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Min kamp #2
My Struggle, Book Two
Having left his first wife, Karl Ove Knausgaard moves to Stockholm, Sweden, where he leads a solitary existence. He strikes up a deep friendship with another exiled Norwegian, a Nietzschean intellectual and boxing fanatic named Geir. He also tracks down Linda, whom he met at a writers' workshop a few years earlier and who fascinated him deeply.
Book Two is at heart a love story—the story of Karl Ove falling in love with his wife. But the novel also tells other stories: of becoming a father, of the turbulence of family life, of outrageously unsuccessful attempts at a family vacation, of the emotional strain of birthday parties for children, and of the daily frustrations, rhythms, and distractions of Stockholm keeping him from (and filling) his novel.
Book Two is at heart a love story—the story of Karl Ove falling in love with his wife. But the novel also tells other stories: of becoming a father, of the turbulence of family life, of outrageously unsuccessful attempts at a family vacation, of the emotional strain of birthday parties for children, and of the daily frustrations, rhythms, and distractions of Stockholm keeping him from (and filling) his novel.
571 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2009
About the author
Karl Ove Knausgård
73 books6,362 followersNominated to the 2004 Nordic Council’s Literature Prize & awarded the 2004 Norwegian Critics’ Prize.
Karl Ove Knausgård (b. 1968) made his literary debut in 1998 with the widely acclaimed novel Out of the World, which was a great critical and commercial success and won him, as the first debut novel ever, The Norwegian Critics' Prize. He then went on to write six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle (Min Kamp), which have become a publication phenomenon in his native Norway as well as the world over.
Karl Ove Knausgård (b. 1968) made his literary debut in 1998 with the widely acclaimed novel Out of the World, which was a great critical and commercial success and won him, as the first debut novel ever, The Norwegian Critics' Prize. He then went on to write six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle (Min Kamp), which have become a publication phenomenon in his native Norway as well as the world over.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,705 reviews
November 19, 2022
Oh, Karl Ove, you capture the heart-break of the lovesick, hypersensitive teenager that speaks to our own lost teenage years. And thanks for Book 2, writing of your life during your 20s and 30s, married, raising children, dealing with the whole urban banana. A reader might think very self-centered of a writer to pen 6 thick volumes of his life, but you, Karl Ove, are able to tap into the culture's pulse and our collective modern human experience - reading your books is almost like reading our own autobiography.
Here is a section of My Struggle, Book 2 I found particularly insightful, where Karl Ove reflects on his dealings with the people in his life: he tells us when he is with other men and women, he feels empathetic and bound to them; but when he is by himself, his feelings for them dissolve. “Everyday life, with its duties and routines, was something I endured, not a thing I enjoyed, not something that was meaningful or that made me happy. . . . I always longed to be away from it. So the life I led was not my own. I tried to make it mine, that was my struggle, because of course I wanted it, but I failed, the longing for something else undermined all my efforts. What was the problem? Was it the shrill, sickly tone I heard everywhere that I couldn’t stand, the one that arose from all the pseudopeople and pseudoplaces, pseudoevents, and psudoconflicts our lives passed through, that which we saw but did not participate in, and the distance that modern life in this way had opened up to our own, actually inalienable here and now? If so, if it was more reality, more involvement I longed for, surely it should be that which I was surrounded by that I should be embracing?”
This is but a sliver of Karl Ove’s musing at the time on the dynamics of living an everyday city life as husband, father, friend, acquaintance; he continues for several pages, expanding on such topics as our standardized, homogenized shrinking world until he is obliged to participate in his daughter’s Rhythm Time class, a occasion he finds to be one of the most excruciatingly painful experiences of his life -- he feels a powerful, passionate, sexual attraction to the graceful, gorgeous Rhythm Time teacher but also feels completely humiliated sitting on the floor, shaking a rattle and singing children's songs. It’s this linking the details of his own experience and conflicted feelings with a broader philosophizing on society and culture, art and literature, I find so compelling.
And a reflection from further on in the novel, “For who brooded over the meaninglessness of life anymore? Teenagers? They were the only ones who were preoccupied with existential issues, and as a result there was something puerile and immature about them, and hence it was doubly impossible for adults with their sense of propriety intact to deal with them. However, this is not so strange, for we never feel more strongly and passionately about life than in our teenage years, when we step into the world for the first time, as it were, and all our feelings are new feelings. So there they are, with their big ideas on small orbits, looking this way and that for an opportunity to launch them, as the pressure builds. And who is it they light upon sooner or later but Uncle Dostoyevsky? Dostoyevsky has become a teenager’s writer, the issue of nihilism a teenager issue.”
Ironically, the many pages of this book are filled to the brim with brooding on existential issues, forever questioning the meaning and meaninglessness of life, as if the author’s feelings are perpetually new feelings, as if every morning he steps into the world for the first time with all the awkwardness, discomfort, unease and even clumsiness of a teenager unhesitatingly opening his heart to the frequent hard edges and occasional tenderness of those around him.
The narrator reminds me of those characters from the novels of Dostoyevsky who, swept up in the intensity of the moment, in a gush of emotional frenzy, say ‘to hell with the future’ and stack all their chips on one spin of the roulette wheel or burn their life savings in a fire. For example, here is Karl Ove back in his room, totally drunk, after hearing a woman he loves tell him sorry, she’s not interested. “I went into the bathroom, grabbed the glass on the sink and hurled it at the wall with all the strength I could muster. I waited to hear if there was any reaction. Then I took the biggest shard I could find and started cutting my face. I did it methodically, making the cuts as deep as I could, and covered my whole face. The chin, cheeks, forehead, nose, underneath the chin. At regular intervals I wiped away the blood with a towel. Kept cutting. Wiped the blood away. But the time I was satisfied with my handiwork there was hardly room for one more cut, and I went to bed.”
Observing Karl Ove as he makes his North American book tour this spring, there isn’t any evidence of a face cut to shreds. One beauty of a novel is the author has the latitude, even in an autobiographical novel like this one (many of his extended family refuse to have anything to do with him), to create imaginatively. And this play of creative imagination makes all the difference. Although the author draws explicitly from his own life—the first-person narrator is named Karl Ove Knausgaard, and he uses the real names of his wife, children, parents, and friends, I am reading these books as a novel, since I sense a good portion is embellished or simply made-up.
Made-up or real, in the end, this is a novel of emotional extremes. Linda, the love of his Karl Ove’s life, breaths hot-blooded fire: melodramatic, mercurial, quick-tempered and occasionally violent and destructive. Yet these two lovers remain together and have three children. And with every additional child their household fire rages with more ferocity. How on earth do they do it? 600 pages of Book 2 tells the tale.
One last note on a key piece of Book 2: Karl Ove’s ongoing conversation with his philosophical and literary friend, Geir, and his ongoing conversation with his philosophic inner self. For instance, Karl Ove alone, “Fictional writing has no value, documentary narrative has no value. The only genres I saw value in, which still conferred meaning, were diaries and essays, the types of literature that did not deal with narrative, that were not about anything, but just consisted of a voice, the voice of your own personality, a life, a face, a gaze you could meet. What is a work of art if not the gaze of another person? Not directed above us, not beneath us, but at the same height as our own gaze. Art cannot be experienced collectively, nothing can, art is something you are alone with. You meet its gaze alone.”
December 22, 2022
My final 5* speed rating of the year goes to no other than Karl Ove Knausgaard, the writer of the contemporary In Search of Lost Time. The egotistical Norwegian man who cannot stop writing about himself, hurting others in the process but irresistible notwithstanding. Same over the top details, same philosophy inserted here and there, same reality show-like confessions but this time with more love. I could also relate to some of his experience which did not happen in the 1st volume.
October 26, 2014
[from Min kamp 1]
It was now more than two weeks since I had published my review of Min kamp 1, and during that time I had not posted anything new. Every day, I stared at the screen, tried to begin, abandoned my unsuccessful attempt after half an hour. Maybe I would never again manage to produce a meaningful piece of writing. I checked my mail for the third time that afternoon. Someone I didn't know said they thought it was amazing that I could read the books in the original Norwegian. There's nothing much to it, I wrote back. I lived in Sweden for ten years, and Norwegian is closely related. After I had replied, I was filled with self-loathing. How could I waste my time on such trivia? Once more, I vowed I would stop doing it, but I knew I was too weak-willed. I went downstairs to have a cigarette.
But you don't smoke, said my girlfriend Not when I returned.
I do when I'm reviewing Knausgård, I said in an irritated voice. I went into the kitchen and began to unstack the dishwasher. I put each item back in its correct place: the glasses directly over the sink, the cups next to them, the flat plates in the cupboard above the counter, the bowls beneath it, the cutlery in the plastic holder opposite, the wooden spoons in the box that had once held a bottle of Old Pulteney.
You don't really want to be doing this, do you? asked Not, as she came over to put her arms around me. What would you rather be doing instead? Reading Min kamp 2, I snapped. I just need time to finish it. Not began to weep quietly, and I immediately regretted my harsh words. She is a very fragile person, who has never recovered from being raped by her step-father at the age of 12. Or possibly it was something else that had happened to her. I have a poor memory for this kind of thing. As usual, I found myself apologizing.
Come on, said Not, as she dried her eyes. Let's go for a walk. You can bring your book. I put on my sandals, took a pair of sunglasses from the bowl near the door, dropped the Knausgård in a blue cloth shopping bag and opened the door. We took the elevator down, passing the fourth, third, second and first floors on our way to the bottom. Although I had already done so earlier, I checked the mailbox, but there was nothing new. I opened the street door. We went out on to rue du Mont-Blanc, then turned left down rue de Chantepoulet. So what do you think your review will be like? asked Not. I don't know, I said. I think the review form is exhausted. The last worthwhile thing posted on Goodreads was Geoff Wilt's review of Finnegans Wake. There are only two more reviews on the site that are worth reading. Everything else is simply mediocre. Including my work. I look at it, and all I can think is: it's just more stuff about books. It's without value. Dishonest.
We had now reached the lake. With the setting sun behind us, the scene resembled one of Rothko's paintings. At the bottom, the darker blue of the water merged into the grey-blue of the Salève, then into the lighter shades of the sky. A smear of white on one side marked the Jet d'Eau; the darker spots in the foreground resolved themselves into a family of ducks, slowly paddling upstream against the current of the Rhône.
You don't need to write about the book, said Not, as she took my hand. Just write about your life. Whatever you like. You're an excellent writer. You could write about going to the bathroom and people would read it.
You know, I said, you might be on to something there.
[to Min kamp 3]
It was now more than two weeks since I had published my review of Min kamp 1, and during that time I had not posted anything new. Every day, I stared at the screen, tried to begin, abandoned my unsuccessful attempt after half an hour. Maybe I would never again manage to produce a meaningful piece of writing. I checked my mail for the third time that afternoon. Someone I didn't know said they thought it was amazing that I could read the books in the original Norwegian. There's nothing much to it, I wrote back. I lived in Sweden for ten years, and Norwegian is closely related. After I had replied, I was filled with self-loathing. How could I waste my time on such trivia? Once more, I vowed I would stop doing it, but I knew I was too weak-willed. I went downstairs to have a cigarette.
But you don't smoke, said my girlfriend Not when I returned.
I do when I'm reviewing Knausgård, I said in an irritated voice. I went into the kitchen and began to unstack the dishwasher. I put each item back in its correct place: the glasses directly over the sink, the cups next to them, the flat plates in the cupboard above the counter, the bowls beneath it, the cutlery in the plastic holder opposite, the wooden spoons in the box that had once held a bottle of Old Pulteney.
You don't really want to be doing this, do you? asked Not, as she came over to put her arms around me. What would you rather be doing instead? Reading Min kamp 2, I snapped. I just need time to finish it. Not began to weep quietly, and I immediately regretted my harsh words. She is a very fragile person, who has never recovered from being raped by her step-father at the age of 12. Or possibly it was something else that had happened to her. I have a poor memory for this kind of thing. As usual, I found myself apologizing.
Come on, said Not, as she dried her eyes. Let's go for a walk. You can bring your book. I put on my sandals, took a pair of sunglasses from the bowl near the door, dropped the Knausgård in a blue cloth shopping bag and opened the door. We took the elevator down, passing the fourth, third, second and first floors on our way to the bottom. Although I had already done so earlier, I checked the mailbox, but there was nothing new. I opened the street door. We went out on to rue du Mont-Blanc, then turned left down rue de Chantepoulet. So what do you think your review will be like? asked Not. I don't know, I said. I think the review form is exhausted. The last worthwhile thing posted on Goodreads was Geoff Wilt's review of Finnegans Wake. There are only two more reviews on the site that are worth reading. Everything else is simply mediocre. Including my work. I look at it, and all I can think is: it's just more stuff about books. It's without value. Dishonest.
We had now reached the lake. With the setting sun behind us, the scene resembled one of Rothko's paintings. At the bottom, the darker blue of the water merged into the grey-blue of the Salève, then into the lighter shades of the sky. A smear of white on one side marked the Jet d'Eau; the darker spots in the foreground resolved themselves into a family of ducks, slowly paddling upstream against the current of the Rhône.
You don't need to write about the book, said Not, as she took my hand. Just write about your life. Whatever you like. You're an excellent writer. You could write about going to the bathroom and people would read it.
You know, I said, you might be on to something there.
[to Min kamp 3]
![Profile Image for Orsodimondo [part time reader at the moment].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1528452721i/10490224._UY200_CR39,0,200,200_.jpg)
June 25, 2022
TERAPIA COL DIAVOLO
Karl Ove Knausgård racconta episodi della sua vita anche lontani nel tempo con dovizia di particolari e dettagli al punto che lo stupore di fronte alla sua portentosa memoria comincia a sfociare in incredulità, sta inventando, sta creando, sta immaginando, sta ricostruendo, non è detto che le cose siano andate proprio come dice lui.
D’altra parte, si sa che la memoria ri-costruisce: e quindi, forse in parte costruisce ex novo.
Ma a prescindere dalla memoria, sicuramente aiutata dai diari che ha sempre avuto l’abitudine di tenere, è chiaro che quello che colpisce, vero o inventato che sia, è l’impressione e la sensazione di verità.
Stoccolma vista da Werner Nystrand, uno dei fotografi della copertina.
E poi, con lo scarto di un punto fermo, ma non necessariamente un accapo, inizia a immergersi in riflessioni che si allontanano dai ricordi, che spingono ancora più lontano, non nel tempo ma nello spazio, mentale ed emotivo, esistenziale. Incrocia filosofia e buon senso, psicanalisi e sociologia, sembra non ci sia argomento del quale non sia pronto a dibattere, tenendo sempre la sua lingua ad altezza umana, come se fossero chiacchiere in poltrona tra amici o conoscenti, magari davanti a un caminetto visto che dalle sue parti il freddo impera.
E quindi, una lingua semplice, alla portata di tutti, per riflessioni che invece non sembrano essere (sempre) alla portata di tutti.
E quindi, un modo per sminuire il suo sentire o un modo per comunicarlo meglio, a più e più lontano?
Anselm Kiefer: Varus, 1976. Dice Knausgård: “È la migliore opera d’arte che sia stata fatta dopo la guerra, forse di tutto il secolo scorso… Non rappresenta dei pensieri, penetra nel profondo della cultura e questo non lo si può esprimere con i pensieri”.
A esempio, dopo una quindicina di pagine di racconto su una (disastrosa) vacanza estiva, la prima “meditazione” che ci viene incontro è quanto incida l’ambiente sulla nostra crescita e formazione e quanto siamo invece “figli” del nostro dna, delle nostre tendenze innate. Knausgård direi che propende decisamente per la seconda ipotesi, e descrive quanto siano diversi i suoi tre figli nonostante cresciuti nello stesso ambiente – io invece credo che si realizzi un mix tra il primo e il secondo elemento.
Ma il punto non è la differenza tra le nostre opinioni. Ciò che mi interessa sottolineare è che io lettore finisco col sentirmi coinvolto, proprio come se Karl Ove e io e magari altri stessimo facendo una chiacchierata: ed è proprio la sua prosa, più che il suo pensiero, a suscitare reazione, interesse, partecipazione.
Knausgård scava nelle profondità delle situazioni, ragiona sul senso delle parole e su quello della propria vita, mettendo tutto quanto in relazione per ottenere una profonda riflessione sulla percezione dell’esistere, della sua vita e dell’esistenza in generale.
Così, dopo averci regalato nel primo tomo il suo rapporto col padre, l’essere figlio di un uomo severo che dopo essersi separato dalla mamma di Karl Ove diventerà pesantemente alcolizzato fino a morirne, qui si concentra sulla sua educazione sentimentale, la separazione e il divorzio dalla prima moglie, il secondo matrimonio con i tre figli (poi diventeranno quattro, e se non sbaglio ne ha avuto un quinto dalla terza moglie, trasferendosi a vivere dalla Svezia a Londra).
Sempre, più o meno latente, traspare la riflessione sul ruolo della scrittura e della letteratura.
Da Bergen in Norvegia approda a Stoccolma. Nella capitale svedese inizia la relazione con Linda, che diventerà la sua seconda moglie e madre di suoi quattro figli. Le difficoltà di una relazione di coppia che parte da fuochi d’artificio e dopo qualche mese approda a più silenziosi lumi di candela: e poi alle prime incrinature, col primo parto, raccontato con dovizia di spazio e particolari - al punto da farmi ricordare quella eterna sera dai Guermantes – la famiglia s’allarga, i diverbi aumentano e diventano più frequenti.
La lotta per essere una persona normale, un padre affettuoso e presente, e contemporaneamente uno scrittore, vero e attivo. Più ci si avvicina alla fine e più si capisce che i cinque o sei anni raccontati – perlopiù vissuti a Stoccolma, per poi approdare a Malmö – stanno preparando il terreno all’inizio della scrittura di questa “sua lotta” (in sei volumi, il romanzo più lungo della storia si ama definirlo).
Frits Thaulow da Knausgård considerato “il pittore norvegese forse più dotato dal punto di vista tecnico, proprio a partire da come sa catturare la luce della neve.
Ho letto che mentre i primi due volumi della saga rispecchiano perfettamente le sue intenzioni iniziali, perché sono scritti senza conoscere la reazione del pubblico, dal terzo volume in poi lo scrittore sarà molto più cauto, e comincerà a filtrare parzialmente ciò che descrive, per tutelare chi lo circonda. Questo potrebbe essere un buon motivo per fermarmi qui e non procedere oltre. Ma potrebbe anche essere un buon motivo per spingermi almeno al terzo tomo e cogliere la differenza.
Con Linda era come se fossi stato catapultato all’indietro, a quel tempo in cui i miei sentimenti oscillavano dalla gioia più grande alla rabbia più totale fino a trasformarsi in una disperazione e in uno sconforto senza limiti, a quel tempo in cui vivevo una serie di momenti così determinanti e decisivi e la cui intensità era tale da far apparire la vita invivibile e non c’era nulla che potesse darmi pare se non i libri, con i loro luoghi, epoche e persone diversi, dove io non ero nessuno e nessuno era me.
Karl Ove Knausgård racconta episodi della sua vita anche lontani nel tempo con dovizia di particolari e dettagli al punto che lo stupore di fronte alla sua portentosa memoria comincia a sfociare in incredulità, sta inventando, sta creando, sta immaginando, sta ricostruendo, non è detto che le cose siano andate proprio come dice lui.
D’altra parte, si sa che la memoria ri-costruisce: e quindi, forse in parte costruisce ex novo.
Ma a prescindere dalla memoria, sicuramente aiutata dai diari che ha sempre avuto l’abitudine di tenere, è chiaro che quello che colpisce, vero o inventato che sia, è l’impressione e la sensazione di verità.
