Johanna Peace: Jenny Diski showed us another way to think

In the morning, on 28 april, it is three years since the british author Jenny Diski went away. She was 68 years old. Ever-smokers. Married to the man that she, in her books call ”the Poet”. Diski managed to produce a lot: novels, short stories, essays, travelogues. Perhaps she is a bit overlooked as a literary writer, because her autobiographical books have left such a strong imprint. Several of them are based in the physical travel – Diski travel by ship to Antarctica, tågluffar of the united states, spending a few months in a cottage in the English countryside and make a detour to both Lapland and New Zealand – in order to later take the form of an inner journey. Or at least an exploration, an exploratory hike.

In his own thoughts. Often interspersed reseskildringarna with flashbacks to childhood: the poor childhood in London, the skogstokiga parents, how she kicked out of different schools, and during the 60s and 70s, go in and out of psychiatric wards. Diskis livsberättelse, if you want to call it so – which I suspect that she hadn't wanted to – is neither the success story or snyfthistoria. It just is. Things are good and bad, often overwhelming jävliga and painful, but are still in the same factual way of the Diskis glance and a pen. With caution, care, curiosity.

The Norwegian philosopher Toril Moi uses the term ”et rettferdig og kjærlig blikk” to describe a particular vision: an attentive, investigative gaze that does not accept things straight off or dismiss them. It is a look that I think match pretty well with Diskis reflections of the self and the world. She is dry and the finding, but very rarely ironiserande or sarcastic.

with a writer who shows the reader a different way of thinking, a different way to read. Another way to grieve, a way to rejoice. To be in existence and to use words to formulate it. Now maybe it sounds like I'm describing Jenny Diski as a man, british tea drinking ladies who are churning out small livsvisdomar, which is the exact opposite of what I want to say.

In the descriptions of the Diskis childhood and life as a young adult there is a rare degree of pain and anger. Here is the attempted suicide – her own and others ' – sexual abuse, severe mental illness, ambiguous and deceitful vuxengestalter. Everything is constant completely to hell. Pain! Depression! Anger! Drugs! Sex! Hysterical performances! Escapes and etersniffning! Mothers and fathers who are completely sick in the head!

There is a scene I often return to in his mind: it's christmas. It is cold. Diski is in a utkylt rental room and read ”the Brothers Karamazov”, or is it the ”Anna Karenina”? She reads and reads and is so depressed she can't move. The knees ache, of any form of depressionssmärta – she can barely stand up. It ends with her mentor Doris Lessing will come and get her, and drive her directly to the psyche.

to go in and out of mental hospitals the rest of my life, or I'm doing something else. Similar to the reasoning Diski somewhere in the twenties. She trained as a teacher, became a writer. For some reason it is a turn of events I find incredibly comforting. There is hope.

Diski is no one freaked out author. No cranky. She is discursive, dry, humorous, självbetraktande. Yet she has written a lot about madness, about the madness, if yes – hysteria. I do not mean that it is an alibi to get to do it from a safe, sound, healthy position, but I think there is a beautiful peacefulness in the. Another way to be insane. An alternative insanity. A way to relate to his life as neither a winner or a loser. As actor. That pissed and philosophical, and with a loving and fair look.

this text is not intended as an elegy. It should not be a sad and grieving. Diski is currently there, far too vivid in my mind. Small-talking, grandiose reasoning.

Jenny Diski is dead. Read Jonas Thentes memorandum.

Read an interview with Jenny Diski in conjunction with a meeting with the DN's readers.

Read Lotta Olsson's review of Jenny Diskis end of the last book – if the cancer that took her life and the relationship to the stepmother Doris Lessing.