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Min kamp #4
Min kamp 4
Karl Ove Knausgårds tredje roman innebærer en enorm litterær satsning, og er en stor bok i mer enn én forstand: Min kamp blir utgitt som seks romaner. Første, andre og tredje bok utkom høsten 2009. Fjerde, femte og sjette bok utkommer våren 2010. Etter tre år på gymnaset i Kristiansand reiser Karl Ove til Nord-Norge som lærervikar. Han møter en ny verden, og bærer med seg erfaringer han ikke selv forstår. Romanen skriver frem en ung manns ufordervete grandiositet og selvpåførte ydmykelser, oppriktigheten og umodenheten og hungeren etter eksistensiell og seksuell forløsning.
472 pages, Hardcover
First published February 24, 2010
About the author
Karl Ove Knausgård
69 books6,679 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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October 19, 2017
Posted at Heradas Review
“...he would have to work out the social game for himself. He would have to learn he would get nowhere by whining or telling tales.”
Karl Ove isn’t talking about himself in this quote, but he might as well be. Eighteen year old Karl Ove spends most of the book whining about his inability to lose his virginity, and attempting to write short fiction (telling tales). You might think I’m joking, but I think the moral of this story is that people should masturbate more often, and especially in their early teenage years. Let me backtrack a bit…
Like book 3, book 4 doesn’t jump around as much as 1 and 2. It stays mostly focused on his life from age sixteen to eighteen, with an occasional leap forward to 2009; Karl Ove in his early forties writing the book you’re reading; his wife and children asleep in the next room. I have to mention that I’m a sucker for these sections where he reminds the reader of his present tense writing of the novel. I don’t know why, but I love it.
Karl Ove as a literary character, is a one of the most unusual protagonists I’ve come across, because he isn’t a protagonist at all. This is unheard of in memoirs. Usually when we tell stories about ourselves, we’re the hero, or at the very least we present ourselves and the situations we get into in the best possible light; painting others as the bully, or the one who deserved what they got, etc. Karl Ove is not like this whatsoever. He lays out every dirty detail, and is extremely hard on himself. He writes himself as the antagonist in his own life story. He also writes about his boner a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I started counting when I noticed the pattern, and eventually lost track at fifteen or so times around the middle of the book.
The main story in this volume involves Karl Ove as a young man who is lost, and his struggle to find the kind of world he fits into. His emotionally, verbally, and physically abusive father has left his mother, started drinking, and seems to be a completely different person than he was when Karl Ove was a boy. He’s starting to see that his father was never happy, and needed something different from life than what he was getting. Also, it’s appearing that he was always a very emotional person, like Karl Ove has always been, crying often, and begging forgiveness of his sons now that they’re grown. Karl Ove is still terrified of him, and doesn’t understand how to reconcile this new person that has replaced his father, with the father that raised him.
At eighteen Karl Ove leaves home for the first time and takes a job as a school teacher in a small fishing community in northern Norway; rural in a different way than he’s familiar with. He’s grossly under qualified for the position, knows it, but wants to be alienated from the familiar. He wants to step a toe outside of his comfort zone. He’s using this experience to save money, and isolate himself so that he can focus on writing more exclusively.
He is absolutely obsessed with losing his virginity, and extremely insecure about his pattern of ejaculating before the act has even begun. In an effort to ease his nerves socially, he begins to drink heavily, which helps him to remain calm while courting the women in this new town he finds himself dislocated in. Drinking also gets him into several situations where he makes a total fool of himself. Even while intoxicated, every time he finds a woman willing to sleep with him, he gets stuck in his own head, and it happens again. This is a great source of embarrassment for him, and he takes it very hard.
We already know from the previous installments of his story, that he sees himself as being too feminine or “feminized” as he calls it. At eighteen, he’s scrawny and lanky, and in this fishing community he’s surrounded by what he considers men’s men: manual laborers, fishermen, tough skinned, strong and silent. He constantly compares himself to those around him, and finds himself lacking in almost every way. To make matters worse, his upstairs neighbors are constantly going at it. All of this and more adds to the feedback loop and reinforces his feelings of inadequacy and shame, which in turn reinforces his inability to do the deed.
In addition to all of this, he’s teaching kids barely younger than himself, and having some trouble not being attracted to the girls in his class, especially the ones who have developed crushes on him. Some of them as young as 13. Oh, Karl Ove. Buddy. Come on, man. You can’t do that! About halfway through the book he has a realization that maybe the reason he Is having so much trouble maintaining control of his ejaculations, and controlling is attraction to his students, and his horniness level in general, is that he has never masturbated. Ever. He sees it as something childish that he should’ve done when he was younger, but now feels it’s too late to begin. He knows that if he were to *ahem* practice on himself a little bit, that he would develop the ability to control himself a little better when he’s with a woman, but he still won’t do it! Good lord eighteen year old Karl Ove! Jerk it already!
So, that brings us full circle to my point from the beginning: masturbation, it’s something everyone should do, especially when you’re young and just starting to develop into the adult you’ll become. Most of Karl Ove’s troubles in this edition would’ve been completely avoided if he had just jerked it a little. So, like I said earlier, if there is a moral here, I think it’s a simple one: masturbate.
“...he would have to work out the social game for himself. He would have to learn he would get nowhere by whining or telling tales.”
Karl Ove isn’t talking about himself in this quote, but he might as well be. Eighteen year old Karl Ove spends most of the book whining about his inability to lose his virginity, and attempting to write short fiction (telling tales). You might think I’m joking, but I think the moral of this story is that people should masturbate more often, and especially in their early teenage years. Let me backtrack a bit…
Like book 3, book 4 doesn’t jump around as much as 1 and 2. It stays mostly focused on his life from age sixteen to eighteen, with an occasional leap forward to 2009; Karl Ove in his early forties writing the book you’re reading; his wife and children asleep in the next room. I have to mention that I’m a sucker for these sections where he reminds the reader of his present tense writing of the novel. I don’t know why, but I love it.
Karl Ove as a literary character, is a one of the most unusual protagonists I’ve come across, because he isn’t a protagonist at all. This is unheard of in memoirs. Usually when we tell stories about ourselves, we’re the hero, or at the very least we present ourselves and the situations we get into in the best possible light; painting others as the bully, or the one who deserved what they got, etc. Karl Ove is not like this whatsoever. He lays out every dirty detail, and is extremely hard on himself. He writes himself as the antagonist in his own life story. He also writes about his boner a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I started counting when I noticed the pattern, and eventually lost track at fifteen or so times around the middle of the book.
The main story in this volume involves Karl Ove as a young man who is lost, and his struggle to find the kind of world he fits into. His emotionally, verbally, and physically abusive father has left his mother, started drinking, and seems to be a completely different person than he was when Karl Ove was a boy. He’s starting to see that his father was never happy, and needed something different from life than what he was getting. Also, it’s appearing that he was always a very emotional person, like Karl Ove has always been, crying often, and begging forgiveness of his sons now that they’re grown. Karl Ove is still terrified of him, and doesn’t understand how to reconcile this new person that has replaced his father, with the father that raised him.
At eighteen Karl Ove leaves home for the first time and takes a job as a school teacher in a small fishing community in northern Norway; rural in a different way than he’s familiar with. He’s grossly under qualified for the position, knows it, but wants to be alienated from the familiar. He wants to step a toe outside of his comfort zone. He’s using this experience to save money, and isolate himself so that he can focus on writing more exclusively.
He is absolutely obsessed with losing his virginity, and extremely insecure about his pattern of ejaculating before the act has even begun. In an effort to ease his nerves socially, he begins to drink heavily, which helps him to remain calm while courting the women in this new town he finds himself dislocated in. Drinking also gets him into several situations where he makes a total fool of himself. Even while intoxicated, every time he finds a woman willing to sleep with him, he gets stuck in his own head, and it happens again. This is a great source of embarrassment for him, and he takes it very hard.
We already know from the previous installments of his story, that he sees himself as being too feminine or “feminized” as he calls it. At eighteen, he’s scrawny and lanky, and in this fishing community he’s surrounded by what he considers men’s men: manual laborers, fishermen, tough skinned, strong and silent. He constantly compares himself to those around him, and finds himself lacking in almost every way. To make matters worse, his upstairs neighbors are constantly going at it. All of this and more adds to the feedback loop and reinforces his feelings of inadequacy and shame, which in turn reinforces his inability to do the deed.
In addition to all of this, he’s teaching kids barely younger than himself, and having some trouble not being attracted to the girls in his class, especially the ones who have developed crushes on him. Some of them as young as 13. Oh, Karl Ove. Buddy. Come on, man. You can’t do that! About halfway through the book he has a realization that maybe the reason he Is having so much trouble maintaining control of his ejaculations, and controlling is attraction to his students, and his horniness level in general, is that he has never masturbated. Ever. He sees it as something childish that he should’ve done when he was younger, but now feels it’s too late to begin. He knows that if he were to *ahem* practice on himself a little bit, that he would develop the ability to control himself a little better when he’s with a woman, but he still won’t do it! Good lord eighteen year old Karl Ove! Jerk it already!