Stoccolma vista da Werner Nystrand, uno dei fotografi della copertina.
E poi, con lo scarto di un punto fermo, ma non necessariamente un accapo, inizia a immergersi in riflessioni che si allontanano dai ricordi, che spingono ancora più lontano, non nel tempo ma nello spazio, mentale ed emotivo, esistenziale. Incrocia filosofia e buon senso, psicanalisi e sociologia, sembra non ci sia argomento del quale non sia pronto a dibattere, tenendo sempre la sua lingua ad altezza umana, come se fossero chiacchiere in poltrona tra amici o conoscenti, magari davanti a un caminetto visto che dalle sue parti il freddo impera.
E quindi, una lingua semplice, alla portata di tutti, per riflessioni che invece non sembrano essere (sempre) alla portata di tutti.
E quindi, un modo per sminuire il suo sentire o un modo per comunicarlo meglio, a più e più lontano?
Anselm Kiefer: Varus, 1976. Dice Knausgård: “È la migliore opera d’arte che sia stata fatta dopo la guerra, forse di tutto il secolo scorso… Non rappresenta dei pensieri, penetra nel profondo della cultura e questo non lo si può esprimere con i pensieri”.
A esempio, dopo una quindicina di pagine di racconto su una (disastrosa) vacanza estiva, la prima “meditazione” che ci viene incontro è quanto incida l’ambiente sulla nostra crescita e formazione e quanto siamo invece “figli” del nostro dna, delle nostre tendenze innate. Knausgård direi che propende decisamente per la seconda ipotesi, e descrive quanto siano diversi i suoi tre figli nonostante cresciuti nello stesso ambiente – io invece credo che si realizzi un mix tra il primo e il secondo elemento.
Ma il punto non è la differenza tra le nostre opinioni. Ciò che mi interessa sottolineare è che io lettore finisco col sentirmi coinvolto, proprio come se Karl Ove e io e magari altri stessimo facendo una chiacchierata: ed è proprio la sua prosa, più che il suo pensiero, a suscitare reazione, interesse, partecipazione.
Knausgård scava nelle profondità delle situazioni, ragiona sul senso delle parole e su quello della propria vita, mettendo tutto quanto in relazione per ottenere una profonda riflessione sulla percezione dell’esistere, della sua vita e dell’esistenza in generale.
Così, dopo averci regalato nel primo tomo il suo rapporto col padre, l’essere figlio di un uomo severo che dopo essersi separato dalla mamma di Karl Ove diventerà pesantemente alcolizzato fino a morirne, qui si concentra sulla sua educazione sentimentale, la separazione e il divorzio dalla prima moglie, il secondo matrimonio con i tre figli (poi diventeranno quattro, e se non sbaglio ne ha avuto un quinto dalla terza moglie, trasferendosi a vivere dalla Svezia a Londra).
Sempre, più o meno latente, traspare la riflessione sul ruolo della scrittura e della letteratura.
Da Bergen in Norvegia approda a Stoccolma. Nella capitale svedese inizia la relazione con Linda, che diventerà la sua seconda moglie e madre di suoi quattro figli. Le difficoltà di una relazione di coppia che parte da fuochi d’artificio e dopo qualche mese approda a più silenziosi lumi di candela: e poi alle prime incrinature, col primo parto, raccontato con dovizia di spazio e particolari - al punto da farmi ricordare quella eterna sera dai Guermantes – la famiglia s’allarga, i diverbi aumentano e diventano più frequenti.
La lotta per essere una persona normale, un padre affettuoso e presente, e contemporaneamente uno scrittore, vero e attivo. Più ci si avvicina alla fine e più si capisce che i cinque o sei anni raccontati – perlopiù vissuti a Stoccolma, per poi approdare a Malmö – stanno preparando il terreno all’inizio della scrittura di questa “sua lotta” (in sei volumi, il romanzo più lungo della storia si ama definirlo).
Frits Thaulow da Knausgård considerato “il pittore norvegese forse più dotato dal punto di vista tecnico, proprio a partire da come sa catturare la luce della neve.
Ho letto che mentre i primi due volumi della saga rispecchiano perfettamente le sue intenzioni iniziali, perché sono scritti senza conoscere la reazione del pubblico, dal terzo volume in poi lo scrittore sarà molto più cauto, e comincerà a filtrare parzialmente ciò che descrive, per tutelare chi lo circonda. Questo potrebbe essere un buon motivo per fermarmi qui e non procedere oltre. Ma potrebbe anche essere un buon motivo per spingermi almeno al terzo tomo e cogliere la differenza.
Con Linda era come se fossi stato catapultato all’indietro, a quel tempo in cui i miei sentimenti oscillavano dalla gioia più grande alla rabbia più totale fino a trasformarsi in una disperazione e in uno sconforto senza limiti, a quel tempo in cui vivevo una serie di momenti così determinanti e decisivi e la cui intensità era tale da far apparire la vita invivibile e non c’era nulla che potesse darmi pare se non i libri, con i loro luoghi, epoche e persone diversi, dove io non ero nessuno e nessuno era me.
June 16, 2016
The original Norwegian editions of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume My Struggle series, presented in thick ~500-page installments, have purportedly sold more than a half-million copies and won lots of prizes. If rumors of such critical and commercial success are true, even if only in Scandinavia, it’s good news for humanity, since these volumes lack traditional plot, let alone anything approaching bondage, vampires or wizards. Maybe it helps that Knausgaard, a respected author of two novels before he’d even started My Struggle, has a bold, sensationalist, attention-grabbing title appropriated from Hitler’s polemical autobiography, which forces readers to contrast his representation and impressions of his writing/family life with the Führer’s concerns? Or maybe the series has stormed across Scandinavia because its scope and approach suggest Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, but instead of tracing the past in rapturous, velveteen, serpentine effusions – every passage suffused with chrysanthemum dust – My Struggle presents something comparatively without affectation, a steady, solid, quotidian, flinty (albeit likely to burst into tears, like squeezing water from a rock) representation of and insight into what it’s like for one man to be alive.
In Fall 2012, both my mother and a grad school friend recommended the first volume to me, saying it sounded “up my alley.” It was way up there, in approach, accessibility, unpredictability, unexpected humor, and heft. For a few years I’ve been saying that fiction that feels like fiction is not my favorite sort of fiction. I’ll turn on a novel for an overwrought simile comparing a Gatorade cap to a crown of thorns. Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer fiction that feels unlike contemporary literary fiction. I’m not necessarily a fan of experimental or explicitly unconventional fiction, either. Turns out I just seem to prefer fiction that feels real. Twain said something like the difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable. Thomas Wolfe (the guy who wrote Look Homeward, Angel, not the guy in the white suit who wrote Bonfire of the Vanities) said that fiction is fact, selected, arranged, and charged with purpose. Both of these assertions apply to Knausgaard’s recent work, except I don’t think the author, at least as he presents himself in the My Struggle series, charges his selections and arrangements of fact with an explicit purpose other than trying to get as close as he can to the core of life. No conventional plot therefore, yet nevertheless engaging, consistently insightful, and almost recklessly sincere.
This series is a multivolume masterpiece of sincerity. It’s epic literary autobiography, worthy of the traditional and more recent meanings of the modifier epic. A Norwegian living in Sweden may have written it but it fulfills David Foster Wallace’s prophecy about post-ironic fiction in the United States: “The next real literary ‘rebels’ in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction.” By now, at least as Knausgaard presents Sweden in this volume, the notion of “U.S. life” can be expanded to include Western Civilization’s so-called First World, including Scandinavia. Like DFW, Knausgaard covers significant territory across apparently infinite pages but he doesn’t do it in a look Ma no hands backflipping with a smile sorta way. All the formal elements of traditional fiction are in place, sans gimmickry. No attention-getting footnotes or images or power points or graphs or numbered lists or Danielewskisms. No masturbatory flights of language en route to the celestial sublime. No silly set pieces or big dance numbers at the end. No talking pieces of poo. Nothing included for a joke. No excessive modifiers or anything that feels like it’s not part of the author’s attempt to stay as close as possible to what he perceives as the core of things, the honest truth of life. He also realizes that such a project may seem megalomaniacal, and he addresses this more than once, never mythologizing himself, always his worst critic, always forcing himself to submit to humility.
What happens in this engrossing, readable, plot-less stretch of 543 beautifully formatted pages published by Archipelago? Mostly child care. Instead of the mythologized image of the author of the past, we find a 21st century house husband, considering himself feminized compared to how fathers once raised children, living in a homogenized culture thanks to international influence (as in Murakami, American fast food joints are name-checked, including Burger King and Subway): “Europe . . . was merging more and more into one large, homogeneous country. The same, the same, everything the same.” Karl Ove is a 30-something Norwegian who’s left his first wife and moved to Stockholm, where, despite this sense of sameness, he can’t read clues revealing minute social gradients as he can in Norway. The author’s good friend Geir, another Norwegian writer living in Sweden, rants about the differences between Norway and Sweden the way some in Philadelphia may occasionally rant about the differences between Philly and New York. (Sweden is essentially more orderly. In Norway people bump into each other on the street. Norwegian academics don’t dress so well.)
Book 1 ended with the author cleaning up the mess his recently deceased alcoholic father made, literally and figuratively. As with Book 2, it started in the recent past and presented a surprisingly fresh vision of the author with young children, at playgrounds, struggling with plastic contraptions meant to convey children across town. As in the first volume, these opening sections create a sympathetic image of a manly, cigarette-smoking Scandinavian author overrun by three children, loving them deeply, trying to control them, aware that this image of a father who gets down on the floor and plays with a rattle with his kids is relatively recent and yet by now pervasive.
His own upbringing had been strict, his father distant and scary, and so Karl Ove struggles with his father’s spirit inside him. He has a history with drink, too. In one riveting recollected scene in which he drinks himself into a world that’s narrowed to a dark tunnel, after the woman who will become the mother of his children humanely rejects him, he smashes a glass and uses its largest, sharpest shard to shred his face.
In both books, this opening fatherhood gambit won me over, made me willing to follow him wherever he went. In the first volume, it’s teen years playing in a terrible band and looking for a place to drink on New Year’s Eve. In Book 2, it’s his first days in Stockholm and the story of how he met his wife, Linda, the woman who helped him become who he is today: prize-winning successful novelist pushing around three young children in a stroller.
The central struggle in this volume is achieving a balance between family and art. He wants a family, three children like a little gang, but he also wants to be left alone to write. He has an “all or nothing” mentality, so this conflict drives the story. It’s all pretty deceptively simple:
For me, society is everything, Geir said. Humanity. I’m not interested in anything beyond that. But I am, I said. Oh yes? Geir queried. What then? Trees, I answered. He laughed. Patterns in plants. Patterns in crystals. Patterns in stones. In rock formations. In galaxies. Are you talking about fractals? Yes, for example. But everything that binds the living and dead, all the dominant forms that exist. Clouds! Sand dunes! That interests me. Oh God, how boring, Geir said. No it isn’t, I said. Yes, it is, he said.
David Foster Wallace’s 1990 essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” concludes with questions about what will come after postmodern irony: “Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the ‘Oh how banal!’”
To which Knausgaard might reply: “For me it was trees and leaves, grass and clouds and a glowing sun, that was all, I understood everything in the light of this.”
An elaborated elegance makes this series what it is. Its patterns and formations feel organic and humble yet troubled and in no way understated. The form in the first two volumes at least suggests something like quiet majesty. It’s only as complicated as it needs to be, with simply dramatized scenes with plentiful short bursts of dialogue, summarized scenes, stretches of essayistic exposition, all in rotation in a way that I comfortably anticipated over time. Yet, despite what’s essentially a not very experimental form, the project itself as a whole seems unconventional, almost unhinged. Three thousand pages of literary autobiography about a middle-aging Norwegian writer and his wife and kids and friends and family? You kidding me? His kids don’t even suffer from Marcusian language pathologies? No empathic immersion in the presentation of other lives? No specific canonical biggie (despite the title and physical similarity to Proust’s multivolume masterwork) providing explicit formal and thematic support?
Of the young writers I had read there was only Jerker Virdborg I liked; his novel Black Crab had something that raised it above the mist of morals and politics others were cloaked in. Not that it was a fantastic novel, but he was searching for something different. That was the sole obligation literature had, in all other respects it was free, but not in this, and when writers disregarded this they did not deserve to be met with anything but contempt.
By the time of the second volume’s action, Karl Ove has written one well-regarded novel but the money is running out. He hasn’t written much of anything for four or five years. He’s included in an article about writer’s block and authors who’ve only written one novel. But he’s searching for something different, a way out. After seeing Bergman’s production of Ibsen’s “Ghosts” with his future wife, he has a model for the sort of work he wants to do in the future. The play offers a bright horizon for the author, and a guide to the book in the reader’s hands.
"A kind of boundlessness arose, something wild and reckless. Into it disappeared plot and space, what was left was emotion, and it was stark, you were looking straight into the essence of human existence, the very nucleus of life, and thus you found yourself in a place where it no longer mattered what was actually happening . . . That was where I had to go, to the essence, to the inner core of human existence."
This inner core of human existence manifests as conversations with friends, dinners at home, fights with a Russian alcoholic neighbor who blasts music in the middle of the night, irritation with his wife’s inability to pitch in around the house and thereby force him to do all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning, all of which gracefully revolve in the present, interspersed with non-linearly proceeding backstory. This sort of structure after a while feels like associative telescopic stargazing into the past, the present naturally filled with expanses of history. Inclusion of non-linear backstory makes the whole story feel real and alive, its edges open and scalloped instead of straight, orderly, contrived, and fictional, since memories tend not to appear in order:
Everyday life, with its duties and routines, was something I endured, not a thing I enjoyed, nor something that was meaningful or made me happy. This had nothing to do with a lack of desire to wash floors or change diapers but rather with something more fundamental: the life around me was not meaningful. I always longed to be away from it. So the life I led was not my own. I tried to make it mine, this was my struggle, because of course I wanted it, but I failed, the longing for something else undermined all my efforts.
A half-million Scandinavians might like Knausgaard in part because this longing for something more meaningful, his attempts to find meaning and beauty in the banalities of life, his struggles at home and with his artistic ambition, are the mark of a conventional protagonist whose obsessive desires are ceaselessly impeded by obstacles. It’s a double-bind in Knausgaard’s case: art impedes family and family impedes art. Like Homer Simpson’s famous revelation about alcohol, art and family are the cause of and cure for all his problems.
In the second volume, there are two exaggeratedly extreme acts: the drunken face-cutting when younger and the manic immersion that produces his second novel, A Time For Everything, risking his family for the sake of his art. So often I sympathized with the author’s situation. I read passages aloud to my wife involving discussions about day care so similar to discussions we’d just had. She began referring to the thick squarish hardback as my new best friend. As a father of a three-month-old daughter, a writer learning to balance family and art, this volume was even more up my alley than the first one about teenage drinking/bands and the death of his father. Yet, despite convergences, I would never go at my face with a shard of glass and I would never leave my family to live in an office for weeks to write a novel. Of course, it’s possible that neither of these extreme actions ever happened. It’s possible that these semi-sensationalist moments are straight-up fiction. But it feels wrong to type that, as though it betrays a trust established between writer and reader over more than 1000 pages at this point.
I don’t want to make it seem like this series was written only for me, since most likely its revelations about self, its honesty with itself and with the reader, bring the project close to more readers than one. But still, it’s a rare expanse of recently published prose that opines about Thomas Bernhard in the context of the narrator’s search for what he would do after his second novel: “No space was opened up for me in Bernhard, everything was closed off in small chambers of reflection, and even though he had written one of the most frightening and shocking novels I had read, Extinction, I didn’t want to look down that road, I didn’t want to go down that road. Hell no, I wanted to be as far from that which was closed and mandatory as it was possible to be. Come on! Into the open, my friend, as Hölderlin had written somewhere. But how, how?”
The clear answer to the preceding question is the book itself, a non-annoying narrative loop-de-loop. By the time the above quotation appears on page 409 we have a pretty good idea of how he’ll write his way out. I don’t in any way want to suggest that the book runs cutesy metafictional macros on the reader. It’s more like the second volume begins to catch up to the point in recent history when he began the project. Whereupon I foresaw an ending in which Knausgaard makes it to the absolute present, completely caught up with himself, writing about writing the sentence he’s writing . . .
Early on in the second novel he states that the work is its own reward. Sitting in a room alone working on what he’s writing is all he really wants. There’s something inexplicitly East Asian about his project, his interest in naturally occurring patterns, as though writing is not about creating another form of narrative entertainment or gaining an audience of readers but a meditation that produces text as traces of where his mind traveled whenever it achieved the solitude he longed for. As such, the primary enlightenment Knausgaard offers involves humility and endurance, presented in uniquely formatted short bursts followed by hard returns, amounting to the volume’s thematic climax on page 501:
"If I have learned one thing over these years, which seems to me immensely important, particularly in an era such as ours, overflowing with such mediocrity, it is the following:
Don’t believe you are anybody.
Do not believe you are somebody.
Because you are not. You’re just a smug, mediocre little shit.
Do not believe that you’re anything special. Do not believe that you’re worth anything, because you aren’t. You’re just a little shit.
So keep your head down and work, you little shit. Then, at least, you’ll get something out of it. Shut your mouth, keep your head down, work and know that you’re not worth a shit.
This, more or less, was what I had learned.
This was the sum of all my experience.
This was the only worthwhile thought I’d ever had."
Again, part of the struggle for the author is to triage eventual criticism that he’s a self-serving megalomaniacal freak. He’s successful in this. He wins the reader over thanks to what seems like sincere introspection throughout. But also through well-phrased contempt for unnamed examples of the sort of self-serving mediocrities he’s afraid he might be or become.
Knausgaard succeeds in presenting the particularities of his conflict with such steadiness and clarity that it appeals on a deep level to a large readership. There are very few sensationalist details or betrayals of confidence that trigger voyeuristic impulses in readers. There’s very little sex, for example, and when it occurs it’s procreative, on a couch after watching a crappy movie. Ultimately, the sense you get from reading this series, the mental and emotional state achieved when silently immersed in its pages, is of connection with another human being, a man from a distant yet familiar place, like yourself in some ways but not in all ways, a man concerned with achieving existential fulfillment, stability, peace. In the end, the project itself seems like proof that he’s achieved a productive balance. There’s a sense that he’s able to write this My Struggle series while maintaining his family. Wikipedia says he’s still married to Linda and they live with their three children, and he’s clearly lived up to manifesto-like spiels about fiction in My Struggle.
I suppose just because a purported half-million Scandinavians have read Knausgaard’s series doesn’t mean I should lump them together. But a great novel seems to bring its readers together, those who’ve shared an experience, each similar yet unique. There’s no question that this volume continues a remarkable series that I expect will have long-lasting influence, at least on me as I gulp down the remaining 2000-plus pages as they appear in English over the next few years. If Knausgaard’s project influences a generation of literary autobiographers, in theory, for now, it’s fine with me. I’d love to see more fiction that feels unlike fiction because it consists of fact selected, arranged, and charged with the purpose of presenting itself as real. Not hyper-real reality or semblances seen through the scrim of tasteful artifice, but as real as it gets, raw, unadorned, and awesome.
(If interested, here are my reviews of Books One, Three, Four, and Five.)
