Uprooting Old Values in New Norwegian : DOLLAR ROAD<i> by Kjartan Flogstad; translated by Nadia Christensen (Louisiana State University Press: $16.95; 200 pp.; 0-8071-1528-8) </i>

Kjartan Flogstad has been one of Norway’s most celebrated and/or most controversial writers for the last 15 years, but he has been unavailable to English-speaking readers until now, with the publication of “Dollar Road.” Originally published in 1977 as “Dalen Portland” (Portland Valley), Flogstad’s novel immediately received Scandinavia’s most prestigious literary award, the Nordic Council Prize. In 1988, it received the Pegasus Prize for Literature, insuring its translation into English.

That “Dollar Road” is, among other things, an indictment of capitalism; that the Pegasus Prize is sponsored by Mobil Oil; that Flogstad writes in his beloved New Norwegian, one of two standard Norwegian dialects, spoken and read by a minority even in Norway, and which he views as an endangered species; that English is the endangering language; that Flogstad strives to write subversive literature; that he is so touted by the System he would subvert, first in Scandinavia and now in the U.S. of A (as he would say): These are ironies certainly not lost on Flogstad, a writer who courts irony as he courts writing itself, with a fervor.

“Dollar Road” opens with a young boy running through a pristine, agricultural landscape in mountainous west Norway. He is sure-footed, and he knows his terrain. He hurries, some urgent message locked inside his lips. Then, forgetting himself, he stops, to wonder at all the things he sees. And he hurries on again, until he reaches his grandfather’s farm and blurts out the message that will forever change the world through which he has just run. There’s work at the factory. His uncle, the farmer Selmer Hoysand, should be there by 3 o’clock.

So begins Flogstad’s saga of Norway’s transition from an agricultural to an industrial society between the 1930s and the 1970s. He follows/creates the fortunes of the Hoysand family, in particular Selmer’s son Arnold and his cousin Rasmus, as they move into town and out into the world, to become rootless members of the modern community.

They take separate paths. Arnold, slow and dutiful, becomes a model factory worker, father and citizen of the state. Rasmus, quick and rebellious, goes to sea. He becomes the adventurer, the wild card and the lone gun. But both are equally without authenticity, both are equally fraudulent, and both are in the dollar’s employ.

They might simply be two negative cliches of capitalism. But are they? Flogstad’s first irony is that he really is fond of them both, like buddies he has lived with for a long time. They are for him--and thus for us--as much more than they seem as they are less. And have they simply walked down predetermined modern paths?

Flogstad, the socialist, has a strong streak of the individualist in him. He sees his boys as pawns and, contradictorily, as creators, holding (at times) with Rasmus that “. . . there is no ready-made path. The steps you take/ Your path doth make.” Certainly Flogstad, the writer, takes us on no ordinary journey--at least on the level of the text--in “Dollar Road.”

The boy of the beginning, running free and sure, stopping and starting, marveling, a natural in his world, is a self-portrait of Flogstad, the writer/stylist of the novel. Flogstad is as sure-footed and free in the world of language as the boy in the world of the mountains. He takes his vocabularies from high and low, near and far, from factories and farms, Wall Street and poetry, science and the locker room, intellectuals and soccer fanatics, Norway and South America. He mixes style and forms with abandon, the poetic and the prosaic, the realistic and the fantastic. He is sentimental, pedantic, very intellectual, very anti-intellectual, supremely critical and supremely non-critical. He moves forward in time, then suddenly backward, then forward again, and back. He is deadly serious and very funny. He stops, like the boy, to marvel at the words, and he takes us on a wild ride.

But like the boy, he runs with a message. And the question is, what happens to the message when the ride, the run, the text becomes far more interesting than the message itself? Flogstad’s dazzling manipulation of the text engenders some of the deepest ironies that attend “Dollar Road,” and even more so his subsequent works. His political solidarity is with the farmer and the laborer and people who speak in simple tongues. His novel is an urbane, intellectual tour de force .

His political vision is highly critical of the capitalistic system and its reduction of values to things that bring dollars. Yet Flogstad’s ability to write about these things, even the most destructive and despicable of them, with such energy and intimacy, even such love, brings value to them like they have not had before. Words take on a life of their own in Flogstad’s deft hands. Yet he decries a world in which the signs have much greater allure and importance than the signified.

Ultimately, I think, Flogstad wants to fight fire with fire, ironies with ironies, uprooted modern existence with the uprooted text, words that give and take value in our lives with words that give and take value in the text. Whether he succeeds or fails may depend on the experience and wisdom of individual readers.

But when all is said and done, Flogstad himself is an optimist, for he still believes in the power of language as a political weapon and a source of joy, mourning and contemplation. Nadia Christensen has truly brought Flogstad’s New Norwegian to life in English. This is a fine translation. And Flogstad is well worth the ride.