So, that brings us full circle to my point from the beginning: masturbation, it’s something everyone should do, especially when you’re young and just starting to develop into the adult you’ll become. Most of Karl Ove’s troubles in this edition would’ve been completely avoided if he had just jerked it a little. So, like I said earlier, if there is a moral here, I think it’s a simple one: masturbate.
December 11, 2019
My Struggle 4 was an outstanding read. We follow KOK during his teenage years following gymnas (presumably highschool in Norway) when he lives on his own for the first time. I loved how he described this feeling, which I feel like I shared the first time I had my own place (albeit under very different circumstances):
"But here! I thought, lifting a slice of bread to my mouth while looking out the window. The reflection of the mountains across the fjord was broken kaleidoscopically by the ripples in the later below. Here no one knew who I was, here were no fixed ties, no fixed problems, here I could do as I liked. Hide away for a year and write, create something in secret. Or I could just take it easy and save up some money. It didn't really matter. What mattered was that I was here." (p. 23)
That is sort of the leitmotif for this novel, freedom.
This is also a novel about KOK's struggle to connect his racing mind to his keyboard: "That’s when something seemed to flash through me, an arc of happiness and energy; now I couldn’t write fast enough, the text lagged slightly behind the narrative, it was a wonderful feeling, shiny and glittering." (p. 29). I do love his analogies and metaphors so much.
During his periods between teaching and drinking. he reads quite a lot. I enjoyed his experience with Ulysses: "But one thing did emerge from these pages with greater force than anything else, and that was the description of a book, Ulysses, which in its singularity sounded absolutely fantastic. Before me I saw an enormous tower, glinting with moisture as it were, surrounded by mist and a pallid light from the overcast sun. It was regarded as the major work of modernism, by which I imagined low-slung racing cars, pilots with leather helmets and jackets, zeppelins floating above skyscrapers in glittering but dark metropolises, computers, electronic music. Names such as Hermann Broch, Robert Musil, Arnold Schönberg. Elements of earlier, long-gone cultures were assimilated into this world, in my mind’s eye, such as Broch’s Virgil and Joyce’s Ulysses." (p. 33)
I found it intoxicating to read about his feelings in having his first job and his first taste of freedom, ironically as it were, as an idea from his father:
"The idea he had sown, to work as a teacher in northern Norway, had grown and grown afterward. In fact, there were only advantages: (1) I would be far away, far from everyone and everything I knew, and totally free. (2) I would be earning my own money doing a respectable job. (3) I would be able to write." (p. 55)
Of course, we always have a healthy dose of KOK realism:
"I got up and went into the staff room, picked up the coffee thermos, and shook it. It was empty, I filled the pot with water, poured it into the machine, popped a filter paper into the funnel, measured five spoonfuls, and started the whole shebang, lots of spluttering and gurgling, the slow rise of black liquid in the pot, and the bright red eye." (p. 56) I love that image of the bright red eye.
I think that the generation that KOK and I share (we are more or less the same age), was very influenced by the increasing accessibility of music. I was just as obsessed with browsing record stores (Waterloo Records in Austin, Tower Records in Boston (R.I.P.), Amoeba Records in San Francisco, Rasputin Records in Berkeley, A&M Comics in Miami...) and can totally relate to his discourse here: "The music was linked with almost everything I had done, none of the records came without a memory. Everything that had happened in the past five years rose like steam from a cup when I played a record, not in the form of thoughts or reasoning, but as moods, openings, space. Some general, others specific. If my memories were stacked in a heap on the back of my life’s trailer, music was the rope that held them together and kept it, my life, in position." (p. 60)
Who of us never did this when we turned up the stereo full blast: "then I had to dance, at that moment, even if I was alone. And, toward the end, on top of all this, like a bloody fighter plane above a tiny dancing village, comes Adrian Belew’s overriding guitar, and oh, oh God, I am dancing and happiness fills me to my fingertips and I only wish it could last, that the solo would go on and on, the plane would never land, the sun would never go down, life would never end." (p. 60). This search for eternal youth is ever-present during the entire 6 volumes but particularly passionately described here.
KOK then makes an enormous parenthesis as he goes back and describes the last few years of gymnas not covered in Vol 3 including the hilarious Lisbeth episode:
"A bewildered flicker appeared in her eyes. But she said nothing apart from yes. I took her hand again, squeezed it hard, and we walked quickly over the last two hundred meters. Hugged her again outside the unmanned reception area, almost suffocating with desire. Down the corridor to the room I shared with three others. Key out, into the lock with trembling hand, a twist, handle down, door open, and in we went. “You back already, Karl Ove?” Jøgge said with a laugh. “Have you brought a visitor with you?” Bjørn said. “How nice!” Harald said. “Would you like a beer, Lisbeth?” (p. 126) With friends like these, as the old saying goes...
There are other hilarious moments, such as his first attempts at self-description and his friend Bassen's reaction:
"In one of the first lessons we’d sat next to each other, and after the homeroom teacher had handed out slips of paper for us to write down three personal qualities we had, Bassen had looked at my answer. Somber, torpid, and serious, I had written. “Are you a complete idiot?” he had said. “You should add lacking in self-knowledge! I’ve never seen anything like it. Somber and torpid, you’ve got to be kidding! Who’s put these ideas in your head?” “So what did you write?” He showed me. Down to earth, honest, horny as hell. “Throw that away. You can’t write that!” Bassen said. I did as I was told. Then on a new piece I wrote, Intelligent, shy, but not really. “That’s better,” he said. “Jesus! Somber and torpid!”
Another reviewer on GR suggested a drinking game with shots for each use of the word "fantastic":
"When we were together I always left early so that he wouldn’t discover how boring I really was. There was a kind of fever in me, two conflicting emotions, such as on the spring morning when we ditched school and went by moped back to his place and listened to records on the lawn. It was fantastic, yet I had to cut it short, something told me I wasn’t worthy or couldn’t fulfill his expectations. So I lay on his lawn with my eyes closed, like a cat on hot bricks, listening to Talk Talk, whom we had discovered at the same time. “It’s your life,” they sang, and everything should have been great, it was spring, I was sixteen years old, had ditched school for the first time, and was lying on the grass with my new friend. But it wasn’t great, it was unbearable." (p. 133) Perhaps a Norweigian speaker can comment on whether it is always the same word used or if a variety of Norweigian words are all translated as "fantastic"?
Then starts his long and unrequited love for Hanne. Some more great description as he takes a bus to northern Norway to his father's house:
"Now she was going to change schools and start at Vågsbygd Gymnas, where she lived. At least that would release me from the torment of seeing her every day! The bus indicated it was going to Kjevik, and at that moment a plane flying low thundered over us, touched down, and screamed along the runway at a speed that made it seem as if we were standing still. Flashing lights, roaring engine. We were living in the future." (p. 138). Again, the optimism is quite contagious in this section.
I love the symbolism of the two brothers (or perhaps KOK and his mother, it is perhaps ambiguous) as the three of them are in her living room:"
We went into the living room. I sat down in the wicker chair, Yngve sat beside Mom on the sofa. Outside, two bats flitted to and fro, disappearing completely in the darkness of the mountains across the river, then reappearing against the lighter sky. Yngve poured coffee from the thermos" (p. 146) This particular conversation becomes one of many honest disclosures: "Then it was as though a dam had burst. Everything suddenly flowed into the same channel, into the same valley, which was soon full of something that excluded everything else." (p. 147)
And again another wonderful description of a bus ride: "Oh, the muted lights in buses at night and the muted sounds. The few passengers, all in their own worlds. The countryside gliding past in the darkness. The drone of the engine. Sitting there and thinking about the best that you know, that which is dearest to your heart, wanting only to be there, out of this world, in transit from one place to another, isn’t it only then you are really present in this world?"