In Fall 2012, both my mother and a grad school friend recommended the first volume to me, saying it sounded “up my alley.” It was way up there, in approach, accessibility, unpredictability, unexpected humor, and heft. For a few years I’ve been saying that fiction that feels like fiction is not my favorite sort of fiction. I’ll turn on a novel for an overwrought simile comparing a Gatorade cap to a crown of thorns. Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer fiction that feels unlike contemporary literary fiction. I’m not necessarily a fan of experimental or explicitly unconventional fiction, either. Turns out I just seem to prefer fiction that feels real. Twain said something like the difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable. Thomas Wolfe (the guy who wrote Look Homeward, Angel, not the guy in the white suit who wrote Bonfire of the Vanities) said that fiction is fact, selected, arranged, and charged with purpose. Both of these assertions apply to Knausgaard’s recent work, except I don’t think the author, at least as he presents himself in the My Struggle series, charges his selections and arrangements of fact with an explicit purpose other than trying to get as close as he can to the core of life. No conventional plot therefore, yet nevertheless engaging, consistently insightful, and almost recklessly sincere.
This series is a multivolume masterpiece of sincerity. It’s epic literary autobiography, worthy of the traditional and more recent meanings of the modifier epic. A Norwegian living in Sweden may have written it but it fulfills David Foster Wallace’s prophecy about post-ironic fiction in the United States: “The next real literary ‘rebels’ in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction.” By now, at least as Knausgaard presents Sweden in this volume, the notion of “U.S. life” can be expanded to include Western Civilization’s so-called First World, including Scandinavia. Like DFW, Knausgaard covers significant territory across apparently infinite pages but he doesn’t do it in a look Ma no hands backflipping with a smile sorta way. All the formal elements of traditional fiction are in place, sans gimmickry. No attention-getting footnotes or images or power points or graphs or numbered lists or Danielewskisms. No masturbatory flights of language en route to the celestial sublime. No silly set pieces or big dance numbers at the end. No talking pieces of poo. Nothing included for a joke. No excessive modifiers or anything that feels like it’s not part of the author’s attempt to stay as close as possible to what he perceives as the core of things, the honest truth of life. He also realizes that such a project may seem megalomaniacal, and he addresses this more than once, never mythologizing himself, always his worst critic, always forcing himself to submit to humility.
What happens in this engrossing, readable, plot-less stretch of 543 beautifully formatted pages published by Archipelago? Mostly child care. Instead of the mythologized image of the author of the past, we find a 21st century house husband, considering himself feminized compared to how fathers once raised children, living in a homogenized culture thanks to international influence (as in Murakami, American fast food joints are name-checked, including Burger King and Subway): “Europe . . . was merging more and more into one large, homogeneous country. The same, the same, everything the same.” Karl Ove is a 30-something Norwegian who’s left his first wife and moved to Stockholm, where, despite this sense of sameness, he can’t read clues revealing minute social gradients as he can in Norway. The author’s good friend Geir, another Norwegian writer living in Sweden, rants about the differences between Norway and Sweden the way some in Philadelphia may occasionally rant about the differences between Philly and New York. (Sweden is essentially more orderly. In Norway people bump into each other on the street. Norwegian academics don’t dress so well.)
Book 1 ended with the author cleaning up the mess his recently deceased alcoholic father made, literally and figuratively. As with Book 2, it started in the recent past and presented a surprisingly fresh vision of the author with young children, at playgrounds, struggling with plastic contraptions meant to convey children across town. As in the first volume, these opening sections create a sympathetic image of a manly, cigarette-smoking Scandinavian author overrun by three children, loving them deeply, trying to control them, aware that this image of a father who gets down on the floor and plays with a rattle with his kids is relatively recent and yet by now pervasive.
His own upbringing had been strict, his father distant and scary, and so Karl Ove struggles with his father’s spirit inside him. He has a history with drink, too. In one riveting recollected scene in which he drinks himself into a world that’s narrowed to a dark tunnel, after the woman who will become the mother of his children humanely rejects him, he smashes a glass and uses its largest, sharpest shard to shred his face.
In both books, this opening fatherhood gambit won me over, made me willing to follow him wherever he went. In the first volume, it’s teen years playing in a terrible band and looking for a place to drink on New Year’s Eve. In Book 2, it’s his first days in Stockholm and the story of how he met his wife, Linda, the woman who helped him become who he is today: prize-winning successful novelist pushing around three young children in a stroller.
The central struggle in this volume is achieving a balance between family and art. He wants a family, three children like a little gang, but he also wants to be left alone to write. He has an “all or nothing” mentality, so this conflict drives the story. It’s all pretty deceptively simple:
For me, society is everything, Geir said. Humanity. I’m not interested in anything beyond that. But I am, I said. Oh yes? Geir queried. What then? Trees, I answered. He laughed. Patterns in plants. Patterns in crystals. Patterns in stones. In rock formations. In galaxies. Are you talking about fractals? Yes, for example. But everything that binds the living and dead, all the dominant forms that exist. Clouds! Sand dunes! That interests me. Oh God, how boring, Geir said. No it isn’t, I said. Yes, it is, he said.
David Foster Wallace’s 1990 essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” concludes with questions about what will come after postmodern irony: “Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the ‘Oh how banal!’”
To which Knausgaard might reply: “For me it was trees and leaves, grass and clouds and a glowing sun, that was all, I understood everything in the light of this.”
An elaborated elegance makes this series what it is. Its patterns and formations feel organic and humble yet troubled and in no way understated. The form in the first two volumes at least suggests something like quiet majesty. It’s only as complicated as it needs to be, with simply dramatized scenes with plentiful short bursts of dialogue, summarized scenes, stretches of essayistic exposition, all in rotation in a way that I comfortably anticipated over time. Yet, despite what’s essentially a not very experimental form, the project itself as a whole seems unconventional, almost unhinged. Three thousand pages of literary autobiography about a middle-aging Norwegian writer and his wife and kids and friends and family? You kidding me? His kids don’t even suffer from Marcusian language pathologies? No empathic immersion in the presentation of other lives? No specific canonical biggie (despite the title and physical similarity to Proust’s multivolume masterwork) providing explicit formal and thematic support?
Of the young writers I had read there was only Jerker Virdborg I liked; his novel Black Crab had something that raised it above the mist of morals and politics others were cloaked in. Not that it was a fantastic novel, but he was searching for something different. That was the sole obligation literature had, in all other respects it was free, but not in this, and when writers disregarded this they did not deserve to be met with anything but contempt.
By the time of the second volume’s action, Karl Ove has written one well-regarded novel but the money is running out. He hasn’t written much of anything for four or five years. He’s included in an article about writer’s block and authors who’ve only written one novel. But he’s searching for something different, a way out. After seeing Bergman’s production of Ibsen’s “Ghosts” with his future wife, he has a model for the sort of work he wants to do in the future. The play offers a bright horizon for the author, and a guide to the book in the reader’s hands.
"A kind of boundlessness arose, something wild and reckless. Into it disappeared plot and space, what was left was emotion, and it was stark, you were looking straight into the essence of human existence, the very nucleus of life, and thus you found yourself in a place where it no longer mattered what was actually happening . . . That was where I had to go, to the essence, to the inner core of human existence."
This inner core of human existence manifests as conversations with friends, dinners at home, fights with a Russian alcoholic neighbor who blasts music in the middle of the night, irritation with his wife’s inability to pitch in around the house and thereby force him to do all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning, all of which gracefully revolve in the present, interspersed with non-linearly proceeding backstory. This sort of structure after a while feels like associative telescopic stargazing into the past, the present naturally filled with expanses of history. Inclusion of non-linear backstory makes the whole story feel real and alive, its edges open and scalloped instead of straight, orderly, contrived, and fictional, since memories tend not to appear in order:
Everyday life, with its duties and routines, was something I endured, not a thing I enjoyed, nor something that was meaningful or made me happy. This had nothing to do with a lack of desire to wash floors or change diapers but rather with something more fundamental: the life around me was not meaningful. I always longed to be away from it. So the life I led was not my own. I tried to make it mine, this was my struggle, because of course I wanted it, but I failed, the longing for something else undermined all my efforts.
A half-million Scandinavians might like Knausgaard in part because this longing for something more meaningful, his attempts to find meaning and beauty in the banalities of life, his struggles at home and with his artistic ambition, are the mark of a conventional protagonist whose obsessive desires are ceaselessly impeded by obstacles. It’s a double-bind in Knausgaard’s case: art impedes family and family impedes art. Like Homer Simpson’s famous revelation about alcohol, art and family are the cause of and cure for all his problems.
In the second volume, there are two exaggeratedly extreme acts: the drunken face-cutting when younger and the manic immersion that produces his second novel, A Time For Everything, risking his family for the sake of his art. So often I sympathized with the author’s situation. I read passages aloud to my wife involving discussions about day care so similar to discussions we’d just had. She began referring to the thick squarish hardback as my new best friend. As a father of a three-month-old daughter, a writer learning to balance family and art, this volume was even more up my alley than the first one about teenage drinking/bands and the death of his father. Yet, despite convergences, I would never go at my face with a shard of glass and I would never leave my family to live in an office for weeks to write a novel. Of course, it’s possible that neither of these extreme actions ever happened. It’s possible that these semi-sensationalist moments are straight-up fiction. But it feels wrong to type that, as though it betrays a trust established between writer and reader over more than 1000 pages at this point.
I don’t want to make it seem like this series was written only for me, since most likely its revelations about self, its honesty with itself and with the reader, bring the project close to more readers than one. But still, it’s a rare expanse of recently published prose that opines about Thomas Bernhard in the context of the narrator’s search for what he would do after his second novel: “No space was opened up for me in Bernhard, everything was closed off in small chambers of reflection, and even though he had written one of the most frightening and shocking novels I had read, Extinction, I didn’t want to look down that road, I didn’t want to go down that road. Hell no, I wanted to be as far from that which was closed and mandatory as it was possible to be. Come on! Into the open, my friend, as Hölderlin had written somewhere. But how, how?”
The clear answer to the preceding question is the book itself, a non-annoying narrative loop-de-loop. By the time the above quotation appears on page 409 we have a pretty good idea of how he’ll write his way out. I don’t in any way want to suggest that the book runs cutesy metafictional macros on the reader. It’s more like the second volume begins to catch up to the point in recent history when he began the project. Whereupon I foresaw an ending in which Knausgaard makes it to the absolute present, completely caught up with himself, writing about writing the sentence he’s writing . . .
Early on in the second novel he states that the work is its own reward. Sitting in a room alone working on what he’s writing is all he really wants. There’s something inexplicitly East Asian about his project, his interest in naturally occurring patterns, as though writing is not about creating another form of narrative entertainment or gaining an audience of readers but a meditation that produces text as traces of where his mind traveled whenever it achieved the solitude he longed for. As such, the primary enlightenment Knausgaard offers involves humility and endurance, presented in uniquely formatted short bursts followed by hard returns, amounting to the volume’s thematic climax on page 501:
"If I have learned one thing over these years, which seems to me immensely important, particularly in an era such as ours, overflowing with such mediocrity, it is the following:
Don’t believe you are anybody.
Do not believe you are somebody.
Because you are not. You’re just a smug, mediocre little shit.
Do not believe that you’re anything special. Do not believe that you’re worth anything, because you aren’t. You’re just a little shit.
So keep your head down and work, you little shit. Then, at least, you’ll get something out of it. Shut your mouth, keep your head down, work and know that you’re not worth a shit.
This, more or less, was what I had learned.
This was the sum of all my experience.
This was the only worthwhile thought I’d ever had."
Again, part of the struggle for the author is to triage eventual criticism that he’s a self-serving megalomaniacal freak. He’s successful in this. He wins the reader over thanks to what seems like sincere introspection throughout. But also through well-phrased contempt for unnamed examples of the sort of self-serving mediocrities he’s afraid he might be or become.
Knausgaard succeeds in presenting the particularities of his conflict with such steadiness and clarity that it appeals on a deep level to a large readership. There are very few sensationalist details or betrayals of confidence that trigger voyeuristic impulses in readers. There’s very little sex, for example, and when it occurs it’s procreative, on a couch after watching a crappy movie. Ultimately, the sense you get from reading this series, the mental and emotional state achieved when silently immersed in its pages, is of connection with another human being, a man from a distant yet familiar place, like yourself in some ways but not in all ways, a man concerned with achieving existential fulfillment, stability, peace. In the end, the project itself seems like proof that he’s achieved a productive balance. There’s a sense that he’s able to write this My Struggle series while maintaining his family. Wikipedia says he’s still married to Linda and they live with their three children, and he’s clearly lived up to manifesto-like spiels about fiction in My Struggle.
I suppose just because a purported half-million Scandinavians have read Knausgaard’s series doesn’t mean I should lump them together. But a great novel seems to bring its readers together, those who’ve shared an experience, each similar yet unique. There’s no question that this volume continues a remarkable series that I expect will have long-lasting influence, at least on me as I gulp down the remaining 2000-plus pages as they appear in English over the next few years. If Knausgaard’s project influences a generation of literary autobiographers, in theory, for now, it’s fine with me. I’d love to see more fiction that feels unlike fiction because it consists of fact selected, arranged, and charged with the purpose of presenting itself as real. Not hyper-real reality or semblances seen through the scrim of tasteful artifice, but as real as it gets, raw, unadorned, and awesome.
(If interested, here are my reviews of Books One, Three, Four, and Five.)
June 3, 2019
A masterpiece - I think it surpasses vol. 1, although it is less fun and less immediately accessible. If vol. 1 was death and childhood, this is love and aging, and it is perhaps the best depiction of love that I have ever read. Family love, romantic love, courtship.
Fascinating structure: A digression that lasts from p. 20 - p. 527, inside of which is a digression that goes from 70-520, inside of which is one from 105-340, inside of which is one that runs from 125-281. The outermost frame, the beginning and the end, details the moments that led to the writing of vol. 1.
I read this volume faster than the first, somehow, and mostly in the basement of my family's french antique store. It knocked me flat. Oddly, I think most of one of the most simple moments. Knausgaard is washing dishes and, tired, he leans his head forward against the cabinet against the sink for support. I'd done this for years. And I've thought about this book every time I've washed dishes since.
Fascinating structure: A digression that lasts from p. 20 - p. 527, inside of which is a digression that goes from 70-520, inside of which is one from 105-340, inside of which is one that runs from 125-281. The outermost frame, the beginning and the end, details the moments that led to the writing of vol. 1.
I read this volume faster than the first, somehow, and mostly in the basement of my family's french antique store. It knocked me flat. Oddly, I think most of one of the most simple moments. Knausgaard is washing dishes and, tired, he leans his head forward against the cabinet against the sink for support. I'd done this for years. And I've thought about this book every time I've washed dishes since.
December 16, 2023
5* solid stars. Trying to collect my thoughts about this novel, the first thing it comes to mind is painter Anselm Kiefer: per Knausgaard “ Anselm Kiefer has always been such a name for me — more so than any other artist of our time, perhaps — because his works are so monumental, so charged with time, so burdened by history, and because the private sphere, the near and the personal, is so completely absent from them.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/ma...
The struggle resumes with love and family in the epicenter. Soul searching as he is trying to establish his identity as a writer, husband, parent, friend. Ibsen said that he who stood alone was strongest: “relationships were there to eradicate individuality, to fetter freedom and suppress that which was pushing through.”
Karl Ove fights to navigate his microcosmos full of “pseudo-people, pseudo-places , pseudo-events”, where public attention is a drug and life consumed by the prefabricated nature of the days and the rails of routine which make everything so predictable. Undifferentiated dreams, a systematized existence under a single commodified denominator. Can indifference be the answer?
A power struggle and existential stretch as “death makes life meaningless because everything we have ever striven for ceases when life does, and meaningful, because its presence makes the little we have of it indispensable, every moment precious.” But the world is always the same, it is the way we view it that changes : A life of darkness but also of light (love), as dawn breaks on the horizon and everything becomes clearer, more alive and happier. But then again not to strive for happy life is the most provocative thing you can do; and there are many ways to be trapped; there are many ways of not being free. In life "it is not that we were are born equal and the conditions of life make our lives unequal, it is the opposite, we were born unequal , and the condition of life make our lives more equal.” Things have to take the time they need…
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/ma...
The struggle resumes with love and family in the epicenter. Soul searching as he is trying to establish his identity as a writer, husband, parent, friend. Ibsen said that he who stood alone was strongest: “relationships were there to eradicate individuality, to fetter freedom and suppress that which was pushing through.”
Karl Ove fights to navigate his microcosmos full of “pseudo-people, pseudo-places , pseudo-events”, where public attention is a drug and life consumed by the prefabricated nature of the days and the rails of routine which make everything so predictable. Undifferentiated dreams, a systematized existence under a single commodified denominator. Can indifference be the answer?
A power struggle and existential stretch as “death makes life meaningless because everything we have ever striven for ceases when life does, and meaningful, because its presence makes the little we have of it indispensable, every moment precious.” But the world is always the same, it is the way we view it that changes : A life of darkness but also of light (love), as dawn breaks on the horizon and everything becomes clearer, more alive and happier. But then again not to strive for happy life is the most provocative thing you can do; and there are many ways to be trapped; there are many ways of not being free. In life "it is not that we were are born equal and the conditions of life make our lives unequal, it is the opposite, we were born unequal , and the condition of life make our lives more equal.” Things have to take the time they need…
February 1, 2020
Karl Ove Knausgård's second instalment in the sprawling My Struggle autobiographic roman fleuve is even more gripping than its predecessor. Perhaps that is because I am also a father roughly the same age as the author, but I was truly pulled in head-first from the get-go. This book covers a period coming about 3-5 years after the primary events of Book 1 which was about his father's death. Here, he has moved to Stockholm, leaving his soon-to-be ex-wife in Norway and falls in love with Laura whom he knew at a writer's workshop two decades previously. Knausgård's writing style is to open multiple parentheses and close them as you near the end of the book, so we start with him in Stockholm writing his second book, A Time for Everything, and already with three kids. He quickly opens a parenthesis to his experiences in Stockholm braving the ice-clad sidewalks when his daughter Vanja is about eight months old armed with his stroller and his self-effacing courage. I enjoyed the episode where he goes to Rhythm Time with Vanja and he is attracted to the musician leading the class while hating the whole principle of being in the class as being too emasculating. He excels at portraying this inner tension between his principles and his actions which are so often in contradiction. "So I stayed put. Vanja was eight months old and bewitched by anything that resembled a performance." (p. 77) This sounds so banal, but I could really imagine being there for my kid, but finding the whole situation ridiculous. And my daughter was the same way in terms of bewitchment. The text is simple, but it conveys the essence of the experience in a way that made it real for me. He suffers through this experience (and never goes back), and has a dinner party that night where we are introduced to his best friend Geir. I really enjoyed the character of Geir (apparently a common first name in Norway, but this is the first time I heard it) and his almost diametrically opposed viewpoints to Karl Ove. I kind of envied their friendship actually.
The writing veers off quite often into philosophical and artistic tangents. When describing Geir's book about Boxers which he particularly appreciated, he makes some interesting observations:
"In abstract reality I could create an identity, and identity made from opinions; in concrete reality, I was who I was, a body, a gaze, a voice. This is where all independence is rooted. Including independent thought. Geir's book was not only about independence, it was also enacted within its terms of reference. He described what he saw with his own eyes, what he heard with his own ears, and when he tried to describe what he saw and heard, it was by becoming a part of it." (p. 128) I think this is one of the insights that he had that led him to write Min Kamp after finishing his second book, to become part of his own story in a sense.
In this book, we learn a bit more about his domestic life and it turns out that he is quite the cook. I loved how he described cooking for the dinner party: "The water was boiling, and I added the tagliatelle. The oil in the two pots was spitting in the heat. I sliced some garlic and put it in, took the mussels from the sink, dropped them in and placed the lid on top. Soon it began to rumble and road. I poured in the white wine, chopped some parsley and sprinkled it in, took the mussels off the hot plate after a few minutes, put the tagliatelle in a colander, fetched the pesto and everything was ready." (p. 287) I wish that I could cook like this, because he makes it all sound so simple!
