuits, as "the big life", characterizing it as a choice that came to define his life.The couple lived for years in Afghanistan, Iran, and India. Myrdal began to focus his writings on anti-colonial politics and developed a politically-minded travel literature. An early example was his 1960 book Crossroads of Culture, later reissued as Travels in Afghanistan.
Since the mid-1950s, Myrdal had grown critical of the Soviet Union and he now gave voice to these misgivings, including works on the Soviet republics in Central Asia. As his heterodox Marxist-Leninist and anti-colonial ideas drew him to Maoist-style Communism, he became a stalwart defender of Mao Zedong's Chinese government and, later, of the Cultural Revolution. His 1963 book Report from a Chinese Village achieved some international success when released in English in 1965, offering a then very rare socio-political study of life in rural China, albeit from a clear pro-Maoist perspective. Several of Myrdal's works were subsequently banned in the Eastern Bloc.
File:Jan-Myrdal-00748427026511940.jpg|thumb|Jan Myrdal speaking at a demonstration against the Vietnam War at Medborgarplatsen in Stockholm, March 1966.
In the mid-1960s, Myrdal, who had returned to Sweden and settled with Kessle outside Mariefred, emerged as a major ideologue of Sweden's youthful new left. He was also a prominent writer and organizer within the Swedish anti-Vietnam War movement. Still, he published on a wide range of subjects beyond anti-imperialist politics, establishing himself as a highly idiosyncratic voice on the far left of Swedish politics and culture.
A signature work was Confessions of a Disloyal European, published in original English in 1968 though in large part based on the merger of two previous Swedish books. It juxtaposes a deeply personal tragedy – a suicide that Myrdal failed to prevent – with what he views as the irresponsible political detachment of himself and other Western intellectuals, as they fail to intervene against an impending Third World War produced by the contradictions of capitalism. In its mixing of personal and political themes and its fragmented structure, it presaged Myrdal's later "I novels". John Leonard of the New York Times described it as an "extraordinary" book and "a particularly disturbing combination of fiction, reportage and allegory", while Kirkus Reviews offered a more mixed opinion of what was termed a "curious document of social guilt".
In 1972, Myrdal co-founded Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, a political-cultural monthly "for freedom of speech and of the press; for a people's culture and anti-imperialism".. He remained involved with the magazine for much of his life, and continued to pen a regular column in it until 2019. FiB/K garnered major attention when it broke the IB affair in 1973, damaging the ruling Social Democratic Party by calling Swedish neutrality into question.
In line with his pro-Chinese, anti-Soviet politics, Myrdal supported Democratic Kampuchea against Vietnamese invasion in the 1970s, notwithstanding his long support for the Vietnamese struggle against the United States. Invited to Kampuchea as a guest of Pol Pot's government, Myrdal wrote positively of the experience and said he had seen "no horror stories". His defense of the Khmer Rouge and his dismissal of the reports of a genocide drew criticism in Sweden, and would remain a subject of controversy for the remainder of his life; he never recanted his pro-Khmer Rouge views.
In the early 1980s, Myrdal helped found a Swedish solidarity movement with the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation. He had come to espouse the view that the Soviet Union had evolved into an even more menacing imperialist threat than the United States, urging Sweden to spend on national defense. He criticized post-Maoist China's adoption of market economics under Deng Xiaoping, but continued to write appreciatively of Enver Hoxha's Albania, for example in Albania Defiant.
The I Novels
In 1982, Myrdal's literary career took a new turn with the publication of Childhood. A semi-autobiographical work somewhat in the mold of Confessions, it caused a scandal due to its unflattering depiction of his parents, Gunnar and Alva. Myrdal would continue to publish in the genre, which he labeled I novels, for the rest of his life, telling and retelling his life in fragmentary stories interwoven with political and historical material. Increasingly, the I novels dealt with themes of aging, memory, and death. The last in the series would be his final book, A Second Reprieve.Although the I novels cemented Myrdal's position as a major figure in Swedish literature and intellectual life, his political influence waned from the late 1970s on. After the end of the Cold War, he grew increasingly marginalized after many of his former supporters renounced their previous support of Marxist-Leninist politics. In contrast to many other 1960s-era leftist intellectuals, Myrdal made no concessions to the new intellectual climate; rather, he doubled down on his views to the point where he began to be viewed as a politically toxic figure.
Nevertheless, as he turned 80 in 2007, Swedish National Television described him as "one of the most significant authors of the 20th century", while noting that his political views had been "strongly criticized".
Later life
In the early 2000s, Myrdal and Kessle moved from their longtime residence in Fagervik, near Mariefred, to Skinnskatteberg. A year after Kessle's death in 2007, Myrdal remarried with Mexico-born Andrea Gaytán Vega, 34 years his junior. They split in 2011, then reconciled, and finally divorced in 2018. Myrdal lived for some time with Gaytán Vega in Fagersta, but spent most of his later life in Varberg.In 1988, Myrdal had had to undergo open-heart surgery; the entire procedure was recorded and turned into an educational documentary shown on Swedish television and in schools. His health again deteriorated in the 2010s, when he was in his eighties. A near-death experience by sepsis is chronicled in A Second Reprieve.
In 2008, admirers of Myrdal created, a literary society that sought to support his writing and stimulate research into his and Kessle's work. Sponsored by Lasse Diding, a left-wing millionaire resident in Varberg, the Society helped move Myrdal himself and his 50,000-volume book collection to Varberg, where it established the Jan Myrdal Library, in which the author took up residence. However, the Society and Myrdal repeatedly clashed over various issues, political and financial. The Society also gives out the Lenin Award to a writer or filmmaker every year, which the first years also was called The Jan Myrdal Big Prize.
In 2011 at the prize ceremony, Myrdal had this to say about our times: "Right now, it smells again like Europe 1914. The summer/autumn of 1914 therefore gives us excellent examples of precisely cultural worker behaviour. It’s not that strange. The ruling thoughts are the thoughts of the rulers, and it is we who become pipes through which the wind of power blows."
Having ended his regular column in FiB/K in November 2019 at age 92, Myrdal was finally forced to cease writing due to ill health in 2020.