When he is back in school, he always fears being along and friendless (while always as an adult seeking solitude for his writing) relating this interesting and sadly funny anecdote:
"My fear of being seen as friendless was not without some justification. One day there was a new note on the notice board. A student who had recently moved to the town and didn’t know anyone at the school wanted someone to be friends with, if anyone was interested they could meet him by the flagpole at twelve the next day. The area around the flagpole at twelve the next day was packed with pupils. Everyone wanted to observe this friendless creature, who naturally enough didn’t show up. Had it been a hoax? Or had this friendless creature got cold feet when he saw the crowd? I suffered with him, whoever he was." (p. 166)
In another moment of comedy, KOK gets a mail from Lisbeth:
"I pushed the letter aside. My chest was riven with despair. I could have slept with her. She had been willing! She wrote that she was in love with me, that she loved me, of course she would have said yes. She knew where we were heading and what I was thinking, of that I was sure. Bloody Jøgge! Those fucking dickheads!" (p. 186)
I loved this paragraph about this passionate search for love in the adolescent KOK, being able to relate to it:
"Outside it was dark, autumn was wrapping its hand around the world, and I loved it. The darkness, the rain, the sudden cracks in the past that opened when the smell of damp grass and soil rose up at me from a ditch somewhere or when car headlights illuminated a house, all somehow caught and enhanced by the music in the Walkman I always carried with me. I listened to This Mortal Coil and thought about when we used to play in the dark in Tybakken, a feeling of happiness grew in me, but not a happiness of the bright, weightless, carefree kind, this happiness was rooted in something else, and when it met the melancholic beauty of the music and the world that was dying around me, it was like sorrow, beautiful sorrow, romantic sorrow, beauty and pain in one impossible mix, and from there sprang a wild longing to live more. To leave this, to find life where it was really lived, in the streets of cities, beneath skyscrapers, at glittering parties with beautiful people in unfamiliar apartments. To find the one great love and all the restlessness that involved, and then the acceptance, the relief, the ecstasy." (p. 195)
This section is a fascinating preview to what he will go far more into depth on in Vol 6:
"I realized that I hadn’t understood a thing. This was deep, and it was painful. The opening, with the föhn wind, was fantastic. Did evil come from outside? Like a wind dragging people along with it? Or did it come from inside? I gazed at the square outside the church, where there were already yellow and orange leaves on the ground. In the street behind, people were walking under umbrellas. Could I become evil? Find myself borne along by a wind of inhumanity and torture someone? Or was I evil?"(p. 203).
And immediately after musing about torture, he thinks about religion:
"Oh, how stupid it was that they went around believing in a god and a heaven. It was so conceited! So unbelievably conceited! Why would God have selected them, people who were so preoccupied with ensuring everyone did the right thing all the time? Those petty-minded fools, why would God bother about them of all people? I almost laughed out loud in the library, but managed at the last moment to stifle it to a giggle. Looking around me, I saw that no one had noticed. Then, to disguise the fact that I had been looking around, I gazed out through the window again, with my head slightly tilted, so that it resembled an active decision, as if I was searching for something." (p. 204). I don't know about you, but this has certainly happened to me before!
Further on, there is some more fantastic (shot!) description:
"The countryside was like a tub filled to the brim with darkness. The next morning the bottom slowly became visible as the light was poured in and seemingly diluted the darkness. It was impossible, I reflected, to witness this without feeling it involved movement. Wasn’t Lihesten, that immense vertical wall of rock, creeping closer with the daylight? Wasn’t the gray fjord rising from the depths of darkness in which it had been hidden all night? The tall birches on the other side of the meadowland, where the fence to the neighboring property was, weren’t they advancing meter by meter? The birches: five or six riders who had kept watch on the house all through the night and now had to pull hard on the reins to curb the restless horses beneath them. During the morning the mist thickened again. Everything was gray, even the winter-green spruces growing on the ridge beyond the lake were gray, and everything was saturated with dampness. The fine drizzle in the air, the droplets collecting under the branches and falling to the ground with tiny, almost imperceptible, thuds, the moisture in the soil of the meadow that had once been a marsh, the squelch it gave when you stepped on it, your shoes sinking in, the mud oozing over them." (pp. 231-232)
This was a page-turner despite there being relatively little action as it were. The writing of KOK is simple in an Elena Ferrante kind of way and yet deep and analytical like Proust or even Joyce. Wonderful, amazing literature!
Fino's KOK Reviews
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
"But here! I thought, lifting a slice of bread to my mouth while looking out the window. The reflection of the mountains across the fjord was broken kaleidoscopically by the ripples in the later below. Here no one knew who I was, here were no fixed ties, no fixed problems, here I could do as I liked. Hide away for a year and write, create something in secret. Or I could just take it easy and save up some money. It didn't really matter. What mattered was that I was here." (p. 23)
That is sort of the leitmotif for this novel, freedom.
This is also a novel about KOK's struggle to connect his racing mind to his keyboard: "That’s when something seemed to flash through me, an arc of happiness and energy; now I couldn’t write fast enough, the text lagged slightly behind the narrative, it was a wonderful feeling, shiny and glittering." (p. 29). I do love his analogies and metaphors so much.
During his periods between teaching and drinking. he reads quite a lot. I enjoyed his experience with Ulysses: "But one thing did emerge from these pages with greater force than anything else, and that was the description of a book, Ulysses, which in its singularity sounded absolutely fantastic. Before me I saw an enormous tower, glinting with moisture as it were, surrounded by mist and a pallid light from the overcast sun. It was regarded as the major work of modernism, by which I imagined low-slung racing cars, pilots with leather helmets and jackets, zeppelins floating above skyscrapers in glittering but dark metropolises, computers, electronic music. Names such as Hermann Broch, Robert Musil, Arnold Schönberg. Elements of earlier, long-gone cultures were assimilated into this world, in my mind’s eye, such as Broch’s Virgil and Joyce’s Ulysses." (p. 33)
I found it intoxicating to read about his feelings in having his first job and his first taste of freedom, ironically as it were, as an idea from his father:
"The idea he had sown, to work as a teacher in northern Norway, had grown and grown afterward. In fact, there were only advantages: (1) I would be far away, far from everyone and everything I knew, and totally free. (2) I would be earning my own money doing a respectable job. (3) I would be able to write." (p. 55)
Of course, we always have a healthy dose of KOK realism:
"I got up and went into the staff room, picked up the coffee thermos, and shook it. It was empty, I filled the pot with water, poured it into the machine, popped a filter paper into the funnel, measured five spoonfuls, and started the whole shebang, lots of spluttering and gurgling, the slow rise of black liquid in the pot, and the bright red eye." (p. 56) I love that image of the bright red eye.
I think that the generation that KOK and I share (we are more or less the same age), was very influenced by the increasing accessibility of music. I was just as obsessed with browsing record stores (Waterloo Records in Austin, Tower Records in Boston (R.I.P.), Amoeba Records in San Francisco, Rasputin Records in Berkeley, A&M Comics in Miami...) and can totally relate to his discourse here: "The music was linked with almost everything I had done, none of the records came without a memory. Everything that had happened in the past five years rose like steam from a cup when I played a record, not in the form of thoughts or reasoning, but as moods, openings, space. Some general, others specific. If my memories were stacked in a heap on the back of my life’s trailer, music was the rope that held them together and kept it, my life, in position." (p. 60)
Who of us never did this when we turned up the stereo full blast: "then I had to dance, at that moment, even if I was alone. And, toward the end, on top of all this, like a bloody fighter plane above a tiny dancing village, comes Adrian Belew’s overriding guitar, and oh, oh God, I am dancing and happiness fills me to my fingertips and I only wish it could last, that the solo would go on and on, the plane would never land, the sun would never go down, life would never end." (p. 60). This search for eternal youth is ever-present during the entire 6 volumes but particularly passionately described here.
KOK then makes an enormous parenthesis as he goes back and describes the last few years of gymnas not covered in Vol 3 including the hilarious Lisbeth episode:
"A bewildered flicker appeared in her eyes. But she said nothing apart from yes. I took her hand again, squeezed it hard, and we walked quickly over the last two hundred meters. Hugged her again outside the unmanned reception area, almost suffocating with desire. Down the corridor to the room I shared with three others. Key out, into the lock with trembling hand, a twist, handle down, door open, and in we went. “You back already, Karl Ove?” Jøgge said with a laugh. “Have you brought a visitor with you?” Bjørn said. “How nice!” Harald said. “Would you like a beer, Lisbeth?” (p. 126) With friends like these, as the old saying goes...
There are other hilarious moments, such as his first attempts at self-description and his friend Bassen's reaction:
"In one of the first lessons we’d sat next to each other, and after the homeroom teacher had handed out slips of paper for us to write down three personal qualities we had, Bassen had looked at my answer. Somber, torpid, and serious, I had written. “Are you a complete idiot?” he had said. “You should add lacking in self-knowledge! I’ve never seen anything like it. Somber and torpid, you’ve got to be kidding! Who’s put these ideas in your head?” “So what did you write?” He showed me. Down to earth, honest, horny as hell. “Throw that away. You can’t write that!” Bassen said. I did as I was told. Then on a new piece I wrote, Intelligent, shy, but not really. “That’s better,” he said. “Jesus! Somber and torpid!”
Another reviewer on GR suggested a drinking game with shots for each use of the word "fantastic":
"When we were together I always left early so that he wouldn’t discover how boring I really was. There was a kind of fever in me, two conflicting emotions, such as on the spring morning when we ditched school and went by moped back to his place and listened to records on the lawn. It was fantastic, yet I had to cut it short, something told me I wasn’t worthy or couldn’t fulfill his expectations. So I lay on his lawn with my eyes closed, like a cat on hot bricks, listening to Talk Talk, whom we had discovered at the same time. “It’s your life,” they sang, and everything should have been great, it was spring, I was sixteen years old, had ditched school for the first time, and was lying on the grass with my new friend. But it wasn’t great, it was unbearable." (p. 133) Perhaps a Norweigian speaker can comment on whether it is always the same word used or if a variety of Norweigian words are all translated as "fantastic"?