Still in the same frame with an 8-month old Vanja, he is at a restaurant with her and having a hard time eating without her fussing and pushing his food off the table.
"I leaned over and rummaged through the bag to see if there was something that might keep her occupied for a few minutes.
A tin lunch box, would that do the trick?
I removed the cookies and put them on the edge of the table, then place the box in front of her, took out my keys and dropped them in.
Objects that rattled and you could take out and put down were just what she needed. Satisfied with my solution, I sat at the table and began to eat.(p. 380). This all sounds, again, so simple and banal, but if you are a father of a small kid, this is precisely the minute to minute things you have to deal with when you continue trying to live your life while being a dad.
In another parenthesis, we learn about how Karl Ove initially met Linda and I will spare you the description of his violent reaction to being unable to connect with her then. You'll need to read it for yourself. However, she also went through a difficult period which she explains to them during a walk which is so pleasantly described: "We had joined the path running alongside the lake and into the forest. The wind had laid bare great swathes of ice. In places it was as shiny as glass and reflected the dark sky like a mirror, in others it was grey, greeenish and grainy, like frozen slush. Now that the train had passed and the warning bell had stopped ringing there was almost complete silence in the forest. Just some rustling and cracking as branches rubbed or the occassional thwack. The squeaking of the stroller wheels, our own brittle footsteps.>"(p. 419). I find this writing with the onomatopoeia of "thwack" so invocative and feel like I am gliding through the forest listening as a voyeur to their conversation. Perhaps it is precisely that Big Brother/voyeuristic kind of feeling that makes his writing so addictive. This particular walk in the forest continues as KOK thinks about color: "The soft whiteness and the gaping blackness both were perfectly still, all was completely motionless, and it was impossible not to be reminded of how much of what surrounded us was dead, how little of it all was actually alive and how much space the living occupied inside us." (p. 420-421) This passage reminded me of his monologue about death at the beginning of Book 1 and serves to demonstrate how despite being broken into six books with connecting themes, this is a complete and coherent oeuvre.
A few pages later, he is on a visit to his family in Norway for his mother's birthday and Vanja's christening and this makes him philosophical once again.
"...but if on occasion we were to raise our gaze to this, the only possible thought was one of incomprehension and impotence, for in fact how small and trivial was the world we allowed ourselves to be lulled by? Yes, of course, the dramas we saw were magnificent, the images we internalized sublime and sometimes also apocalyptic, but be honest, slaves, what part did we play in them?
None.
But the stars twinkle above our heads, the sun shines, the grass grows and the earth, yes, the earth, it swallows all life and eradicates all vestiges of it, spews out new life in a cascade of limbs and eyes, leaves and nail, hair and tails, cheeks and fur and guts, and swallows it up again. And what we never really comprehend, or don't want to comprehend, is that this only happens outside us, that we ourselves have no part in it, that we are only that which grows and dies, as blind as the waves in the sea are blind."(p. 435) That is about as precise a statement of my own atheistic, existentialist viewpoint as I could possibly describe and using language which is not high falutin', but down to earth. Rolling in the mud actually.
Later, he is out purchasing books for the research into A Time for Everything: "Some months ago I had seen a picture of some Indians in a canoe. They were paddling across a lake, in the bows was a man dressed like a bird with its wings outstretched. The picture penetrated all the layers of conceptions I had about Indians, everything I had read in books and comics and seen in films, straight through to reality: they had existed. They had indeed lived their lives with their totem poles, spears, bows and arrows, alone on an enormous continent, blissfully unaware that lives other than theirs were not only possible but also existed. It was a fantastic thought."(p. 489) I love how this extract describes his thoughts and how he stacks his frames of perception. That is truly what this work is about, I think, different frames of perception about his life, and his describing of it to us. It cannot possibly be 100% true because he is describing events years in the past and therefore there must be inaccuracies, but this is his perception of his own reality that he is unveiling to us as readers, and it is intimate and exciting to read.
The book ends after he finishes the second book and has started to form a few ideas of an autobiographical work (the one we are reading naturally) and I also, as an aspiring writer, appreciated the work ethic of four pages a day regardless of the quality. That does describe how difficult it is to write to a "t".
I truly enjoyed this book and am looking forward to read about his childhood in Book 3.
Fino's KOK Reviews:
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6
A Time For Everything
The writing veers off quite often into philosophical and artistic tangents. When describing Geir's book about Boxers which he particularly appreciated, he makes some interesting observations:
"In abstract reality I could create an identity, and identity made from opinions; in concrete reality, I was who I was, a body, a gaze, a voice. This is where all independence is rooted. Including independent thought. Geir's book was not only about independence, it was also enacted within its terms of reference. He described what he saw with his own eyes, what he heard with his own ears, and when he tried to describe what he saw and heard, it was by becoming a part of it." (p. 128) I think this is one of the insights that he had that led him to write Min Kamp after finishing his second book, to become part of his own story in a sense.
In this book, we learn a bit more about his domestic life and it turns out that he is quite the cook. I loved how he described cooking for the dinner party: "The water was boiling, and I added the tagliatelle. The oil in the two pots was spitting in the heat. I sliced some garlic and put it in, took the mussels from the sink, dropped them in and placed the lid on top. Soon it began to rumble and road. I poured in the white wine, chopped some parsley and sprinkled it in, took the mussels off the hot plate after a few minutes, put the tagliatelle in a colander, fetched the pesto and everything was ready." (p. 287) I wish that I could cook like this, because he makes it all sound so simple!
Still in the same frame with an 8-month old Vanja, he is at a restaurant with her and having a hard time eating without her fussing and pushing his food off the table.
"I leaned over and rummaged through the bag to see if there was something that might keep her occupied for a few minutes.
A tin lunch box, would that do the trick?
I removed the cookies and put them on the edge of the table, then place the box in front of her, took out my keys and dropped them in.
Objects that rattled and you could take out and put down were just what she needed. Satisfied with my solution, I sat at the table and began to eat.(p. 380). This all sounds, again, so simple and banal, but if you are a father of a small kid, this is precisely the minute to minute things you have to deal with when you continue trying to live your life while being a dad.
In another parenthesis, we learn about how Karl Ove initially met Linda and I will spare you the description of his violent reaction to being unable to connect with her then. You'll need to read it for yourself. However, she also went through a difficult period which she explains to them during a walk which is so pleasantly described: "We had joined the path running alongside the lake and into the forest. The wind had laid bare great swathes of ice. In places it was as shiny as glass and reflected the dark sky like a mirror, in others it was grey, greeenish and grainy, like frozen slush. Now that the train had passed and the warning bell had stopped ringing there was almost complete silence in the forest. Just some rustling and cracking as branches rubbed or the occassional thwack. The squeaking of the stroller wheels, our own brittle footsteps.>"(p. 419). I find this writing with the onomatopoeia of "thwack" so invocative and feel like I am gliding through the forest listening as a voyeur to their conversation. Perhaps it is precisely that Big Brother/voyeuristic kind of feeling that makes his writing so addictive. This particular walk in the forest continues as KOK thinks about color: "The soft whiteness and the gaping blackness both were perfectly still, all was completely motionless, and it was impossible not to be reminded of how much of what surrounded us was dead, how little of it all was actually alive and how much space the living occupied inside us." (p. 420-421) This passage reminded me of his monologue about death at the beginning of Book 1 and serves to demonstrate how despite being broken into six books with connecting themes, this is a complete and coherent oeuvre.
A few pages later, he is on a visit to his family in Norway for his mother's birthday and Vanja's christening and this makes him philosophical once again.
"...but if on occasion we were to raise our gaze to this, the only possible thought was one of incomprehension and impotence, for in fact how small and trivial was the world we allowed ourselves to be lulled by? Yes, of course, the dramas we saw were magnificent, the images we internalized sublime and sometimes also apocalyptic, but be honest, slaves, what part did we play in them?
None.
But the stars twinkle above our heads, the sun shines, the grass grows and the earth, yes, the earth, it swallows all life and eradicates all vestiges of it, spews out new life in a cascade of limbs and eyes, leaves and nail, hair and tails, cheeks and fur and guts, and swallows it up again. And what we never really comprehend, or don't want to comprehend, is that this only happens outside us, that we ourselves have no part in it, that we are only that which grows and dies, as blind as the waves in the sea are blind."(p. 435) That is about as precise a statement of my own atheistic, existentialist viewpoint as I could possibly describe and using language which is not high falutin', but down to earth. Rolling in the mud actually.
Later, he is out purchasing books for the research into A Time for Everything: "Some months ago I had seen a picture of some Indians in a canoe. They were paddling across a lake, in the bows was a man dressed like a bird with its wings outstretched. The picture penetrated all the layers of conceptions I had about Indians, everything I had read in books and comics and seen in films, straight through to reality: they had existed. They had indeed lived their lives with their totem poles, spears, bows and arrows, alone on an enormous continent, blissfully unaware that lives other than theirs were not only possible but also existed. It was a fantastic thought."(p. 489) I love how this extract describes his thoughts and how he stacks his frames of perception. That is truly what this work is about, I think, different frames of perception about his life, and his describing of it to us. It cannot possibly be 100% true because he is describing events years in the past and therefore there must be inaccuracies, but this is his perception of his own reality that he is unveiling to us as readers, and it is intimate and exciting to read.
The book ends after he finishes the second book and has started to form a few ideas of an autobiographical work (the one we are reading naturally) and I also, as an aspiring writer, appreciated the work ethic of four pages a day regardless of the quality. That does describe how difficult it is to write to a "t".
I truly enjoyed this book and am looking forward to read about his childhood in Book 3.
Fino's KOK Reviews:
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6
A Time For Everything
January 21, 2023
How the hell does Karl Ove (I feel as though we are best friends now) pull this off? No way should he be managing this. I loved the first magnum, despite the downward spiral of a dying alcoholic father, and now I'm giving highest marks to the follow-up opus as well. Four more books are promised to come. I don't doubt it. The man can go on and on and on to the point where detractors might equate his diary-like approach to a diarrhea-like one (only with words, thank you).
I like Book Two despite the fact that the first 80 pp. read like a Mr. Mom rant, despite the fact that the book just ends randomly (or, as the big shots like to write, in media res), and despite the fact that most of the 573 pp. consist of mundane daily existence. It's like a literary reality show, an intellectual soap opera, a blow-by-blow follow-the-author Big Brother live cam from Scandinavia.
So, what gives? I have to think about this. A lot of little things are at work, and a few big ones. Voice, of course. He's hitting the right note, even if I don't quite know what note that is (sharp, flat, whatever). The setting (mostly Sweden here, as opposed to Norway in Book One) gives him ample canvas to paint on, too. Speaking of, he knows a lot about painters. And writers.
And I like to listen to him blather on with opinions about both, just as I love to read Hemingway when he goes on and on about books and writers and painters. And speaking of Hemingway, Knausgard likes to write about drinking just like the big-bearded lug. A little-bearded lug, Karl Ove's picture makes me wonder how he's still standing. By the looks of him, he could keel over any second. Liquor and cigarettes can give you that collapsible, desiccated look. Watch out for stiff Scandinavian breezes, is my advice.
But seriously, a review of some sort at least. It's not a novel. An autobiography, maybe -- or "memoir," which allows for novelistic liberties. Much easier to invent stuff when the stuff is breaking out all around you. And quite a conceit. Not only Proust, but Rousseau would be proud. And so many others who have written Karl Odes to Themselves. You get a lot of young husband-wife bickering here and much ado about bringing up babies. First, though, a Moby Dick-like birthing scene for Baby One. Wife Linda screams for 30 pp..
But more interesting to me (my kids are grown up) was the banter with his best friend Geir. This guy is yin to Karl Ove's yang. Where Karl Ove is withdrawn, a Romantic, and one to avoid conflict, Geir is outgoing, a Realist, and happy to engage (even taking a "vacation" in Iraq!). More interesting still, Geir is a boxer and intellectual. Neat combination, that. And, meeting over beer, aquavit, grappa, or whatever, these two talk about everything under the sun -- mostly the Scandinavian sun, but that's cool, too. You learn a lot about Scandinavian literature (and I love Hamsun, anyway).
So yeah, that. It's kind of like the upside of college, the days you stayed up late and argued passionately about intellectual stuff. Karl Ove still enjoys that with his pals (few as they are), and we get ringside seats. I jotted down names of painters, musicians, poets, novelists, etc., out of sheer curiosity. Unfortunately, many of them are not translated into English.
In the end, then, the Diary of an Everyday Life only works if you care, if your temperament matches Knausgard's, and if you like minutiae and a writer not only willing but dying to digress. He picks up colors and textures and sensory details nicely, too. In that sense and in those scenes, he shows similarities with Tolstoy.
Speaking of Tolstoy and similarities, we might as well throw solipsism in the mix. Knausgard's ruminations on death -- the death of ME, specifically -- admits to us all that he is the center of his universe and not afraid to say so. He almost seems to be saying, "Do you dare to deny that you are the center of YOURS? Who cares what will become of the world. For all intents and purposes, It ends when you do!"
And like Knausgard's book does. Randomly.
I like Book Two despite the fact that the first 80 pp. read like a Mr. Mom rant, despite the fact that the book just ends randomly (or, as the big shots like to write, in media res), and despite the fact that most of the 573 pp. consist of mundane daily existence. It's like a literary reality show, an intellectual soap opera, a blow-by-blow follow-the-author Big Brother live cam from Scandinavia.
So, what gives? I have to think about this. A lot of little things are at work, and a few big ones. Voice, of course. He's hitting the right note, even if I don't quite know what note that is (sharp, flat, whatever). The setting (mostly Sweden here, as opposed to Norway in Book One) gives him ample canvas to paint on, too. Speaking of, he knows a lot about painters. And writers.
And I like to listen to him blather on with opinions about both, just as I love to read Hemingway when he goes on and on about books and writers and painters. And speaking of Hemingway, Knausgard likes to write about drinking just like the big-bearded lug. A little-bearded lug, Karl Ove's picture makes me wonder how he's still standing. By the looks of him, he could keel over any second. Liquor and cigarettes can give you that collapsible, desiccated look. Watch out for stiff Scandinavian breezes, is my advice.
But seriously, a review of some sort at least. It's not a novel. An autobiography, maybe -- or "memoir," which allows for novelistic liberties. Much easier to invent stuff when the stuff is breaking out all around you. And quite a conceit. Not only Proust, but Rousseau would be proud. And so many others who have written Karl Odes to Themselves. You get a lot of young husband-wife bickering here and much ado about bringing up babies. First, though, a Moby Dick-like birthing scene for Baby One. Wife Linda screams for 30 pp..
But more interesting to me (my kids are grown up) was the banter with his best friend Geir. This guy is yin to Karl Ove's yang. Where Karl Ove is withdrawn, a Romantic, and one to avoid conflict, Geir is outgoing, a Realist, and happy to engage (even taking a "vacation" in Iraq!). More interesting still, Geir is a boxer and intellectual. Neat combination, that. And, meeting over beer, aquavit, grappa, or whatever, these two talk about everything under the sun -- mostly the Scandinavian sun, but that's cool, too. You learn a lot about Scandinavian literature (and I love Hamsun, anyway).
So yeah, that. It's kind of like the upside of college, the days you stayed up late and argued passionately about intellectual stuff. Karl Ove still enjoys that with his pals (few as they are), and we get ringside seats. I jotted down names of painters, musicians, poets, novelists, etc., out of sheer curiosity. Unfortunately, many of them are not translated into English.
In the end, then, the Diary of an Everyday Life only works if you care, if your temperament matches Knausgard's, and if you like minutiae and a writer not only willing but dying to digress. He picks up colors and textures and sensory details nicely, too. In that sense and in those scenes, he shows similarities with Tolstoy.
Speaking of Tolstoy and similarities, we might as well throw solipsism in the mix. Knausgard's ruminations on death -- the death of ME, specifically -- admits to us all that he is the center of his universe and not afraid to say so. He almost seems to be saying, "Do you dare to deny that you are the center of YOURS? Who cares what will become of the world. For all intents and purposes, It ends when you do!"
And like Knausgard's book does. Randomly.
March 8, 2015
I really, really, really loved the first one of these, but I did not love this one. It was at times a... slog to get through. There were some great moments and I'm glad I finished it, because it ended strong, but the majority fell into the risky trap of this project, and read to me like excerpts from a self-absorbed parenting blog detailing what life is like as a successful writer with a family in Sweden (spoiler alert: in the absence of any other worries -- medical bills, say, or the need to do unpleasant work for a living, Scandinavians have the leisure to spend days purchasing books and contemplating how miserable they are). Sweden does sound annoying in that too-good-to-be-tolerable way, sort of like Portland but with socialized medicine and an entire class of people gainfully employed in producing culture. Plus too dark and cold. Anyway. My current life is somewhat similar to the one described by Knausgård, minus the success and people dropping by regularly to tell me how brilliant and talented and good-looking I am. I too am stuck home with a baby, and while in one way this made the book more interesting than it would've been otherwise, in another it made me wonder why I should bother reading about his, when I have plenty of Struggles of my own (yes, I get that that's the point, but it didn't stop me from wondering it).
I kept trying to decide why I loved the first one but didn't really have the patience for this. Part of it is that bourgie creative-class life in present-day (or very recent) Stockholm just isn't nearly as interesting to me as life growing up in Norway in the seventies; there wasn't magic in this one, as there was in the first, except in a few rare moments and then at the end. The first book transcended the mundane casually, habitually, pretty much constantly, while the second was the opposite: we got stuck with much less fascinating characters, in an infinitely less compelling landscape, for hundreds and hundreds of pages. Clearly this was the point, but again, knowing that didn't make it any more interesting to read.
My other problem -- and I hate admitting this, because I secretly think people are stupid when they demand likable characters, so this is me saying that I'm stupid -- was that I couldn't stand Knausgård or his partner or his friend or really anyone else in the book. Much as I'd love to be too high-minded to let this trouble me, in the absence of captivating plot, atmosphere, language, theme, etc., I am not and it did. His partner seemed miserable, he seemed like a dick, and I just kept being like, "Will you unhappy whining people please stop having more children?" which, yes, again, I do get that that's the point but it didn't make this any more of a pleasure to read. I know this makes me sound like a moron, but there were all these times when he would say something gross about, say, a disabled person, or American Indians, or the time he smashed a poor furry bat with a brick (I love bats), and I'd just be like, "Why am I doing this dick the courtesy of inhabiting his head?" This dramatized a tension that's always made me uncomfortable: that as a reader, you're having an intimate experience with a person who is more than likely not someone you'd ever spend actual time with, being as a lot of writers are socially anxious weirdos, arrogant assholes, or just not people I'd ever want to know, or who'd ever want to know me. I learned pretty early on it was usually better to avoid meeting my favorite living writers, and even to avoid reading interviews with writers or other artists whose work had affected me, because their real-life personas were always disappointing in a way that disturbed my relationship with their work. Knausgård is aware of and interested in this, and he forces the issue by being the subject of his book, and by being obsessively self-reflexive about the question of what others (including us, his readers) think of him.
Writing this review is making me realize that many of the things that made this book interesting were the things that made it not much fun to read. However, I am a casual ditcher of books I don't enjoy but I stuck this one out, and on some level I did feel my struggle was worth it. The ending, when he returns to Norway and then starts writing the first book, is at points almost unspeakably beautiful. And, being me, I cried at the end. There are some things he's doing here that are great, and in themselves worthwhile. I haven't decided yet if I'll keep going to number three... probably I will, though after a long pause. This took me forever to get through but I wouldn't let myself start new novels until I finished it, so I've got a major backlog of books that aren't about Karl Ove Knausgård's struggle, and I'm looking forward to reading some of those.
