Kolar’s debut book—with its meaningful but stylistically somewhat clunky title—resembles in some ways the current of contemporary Slovenian (and other) prose that prioritizes anecdotalism and the so-called “common man.” The common man is often portrayed as such because of the high vantage point from which the writer observes him. Although the story of the common man is declaratively on the side of demystifying the writer, it actually mystifies him. Writing about the common man often signifies a symbolic ascent for the writer, regardless of their actual class or background.

However, Kolar’s protagonist seems small in another sense: he is small because his perspective is a minority one. Namely, if the common man in the aforementioned trend is marked by the pathology of neurosis, Kolar’s protagonist suffers from psychosis. This clearly draws a line between his perspective and the normalized one, as psychosis is a distinctly asocial pathology, whereas neurosis is a pathology of socialization.

At the same time, differences also emerge in the anecdotalism itself. If, in the first case, anecdotes come together into a specific narrative that, among other things, reinforces the writer’s mystified position, in “Voice of the Night,” the anecdote does not lead to a complete narrative whole but instead abolishes all narrative. Over time, these pathologies begin—in the first person, of course—to be written in a psychotic type of speech, if we define this type through its self-referentiality. However, this is not the language of visions, broken syntax, and the like, but a professional discourse—specifically, the discourse of midwifery.

We find ourselves in the midst of a perceived sliding of signifiers. In reality, the signifiers—most likely—do not slide; in fact, through all its technicality (which can be verified with the novel’s author, opening up a specific set of questions), this discourse brings very specific references. It describes precisely defined body parts, medical procedures, bodily processes, and so on. It is precisely through this professional approach that the protagonist holds up a mirror to the reader. By using the most legitimate, almost sacred discourse of modern civilization, which remains inaccessible to the layperson, he places the reader in a position (not in a clinical sense) where they are left to a kind of roller-coaster slide, in which their everyday language becomes a means of exclusion. Their exclusion from a story they cannot follow.

But still—don’t expect an unreadable book, some kind of monster that professional committees and Slovenian columnists would fear. All of the above is woven into the short novel with lightness and humor and doesn’t stand out that much. Parts full of professional discourse can trigger a kind of laughter alongside the sense of uncanny, as one can sense a clumsy person operating with these words. In his helplessness and smallness, the protagonist can also be very likable, and if he doesn’t allow for the writer’s superior gaze, he can create a superior gaze for the reader toward such a common man.

So, it’s a short novel that presents a unique challenge. However, this challenge isn’t necessarily obvious. A superficial reader—as most are, especially the so-called professional ones—will miss it. The question arises: at whose expense is the joke? The novel is an open challenge that calls for a challenging reader, but for a tired and limited receptive machine, this challenge will be hard to accept. It seems to be a work open enough to be co-shaped by interpretations, but there aren’t many of those interpretations yet. Thus, “Voice of the Night” stands before me as a distinctly ambivalent literary phenomenon, not yet fully completed.

However, this openness and unanswered challenge don’t mean that interpretations won’t come; it’s just that their differentiation would be hard to expect. As a text that can quickly lead a reader into pleasure and self-satisfaction, it can certainly attract a wider audience. At this point, I will try to consider it outside its form, on the level of the sensitively portrayed life flow of the psychotic protagonist. The framing of episodes from his life, which may at first glance seem overly fragmented, matches the stories of psychotics’ lives that we can hear from their own mouths. The incompleteness that gapes where we see the future in neurotics sucks in all current events and, in its own way, plays with the relationship between the present and the past. Individual life episodes are like cards that can be shuffled, and causality disappears between them. This disappearance means that other episodes that should connect them are erased, provided they were kept in memory. This is closely related to the new form of anecdotalism I described, and thus to the form of the novel as a whole.

Here, on the level of content, the future of a psychotic’s life—perhaps this future is the throat from which the voice of the night emerges—takes on a similar role to that which structured openness takes on the level of the novel’s form. One could say, then, that there is a special alignment of form and content. Here, a new side of an already multifaceted text is revealed, contrasting with its length—but that’s not surprising. It is precisely short texts, when successful, that can express their density through internal differentiation. The pinnacle of this logic is likely represented by the form of a poem.

As I conclude this review, I feel like reading “Voice of the Night” again, both for its fun and poignancy and for what calls both into question. Now that I’m reading the afterword by Andrej Tomažin, which I previously avoided to prevent any influence on myself, it seems I could also change my thesis about the lack of interpretation; since Tomažin deals more explicitly and intensely with some matters only hinted at in my text, I can say that one reader’s pole has already formed. Given that some clues suggest another already exists, I can wait with interest for its articulation—but again, if it is to happen.