Then starts his long and unrequited love for Hanne. Some more great description as he takes a bus to northern Norway to his father's house:
"Now she was going to change schools and start at Vågsbygd Gymnas, where she lived. At least that would release me from the torment of seeing her every day! The bus indicated it was going to Kjevik, and at that moment a plane flying low thundered over us, touched down, and screamed along the runway at a speed that made it seem as if we were standing still. Flashing lights, roaring engine. We were living in the future." (p. 138). Again, the optimism is quite contagious in this section.
I love the symbolism of the two brothers (or perhaps KOK and his mother, it is perhaps ambiguous) as the three of them are in her living room:"
We went into the living room. I sat down in the wicker chair, Yngve sat beside Mom on the sofa. Outside, two bats flitted to and fro, disappearing completely in the darkness of the mountains across the river, then reappearing against the lighter sky. Yngve poured coffee from the thermos" (p. 146) This particular conversation becomes one of many honest disclosures: "Then it was as though a dam had burst. Everything suddenly flowed into the same channel, into the same valley, which was soon full of something that excluded everything else." (p. 147)
And again another wonderful description of a bus ride: "Oh, the muted lights in buses at night and the muted sounds. The few passengers, all in their own worlds. The countryside gliding past in the darkness. The drone of the engine. Sitting there and thinking about the best that you know, that which is dearest to your heart, wanting only to be there, out of this world, in transit from one place to another, isn’t it only then you are really present in this world?"
When he is back in school, he always fears being along and friendless (while always as an adult seeking solitude for his writing) relating this interesting and sadly funny anecdote:
"My fear of being seen as friendless was not without some justification. One day there was a new note on the notice board. A student who had recently moved to the town and didn’t know anyone at the school wanted someone to be friends with, if anyone was interested they could meet him by the flagpole at twelve the next day. The area around the flagpole at twelve the next day was packed with pupils. Everyone wanted to observe this friendless creature, who naturally enough didn’t show up. Had it been a hoax? Or had this friendless creature got cold feet when he saw the crowd? I suffered with him, whoever he was." (p. 166)
In another moment of comedy, KOK gets a mail from Lisbeth:
"I pushed the letter aside. My chest was riven with despair. I could have slept with her. She had been willing! She wrote that she was in love with me, that she loved me, of course she would have said yes. She knew where we were heading and what I was thinking, of that I was sure. Bloody Jøgge! Those fucking dickheads!" (p. 186)
I loved this paragraph about this passionate search for love in the adolescent KOK, being able to relate to it:
"Outside it was dark, autumn was wrapping its hand around the world, and I loved it. The darkness, the rain, the sudden cracks in the past that opened when the smell of damp grass and soil rose up at me from a ditch somewhere or when car headlights illuminated a house, all somehow caught and enhanced by the music in the Walkman I always carried with me. I listened to This Mortal Coil and thought about when we used to play in the dark in Tybakken, a feeling of happiness grew in me, but not a happiness of the bright, weightless, carefree kind, this happiness was rooted in something else, and when it met the melancholic beauty of the music and the world that was dying around me, it was like sorrow, beautiful sorrow, romantic sorrow, beauty and pain in one impossible mix, and from there sprang a wild longing to live more. To leave this, to find life where it was really lived, in the streets of cities, beneath skyscrapers, at glittering parties with beautiful people in unfamiliar apartments. To find the one great love and all the restlessness that involved, and then the acceptance, the relief, the ecstasy." (p. 195)
This section is a fascinating preview to what he will go far more into depth on in Vol 6:
"I realized that I hadn’t understood a thing. This was deep, and it was painful. The opening, with the föhn wind, was fantastic. Did evil come from outside? Like a wind dragging people along with it? Or did it come from inside? I gazed at the square outside the church, where there were already yellow and orange leaves on the ground. In the street behind, people were walking under umbrellas. Could I become evil? Find myself borne along by a wind of inhumanity and torture someone? Or was I evil?"(p. 203).
And immediately after musing about torture, he thinks about religion:
"Oh, how stupid it was that they went around believing in a god and a heaven. It was so conceited! So unbelievably conceited! Why would God have selected them, people who were so preoccupied with ensuring everyone did the right thing all the time? Those petty-minded fools, why would God bother about them of all people? I almost laughed out loud in the library, but managed at the last moment to stifle it to a giggle. Looking around me, I saw that no one had noticed. Then, to disguise the fact that I had been looking around, I gazed out through the window again, with my head slightly tilted, so that it resembled an active decision, as if I was searching for something." (p. 204). I don't know about you, but this has certainly happened to me before!
Further on, there is some more fantastic (shot!) description:
"The countryside was like a tub filled to the brim with darkness. The next morning the bottom slowly became visible as the light was poured in and seemingly diluted the darkness. It was impossible, I reflected, to witness this without feeling it involved movement. Wasn’t Lihesten, that immense vertical wall of rock, creeping closer with the daylight? Wasn’t the gray fjord rising from the depths of darkness in which it had been hidden all night? The tall birches on the other side of the meadowland, where the fence to the neighboring property was, weren’t they advancing meter by meter? The birches: five or six riders who had kept watch on the house all through the night and now had to pull hard on the reins to curb the restless horses beneath them. During the morning the mist thickened again. Everything was gray, even the winter-green spruces growing on the ridge beyond the lake were gray, and everything was saturated with dampness. The fine drizzle in the air, the droplets collecting under the branches and falling to the ground with tiny, almost imperceptible, thuds, the moisture in the soil of the meadow that had once been a marsh, the squelch it gave when you stepped on it, your shoes sinking in, the mud oozing over them." (pp. 231-232)
This was a page-turner despite there being relatively little action as it were. The writing of KOK is simple in an Elena Ferrante kind of way and yet deep and analytical like Proust or even Joyce. Wonderful, amazing literature!
Fino's KOK Reviews
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
October 26, 2014
[from Min kamp 3]
Knausgård is such a crafty bastard. I can't find the heart to parody him again after the episode where his colleague adds an extra paragraph to the story his eighteen year old self is in the middle of writing:
But writing a serious review is almost as unattractive, since he's ready to meet me there too. Uncle Kjartan's interminable monologues on Heidegger seem embarrassingly close to the things I've been saying this week about Min kamp 4; Kjartan's relatives try their best to create a Heidegger-free zone, and Not has been making similar suggestions about a moratorium on Knausgård criticism. I just have to admit I've been boxed in. Evidently, Knausgård feels he can take himself to pieces more brutally than any of us onlookers, and will in due course spend a thousand pages doing exactly that in the last volume. I can see he's getting nicely warmed up.
Okay, Karl Ove, you win. Carry on telling me about what an appalling person you are while taking my time and money, and don't even let me get a word in edgeways. You really are a slick con artist.
[to Min kamp 5]
Knausgård is such a crafty bastard. I can't find the heart to parody him again after the episode where his colleague adds an extra paragraph to the story his eighteen year old self is in the middle of writing:
I det samme jeg la øyene på papiret som stod i skrivmaskinen, så jeg at noen hade skrevet på det. Jeg blev helt kald. Den første halve siden var min, og så kom det fem linjer som ikke var mine. Jeg leste dem.I'm guessing that this is going to cause Don Bartlett some headaches when he translates it, since part of the humor resides in the contrast between the different Norwegian dialects used, but here's the best I can do right now:
"Gabriel stakk fingrerne langt inne i den våte fitte. Å herregud, stønna Lisa. Gabriel dro fingrene ut og lukta på dem. Fitte, tenkte han. Lisa sprella under han. Gabriel drakk en drøy slurk av vodkaen. Så gliste han og dro ned glidelåsen og stakk den harde kuken in i den rynkete fitta hennes. Hun skrek av fryd. Gabriel, du er gutten sin!"
Rystet i mitt innerste, ja, nesten på gråten, satt jeg og stirret på de fem linjerne. Det var en treffende parodi på måten jeg skrev på.
The moment I saw the paper that was sitting in the typewriter, I knew someone had written on it. I felt cold with horror. The first half was mine, then there were five lines that were not mine. I read them.A little later, after drinking a bottle of red wine, he vomits all over his notes; although this is in a way the book in miniature (bad sex, alcohol, bodily fluids, literary ambitions and humiliation), he's successfully dissuaded me from assisting his heartless friend Tor Einar any further. The two parodies I've already written will have to be enough.