I kept trying to decide why I loved the first one but didn't really have the patience for this. Part of it is that bourgie creative-class life in present-day (or very recent) Stockholm just isn't nearly as interesting to me as life growing up in Norway in the seventies; there wasn't magic in this one, as there was in the first, except in a few rare moments and then at the end. The first book transcended the mundane casually, habitually, pretty much constantly, while the second was the opposite: we got stuck with much less fascinating characters, in an infinitely less compelling landscape, for hundreds and hundreds of pages. Clearly this was the point, but again, knowing that didn't make it any more interesting to read.
My other problem -- and I hate admitting this, because I secretly think people are stupid when they demand likable characters, so this is me saying that I'm stupid -- was that I couldn't stand Knausgård or his partner or his friend or really anyone else in the book. Much as I'd love to be too high-minded to let this trouble me, in the absence of captivating plot, atmosphere, language, theme, etc., I am not and it did. His partner seemed miserable, he seemed like a dick, and I just kept being like, "Will you unhappy whining people please stop having more children?" which, yes, again, I do get that that's the point but it didn't make this any more of a pleasure to read. I know this makes me sound like a moron, but there were all these times when he would say something gross about, say, a disabled person, or American Indians, or the time he smashed a poor furry bat with a brick (I love bats), and I'd just be like, "Why am I doing this dick the courtesy of inhabiting his head?" This dramatized a tension that's always made me uncomfortable: that as a reader, you're having an intimate experience with a person who is more than likely not someone you'd ever spend actual time with, being as a lot of writers are socially anxious weirdos, arrogant assholes, or just not people I'd ever want to know, or who'd ever want to know me. I learned pretty early on it was usually better to avoid meeting my favorite living writers, and even to avoid reading interviews with writers or other artists whose work had affected me, because their real-life personas were always disappointing in a way that disturbed my relationship with their work. Knausgård is aware of and interested in this, and he forces the issue by being the subject of his book, and by being obsessively self-reflexive about the question of what others (including us, his readers) think of him.
Writing this review is making me realize that many of the things that made this book interesting were the things that made it not much fun to read. However, I am a casual ditcher of books I don't enjoy but I stuck this one out, and on some level I did feel my struggle was worth it. The ending, when he returns to Norway and then starts writing the first book, is at points almost unspeakably beautiful. And, being me, I cried at the end. There are some things he's doing here that are great, and in themselves worthwhile. I haven't decided yet if I'll keep going to number three... probably I will, though after a long pause. This took me forever to get through but I wouldn't let myself start new novels until I finished it, so I've got a major backlog of books that aren't about Karl Ove Knausgård's struggle, and I'm looking forward to reading some of those.
March 26, 2018
"The Epic Side of Truth, Wisdom"
Feel like my soul has turned into steel / I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal "Not Dark Yet," Bob Dylan, 1997
Prior to reading this, I was skeptical about reading a roman à clef based loosely on the author's life? Could he succeed in depicting a seemingly ordinary life as interesting enough to fill 4/5/6 volumes? Is he the Scandinavian equivalent of the fat-head fiction writers churned out from MFA programs across the nation to dazzle the cognoscenti with a woeful memoir of M.y F.abulous A.gony, or, worse, a supercilious philosophizing intellectual boor who'll shortly lose the reader in his quest to bless the world with intelligence and Mensa mysticism?
I skimmed several reviews prior to concluding my worries were misplaced and that Volume 2 (subtitled "A Man in Love") seemed the best place to start the 6-volume set. Note: each novel is self-contained so you can start with any volume and need not fear being sucked into reading any of the other 5 volumes; though, if you're like me, you'll want to read at least one more.
Knausgard's writing style is so honest, hypnotic, addictive, enduring, cozing. It's not arrogant, hyper-intellectual or ranting. One reviewer even complemented it as "unliterary." Reading this was like having over to an anodyne dinner a bright, congenial, ordinary fellow (who's also a world-wise Norwegian artist) sit down and converse with you "on the level" for hours, discussing ordinary things that happen in the course of life to us all, in varied forms, such as falling in (and out of) love, in-laws, parents, pets, neighbors, child-rearing, reading books, being forced to attend a party where you only know a few people and otherwise by those you despise, living quarters, career moves, traveling, restaurants, music, sports, work, old loves, old friends, returning to the place you grew up. There seems no subject he'll deign to discuss, yet he's never boring. You'll want to keep buying him more drinks to beg him to stay.
His explanation for writing this monumental work is found, I think, in this passage:
Knausgaard incredibly winkles the extraordinary out of the ordinary as if it were pearls from oysters. And, he does so in such a way that's "more real than reality." [Italy's La Republica] Some examples that are typical in his tale of falling in love with and having children with his current wife:
Feel like my soul has turned into steel / I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal "Not Dark Yet," Bob Dylan, 1997
Prior to reading this, I was skeptical about reading a roman à clef based loosely on the author's life? Could he succeed in depicting a seemingly ordinary life as interesting enough to fill 4/5/6 volumes? Is he the Scandinavian equivalent of the fat-head fiction writers churned out from MFA programs across the nation to dazzle the cognoscenti with a woeful memoir of M.y F.abulous A.gony, or, worse, a supercilious philosophizing intellectual boor who'll shortly lose the reader in his quest to bless the world with intelligence and Mensa mysticism?
I skimmed several reviews prior to concluding my worries were misplaced and that Volume 2 (subtitled "A Man in Love") seemed the best place to start the 6-volume set. Note: each novel is self-contained so you can start with any volume and need not fear being sucked into reading any of the other 5 volumes; though, if you're like me, you'll want to read at least one more.
Knausgard's writing style is so honest, hypnotic, addictive, enduring, cozing. It's not arrogant, hyper-intellectual or ranting. One reviewer even complemented it as "unliterary." Reading this was like having over to an anodyne dinner a bright, congenial, ordinary fellow (who's also a world-wise Norwegian artist) sit down and converse with you "on the level" for hours, discussing ordinary things that happen in the course of life to us all, in varied forms, such as falling in (and out of) love, in-laws, parents, pets, neighbors, child-rearing, reading books, being forced to attend a party where you only know a few people and otherwise by those you despise, living quarters, career moves, traveling, restaurants, music, sports, work, old loves, old friends, returning to the place you grew up. There seems no subject he'll deign to discuss, yet he's never boring. You'll want to keep buying him more drinks to beg him to stay.
His explanation for writing this monumental work is found, I think, in this passage:
The only genres I saw value in, which still conferred meaning, were diaries and essays, the types of literature that did not deal with narrative, that . . . just consisted of a voice, the voice of your own personality, a life, a face, a gaze you could meet. What is a work of art if not the gaze of another person? Not directed above us, nor beneath us, but at the same height as our own gaze. Art cannot be experienced collectively, nothing can, art is something you are alone with. You meet its gaze alone.Knausgaard reifies Socrates' famous quote that the "unexamined life is not worth living." With attention to fine detail and genuine inquisitiveness of both the significant and the mundane, he helps the reader, too, find the richness in life, revealing that, quoting Henry Miller, "we have only to open up to discover what is already there." Reading this book (or any of the other volumes) is a particularly helpful exercise for the young writer in showing not telling.
Knausgaard incredibly winkles the extraordinary out of the ordinary as if it were pearls from oysters. And, he does so in such a way that's "more real than reality." [Italy's La Republica] Some examples that are typical in his tale of falling in love with and having children with his current wife:
What was it that Rilke wrote? That music raised him out of himself, and never returned him to where it had found him, but to a deeper place, somewhere in the unfinished."I concur with the assessment by the New Yorker's reviewer that Knausgaard has hit on "the epic side of truth, wisdom."
***
I have no problem with uninteresting or unoriginal people--they may have other, more important attributes, such as warmth, consideration, friendliness, a sense of humor or talents such as being able to make a conversation flow to generate an atmosphere of ease around them, or the ability to make a family function--but I feel almost physically ill in the presence of boring people who consider themselves especially interesting and who blow their own trumpets."
***
But what do you say to have any impact on a man who at one time admired the Spice Girls?
March 27, 2023
Re-editing of my review of 5 years ago)
What’s the matter with Knausgard? What game is he playing with us? Part 1 of his series bears the title "Father", and that father certainly is present, but rather as a threatening shadow than as an acting person, and in this Part 2 the title is "A Man in Love", but almost constantly it is about divorces between people and quarrels between Karl Ove and his wife Linda.
Of course, this second part also contains very endearing passages: about falling in love, about the caring relationship between Karl Ove and his children. But the focus is on the inability that the author acknowledges in himself to really love and give priority to the people he actually loves. Once again, Karl Ove is portrayed as a rather unsympathetic person, who drinks lavishly, does not stick to what he agreed to, and is engrossed by nostalgia and restlessness. There is only one passion that always returns and he stays true to: writing. But even in that one passion there’s continual doubt about whether it is really good what he puts on paper, and he constantly compares himself (to his disadvantage) to other, greater Scandinavian writers.
As in the first part, long drawn-out descriptions of trivial activities (shopping, taking care of the children, walking the streets, table conversations) alternate with sometimes pertinent considerations about parenting, intense poignant scenes (the whole description of the birth of his first child, for instance), in-depth character analyses of friends and family members and atmospheric place descriptions. And then there are the striking incongruences: contradictions between scenes in the first part and those in this part; does Knausgard consciously wants us to believe he is an unreliable narrator? Also some difference in the quality of the writing is very noticeable: some passages are clearly written sloppily, without obvious meaning, while others are real stylistic gems.
Knausgard continues to intrigue, I keep on wondering where all this is heading to, so he surely got under my skin.
(In the meanwhile I read the whole series, and eventually it became clear what a formidable self-reflexive exploit this whole cycle is. Not every part is toplevel, but Knausgards excruciating way of looking at reality - especially his own behavior - truly is mesmerizing. See my other reviews, or my global review: My Struggle I-VI)
What’s the matter with Knausgard? What game is he playing with us? Part 1 of his series bears the title "Father", and that father certainly is present, but rather as a threatening shadow than as an acting person, and in this Part 2 the title is "A Man in Love", but almost constantly it is about divorces between people and quarrels between Karl Ove and his wife Linda.
Of course, this second part also contains very endearing passages: about falling in love, about the caring relationship between Karl Ove and his children. But the focus is on the inability that the author acknowledges in himself to really love and give priority to the people he actually loves. Once again, Karl Ove is portrayed as a rather unsympathetic person, who drinks lavishly, does not stick to what he agreed to, and is engrossed by nostalgia and restlessness. There is only one passion that always returns and he stays true to: writing. But even in that one passion there’s continual doubt about whether it is really good what he puts on paper, and he constantly compares himself (to his disadvantage) to other, greater Scandinavian writers.
As in the first part, long drawn-out descriptions of trivial activities (shopping, taking care of the children, walking the streets, table conversations) alternate with sometimes pertinent considerations about parenting, intense poignant scenes (the whole description of the birth of his first child, for instance), in-depth character analyses of friends and family members and atmospheric place descriptions. And then there are the striking incongruences: contradictions between scenes in the first part and those in this part; does Knausgard consciously wants us to believe he is an unreliable narrator? Also some difference in the quality of the writing is very noticeable: some passages are clearly written sloppily, without obvious meaning, while others are real stylistic gems.
Knausgard continues to intrigue, I keep on wondering where all this is heading to, so he surely got under my skin.
(In the meanwhile I read the whole series, and eventually it became clear what a formidable self-reflexive exploit this whole cycle is. Not every part is toplevel, but Knausgards excruciating way of looking at reality - especially his own behavior - truly is mesmerizing. See my other reviews, or my global review: My Struggle I-VI)
September 19, 2020
Sjećam se samo šačice epizoda iz sopstvenog djetinjstva, a svima njima sam pridavao značaj i smatrao ih prekretnicama, ali sada vidim da su se kupale u moru drugih događaja, što potpuno briše njihov smisao, jer kako mogu da znam da su baš ti događaji koje pamtim odlučujući, a ne ostali o kojima ništa ne znam?
Drugi tom Karl Uvea je kao med; u početku je slatko, ali sve što ga više jedeš on postaje sve gorči. Postoji neka prostranost i privlačnost u njegovoj prozi koja čitaoca čini budnim i zaokupljenim. Njegov humor nije izložen, već ga same peripetije porodičnog života kristališu i on tako mjestimice svjetluca pod plaštom apsurda. Dekadencija u Švedskoj mije ovom knjigom kao rijeka, prodorna i prazna, često i bolna.
U drugom tomu Moja borba, Uve opisuje porodični život usred grada. Buka stanara, vreva na ulicama, nepodnošljivost, to gušenje koje jedna metropola izaziva kod čovjeka svakako neće izostaviti ni porodicu Uve. ,,Ova zemlja nije normalna!" jednom će pisac uzviknuti, i kako se događaji budu nizali tako će nenormalnost postati ustaljenost u njegovom životu. Ova knjiga nekako meteorološki talasa, čas je oblačno čas se razvedrava. Uveovo prvo dijete, Vanja, zauzima zaista krasne momente u ovoj knjizi. Pažljivi i niježni momenti, a nehotice i spontani događaji s njom brišu sve sumorne trenutke. Kada se ona pojavi, prošlost i ono što dolazi je nevažno. Vrijeme u knjizi često će biti ispunjeno pažnjom i toplinom prema njoj. Njegova žena Linda je takođe heroina ove knjige. Njegovi zanimljivi razgovori sa prijateljem Gejrom i još mnogo toga čine ovu knjigu širom i dinamičnijom.
Uve je estetski nihilista. Njegova svaka riječ je odmjerena, duboka, pažljivo pripremljena i koja iz topa ispucana prodire kroz srca čitalaca. Bez obzira na porodicu, čitalac će da se s topi s piščevom borbom u svakodnevnoj rutini ispraznih dešavanja. ,,Sve je jedno, jedno te isto." Karl Uve stalno bježi od života, želi da bude stepski vuk i da iz druge perspektive posmatra sebe i ono što čini. Da ode u samoću koja ne čuje.
November 10, 2015
A Man in Love
"The fact that paintings and, to some extent, photographs were so important for me had something to do with this. They contained no words, no concepts, and when I looked at them what I experienced, what made them so important, was also non conceptual. There was something stupid in this, an area that was completely devoid of intelligence, which I had difficulty acknowledgng or accepting, yet which perhaps was the most important single element of what I wanted to do."
-- Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle Book 2
Sometimes writing a review of a book is just about marking the space, staking the ground, scratching the wall with hard chalk. I swim back and forth about how I feel about Knausgaard. Hell, I swim back and forth about whether I want to spell his last name Knausgaard or Knausgård. Right now I don't feel strongly either way. Completely ambivalent. Sometimes, I think Karl Ove's art is his huge capacity for being pretentious and narcissistic, but (just to be fair) I also think the same thing about most artists. There is something about the personality of an artist that IS by their nature selfish, demanding, exhibitionist: crying for notice, for acclaim, for some distant other to meet their gaze, catch their pitch, experience their trip. I think of the story of Picasso's daughter showing him her beautiful new shoes, and he takes them and paints them and makes her cry.
And I mean all this ego art as a good thing. I guess what, for me, sets Karl Ove apart from other fiction artists/authors is he exposes (or at least wants us to THINK he exposes) a lot more about his life in his art. His self is stylized, but not hidden. He isn't hiding his ego behind another character. He makes his ego a character. He isn't trying to hide his flaws (and boy sometimes there seems to be buckets of flaws) or those of his family (see Linda) or friends. He uses those weaknesses like a painter uses shadow or a carpenter uses sandpaper.
His prose seems to jump between three styles:
1: Hyper-detailed narrative about his life. This isn't a straight narrative. He will jump back and forth in time. He starts with three kids, backs up to before he meets Linda, progresses through courting, marriage, babies, and during this journey forward will occasionally run back in time as he recalls events or situations that add to his current narrative. Anyway, this style is the bulk of the book and allows for very descriptive accounts of fights with his wife, struggles with family members, trips, walks, meals, etc. It is like he took his journal/diary and just tossed it in and expanded it.
2. Excursions into philosophy. In the middle of an event in his life, Karl Ove will suddenly digress and spend 3-10 pages discoursing on literature, painting, angels, life, death, children.
3. Excursions into nature/city. Not only does he take walks, but any movement might lead Karl Ove into a journey into a sunset, swarm of birds, buildings, beach, clouds. He is painting with words, trying to capture in words what a Turner or one of his photographer friends might capture with a lens.
4. Discussions with friends (mainly his close friend Gier). These parts accomplish the same things as 2, but as a dialogue with counterpoints instead of a straight inner monologue.
So, here I sit 1/3 (or two books) into 'My Struggle' and not yet tired of it. My feelings for these books ebb (Franzen at his worst) and flow (Proust at his best) depending on the prose and my own mood. At times, when I'm feeling great and the book seems to be on fleek, it all ends up being a groove I was meant to slide down (++), but there are times when the prose seem to be working fine, but I'm just not feeling it (+-) or when the prose kinds stinks, but I seem not to mind very much (-+). Thankfully, there have been very few instances where me and the novel seem to be mired at the same time (--). I might have lost faith (at times) in Knausgård as a person, but not in what he has written (yet), and not yet in his role as an artist.
"Over recent years I had increasingly lost faith in literature. I read and thought this was something someone has made up. Perhaps it was because we were totally inundated with fiction and stories...The only genres I saw value in, which still conferred meaning, were diaries and essays, the types of literature that did not deal with narrative, that were not about anything, but just consisted of a voice, the voice of your own personality, a life, a face, a gaze you could meet. What is a work of art if not the gaze of another person? Not directed above us, nor beneath us, but at the same height as our own gaze. Art cannot be experienced collectively, nothing can, art is something you are alone with. You meet its gaze alone."/
-- Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle Book 2
"The fact that paintings and, to some extent, photographs were so important for me had something to do with this. They contained no words, no concepts, and when I looked at them what I experienced, what made them so important, was also non conceptual. There was something stupid in this, an area that was completely devoid of intelligence, which I had difficulty acknowledgng or accepting, yet which perhaps was the most important single element of what I wanted to do."
-- Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle Book 2
Sometimes writing a review of a book is just about marking the space, staking the ground, scratching the wall with hard chalk. I swim back and forth about how I feel about Knausgaard. Hell, I swim back and forth about whether I want to spell his last name Knausgaard or Knausgård. Right now I don't feel strongly either way. Completely ambivalent. Sometimes, I think Karl Ove's art is his huge capacity for being pretentious and narcissistic, but (just to be fair) I also think the same thing about most artists. There is something about the personality of an artist that IS by their nature selfish, demanding, exhibitionist: crying for notice, for acclaim, for some distant other to meet their gaze, catch their pitch, experience their trip. I think of the story of Picasso's daughter showing him her beautiful new shoes, and he takes them and paints them and makes her cry.
And I mean all this ego art as a good thing. I guess what, for me, sets Karl Ove apart from other fiction artists/authors is he exposes (or at least wants us to THINK he exposes) a lot more about his life in his art. His self is stylized, but not hidden. He isn't hiding his ego behind another character. He makes his ego a character. He isn't trying to hide his flaws (and boy sometimes there seems to be buckets of flaws) or those of his family (see Linda) or friends. He uses those weaknesses like a painter uses shadow or a carpenter uses sandpaper.