"Gabriel slid his fingers all the way into her wet cunt. Oh god, moaned Lisa. Gabriel pulled his fingers out and sniffed them. Cunt, he thought. Lisa wriggled under him. Gabriel knocked back a good mouthful of the vodka. Then he smiled and pulled down his zip and shoved his hard cock into her wrinkled cunt. She screamed with pleasure. Gabriel, you're my man!"
Shaken to the core, almost in tears, I sat and stared at the five lines. It was a horribly accurate parody of my writing style.
But writing a serious review is almost as unattractive, since he's ready to meet me there too. Uncle Kjartan's interminable monologues on Heidegger seem embarrassingly close to the things I've been saying this week about Min kamp 4; Kjartan's relatives try their best to create a Heidegger-free zone, and Not has been making similar suggestions about a moratorium on Knausgård criticism. I just have to admit I've been boxed in. Evidently, Knausgård feels he can take himself to pieces more brutally than any of us onlookers, and will in due course spend a thousand pages doing exactly that in the last volume. I can see he's getting nicely warmed up.
Okay, Karl Ove, you win. Carry on telling me about what an appalling person you are while taking my time and money, and don't even let me get a word in edgeways. You really are a slick con artist.
[to Min kamp 5]
June 4, 2019
An incredible, almost entirely self-sufficient segment of My Struggle. It follows a very similar structure to the great book 2 (embedded 200 page flashback in a brief hiatus of direct narrative), but what 4 relatively lacks in emotional depth, it makes up for with verve and excitement. The subject is clearly, for lack of a better word, lust: it tracks ages 16-18 through a frustratingly wonderful narrative of drinking and sexual failure. Knausgaard works as a high school teacher, unable to to do anything with his students, all of whom are essentially his age.
K.O.K. was smart to lead things off by citing other great teenage novels (Catcher in the Rye, for example), and the angst and stupidity and monomania of the age are brilliantly rendered. The small town up north where the action takes place is as evocative as anything I've read - and it makes the scandal of the book feels genuine and earned.
He told me in our interview that the plot of his first novel, not yet translated, is very close to this, which might account for how contained it feels. Oddly, it would be a good place to start, for people who are wondering if they'd like him.
K.O.K. was smart to lead things off by citing other great teenage novels (Catcher in the Rye, for example), and the angst and stupidity and monomania of the age are brilliantly rendered. The small town up north where the action takes place is as evocative as anything I've read - and it makes the scandal of the book feels genuine and earned.
He told me in our interview that the plot of his first novel, not yet translated, is very close to this, which might account for how contained it feels. Oddly, it would be a good place to start, for people who are wondering if they'd like him.
May 19, 2017
One day in the distant future, whenever we think about Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume My Struggle series, memories of an era between 2012 through 2017 will come rushing back.
My Struggle: Book One (2012) involved a teenage search for alcohol on New Year’s Eve followed by the alcoholic death of the author’s father some ten years later. My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love (2013)—the best one by far for me; the volume responsible for the author’s reputation—covered falling in love, fatherhood, the conflict of having a family and trying to write. My Struggle: Book Three (2014), set entirely during his childhood under the shadow of an unpredictable, menacing father, presented regularly occurring instances of tears. Book Four, published in the U.S. in April 2015, replaces tears with nocturnal emission and premature ejaculation.
A six-volume memoir of a chronic masturbator would be problematic. Fortunately, KOK avoids critiques regarding autobiographical autoeroticism:
The fact was I had never masturbated. Had never beat off. Had never played with myself. I was eighteen years old now and it had never happened. Not once. I hadn’t even tried. My lack of experience of this meant that I both knew and didn’t know how to do it. And once I hadn’t done it as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old, time passed and it slowly became unthinkable, not in the sense of unheard of, more in the sense of beyond my horizons. The direct result of this was that I had heavy nocturnal emissions. I dreamed about women, and in my sleep not even touching was required, it was enough just to lay my eye on them, standing there, with their beautiful bodies, and I came. If I was close to them in my dreams, again I came. My whole body jerked and convulsed through the night, and my underpants were soaked with semen in the morning. (350)
If all goes well for the remainder of the year, 2015 will be forever linked in our minds with an 18-year-old’s underpants filling up with semen. This one’s narrative arc tracks an academic year as he teaches in a small fishing village in northern Norway, an isolated spot lorded over by fjords and permanent winter darkness. But progression can also be charted in terms of sticky underpants at first, followed by premature ejaculation during failed attempts at coitus, ending with a triumphant scene that made this reader literally LOL as he closed the book.
KOK at this age is sex obsessed, especially since he’s still a virgin. In a civilization lacking significant rights of passage, intercourse is the new bar/bat mitzvah, even in northern Norway in 1987. But there’s more to it than the will to copulate. It’s about exchanging the chrysalis of innocence for the wings of experience, attaining knowledge reserved for adults.
I looked upon [girls] as completely unapproachable creatures, indeed, as angels of a sort, I loved everything about them, from the veins in the skin over their wrists to the curves of their ears, and if I saw a breast under a T-shirt or a naked thigh under a summer dress, it was as though everything in my insides was let loose, as though everything began to swirl around and the immense desire that then arose was as light as light itself, as light as air, and in it there was a notion that everything was possible, not only here but everywhere and not only now but forever. At the same time as all this arose inside me, a consciousness shot up from below, like a waterspout, it was heavy and dark, there was abandon, resignation, impotence, the world closing in on me. There was the awkwardness, the silence, the scared eyes. There were the flushed cheeks and the great unease.
But there were other reasons too. There was something I couldn’t do and something I didn’t understand. There were secrets and there was darkness, there were shady dealings and there was laughter that jeered at everything. Oh, I sensed it, but I knew nothing about it. Nothing. (82)
It’s about love, too: erotic, spiritual, artistic. Young KOK loves women, books, music. But he doesn’t quite love himself. He believes girls detect his lack of confidence the way dogs smell fear. Nearly all members of the opposite sex are attracted to him, nevertheless, including many of his thirteen-year-old students.
My heart beat faster as I stopped beside her. Oh, it was ridiculous, but the awareness that she might be in love with me made it suddenly impossible to behave normally.
I leaned over and she seemed to shrink back. Her breathing changed. Her eyes were locked on to the book. I could smell the fragrance of her shampoo, I studiously avoided any form of contact, placed my finger on the first number she had written. She stroked her hair to the side, rested one elbow on the table. It was as if everything we did had become conscious: every detail became visible, it was no longer unthinking and natural but considered and artificial. (397)
Interactions with students awkwardly and tenderly approach transgression. He admires the form of a student and feels an abyss open inside him. He may be a little in love with Andrea, a thirteen year old, but he knows no one knows. At an all-ages alcohol-soaked party in another town, he kisses a thirteen-year-old girl, regrets it in the morning, and fears repercussions that never come.
But Book Four seems mostly about emerging from childhood into the freedom (and, to a degree, responsibility) of adulthood. It’s about an 18-year-old boy with artistic tendencies as undefined as they are ambitious, in a black beret, white shirt, and black pants held up by a studded belt, emerging from the shadow of youth. The first 100+ pages relay KOK’s arrival in the north to teach, the start of classes, his acclimation to the isolation in which he writes his first stories. One early weekend night, he goes out with new friends and blacks out after drinking too much. An audaciously long stretch of backstory follows (200+ pages), set during the preceding year. KOK’s childhood was lorded over by his increasingly alcoholic father, but he lives with his mother in southern Norway as he finishes high school. He hosts a graduation-type party (cases of beer stacked in the kitchen) that wrecks his mother’s house. That summer he sells cassettes to tourists, drinks, and tries as hard as he can to have sex. He causally mentions being drunk in a car that goes off the road and flips over at 100 kph (62 mph). By the time we return to the bathroom in which the young teacher has just vomited bile, we feel that in no way should he be educating children. He’s an overgrown child himself, fresh off a summer of indulgence in drunkenness and the quest to shed his virginity.
I wanted to steal, drink, smoke hash, and experiment with other drugs – cocaine, amphetamines, mescaline – to get high and live the great rock-and-roll lifestyle, to feel to the last drop of my blood that I couldn’t give a flying fuck about anything. Oh, what appeal there was in that! But then there was all the rest of me inside that wanted to be a serious student, a decent son, a good person. If only I could blow that to smithereens! (320)
Imagine Kurt Cobain in the classroom in 1987. (KOK was born in December 1968; Cobain in February 1967).
KOK knows the order of the planets and has written reviews about bands like Tuxedomoon for hometown newspapers, but there’s not that much difference between students and teacher, we realize, and there’s an expectation therefore that something indecent will happen while the teacher is blacked out one night.
Young Karl Ove is a fan of author Jens Bjørneboe and his History of Bestiality trilogy, the first volume of which describes an alpine wind that drives residents mad, sometimes causing murders, and difficulties with hard cider that often result in fathers killing their entire families. All three volumes consistently emphasize that we live on a thin crust of land between raging magma below and idiotically ordered outerspace above, that it’s no wonder we behave like homicidal lunatics, but there’s also great natural beauty and pleasures galore on Earth. Somewhat like KOK’s father, Bjørneboe was an alcoholic who ultimately hanged himself instead of drinking himself to death. The father’s shadow gives all these volumes their heft, so when young Karl Ove enthuses about his early experience with drink, end-stage alcoholism always lurks off-stage.