His prose seems to jump between three styles:
1: Hyper-detailed narrative about his life. This isn't a straight narrative. He will jump back and forth in time. He starts with three kids, backs up to before he meets Linda, progresses through courting, marriage, babies, and during this journey forward will occasionally run back in time as he recalls events or situations that add to his current narrative. Anyway, this style is the bulk of the book and allows for very descriptive accounts of fights with his wife, struggles with family members, trips, walks, meals, etc. It is like he took his journal/diary and just tossed it in and expanded it.
2. Excursions into philosophy. In the middle of an event in his life, Karl Ove will suddenly digress and spend 3-10 pages discoursing on literature, painting, angels, life, death, children.
3. Excursions into nature/city. Not only does he take walks, but any movement might lead Karl Ove into a journey into a sunset, swarm of birds, buildings, beach, clouds. He is painting with words, trying to capture in words what a Turner or one of his photographer friends might capture with a lens.
4. Discussions with friends (mainly his close friend Gier). These parts accomplish the same things as 2, but as a dialogue with counterpoints instead of a straight inner monologue.
So, here I sit 1/3 (or two books) into 'My Struggle' and not yet tired of it. My feelings for these books ebb (Franzen at his worst) and flow (Proust at his best) depending on the prose and my own mood. At times, when I'm feeling great and the book seems to be on fleek, it all ends up being a groove I was meant to slide down (++), but there are times when the prose seem to be working fine, but I'm just not feeling it (+-) or when the prose kinds stinks, but I seem not to mind very much (-+). Thankfully, there have been very few instances where me and the novel seem to be mired at the same time (--). I might have lost faith (at times) in Knausgård as a person, but not in what he has written (yet), and not yet in his role as an artist.
"Over recent years I had increasingly lost faith in literature. I read and thought this was something someone has made up. Perhaps it was because we were totally inundated with fiction and stories...The only genres I saw value in, which still conferred meaning, were diaries and essays, the types of literature that did not deal with narrative, that were not about anything, but just consisted of a voice, the voice of your own personality, a life, a face, a gaze you could meet. What is a work of art if not the gaze of another person? Not directed above us, nor beneath us, but at the same height as our own gaze. Art cannot be experienced collectively, nothing can, art is something you are alone with. You meet its gaze alone."/
-- Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle Book 2
May 15, 2021
My first impression of Karl Ove Knausgaard came from a black and white photograph published with a review of his book "A Time For Everything" in The New York Review of Books.
He is seen smoking against the rugged Norwegian landscape, hair disheveled, wearing an old, battered tee-shirt, lost in thought. Completely and unabashedly himself, yet ill at ease. Entirely present, feet deeply rooted in the present moment, yet his mind is clearly in flight, flickering at the surface of his gaze.
The striking portrait somehow encompasses all of the qualities of his writing: intense, raw, physical, elusive, inquisitive and elemental.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
What Knausgaard achieves in "My Struggle", his mad yet mesmerizing 6-volume autobiographical enterprise, is simply the most "real" depiction of the movements of the mind that I have ever read. A life told in its most boring minutiae and its most elemental highs and lows, as it moves from the most mundane to the most transcendent.
Knausgaard plays alongside Proust or Virginia Woolf in his desire to encapsulate all of his experience as a human being, a teenager, a son, a friend, a lover, a father but most of all: a writer. But he does it with even more urgency, more radicality, more anger and more modernity. An Everyman of the 21st century with a 17th century temperament.
The second volume of this autobiography, which tackles the fire and vagaries of love as well as the deep ambivalences that lie at the heart of domestic life and parenthood, is utterly engrossing.
My only sadness comes from the fact that I now have to wait another year before we get the third installment in English.
Read him, and listen to him below speak about Book 1, which deals with his youth and the death of his father, and he might very well change the way you look at the world around you and your own reaction to events.
http://youtu.be/1ODhM41VOYg
He is seen smoking against the rugged Norwegian landscape, hair disheveled, wearing an old, battered tee-shirt, lost in thought. Completely and unabashedly himself, yet ill at ease. Entirely present, feet deeply rooted in the present moment, yet his mind is clearly in flight, flickering at the surface of his gaze.
The striking portrait somehow encompasses all of the qualities of his writing: intense, raw, physical, elusive, inquisitive and elemental.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
What Knausgaard achieves in "My Struggle", his mad yet mesmerizing 6-volume autobiographical enterprise, is simply the most "real" depiction of the movements of the mind that I have ever read. A life told in its most boring minutiae and its most elemental highs and lows, as it moves from the most mundane to the most transcendent.
Knausgaard plays alongside Proust or Virginia Woolf in his desire to encapsulate all of his experience as a human being, a teenager, a son, a friend, a lover, a father but most of all: a writer. But he does it with even more urgency, more radicality, more anger and more modernity. An Everyman of the 21st century with a 17th century temperament.
The second volume of this autobiography, which tackles the fire and vagaries of love as well as the deep ambivalences that lie at the heart of domestic life and parenthood, is utterly engrossing.
My only sadness comes from the fact that I now have to wait another year before we get the third installment in English.
Read him, and listen to him below speak about Book 1, which deals with his youth and the death of his father, and he might very well change the way you look at the world around you and your own reaction to events.
http://youtu.be/1ODhM41VOYg
June 22, 2015
Book Two of My Struggle makes good on the promise of an ‘epic of the everyday’; toward the end of the book Karl Ove describes his idea of literature as a kind of participation in the gaze of another, how only diaries and essays continue to move him as works of literature because that is where one might come closest to inhabiting another’s gaze on the world, another’s purview onto being. Thus the book he begins to write, thus the book we hold in our hands. For even here among the ascetic, exhaustive disclosure of raw daily living we find metafiction at work. “The new sincerity” though? I can’t make the claim. People simply do not remember things in this way. Autobiographical fiction, yes… but sincere? I am in no position to qualify this. This is unmoored remembrance, digressionary autobiographical meanderings, extended maundering, with an emphasis on the creational aspect of dream-recall, because again no one remembers like this. The language is as spare as ever -it is my impression, correct or not, that not a single metaphor was employed throughout the entirety of these 600 pages. The sparseness, or attempt at a minimalist precision in the prose, at length can give the impression of a kind of austerity, severity, but the lie to this is given in unexpected moments of dark laughter and lengthy passages where the eye is cleared to apprehend the substructure of sublime beauty a landscape or a scene manifests. Karl Ove is especially susceptible to tempering his angst with a rejuvenation of the senses in a kind of nostalgic or aesthetic drawing-into the color of the sky, the twinkle of the stars, the inky night, the smell of a forest or salt water, the sound of waves, the sparkle of snow, the rhythms of a busy city, the mise-en-scene of a noisy gathering of people. The latter is where I can see a sort of similarity to Proust, though I still think it is a lazy critic who attempts to elucidate things about this project in terms of Proust, something else is at hand here. But there is a similar concentration on personality revealed during extended dialogue and miniscule observation from the narrator. Possible influences are revealed in this volume, Dostoevsky’s Underground Man and Hamsun being, to me, the clearest analogs. But mostly this is a book about a rootless man attempting to write while managing a marriage and children - the primary concern of this book is what it is like to be a father in his mid-thirties and the attempt to come to terms with what his life is. The impressive thing is that Karl Ove manages to draw us so completely into his almost unremarkable daily concerns and makes them feel so vital to us, outside, gazing in on the gaze searching out. Again, the idea that every life is an odyssey, an epic, no one excluded. The adventure of becoming whatever it is you end up becoming. That there is a shadow always over our small happinesses and successes, and that there is a background of quiet hope behind our failures, that grasping our authenticity and our becoming is indeed a struggle. Perhaps this resonates the most with those of us who feel we don’t exactly belong in the lives we one day find ourselves living, but isn’t this everyone at some point? Karl Ove here in Book Two is cataloging a kind of universal alienation of the individual, and he does it with startling success. These books he has written are close to our lives, we should be glad they are out there for us to inhabit.
June 3, 2017
Though his style and agenda have nothing in common with Virginia Woolf, Karl Ove Knausgård, too, has an outrageous and uncanny ability to mix the banal and the lofty, the quotidian and the existential without ever upsetting the balance. He deals, in short, with life, and in this process he cuts off all layers of pretension and untruth and reveals the rawness, the failures, the temporary successes and the anxieties of modern life.
In this second installment of Knausgård’s massive opus, he zooms in on children and relationships, on falling in love, on his opposing needs for family life and for solitude, on trying, ultimately, to be a good man. As in the first book, he makes no bones about his shortcomings – this time as a father and as a partner, but nor is anyone else spared the brutal honesty of his pen – from his wife’s depressions to his mother-in-law’s drinking problem – he deals in all of it. Although it is an autobiographical novel, subsequent interviews have revealed little invention in these revelations; this is his life, these are the people in it. (Characteristically, he even chronicles the birth of his first child, right down to his wife’s pains, primal screams and contractions, the too mild anesthetics, the intern who had to join the midwife. I felt a jolt of déja-vu, and not for the first time my heart went out to his wife).
As in my recent reading experience of Hilary Mantel’s 2nd installment of the Cromwell series, something clicked into place when I began this second volume. I was familiar with the confessional tone, I knew the main participants and could easily conjure up the scenery again (although we move from Norway to Sweden) and thus could better sit back and enjoy the journey he took me on. And once again, part of the attraction of Min Kamp (My Struggle) is in its recognizability: it is both voyeuristic and liberating (occasionally also annoying) to read of how Knausgård feels emasculated when he walks his child’s pram through Stockholm; how he feels ambivalent about modern life and longs for the renaissance (e.g. he imagines what it would be like to live in a world which Shakespeare is about to enter); how poetry seems an unconquerable land to him and how that makes him feel unworthy, yet how he tries to come to terms with it – how he constantly tries to come to terms with all these thoughts and actions (and often fails) that he considers shortcomings but which most of us are guilty of in different ways all the time. Few people bring them out into the open like Knausgård does, and presumably that is why some of the reviews in Danish newspapers have claimed that: he doesn’t write about himself; he writes about me, about all of us.
It isn’t all about children and relationships, though. The main storyline (which is never chronological) is interspersed with strange anecdotes about friends, parents, snakes, crazy Russian neighbours, nature. The minute descriptions of the materials of the world – the things in it – sometimes reminded me of American Psycho in its endless listing of items which seemingly serve no purpose other than to act as a kind of backdrop for the likewise endless reflections. We get some interesting Norwegian perspectives on Sweden from the exile’s point of view (e.g. on conformity), many of which I’ve heard from my Danish friend living in Stockholm. Along the route he muses on his own writing, on literature, on other writers. He is reading The Brothers Karamazov while writing this book and complains that while he can’t help reading Dostoevsky, he also feels the novel has a hysterical quality to it. The existential questioning he brings into his reading, he also demonstrates in some of the dialogue between, especially, himself and his best friend, Geir. They have some conversations in the latter half of the book that not only resonated profoundly with things I realized I had thought myself but which also, in my view, moved the book into a league of its own.
He dips in and out of second hand bookshops, buying obscure and well-known books alike. He heads for a café, has a coffee and a cigarette and reads for so long that he arrives home too late for supper. He is both an unapologetic reader and writer. He says at one point: Listen af ting, jeg gerne ville læse, var lang som et ondt år , meaning roughly The list of books I wanted to read was as a long as a year of evil, the latter part being a Danish, and presumably Norwegian, saying, which underlines exactly how he feels chained to his books, whether as a reader or a writer. His writing is not necessarily a labour of love. It is what he feels he must do.
There is a Nordic melancholia that pervades the book. At times it – he – was too much, and I had to put aside his ruthless introspection for something lighter that would let me breathe. At other times, this book precisely enables free breathing: he leaves no stone unturned, is continually unplugged, leaving me, for a while at least, feeling as if I, too, had shed layers of untruth by proxy.
(James Wood, too, is a fan of Knausgård. Here is his interview with him in: http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...)
In this second installment of Knausgård’s massive opus, he zooms in on children and relationships, on falling in love, on his opposing needs for family life and for solitude, on trying, ultimately, to be a good man. As in the first book, he makes no bones about his shortcomings – this time as a father and as a partner, but nor is anyone else spared the brutal honesty of his pen – from his wife’s depressions to his mother-in-law’s drinking problem – he deals in all of it. Although it is an autobiographical novel, subsequent interviews have revealed little invention in these revelations; this is his life, these are the people in it. (Characteristically, he even chronicles the birth of his first child, right down to his wife’s pains, primal screams and contractions, the too mild anesthetics, the intern who had to join the midwife. I felt a jolt of déja-vu, and not for the first time my heart went out to his wife).
As in my recent reading experience of Hilary Mantel’s 2nd installment of the Cromwell series, something clicked into place when I began this second volume. I was familiar with the confessional tone, I knew the main participants and could easily conjure up the scenery again (although we move from Norway to Sweden) and thus could better sit back and enjoy the journey he took me on. And once again, part of the attraction of Min Kamp (My Struggle) is in its recognizability: it is both voyeuristic and liberating (occasionally also annoying) to read of how Knausgård feels emasculated when he walks his child’s pram through Stockholm; how he feels ambivalent about modern life and longs for the renaissance (e.g. he imagines what it would be like to live in a world which Shakespeare is about to enter); how poetry seems an unconquerable land to him and how that makes him feel unworthy, yet how he tries to come to terms with it – how he constantly tries to come to terms with all these thoughts and actions (and often fails) that he considers shortcomings but which most of us are guilty of in different ways all the time. Few people bring them out into the open like Knausgård does, and presumably that is why some of the reviews in Danish newspapers have claimed that: he doesn’t write about himself; he writes about me, about all of us.
It isn’t all about children and relationships, though. The main storyline (which is never chronological) is interspersed with strange anecdotes about friends, parents, snakes, crazy Russian neighbours, nature. The minute descriptions of the materials of the world – the things in it – sometimes reminded me of American Psycho in its endless listing of items which seemingly serve no purpose other than to act as a kind of backdrop for the likewise endless reflections. We get some interesting Norwegian perspectives on Sweden from the exile’s point of view (e.g. on conformity), many of which I’ve heard from my Danish friend living in Stockholm. Along the route he muses on his own writing, on literature, on other writers. He is reading The Brothers Karamazov while writing this book and complains that while he can’t help reading Dostoevsky, he also feels the novel has a hysterical quality to it. The existential questioning he brings into his reading, he also demonstrates in some of the dialogue between, especially, himself and his best friend, Geir. They have some conversations in the latter half of the book that not only resonated profoundly with things I realized I had thought myself but which also, in my view, moved the book into a league of its own.
He dips in and out of second hand bookshops, buying obscure and well-known books alike. He heads for a café, has a coffee and a cigarette and reads for so long that he arrives home too late for supper. He is both an unapologetic reader and writer. He says at one point: Listen af ting, jeg gerne ville læse, var lang som et ondt år , meaning roughly The list of books I wanted to read was as a long as a year of evil, the latter part being a Danish, and presumably Norwegian, saying, which underlines exactly how he feels chained to his books, whether as a reader or a writer. His writing is not necessarily a labour of love. It is what he feels he must do.
There is a Nordic melancholia that pervades the book. At times it – he – was too much, and I had to put aside his ruthless introspection for something lighter that would let me breathe. At other times, this book precisely enables free breathing: he leaves no stone unturned, is continually unplugged, leaving me, for a while at least, feeling as if I, too, had shed layers of untruth by proxy.
(James Wood, too, is a fan of Knausgård. Here is his interview with him in: http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...)
November 15, 2019
'...Όμως έτσι είναι, είμαστε αιχμάλωτοι ο ένας του άλλου, όπως είμαστε αιχμάλωτοι και του εαυτού μας, δεν μπορούμε να φύγουμε απο κεί, δεν μπορείς να ελευθερωθείς, η ζωή σου ειναι αυτή που σου έλαχε."
----------------------------
Ένα αστέρι λιγότερο στο δεύτερο βιβλίο του Κναουσγκορντ από μένα, το λιγο μεγαλύτερο, λιγο αυτοαναφορικότερο, λιγο υπερβολικά ξεμπροστιαστικό για τον υπολοιπο περίγυρό του - την πρωτη και τη δευτερη γυναίκα του, τα παιδια του, την μανα του, την πεθερα του, τους φιλους του, ολους τους παιρνει η μπάλα, ακομη και την τρελλη ρωσιδα αλκοολική γειτόνισσά του - κανενας δε γλίτωσε απο την κρίση ειλικρίνειας του συγγραφέα, που ενιωσε ότι θελει να μοιραστει την ιδιωτικότητά του με ολο τον κόσμο, κι εβγαλε ολονων τ απλυτα στη φόρα, παντα μεσα απ το προσωπικο του πρισμα.
Οι δικοι μας οι αρχαιοι ελεγαν τα εν οικω μη εν δημω, και το σκεφτομουν αυτο μερικες φορες, όσο μου πηρε - καιρο- να διαβασω αυτη την ατελειωτη (732 σελ) αφήγηση.
Ενιωθα καποιες στιγμες να ειμαι μεσ στο σπιτι τους, με τα προβληματα τους, την κουραση τους, τους τσακωμους τους με μωρα, παιδια, αλκοολικες πεθερες και ανεκφραστες μαναδες.
Με εκανε να νιωθω ενοχα αυτο, σκεφτομουν τι δουλεια εχω εγω να κοιταζω τωρα απο την κλειδαροτρυπα, ενιωθα φιλήδονος τηλεθεατης σε ριαλιτυ.
--------------
Όμως, απ' την αλλη πλευρα πιστεύω επίσης πως αυτο που κανει ο Κναουσγκορτ ειναι σημαντικό.
Ειναι σαν να θυσιαζει τον εαυτο του για να μας δειξει οτι ο βασιλιας ειναι γυμνος. Οτι η κοινωνια ειναι υποκριτική με τους ακαμπτους κανονες που μας κουναει το δαχτυλο και μας υπαγορευει οτι α τωρα πρεπει να παντρευτεις α τωρα πρεπει να κανεις παιδι α τωρα αλλο ενα, α τωρα πρεπει να εισαι απεραντα ευτυχισμενος.
Τι, δεν εισαι;
Γιατι δεν εισαι;
Και ο Κναουσγκορντ, με το προσωπικο του παραδειγμα μας ενθαρρυνει οτι ειναι οκ να μην εισαι πχ 'επιτυχημενος' κατα τα στανταρ της κοινωνιας, οπως θα το περιμενε ο κοσμος απο σενα,
ειναι οκ να νιωθεις να βουλιαζεις μεσα σου ή να εισαι απεραντα κουρασμενος μερικες φορες απο ολη την ενηλικιωση και τις απαιτησεις της,
ειναι οκ να μην εχεις τον τελειο γαμο, τα τε��εια παιδια και να βαλτωνεις μεσα σ' ολο αυτο,
συμβαινει και σε αλλους. Συμβαινει συχνα.
Δεν εισαι μονος.
Ειναι σαν να θυσιαζεται, για να μην νιωσεις μονος.
Εγω ετσι το εξελαβα. Δηλαδη, η αναγνωση των βιβλιων του, με βοηθαει σ αυτο.
------------
Ειμαι γενικα χαρουμενη που βλεπω μια συγχρονη κ ταυτοχρονη στροφη της λογοτεχνιας προς το ημερολογιακο ειδος, προς το ξεμπροστιασμα κανονων και την αθέτησή τους, δειχνει ετσι ενα πιο ανθρωπινο προσωπο, τις αδυναμιες τους σπαραγμους, τις νευρωσεις και την καταθλιψη του συγχρονου ανθρωπου.
Μου αρεσε. Πολυ.
Θα συνεχισω του χρονου με το 3ο βιβλιο του.