Why didn’t they drink? Why didn’t everyone drink? Alcohol makes everything big, it is a wind blowing through your consciousness, it is crashing waves and swaying forests, and the light it transmits gilds everything you see, even the ugliest and most revolting person become attractive in some way, it is as if all objections and all judgments are cast aside in a wide sweep of the hand, in an act of supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful. (426)
As with the first section of Book One (the teenage quest for alcohol on New Year’s Eve), Book Three (entirely embedded in early childhood), Book Four complicates for me the concept of relatability. Finding a novel “relatable” often seems like a weak critique but part of KOK’s allure is exactly this connection with readers. It’s not so simplistic as “I get what he’s saying, I once constantly thought about losing my virginity, too.” At its best, it’s more about evoking memories in a reader.
Proust is the patron saint of associative memory, the famous phenomenon in which a cookie dipped in tea revives a forgotten world. KOK and his My Struggle series will become associated with something similar: instead of some innocent trigger evoking memories, Knausgaard’s dramatization of his past evokes memories for readers. My Struggle is the madeleine.
His detailed quest for sex opens a world of memory, particularly embarrassing bits not so often aired these days. It takes considerable restraint not to list instances from my life that more or less match those in the novel. And I’m sure many women share memories of these mostly forgotten, awkwardly executed initial attempts at getting it on.
But there’s more to this than that: there’s the image of KOK listening to Led Zep, pacing his apartment with clenched fists, psyching himself up to write. There’s the excitement of his initial immersion in the act of writing. There’s the clueless/confident sense of the importance of what’s been written, a surge at first that hooks the nascent writer for life. And there’s the first experience with criticism, especially the negative sort from his older brother, which fuels his ambition to one day write something like My Struggle:
You don’t think anyone’s going to publish it do you? In all seriousness?
I’ll damn well show him. I’ll damn well show the whole fucking world who I am and what I am made of. I’ll crush every single one of them. I’ll render every single one of them speechless. I will. I will. I damn well will. I’ll be so big no one is even close. No one. No. One. Never. Not a chance. I will be the greatest ever. The fucking idiots. I’ll damn well crush every single one of them.
I had to be big. I had to be.
If not, I might as well end it all. (413)
As KOK once again receives big attention we can expect to see increasingly intense dissent online. This installment supplies more than enough fodder for those who prefer hot-take ridicule and rage over the time-consuming busy work of reading. I generally look forward to superficial, dismissive, reductive critiques based on the author’s gender and race, tweets along the lines of “do we really need more narratives like this?” (White male tales of heterosexual adventures.)
Scott Esposito (editor of the Quarterly Conversation and point person for lit in translation) off-handedly tweeted a few weeks before I started reading that “Book Four is pretty much all about Karl Ove’s penis.” This was followed by the online equivalent of eye rolls and sighs: “please tell me you are joking.” Esposito responded that it’s all about “semen and alcohol,” and the response was “no please make it stop.” Esposito then said it makes sense since KOK is like 18 years old in Book Four, to which the response was “I don’t care just make it stop.”
As attention ramps up with this volume’s release followed by events in NYC and San Francisco in May, we can expect to see more of this sort of thing. Or maybe since KOK’s attempts are so consistently thwarted most will find him (sym)pathetic.
Fortunately for My Struggle fans, new volumes won’t stop coming until 2017.
(If interested, here are my reviews of Books One, Two, Three, and Five.)
My Struggle: Book One (2012) involved a teenage search for alcohol on New Year’s Eve followed by the alcoholic death of the author’s father some ten years later. My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love (2013)—the best one by far for me; the volume responsible for the author’s reputation—covered falling in love, fatherhood, the conflict of having a family and trying to write. My Struggle: Book Three (2014), set entirely during his childhood under the shadow of an unpredictable, menacing father, presented regularly occurring instances of tears. Book Four, published in the U.S. in April 2015, replaces tears with nocturnal emission and premature ejaculation.
A six-volume memoir of a chronic masturbator would be problematic. Fortunately, KOK avoids critiques regarding autobiographical autoeroticism:
The fact was I had never masturbated. Had never beat off. Had never played with myself. I was eighteen years old now and it had never happened. Not once. I hadn’t even tried. My lack of experience of this meant that I both knew and didn’t know how to do it. And once I hadn’t done it as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old, time passed and it slowly became unthinkable, not in the sense of unheard of, more in the sense of beyond my horizons. The direct result of this was that I had heavy nocturnal emissions. I dreamed about women, and in my sleep not even touching was required, it was enough just to lay my eye on them, standing there, with their beautiful bodies, and I came. If I was close to them in my dreams, again I came. My whole body jerked and convulsed through the night, and my underpants were soaked with semen in the morning. (350)
If all goes well for the remainder of the year, 2015 will be forever linked in our minds with an 18-year-old’s underpants filling up with semen. This one’s narrative arc tracks an academic year as he teaches in a small fishing village in northern Norway, an isolated spot lorded over by fjords and permanent winter darkness. But progression can also be charted in terms of sticky underpants at first, followed by premature ejaculation during failed attempts at coitus, ending with a triumphant scene that made this reader literally LOL as he closed the book.
KOK at this age is sex obsessed, especially since he’s still a virgin. In a civilization lacking significant rights of passage, intercourse is the new bar/bat mitzvah, even in northern Norway in 1987. But there’s more to it than the will to copulate. It’s about exchanging the chrysalis of innocence for the wings of experience, attaining knowledge reserved for adults.
I looked upon [girls] as completely unapproachable creatures, indeed, as angels of a sort, I loved everything about them, from the veins in the skin over their wrists to the curves of their ears, and if I saw a breast under a T-shirt or a naked thigh under a summer dress, it was as though everything in my insides was let loose, as though everything began to swirl around and the immense desire that then arose was as light as light itself, as light as air, and in it there was a notion that everything was possible, not only here but everywhere and not only now but forever. At the same time as all this arose inside me, a consciousness shot up from below, like a waterspout, it was heavy and dark, there was abandon, resignation, impotence, the world closing in on me. There was the awkwardness, the silence, the scared eyes. There were the flushed cheeks and the great unease.
But there were other reasons too. There was something I couldn’t do and something I didn’t understand. There were secrets and there was darkness, there were shady dealings and there was laughter that jeered at everything. Oh, I sensed it, but I knew nothing about it. Nothing. (82)
It’s about love, too: erotic, spiritual, artistic. Young KOK loves women, books, music. But he doesn’t quite love himself. He believes girls detect his lack of confidence the way dogs smell fear. Nearly all members of the opposite sex are attracted to him, nevertheless, including many of his thirteen-year-old students.
My heart beat faster as I stopped beside her. Oh, it was ridiculous, but the awareness that she might be in love with me made it suddenly impossible to behave normally.
I leaned over and she seemed to shrink back. Her breathing changed. Her eyes were locked on to the book. I could smell the fragrance of her shampoo, I studiously avoided any form of contact, placed my finger on the first number she had written. She stroked her hair to the side, rested one elbow on the table. It was as if everything we did had become conscious: every detail became visible, it was no longer unthinking and natural but considered and artificial. (397)
Interactions with students awkwardly and tenderly approach transgression. He admires the form of a student and feels an abyss open inside him. He may be a little in love with Andrea, a thirteen year old, but he knows no one knows. At an all-ages alcohol-soaked party in another town, he kisses a thirteen-year-old girl, regrets it in the morning, and fears repercussions that never come.
But Book Four seems mostly about emerging from childhood into the freedom (and, to a degree, responsibility) of adulthood. It’s about an 18-year-old boy with artistic tendencies as undefined as they are ambitious, in a black beret, white shirt, and black pants held up by a studded belt, emerging from the shadow of youth. The first 100+ pages relay KOK’s arrival in the north to teach, the start of classes, his acclimation to the isolation in which he writes his first stories. One early weekend night, he goes out with new friends and blacks out after drinking too much. An audaciously long stretch of backstory follows (200+ pages), set during the preceding year. KOK’s childhood was lorded over by his increasingly alcoholic father, but he lives with his mother in southern Norway as he finishes high school. He hosts a graduation-type party (cases of beer stacked in the kitchen) that wrecks his mother’s house. That summer he sells cassettes to tourists, drinks, and tries as hard as he can to have sex. He causally mentions being drunk in a car that goes off the road and flips over at 100 kph (62 mph). By the time we return to the bathroom in which the young teacher has just vomited bile, we feel that in no way should he be educating children. He’s an overgrown child himself, fresh off a summer of indulgence in drunkenness and the quest to shed his virginity.
I wanted to steal, drink, smoke hash, and experiment with other drugs – cocaine, amphetamines, mescaline – to get high and live the great rock-and-roll lifestyle, to feel to the last drop of my blood that I couldn’t give a flying fuck about anything. Oh, what appeal there was in that! But then there was all the rest of me inside that wanted to be a serious student, a decent son, a good person. If only I could blow that to smithereens! (320)
Imagine Kurt Cobain in the classroom in 1987. (KOK was born in December 1968; Cobain in February 1967).
KOK knows the order of the planets and has written reviews about bands like Tuxedomoon for hometown newspapers, but there’s not that much difference between students and teacher, we realize, and there’s an expectation therefore that something indecent will happen while the teacher is blacked out one night.
Young Karl Ove is a fan of author Jens Bjørneboe and his History of Bestiality trilogy, the first volume of which describes an alpine wind that drives residents mad, sometimes causing murders, and difficulties with hard cider that often result in fathers killing their entire families. All three volumes consistently emphasize that we live on a thin crust of land between raging magma below and idiotically ordered outerspace above, that it’s no wonder we behave like homicidal lunatics, but there’s also great natural beauty and pleasures galore on Earth. Somewhat like KOK’s father, Bjørneboe was an alcoholic who ultimately hanged himself instead of drinking himself to death. The father’s shadow gives all these volumes their heft, so when young Karl Ove enthuses about his early experience with drink, end-stage alcoholism always lurks off-stage.
Why didn’t they drink? Why didn’t everyone drink? Alcohol makes everything big, it is a wind blowing through your consciousness, it is crashing waves and swaying forests, and the light it transmits gilds everything you see, even the ugliest and most revolting person become attractive in some way, it is as if all objections and all judgments are cast aside in a wide sweep of the hand, in an act of supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful. (426)
As with the first section of Book One (the teenage quest for alcohol on New Year’s Eve), Book Three (entirely embedded in early childhood), Book Four complicates for me the concept of relatability. Finding a novel “relatable” often seems like a weak critique but part of KOK’s allure is exactly this connection with readers. It’s not so simplistic as “I get what he’s saying, I once constantly thought about losing my virginity, too.” At its best, it’s more about evoking memories in a reader.
Proust is the patron saint of associative memory, the famous phenomenon in which a cookie dipped in tea revives a forgotten world. KOK and his My Struggle series will become associated with something similar: instead of some innocent trigger evoking memories, Knausgaard’s dramatization of his past evokes memories for readers. My Struggle is the madeleine.
His detailed quest for sex opens a world of memory, particularly embarrassing bits not so often aired these days. It takes considerable restraint not to list instances from my life that more or less match those in the novel. And I’m sure many women share memories of these mostly forgotten, awkwardly executed initial attempts at getting it on.
But there’s more to this than that: there’s the image of KOK listening to Led Zep, pacing his apartment with clenched fists, psyching himself up to write. There’s the excitement of his initial immersion in the act of writing. There’s the clueless/confident sense of the importance of what’s been written, a surge at first that hooks the nascent writer for life. And there’s the first experience with criticism, especially the negative sort from his older brother, which fuels his ambition to one day write something like My Struggle:
You don’t think anyone’s going to publish it do you? In all seriousness?
I’ll damn well show him. I’ll damn well show the whole fucking world who I am and what I am made of. I’ll crush every single one of them. I’ll render every single one of them speechless. I will. I will. I damn well will. I’ll be so big no one is even close. No one. No. One. Never. Not a chance. I will be the greatest ever. The fucking idiots. I’ll damn well crush every single one of them.
I had to be big. I had to be.
If not, I might as well end it all. (413)
As KOK once again receives big attention we can expect to see increasingly intense dissent online. This installment supplies more than enough fodder for those who prefer hot-take ridicule and rage over the time-consuming busy work of reading. I generally look forward to superficial, dismissive, reductive critiques based on the author’s gender and race, tweets along the lines of “do we really need more narratives like this?” (White male tales of heterosexual adventures.)
Scott Esposito (editor of the Quarterly Conversation and point person for lit in translation) off-handedly tweeted a few weeks before I started reading that “Book Four is pretty much all about Karl Ove’s penis.” This was followed by the online equivalent of eye rolls and sighs: “please tell me you are joking.” Esposito responded that it’s all about “semen and alcohol,” and the response was “no please make it stop.” Esposito then said it makes sense since KOK is like 18 years old in Book Four, to which the response was “I don’t care just make it stop.”
As attention ramps up with this volume’s release followed by events in NYC and San Francisco in May, we can expect to see more of this sort of thing. Or maybe since KOK’s attempts are so consistently thwarted most will find him (sym)pathetic.
Fortunately for My Struggle fans, new volumes won’t stop coming until 2017.
(If interested, here are my reviews of Books One, Two, Three, and Five.)
February 4, 2019
Press Release for Immediate Publication, May 29, 2017
From: CUPID (Committee for Understanding Priapism In Development)
Subject: 2017 CHUB Award Goes to Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard
CUPID, the international Committee for Understanding Priapism In Development, is much pleased to announced our 2017 CHUB Award winner, Karl Ove Knausgaard, for his contributions to a better public understanding of the Chronic Hell of Uncontrollable Bulges that all men suffer in their formative years ("CHUB").
We selected Karl Ove for the first five volumes of his upstanding "My Struggle," recently published in English, and primarily for his semi-autobiographical novel, My Struggle, Book 4: Dancing in the Dark, in which he brilliantly portrays the tormented mind of the male in his late teens. In the novel, Mr. Knausgaard describes his hardest year, as a nineteen-year-old teacher on the northern coast of Norway, with a mind chronically cluttered with carnal cacoethes, so much that he could hardly stop his virginity from being taken by a wanton woman a year his senior.
CUPID believes such truthful depictions of the male developing into manhood are much needed for western and westernized females to gain a more complete understanding of the male as he grows under an ominous terror brought on by the petrifying conflict between his moral compass and chivalric aspirations on the one hand and, in the other, the arising involuntary demonic thoughts and the uncontrollable reaction of his bodily functions.
"Dancing in the Dark" is a rigid reminder that, as Sir William Osler, father of modern medicine, so veriloquently stated, "The natural man has only two primal passions -- to get and beget."
Portions of Interviews with CUPID President Johnson N. Palmer, Fusée de Poche, Louisiana, May 25, 2017:
I too grew up as a young male. It was quite hard. Mr. Knut gave such fitting descriptions of the pain endured by the young man in the vulgar visions spewing randomly into his head which lewdly unloose an altogether irrepressible granitic growth.
You might not think it, but my mind was not at all complicated back then. It was all quite simple. My mind was not, as some of you gals might believe, a pornographic potpourri.
Heck, the most provocative photos in my room were a poster of Farrah Fawcett, in an unbelievably hot pose in a burnt-orange bikini burnt into my mind, and of the model Cheryl Tiegs in a see through fishnet bathing suit. Boy howdy, that brings back some moving memories.
The forming male mind is more idolatrous of the female figure, a worship in which they are congenitally corneous and carnally-afflicted supplicants. One of our doctors on the CUPID premises says a young men we are overloaded with what they call androgen. I says, hey now boy, I ain't no androgynous, and he explained that weren't what he was talking about. From what I've been able to gather in my power position, the thrust of it is that this chemical plagues us as boys with bouts of what you might call a sort of depression of the mind and inflational, compromising poses. We become depressed because we are cheapened by our persistent, involuntary preoccupations with female machinations, each of us a walking contradiction with an itchy false sensor always going off with what it believes is female pheromones. You could say we was in a testosterone zone.
Oh sure. I think the teen male mind is completely misunderstood by womenfolk. Most of us is tongue-tied, terrified and timid in the presence of the female subspecies, when we are usually nothing but peach-fuzzed, pimple-faced punks repeatedly suffering persecution from our peers. I was often flummoxed by my buddies bragging with all-fired bravado after a girl walked by, and then I'd become a bashful boy with an inner barbarian when approached by a pretty girl.
We need more books like this here one written by Mr. Knuttsen [pointing] to help us here at CUPID counter the negative feministic reactions to young men in general at a time when these boys have increasing pressure to handle themselves amidst the plethora of porn available on the internets. Today's young man is dazed and dogged by thoughts he does and should deem demonic, he's likely just a gawky geek losing grip on reality by his salacious yearnings. We need more contributions to help young men as they face the insidious internets full of pornographic photos and what they call naked selfins bombarding their cellular phones.
Yes, sure. I'd tell the fellows and upstanding ladies out there to send in whatever you can afford because young men are out there in need of your aid and succor as they face the devilry in porn purveyors and selfie-sending harlots. Our address is CUPID, Box 96, Fusée de Poche, Louisiana 69699. Thank you very much.