Θελω ενα διαλειμμα απο την peeping Tom φάση του ωστόσο.
----------------------------
Ένα αστέρι λιγότερο στο δεύτερο βιβλίο του Κναουσγκορντ από μένα, το λιγο μεγαλύτερο, λιγο αυτοαναφορικότερο, λιγο υπερβολικά ξεμπροστιαστικό για τον υπολοιπο περίγυρό του - την πρωτη και τη δευτερη γυναίκα του, τα παιδια του, την μανα του, την πεθερα του, τους φιλους του, ολους τους παιρνει η μπάλα, ακομη και την τρελλη ρωσιδα αλκοολική γειτόνισσά του - κανενας δε γλίτωσε απο την κρίση ειλικρίνειας του συγγραφέα, που ενιωσε ότι θελει να μοιραστει την ιδιωτικότητά του με ολο τον κόσμο, κι εβγαλε ολονων τ απλυτα στη φόρα, παντα μεσα απ το προσωπικο του πρισμα.
Οι δικοι μας οι αρχαιοι ελεγαν τα εν οικω μη εν δημω, και το σκεφτομουν αυτο μερικες φορες, όσο μου πηρε - καιρο- να διαβασω αυτη την ατελειωτη (732 σελ) αφήγηση.
Ενιωθα καποιες στιγμες να ειμαι μεσ στο σπιτι τους, με τα προβληματα τους, την κουραση τους, τους τσακωμους τους με μωρα, παιδια, αλκοολικες πεθερες και ανεκφραστες μαναδες.
Με εκανε να νιωθω ενοχα αυτο, σκεφτομουν τι δουλεια εχω εγω να κοιταζω τωρα απο την κλειδαροτρυπα, ενιωθα φιλήδονος τηλεθεατης σε ριαλιτυ.
--------------
Όμως, απ' την αλλη πλευρα πιστεύω επίσης πως αυτο που κανει ο Κναουσγκορτ ειναι σημαντικό.
Ειναι σαν να θυσιαζει τον εαυτο του για να μας δειξει οτι ο βασιλιας ειναι γυμνος. Οτι η κοινωνια ειναι υποκριτική με τους ακαμπτους κανονες που μας κουναει το δαχτυλο και μας υπαγορευει οτι α τωρα πρεπει να παντρευτεις α τωρα πρεπει να κανεις παιδι α τωρα αλλο ενα, α τωρα πρεπει να εισαι απεραντα ευτυχισμενος.
Τι, δεν εισαι;
Γιατι δεν εισαι;
Και ο Κναουσγκορντ, με το προσωπικο του παραδειγμα μας ενθαρρυνει οτι ειναι οκ να μην εισαι πχ 'επιτυχημενος' κατα τα στανταρ της κοινωνιας, οπως θα το περιμενε ο κοσμος απο σενα,
ειναι οκ να νιωθεις να βουλιαζεις μεσα σου ή να εισαι απεραντα κουρασμενος μερικες φορες απο ολη την ενηλικιωση και τις απαιτησεις της,
ειναι οκ να μην εχεις τον τελειο γαμο, τα τε��εια παιδια και να βαλτωνεις μεσα σ' ολο αυτο,
συμβαινει και σε αλλους. Συμβαινει συχνα.
Δεν εισαι μονος.
Ειναι σαν να θυσιαζεται, για να μην νιωσεις μονος.
Εγω ετσι το εξελαβα. Δηλαδη, η αναγνωση των βιβλιων του, με βοηθαει σ αυτο.
------------
Ειμαι γενικα χαρουμενη που βλεπω μια συγχρονη κ ταυτοχρονη στροφη της λογοτεχνιας προς το ημερολογιακο ειδος, προς το ξεμπροστιασμα κανονων και την αθέτησή τους, δειχνει ετσι ενα πιο ανθρωπινο προσωπο, τις αδυναμιες τους σπαραγμους, τις νευρωσεις και την καταθλιψη του συγχρονου ανθρωπου.
Μου αρεσε. Πολυ.
Θα συνεχισω του χρονου με το 3ο βιβλιο του.
Θελω ενα διαλειμμα απο την peeping Tom φάση του ωστόσο.
July 29, 2014
I'm torn between taking part in the backlash against the Knausgaard hype--because, let's be honest, there are plenty of authors more deserving of front page attention from every newspaper, magazine and website with 'New York' in the title--and trying to get in early on the revisionism to the backlash, by pointing out that although Knausgaard is not Proust or Woolf, nor is he trying to be, and it's not his fault that every newspaper, magazine and website with 'New York' in the title decided to put him on their cover at the same moment. Frankly, the idea that any serious author could possibly drum up that level of support before s/he is dead is rather heartening.
Which will it be, I wonder, backlash or revisionism-to-the-backlash? Probably more backlash, I admit, but while lashing back I will try to remember that, read on its own terms rather than in the context of Knausgaard-is-the-new-black rhetoric, this book is an ideal airplane novel. In fact, Knausgaard's real achievement is probably that he's written a book that compels you to turn the pages, while also not being a complete idiot. If contemporary literture is any guide, that puts him in a class of one.
On the other hand, I'm more than a little concerned that the book is so readable just because it makes the life I (and probably most of his other readers) lead seem epic and worthy of attention. That makes me feel a warm glow. I recognize the things that Karl Ove goes through in the book. I relate to him.
Karl Ove Knausgaard, in short, turns me into a high school senior, reading only books in which the main character looks, feels, talks and acts like the reader him or herself. I look forward to finishing the series and writing an essay or review: "Karl Ove Knausgaard is More Dangerous to Literature than Harry Potter."
More seriously: Knausgaard is a literary existentialist who knows that i) he's a literary existentialist and ii) knows that being a literary existentialist is more than a little silly. He very self-consciously flips back and forth between his Holderlin mood (oh world! how beauteous thou art!) and his Bernhard mood (fuck off). He is ultra-individualistic, and recognizes that this causes him problems and pain, but can't quite break out of it. This level of reflection raises this volume far above the first, and gives me reason to keep reading. No mean feat.
It helps that his friend Geir is a total champion, and that Knausgaard is willing to let another voice provide some context on his (the author's) life. I hope for more Geir to come.
Which will it be, I wonder, backlash or revisionism-to-the-backlash? Probably more backlash, I admit, but while lashing back I will try to remember that, read on its own terms rather than in the context of Knausgaard-is-the-new-black rhetoric, this book is an ideal airplane novel. In fact, Knausgaard's real achievement is probably that he's written a book that compels you to turn the pages, while also not being a complete idiot. If contemporary literture is any guide, that puts him in a class of one.
On the other hand, I'm more than a little concerned that the book is so readable just because it makes the life I (and probably most of his other readers) lead seem epic and worthy of attention. That makes me feel a warm glow. I recognize the things that Karl Ove goes through in the book. I relate to him.
Karl Ove Knausgaard, in short, turns me into a high school senior, reading only books in which the main character looks, feels, talks and acts like the reader him or herself. I look forward to finishing the series and writing an essay or review: "Karl Ove Knausgaard is More Dangerous to Literature than Harry Potter."
More seriously: Knausgaard is a literary existentialist who knows that i) he's a literary existentialist and ii) knows that being a literary existentialist is more than a little silly. He very self-consciously flips back and forth between his Holderlin mood (oh world! how beauteous thou art!) and his Bernhard mood (fuck off). He is ultra-individualistic, and recognizes that this causes him problems and pain, but can't quite break out of it. This level of reflection raises this volume far above the first, and gives me reason to keep reading. No mean feat.
It helps that his friend Geir is a total champion, and that Knausgaard is willing to let another voice provide some context on his (the author's) life. I hope for more Geir to come.
September 10, 2018
I wandered beneath the sun-dappled shade from the trees, surrounded by the warm fragrances of the forest, thinking that I was in the middle of my life. Not life as an age, not halfway along life’s path, but in the middle of my existence. My heart trembled.
Rather late in this volume, Karl Ove reflects on ascribing a utility to literature especially fiction. He confesses a desire to read only essays and diaries at the moment. [all the verbs and gerunds need to be qualified in this endeavor (My Struggle, as opposed to my reviews thereof), that will be self evident to those familiar with the enterprise. The specificity does strike me as artifice, unlike say the project of Jacques Roubaud.] If that is the case his accounts of reading appear more towards the modernist or late 19C novel, particularly in the Russian approaches.
There is something electric and narcotic in this prose. That’s a remarkable feat given the attention to smoke breaks. I found myself lighting my pipe for the first time in years yesterday in empathy. It was most natural to finish the second volume out here on the porch this morning. Knausgård appears to crave such solitude. Lovely cool weather has arrived after a daylong deluge which took me away from Karl Ove and some delicious Berlin Sour ale last night to aid our struggling sub pump. I did think of his work while carrying buckets of water out to the alley.
I have never been one for completing entire series of books. My caprice governs. My gaze typically wanders. My inner Augie March. That is not the case at present. Opening the third installment as soon as possible.
Rather late in this volume, Karl Ove reflects on ascribing a utility to literature especially fiction. He confesses a desire to read only essays and diaries at the moment. [all the verbs and gerunds need to be qualified in this endeavor (My Struggle, as opposed to my reviews thereof), that will be self evident to those familiar with the enterprise. The specificity does strike me as artifice, unlike say the project of Jacques Roubaud.] If that is the case his accounts of reading appear more towards the modernist or late 19C novel, particularly in the Russian approaches.
There is something electric and narcotic in this prose. That’s a remarkable feat given the attention to smoke breaks. I found myself lighting my pipe for the first time in years yesterday in empathy. It was most natural to finish the second volume out here on the porch this morning. Knausgård appears to crave such solitude. Lovely cool weather has arrived after a daylong deluge which took me away from Karl Ove and some delicious Berlin Sour ale last night to aid our struggling sub pump. I did think of his work while carrying buckets of water out to the alley.
I have never been one for completing entire series of books. My caprice governs. My gaze typically wanders. My inner Augie March. That is not the case at present. Opening the third installment as soon as possible.
January 7, 2024
3rd book of 2024.
Better than volume 1, maybe even by a long shot. Knausgaard relentlessly portrays the banality of his own life and all life. He hates being a father. He doesn't necessarily love his wife (though they continue to have children). He asks himself, frequently, Is this all? Is this life? There are surges of happiness but I found he was always quick to undermine them: it only lasted a few seconds, he says. I tore through this, easily one-hundred pages a day. I find him addictive, as I said before, but more so here. Pages and pages of pushing prams, washing dishes, trying and failing to write. Reading Dostoyevsky. Wondering about the future of his children. Wondering why he is a terrible and selfish father. He describes falling in love incredibly well, and the end of the honeymoon phase just as well. That sliding into routine, normality, how painful it can be sometimes. Nothing good lasts forever or is continuous. I find Knausgaard to be depressing and uplifting. There's a kind of nihilism that also borders on a sort of stoicism. He even finds fiction pointless: so we start to see his inklings at My Struggle; if fiction is pointless and false, where does one go? To the truth. And yet, he tells Geir in one of their 30 page conversations over dinner that he has a terrible memory. So what's all this then? He's likened to Proust enough but I will say one thing on the subject, that, like when I read through In Search of Lost Time, after sitting with the book for an hour or more solidly reading, I would stand up and stretch, perhaps go to the nearest window and look out. The street, the cars and the houses all seemed massive. As if by reading the minute details of Knausgaard, I had also shrunken to the size of their pinprick detail. Then the real world, on surfacing, seemed enormous. An entire house! And, looking up, the unfathomably largeness of the sky. Then I'd settle back into it; things were this big and always had been. I'd drink coffee and do some jobs, go to work, then when I returned to the book, I'd feel everything shrinking again. It's like playing as Alice. In the end it's hard to know whether things are easier to understand when they're tiny or huge. Perhaps only by the shifting perspective do we see them clearly.
Better than volume 1, maybe even by a long shot. Knausgaard relentlessly portrays the banality of his own life and all life. He hates being a father. He doesn't necessarily love his wife (though they continue to have children). He asks himself, frequently, Is this all? Is this life? There are surges of happiness but I found he was always quick to undermine them: it only lasted a few seconds, he says. I tore through this, easily one-hundred pages a day. I find him addictive, as I said before, but more so here. Pages and pages of pushing prams, washing dishes, trying and failing to write. Reading Dostoyevsky. Wondering about the future of his children. Wondering why he is a terrible and selfish father. He describes falling in love incredibly well, and the end of the honeymoon phase just as well. That sliding into routine, normality, how painful it can be sometimes. Nothing good lasts forever or is continuous. I find Knausgaard to be depressing and uplifting. There's a kind of nihilism that also borders on a sort of stoicism. He even finds fiction pointless: so we start to see his inklings at My Struggle; if fiction is pointless and false, where does one go? To the truth. And yet, he tells Geir in one of their 30 page conversations over dinner that he has a terrible memory. So what's all this then? He's likened to Proust enough but I will say one thing on the subject, that, like when I read through In Search of Lost Time, after sitting with the book for an hour or more solidly reading, I would stand up and stretch, perhaps go to the nearest window and look out. The street, the cars and the houses all seemed massive. As if by reading the minute details of Knausgaard, I had also shrunken to the size of their pinprick detail. Then the real world, on surfacing, seemed enormous. An entire house! And, looking up, the unfathomably largeness of the sky. Then I'd settle back into it; things were this big and always had been. I'd drink coffee and do some jobs, go to work, then when I returned to the book, I'd feel everything shrinking again. It's like playing as Alice. In the end it's hard to know whether things are easier to understand when they're tiny or huge. Perhaps only by the shifting perspective do we see them clearly.
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June 10, 2018Αφού διάβασα το εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον “Ένας θάνατος στην οικογένεια” ήρθε ο καιρός να συνεχίσω με το δεύτερο μέρος του Αγώνα του Karl Ove (αρνούμαι να γράψω το επίθετό του!).
Στο δεύτερο βιβλίο λοιπόν μας μιλάει γι' αυτό ακριβώς που λέει και ο τίτλος, για τη ζωή του ως σύζυγος και ως πατέρας. Για το πώς γνώρισε τη Λίντα, τη δεύτερη σύζυγό του, για το πώς απέκτησαν το πρώτο τους παιδί, για τις δυσκολίες της σχέσης τους και τα προβλήματα της καθημερινότητας, τις αποτυχίες, τις γκρίνιες, τους καβγάδες. Για την αγάπη του για την γυναίκα του και τα παιδιά του, την ανάγκη του για το γράψιμο και τη συνύπαρξη όλων αυτών.
Γραμμένο στο ίδιο στιλ με το πρώτο, κάπως ημερολογιακό, κάπως συνειρμικό, χωρίς το εξομολογητικό ύφος που περίμενα να δω μας παραθέτει με ειλικρίνεια τις σκέψεις και τις απόψεις του, τα πιστεύω και τα θέλω του.
Εδώ πιο πολύ από ότι στο προηγούμενο, εκεί που διάβαζα δεν μπορούσα να μην αναρωτηθώ τι θα σκέφτονταν για το τάδε σημείο οι εμπλεκόμενοι του βιβλίου. Το λες και λίγο γενναίο να παρουσιάσεις τις σκέψεις σου με τέτοιο τρόπο χωρίς την προστασία κάποιου φανταστικού χαρακτήρα.
Ενδιαφέρον όπως και το πρώτο αλλά ομολογώ πως το απόλαυσα λιγότερο και κάποιες φορές με κούραζε. Ίσως να έφταιγε το θέμα ή ίσως και η έκταση, δεν μπόρεσα να καταλάβω τι δεν μου έκατσε τόσο καλά.... μπορεί και η μετάφραση ή η επιμέλεια της, με την οποία νομίζω ότι κάτι δεν πήγαινε καλά..........
Από όλο το βιβλίο θα ξεχωρίσω τις τελευταίες περίπου 200 σελίδες μου μου άρεσαν πιο πολύ και σίγουρα κάποια στιγμή (ελπίζω σύντομα) θα επανέλθω και με το 3ο μέρος....
B.R.A.CE. 2018: Ένα βιβλίο με τα απομνημονεύματα ή την βιογραφία κάποιου
Στο δεύτερο βιβλίο λοιπόν μας μιλάει γι' αυτό ακριβώς που λέει και ο τίτλος, για τη ζωή του ως σύζυγος και ως πατέρας. Για το πώς γνώρισε τη Λίντα, τη δεύτερη σύζυγό του, για το πώς απέκτησαν το πρώτο τους παιδί, για τις δυσκολίες της σχέσης τους και τα προβλήματα της καθημερινότητας, τις αποτυχίες, τις γκρίνιες, τους καβγάδες. Για την αγάπη του για την γυναίκα του και τα παιδιά του, την ανάγκη του για το γράψιμο και τη συνύπαρξη όλων αυτών.
Γραμμένο στο ίδιο στιλ με το πρώτο, κάπως ημερολογιακό, κάπως συνειρμικό, χωρίς το εξομολογητικό ύφος που περίμενα να δω μας παραθέτει με ειλικρίνεια τις σκέψεις και τις απόψεις του, τα πιστεύω και τα θέλω του.
Εδώ πιο πολύ από ότι στο προηγούμενο, εκεί που διάβαζα δεν μπορούσα να μην αναρωτηθώ τι θα σκέφτονταν για το τάδε σημείο οι εμπλεκόμενοι του βιβλίου. Το λες και λίγο γενναίο να παρουσιάσεις τις σκέψεις σου με τέτοιο τρόπο χωρίς την προστασία κάποιου φανταστικού χαρακτήρα.
Ενδιαφέρον όπως και το πρώτο αλλά ομολογώ πως το απόλαυσα λιγότερο και κάποιες φορές με κούραζε. Ίσως να έφταιγε το θέμα ή ίσως και η έκταση, δεν μπόρεσα να καταλάβω τι δεν μου έκατσε τόσο καλά.... μπορεί και η μετάφραση ή η επιμέλεια της, με την οποία νομίζω ότι κάτι δεν πήγαινε καλά..........
Από όλο το βιβλίο θα ξεχωρίσω τις τελευταίες περίπου 200 σελίδες μου μου άρεσαν πιο πολύ και σίγουρα κάποια στιγμή (ελπίζω σύντομα) θα επανέλθω και με το 3ο μέρος....
B.R.A.CE. 2018: Ένα βιβλίο με τα απομνημονεύματα ή την βιογραφία κάποιου
January 5, 2024
Knausgård claims to have a terribly bad memory. At the same time, he traces the days of his life in such detail that it seems as if he were experiencing them at the moment of writing. Years later, who can say what the three other passengers, who were on the underground with him on a particular day, looked like? It is not clear from his novel whether he keeps a diary - he only mentions random notes - but even then it would not be possible to achieve such immediacy in retrospect: time would inevitably dampen, distort or obscure what he remembers. In this respect, it is logical to call his great autobiography a novel. The only problem with this is that the reader is left completely in limbo as to what did and did not happen.
Ultimately, however, it doesn't matter. Knausgård manages to create a depth out of everyday life that pulls you down with him to the point where he looks naked into a mirror and reveals his darkest sides. We follow this psychological exhibitionism with fascination and horror and it is impossible to look away. At the same time, Knausgård's self-dissection urges us to look inside ourselves. Each of his self-revelations allows a further possibility of identification; in many of his fallibilities we recognise ourselves. That is what makes this novel so exciting.
This volume is about love; about its great moments and banalities, about the curse and blessing of partnership, about the happiness and lack of freedom of being a parent. It is as trivial as it is profound. Knausgård manages to introduce a level of reflection that juxtaposes the plot with an essayistic, philosophical dimension. We witness his search for a way to endure life and live it as a good person. The path leads through embarrassments, misdemeanours and profanity. But we even follow the description of a nappy change with fascination.
Knausgård doesn't aim to be liked and that's what makes him likeable. And the fact that you can often recognise yourself in him also leads to an unexpected self-reconciliation. In this respect, this novel offers a catharsis that is rarely experienced.
Ultimately, however, it doesn't matter. Knausgård manages to create a depth out of everyday life that pulls you down with him to the point where he looks naked into a mirror and reveals his darkest sides. We follow this psychological exhibitionism with fascination and horror and it is impossible to look away. At the same time, Knausgård's self-dissection urges us to look inside ourselves. Each of his self-revelations allows a further possibility of identification; in many of his fallibilities we recognise ourselves. That is what makes this novel so exciting.
This volume is about love; about its great moments and banalities, about the curse and blessing of partnership, about the happiness and lack of freedom of being a parent. It is as trivial as it is profound. Knausgård manages to introduce a level of reflection that juxtaposes the plot with an essayistic, philosophical dimension. We witness his search for a way to endure life and live it as a good person. The path leads through embarrassments, misdemeanours and profanity. But we even follow the description of a nappy change with fascination.
Knausgård doesn't aim to be liked and that's what makes him likeable. And the fact that you can often recognise yourself in him also leads to an unexpected self-reconciliation. In this respect, this novel offers a catharsis that is rarely experienced.
May 7, 2018
Ο Knausgard μας ξανασυστήνεται βάζοντάς μας ξανά θεατές σε μια άλλη φάση της ζωής του. Τελειώνοντας και το δεύτερο βιβλίο, έχω την αίσθηση ότι σε κάθε τόμο μας παρουσιάζει και μια ιδιότητά του ως άνθρωπος. Στο πρώτο ήταν ο γ��ος, ο εγγονός, ο αδερφός, ο έφηβος, ο φοιτητής και ο νεαρός άντρας. Στον ερωτευμένο άντρα είναι ακριβώς αυτό. Ο σύντροφος, ο εραστής, ο σύζυγος, ο πατέρας, ο ώριμος πια άντρας. Με τις μικρές και τις μεγάλες στιγμές του. Με τα προβλήματα της καθημερινότητας και τις χαρές που αυτή προσφέρει. Με τα αδιέξοδα, προσωπικά και επαγγελματικά, τις κρυμμένες επιθυμίες, τις ωμές αλήθειες που πολύ απλά ξεστομίζει. Η αφήγηση της ζωής του δεν ωραιοποιείται, δεν παρουσιάζεται ως ονειρική ή ιδανική αλλά ούτε και ως σκοτεινή δραματουργία. Είναι ένας απλός άνθρωπος, με κοινότοπα προβλήματα, ανησυχίες και προβληματισμούς. Παλεύει να βρει λύσεις, κάνει σωστά, κάνει λάθη και πάνω από όλα ζει τη ζωή που του αναλογεί. Karl Ove, να ξέρεις δεν είσαι μόνος σου.
April 11, 2019
Na tri stranice (470-472) Karl Uve opisuje trenutak u kafiću u kojem pije gutljaj svetlog Staropramen piva i proteže ga sve od nastanka čoveka do danas. Opisi ukusa, mirisa i sreće koju mu donosi gutljaj piva u tom trenutku pomešani su sa filozofskim mislima o našoj svakodnevnoj “simbiozi sa mašinom”, činjenici da nas sve čeka ono neizbežno i svemu onome što nas u današnje vreme čini (ili bolje reći ne čini) “modernim”. U ovom trenutku shvatam da bih sa neizmernom radošću čitao bilo šta što Karl Uve napiše. Čak i da piše o telefonskom imeniku - odlično, ja sam apsolutno za, zašto da ne...
September 27, 2017
Marcel Reich-Ranicki hat einmal gesagt: "Es gibt nichts Langweiligeres als Geschichten über kleine Kinder"! Glücklicherweise geht es im zweiten Band von Karl Ove Knausgards autobiografischer Romanreihe nicht ausschließlich um kleine Kinder, man kann auch interessante Dialoge des Autors mit seinem Freund Geir verfolgen. Trotzdem kann ich nach diesem Roman den Hype um Knausgard nicht ganz nachvollziehen.
July 16, 2014
Una maravilla el Karl Ove, cuando lo empecé pensé que había encontrado a una alma gemela, de quién podía leer todo tipo de anécdotas, sus problemas, su cotidiana, y me los contaba sólo a mi. Pero después de 500 páginas de sus cosas, sus broncas con Linda, sus amigos, sus cenas, sus paseos, sus pláticas con Geir, su amigo escritor, hay algo que me empezó a hacer ruido. No es demasiada intimidad? Ya se que en este mundo post-todo, no hay mucho respeto por la vida privada, pero no se, a veces da algo de pudor el que alguien cuente todo absolutamente todo en un libro. Y eso que sólo es uno! Como me sentiría si leyera todos sus 6 libros? Escribe tan genial que podría estar hablándome de lavar los platos las 500 páginas (actividad a la cual si le dedica unas cuantas). Quizás ahí está lo genial de el Karl Ove, que literalmente te está hablando de la banalidad de la vida, de lavar platos y pelearte con la vecina, de encontrarte con que tu suegra se toma tu grappa, (y que le marca la botella para averiguar qué pasa), que si la linda se embaraza y se la pasan peleando, sus conflictos con el ser un escritor "respetado", su lucha contra su ego y su necesidad de quedar bien con todo el mundo. Qué puedo decir? Vale la pena leerlo, pero no quisiera ser alguien cercano a el, es demasiado! Pero es una maravilla para los que estamos lejos.
Igual tengo que agregar algo que se me queda en la cabeza, como un ruido que me molesta. Esta cuestión que tiene el Karl Ove (si me refiero a el con esta confianza es culpa toda de el), bueno, lo que tiene el con la ficción. El siente, o menciona en varios momentos de su libro, que la ficción no tiene sentido, que no es real. Hace años me entró esa duda existencial, en un momento en el cual estaba pensando estudiar filosofía ( al final ni filosofía, ni literatura, pero ese es otro tema), y aquí no me voy a poner a desenredar ese tema de la ficción contra la realidad, porque hay tantos autores que amo, tanta ficción que es real y me dice de mi vida aunque se trate de la vida de otros, que nada, tenía que mencionarlo aunque tampoco lo resuelva, sólo quería mencionar que me molesta que sea un tema para el. Escribirá ficción otra vez? Ni idea, pero seguro si lo hace lo hará impecablemente, así como ha hecho con la vida real.
Igual tengo que agregar algo que se me queda en la cabeza, como un ruido que me molesta. Esta cuestión que tiene el Karl Ove (si me refiero a el con esta confianza es culpa toda de el), bueno, lo que tiene el con la ficción. El siente, o menciona en varios momentos de su libro, que la ficción no tiene sentido, que no es real. Hace años me entró esa duda existencial, en un momento en el cual estaba pensando estudiar filosofía ( al final ni filosofía, ni literatura, pero ese es otro tema), y aquí no me voy a poner a desenredar ese tema de la ficción contra la realidad, porque hay tantos autores que amo, tanta ficción que es real y me dice de mi vida aunque se trate de la vida de otros, que nada, tenía que mencionarlo aunque tampoco lo resuelva, sólo quería mencionar que me molesta que sea un tema para el. Escribirá ficción otra vez? Ni idea, pero seguro si lo hace lo hará impecablemente, así como ha hecho con la vida real.
March 8, 2019
انتهيت من الجزء الثاني من ملحمة كفاحي، ويمكن ملحمة دا الوصف الأنسب للعمل الأسطوري دا، جرعة أدبية مكثفة مع قدرة سردية معجزة، والأهم عمق نفسي مقدم كوجبة طعام شهية.
الرجل بيقدم لنا الحياة بكل ما فيها، الحياة بالتفاصيل، بالبشر، بالعلاقات، بكل شيء، بصيغة كلاسيكية أصيلة، ممزوجة بسلاسة ومتعة مدهشين.
رواية أرشحها بكل ثقة لأي قاريء ومحب للأدب الجيد.
الرجل بيقدم لنا الحياة بكل ما فيها، الحياة بالتفاصيل، بالبشر، بالعلاقات، بكل شيء، بصيغة كلاسيكية أصيلة، ممزوجة بسلاسة ومتعة مدهشين.
رواية أرشحها بكل ثقة لأي قاريء ومحب للأدب الجيد.
February 23, 2024
Volume two done. I liked this just as much as the first volume, but they exist in completely different realms, neither necessarily “better” than the other. Knausgaard’s choice of splitting up the relative time period of each volume in My Struggle is starting to make sense. It doesn’t make sense to include the mundane nature of settled family life in the first volume, where we are seeing the dark nature of a spiralling and alcoholic father. Somehow it would cheapen the impact. And Knausgaard’s prose is so vivid that it’s perfectly accessible experientially – I can basically substitute myself in his place and role play the terrible events he goes through. That substitution occurs here as well – perhaps a look forward, a teaser of what the future could hold. At least in this iteration of this life (Karl Ove’s, that is), things make sense to me. There is pure electricity when he talks about the nature of his falling in love with Linda, absolutely convinced that the path he has taken to get to her is somehow niche, unconventional, not sanctioned by others. There are moments that make your heart leap out of its chest. The serene and heavy intimacy of the moment that he tells Linda that he wants to have children with her. The pregnant pause. Various moments of coming to terms with changing roles, having to negate parts of himself that have to take a necessary backseat. There is a new life in the room. Children. And then, of course, a perfectly author-to-author relationship with Geir, in which the criticisms and the explorations and the cynicisms come together to create a dynamic that will leave something in its wake.
October 21, 2015
[continued from here]
At 8%, and once again I'm eating an apple. Coincidence!? An apple a day keeps the doctor away; they say. Karl Ove and his family are eating apples too. On a family trip to an amusement-park. The muse is long gone; the park peeled off and ugly, but the kids don't notice. The first food mentioned in a novel has to mean something, right? A symbol ... maybe? Apples are secretly driving our fate. The tree of knowledge, the forbidden fruit, the apple falling on Newton's head, and the appletree Martin Luther wants to plant on pre-doomsday? All of these appleish representations are in dispute. Sometimes an apple is just an apple.
Knausgård took Linda from Moss to Balestrand via Oslo and Flåm once; funny I followed his footsteps before I even knew about him. Above me, on the first floor, my nephew (for lack of a better word) is playing piano. Something complicated, Rachmaninov perhaps, or Chopin; with many notes in any case. He lives in Norway (my nephew, not Rachmaninov, but is German) and he knows Knausgaard, but only through the media. The scandals that Min Kamp had triggered were omnipresent. Any PR is good PR, isn't it, Karl Ove? potius amicum quam dictum perdere.
At 78%. The little family is visiting Linda's parents in the Swedish countryside. A song comes to mind:
I meant to finish the book last night but I couldn't. I was happily reading along on my Kindle when the darn device suddenly acted up and rebooted. It seems I forgot to switch off WiFi-mode, and the Kindle started to download a new Firmware OTA and then installed it.
DAMN! DAMN!
I had to stare on some polite messages and progress bars instead of reading for at least 20 minutes. My precious reading time was gone just like that.
DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!
The only good thing I found out is that Knausgård indeed managed to get out of the nested story telling alright; back on the first level. Congrats, Karl Ove; but I think you have to work on your damned temper tantrums.
[to be continued here]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
At 8%, and once again I'm eating an apple. Coincidence!? An apple a day keeps the doctor away; they say. Karl Ove and his family are eating apples too. On a family trip to an amusement-park. The muse is long gone; the park peeled off and ugly, but the kids don't notice. The first food mentioned in a novel has to mean something, right? A symbol ... maybe? Apples are secretly driving our fate. The tree of knowledge, the forbidden fruit, the apple falling on Newton's head, and the appletree Martin Luther wants to plant on pre-doomsday? All of these appleish representations are in dispute. Sometimes an apple is just an apple.
·•●•·At 22% Karl Ove arrives in Stockholm; trying to buy a scarf. Not an easy task for a Norwegian alien in Sweden it seems; a fest for false friends if I add German and English too: Halsduk, Halstuch, Halstørkle, Scarf, Schal, Shawl, Sjal. [Mental note: arrive in Sweden in summer or bring a scarf]
·•●•·At 30% and Karl Ove managed to nest his memories five levels deep now; if I'm not mistaken. A story within a story within a story within a story within a story. I hope he finds his way back. I hope I do.
·•●•·At 45%. It's 5:30am and I'm in the office. It's quiet. The only other person in the building is far away. The tea is ready. At this time of day there's almost no noise coming from the street below. I can open the windows. The first thing I read this morning is a Wikipedia entry about Malbolge. As you probably know this is the name (different spelling) of the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno. It's also the name of a programming language. That's what I'm interested in; that's my job – sort of. The programming language from hell! Invented in 1998, it's so complicated that it took two years for the first programm to appear. This is what a "Hello World!" program looks like in Malbolge:
(=<`#9]~6ZY32Vx/4Rs+0No-&Jk)"Fh}A strange noise interrupts my thoughts. I look out the window and see a giant street sweeper crawling up the street. Its color is a light yellow and on its side there are huge letters forming the word SCHRUBBER. There's a car double-parking in front of the building across the street. The SCHRUBBER has to go around it. The maneuver is painfully slow and tight and I wonder what the driver is thinking now. Does he like his job? I close the window and return to my desk. My interest in Malbolge has vanished and I go back to Knausgård. Linda is pregnant.
|Bcy?`=*z]Kw%oG4UUS0/@-ejc(:'8dc
·•●•·At 50%. Knausgård is a master of digression and one of slowness. Suits me just fine on this beautiful day. It's neither too hot, nor cold, no rain and no humidity to speak of. The sky isn't all a boring blue but you have some clouds to look at. I listen to the kids from the kindergarten next door as they play outside in the sun. Four little stories from kindergarten are in Knausgård's book so far. From my own relatives who live in Norway I know that Norwegians are good with kids. But this is Sweden and Karl Ove doesn't seem so fond of the kindergarten. His duties there interfere with his life, he thinks. Maybe he still has to find his real identity? The other sound coming from outside is the rustling of the trees. This is weird, because the rustling always reminds me of the movie Blowup by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. A great movie this is. But even greater is Antonioni's The Passenger. Jack Nicholson plays David Locke, a TV journalist making a documentary in post-colonial Africa, then decides to impersonate a man who died in his hotel. It turned out the dead man was an arm dealer, and Locke travels through Europe to the appointments the dead man made. The camera-work in this movie is astounding. The penultimate scene is a long single tracking shot. The camera moves from a hotel room through the bars that are placed in front of the window to a beaten down village square then turns 180 degrees and moves back into the room. That's seven minutes in which basically nothing happens and you have ample time to ponder what happened before in the movie. In a way this movie reminds me of Knausgård's book. Nothing happens and it's very slow, but in a dense kind of way that sucks you right in.
·•●•·At 66%. While Karl Ove takes us through a part of Stockholm, my thoughts wander off seven years back to a trip we made through a part of Norway called In a Nutshell. Hardangerjøkulen / Nærøyfjord / Flåm / Aurlandsfjord. I have go there again one time.
Knausgård took Linda from Moss to Balestrand via Oslo and Flåm once; funny I followed his footsteps before I even knew about him. Above me, on the first floor, my nephew (for lack of a better word) is playing piano. Something complicated, Rachmaninov perhaps, or Chopin; with many notes in any case. He lives in Norway (my nephew, not Rachmaninov, but is German) and he knows Knausgaard, but only through the media. The scandals that Min Kamp had triggered were omnipresent. Any PR is good PR, isn't it, Karl Ove? potius amicum quam dictum perdere.
·•●•·
At 78%. The little family is visiting Linda's parents in the Swedish countryside. A song comes to mind:
Tram wires cross Northern skiesDiscussing Norway's history with my nephew; constitution day on May 17th; people walking in uniforms; the subtle difference between patriotism and nationalism; Being mildly shocked when I heard about the first constitution of Norway (1814) that included (in the second paragraph) a general ban against Jews and Jesuits entering the country. Knausgård already mentioned the constitution day; will he also mention this? Still have a long way to go with Min Kamp.
Cut my blue heart in two
My knuckles bleed down tattered street
On a door that shouldn’t be in front of me
...
Whisper me words in the shape of a bay
Shelter my love from the wind and the waves
Emily Barker -- Nostalgia [Wallander Theme]
·•●•·At 85%. I guess this was inevitable. Yesterday I walked through a light forest. There was a creek, which I followed, until I came to a small house. The stream flowed along one side of the house and was driving a water wheel. My guess that this could be here an old forge was confirmed when I heard a noise from the house that sounded like hammer blows on an anvil. Apparently there was a blacksmith at work. The door of the house stood open and I went inside. The smith was a tall man, and stood with his back to me in front of his forge. He poked with a rod in the hot coals and then a small fire began to blaze. He didn't seem to notice me. He picked up the rod, which was actually a long plated pliers, from the fire and led it to the anvil. The pliers was holding an elongated piece of steel, glowing orange, and on which he was now pounding with his hammer. Suddenly the blacksmith began to speak. "Forging is an art from which everyone thought it's no longer needed. Ha! You know what this nail is for?" He held up the glowing piece of steel, and I realized it was indeed a four-sided nail about fifteen centimeters long. Before I could answer he said: "Exterior facades. Nothing better than these nails. Common nails you get at the hardware store, hold three years tops before they rust. And they cleave the wood, moisture penetrates, mold is the consequence. Screws are slightly better, five to ten years, and then – rust and mold. But this nail will last six hundred years. That's what I call a warranty! You want one?" He probably thought, if I wanted to have a nail. When I still didn't answer the blacksmith raised his head, so I could see his face for the first time. It was Karl Ove Knausgård. He grinned. The nail, which he had held up, had turned into a rolled book and on the spine I could read the letters "in" and "Kam". He led the book on the anvil, it glowed a little, and he started again with his hammer. Then I woke up. Strange dream this was.
·•●•·At 95%. DAMN!
I meant to finish the book last night but I couldn't. I was happily reading along on my Kindle when the darn device suddenly acted up and rebooted. It seems I forgot to switch off WiFi-mode, and the Kindle started to download a new Firmware OTA and then installed it.
DAMN! DAMN!
I had to stare on some polite messages and progress bars instead of reading for at least 20 minutes. My precious reading time was gone just like that.
DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!
The only good thing I found out is that Knausgård indeed managed to get out of the nested story telling alright; back on the first level. Congrats, Karl Ove; but I think you have to work on your damned temper tantrums.
·•●•·At 100%. FINISHED ... for now.So, what have I read? Is it the/a autobiography of Karl Ove Knausgård, his memoir, some sort of diarrheal diary, or the literary equivalent of a reality TV show? With only two out of six books read (28% if you count the pages) I think it's too early to tell. The word Roman (=novel) on the original Norwegian (and also German) book covers makes me think there must be more to the picture than meets the eye at first. The German publisher (or maybe Amazon Germany) recently added "autobiographical project" to the book's title, but that's probably only for marketing. Knausgård, the author, not the one in the book, seems to be a rather sly dog. The German word for that would be Schlitzohr. I'm pretty sure he has something more up his sleeves but he won't show until the show is over. There is some strange undertow in the way he tells his stories and he finds just the right balance of conversations with his partners, inner monologues, trivial actions, and philosophical banter, that I like to read him on and on and on. But I made up a reading plan, and I'm going to stick to it. Period. No more Knausgård until October (Volume 3). Last one (Volume 6) when it comes out sometime around September 2016. Too much Knausgård at once cannot possibly be healthy.
[to be continued here]
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