From: CUPID (Committee for Understanding Priapism In Development)
Subject: 2017 CHUB Award Goes to Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard
CUPID, the international Committee for Understanding Priapism In Development, is much pleased to announced our 2017 CHUB Award winner, Karl Ove Knausgaard, for his contributions to a better public understanding of the Chronic Hell of Uncontrollable Bulges that all men suffer in their formative years ("CHUB").
We selected Karl Ove for the first five volumes of his upstanding "My Struggle," recently published in English, and primarily for his semi-autobiographical novel, My Struggle, Book 4: Dancing in the Dark, in which he brilliantly portrays the tormented mind of the male in his late teens. In the novel, Mr. Knausgaard describes his hardest year, as a nineteen-year-old teacher on the northern coast of Norway, with a mind chronically cluttered with carnal cacoethes, so much that he could hardly stop his virginity from being taken by a wanton woman a year his senior.
CUPID believes such truthful depictions of the male developing into manhood are much needed for western and westernized females to gain a more complete understanding of the male as he grows under an ominous terror brought on by the petrifying conflict between his moral compass and chivalric aspirations on the one hand and, in the other, the arising involuntary demonic thoughts and the uncontrollable reaction of his bodily functions.
"Dancing in the Dark" is a rigid reminder that, as Sir William Osler, father of modern medicine, so veriloquently stated, "The natural man has only two primal passions -- to get and beget."
Portions of Interviews with CUPID President Johnson N. Palmer, Fusée de Poche, Louisiana, May 25, 2017:
I too grew up as a young male. It was quite hard. Mr. Knut gave such fitting descriptions of the pain endured by the young man in the vulgar visions spewing randomly into his head which lewdly unloose an altogether irrepressible granitic growth.
You might not think it, but my mind was not at all complicated back then. It was all quite simple. My mind was not, as some of you gals might believe, a pornographic potpourri.
Heck, the most provocative photos in my room were a poster of Farrah Fawcett, in an unbelievably hot pose in a burnt-orange bikini burnt into my mind, and of the model Cheryl Tiegs in a see through fishnet bathing suit. Boy howdy, that brings back some moving memories.
The forming male mind is more idolatrous of the female figure, a worship in which they are congenitally corneous and carnally-afflicted supplicants. One of our doctors on the CUPID premises says a young men we are overloaded with what they call androgen. I says, hey now boy, I ain't no androgynous, and he explained that weren't what he was talking about. From what I've been able to gather in my power position, the thrust of it is that this chemical plagues us as boys with bouts of what you might call a sort of depression of the mind and inflational, compromising poses. We become depressed because we are cheapened by our persistent, involuntary preoccupations with female machinations, each of us a walking contradiction with an itchy false sensor always going off with what it believes is female pheromones. You could say we was in a testosterone zone.
Oh sure. I think the teen male mind is completely misunderstood by womenfolk. Most of us is tongue-tied, terrified and timid in the presence of the female subspecies, when we are usually nothing but peach-fuzzed, pimple-faced punks repeatedly suffering persecution from our peers. I was often flummoxed by my buddies bragging with all-fired bravado after a girl walked by, and then I'd become a bashful boy with an inner barbarian when approached by a pretty girl.
We need more books like this here one written by Mr. Knuttsen [pointing] to help us here at CUPID counter the negative feministic reactions to young men in general at a time when these boys have increasing pressure to handle themselves amidst the plethora of porn available on the internets. Today's young man is dazed and dogged by thoughts he does and should deem demonic, he's likely just a gawky geek losing grip on reality by his salacious yearnings. We need more contributions to help young men as they face the insidious internets full of pornographic photos and what they call naked selfins bombarding their cellular phones.
Yes, sure. I'd tell the fellows and upstanding ladies out there to send in whatever you can afford because young men are out there in need of your aid and succor as they face the devilry in porn purveyors and selfie-sending harlots. Our address is CUPID, Box 96, Fusée de Poche, Louisiana 69699. Thank you very much.
July 17, 2015
Book Four of My Struggle presents to us an eighteen-year-old Karl Ove Knausgaard, a Hamsun-esque anti-hero, a version perhaps (o dear reader, permit me my lazy analogies! I have so little in this life!) of the unnamed vagrant that staggers the streets of Kristiania in Hunger, with a similarly loosely-woven and easily-breached code of chivalry, regiment of a derangement of the senses, of shame, self-abnegation, self-flagellation, loosely (again) bound up with self-aggrandizement, self-confidence always on the brink of slipping into self-abuse and shadowy self-effacement, with a nice admixture of the violent despising and denial of hypocritical bourgeois ethics and decent musical taste ... ! … He moves to a tiny isolated fishing village in Northern Norway to work as a teacher for a year as an excuse to excuse himself from society and have space and silence to write, he mixes with the locals to varying degrees of success and humiliation, he drinks himself to blackness, he vomits copiously, he pursues the phantom Getting Laid to no end, he soils uncountable pairs of underwear with premature ejaculations, he feels his special brand of Nordic Promethean shame at this, he succeeds at writing he fails at writing, he observes the fjord and the surrounding mountains and the changing seasons with an intense sensitivity to the deeply felt yet vague affinity our inner natures find in the sublime, he is lonely, he is Other, he frets with fraternity among the people he encounters in this strange landscape, and when the polar night begins he becomes evermore apparition-like, the scarcity of light taking on all manner of inward refraction and correspondence in our young man... The structure of this book mirrors Book Two, where the greater part of the middle section is a remembrance, a lengthy digressionary intrusion into the narrative that is a leading-up to the resumption of the present tense hundreds of pages later, and there are also brief windows into later years, KOK composing the book we are reading, which casts a pleasant metafictive Brocken spectre over the whole endeavor, and there is a pathos, or maybe simply a readerly self-identification with the young Karl Ove of this book that allows a tenderness or empathetic sweetness to arise out of his travails, his insecurities, his little victories, his endurance, his growing up. Perhaps the strangest of the four books thus far (and this is a compliment) I truly enjoyed reading every page of it. We English Readers of Karl Ove Knausgaard now must wait until April of 2016 to resume our weird walk in his shoes… so be it! Time slips by in the most peculiar and unpredictable ways...
May 24, 2016
[continued from here]
At 12%. I started this, the fourth part of Karl Ove Knausgård’s struggle, three days late. The only strict reading plan I had and it whooshed right past me. So far for making plans. Karl Ove has finished school. It’s the summer after he turned eighteen–1987–, and his plan is to go up North to a small town and become a substitute teacher for a year. This reminds me of another book I read last year by another Norwegian author, Agnar Mykle, whose book Lasso rundt fru Luna deals with a young man whose plan is was to go up North to a small town and become a substitute teacher. And, sure enough, Karl Ove–keeping up the image of a sly dog in my eyes–mentions Agnar’s Lasso right at the start of his book.
·•●•·
After 18% I realize I don’t like this fourth installment as much as the previous three. I should like it though! Why don’t I like it?! Is it me; not sleeping so well the last couple nights; being pissed off by the weather and work stuff, and generally feeling sort of miserable? Is it Karl Ove; loosing his talent to write a captivating story about nothing? Is it the language; the translation? — This book has new translator. I emailed the previous one (who will return with Vol.5), asked him why he skipped Vol.4 and he wrote back (after five minutes!); speaking of time constrains – his involment in other projects – deadlines and so on; all the usual stuff. Nice guy – it seems – I want him back! I want my old KOK back...
·•●•·
At 35% now and the narrative still doesn’t grab me like the previous books did. Not thinking it’s a translation issue. The words are alright. Some phrases have “ATTENTION! NORWEGIAN WORDPLAY” written all over them, and I have to look them up; try to make sense of them – or ask Manny. The Knausgårdian pull is definitely there, but it’s not as strong this time. For instance Karl Ove and his mother have a conversation about his new job as a newspaper critic over dinner. A lot of things get mentioned; the tomato sauce, the potato that almost rolled of the plate, the pots and pans. But where is the detail? What color did the pot have – which pattern did the table cloth have – what song was played on the radio? Those kind of things. @KOK – You’re not faltering, are you? There are also way too few other books mentioned so far. I hope this’ll change.
·•●•·
At 50% the book has gained some momentum, not least because of Bjørneboe and also Heidegger who were explicetely mentioned several times and at other times lurk in the back somehow.
What is annoying, though, is the way some words gets emphasized: Someone, probably from the German publisher, decided it was good idea to write those words not in the usual way, italic, but italic and bold . Very distracting.
[NB: If you see a space between the word “bold” and the full stop above – that wasn’t me! It’s yet another glitch in the GR software]
·•●•·
At 75%. Nearing the end of this novel. Is this really a novel, or is it a memoir after all? I looked up the small town in Northern Norway on Google Maps, where most of the story is set, and couldn’t find it. There is not village called Håfjord in all of Norway. I finally found an article from Dagbladet in which Knausgård admits he gave the place and the people in different names to protect them. But of course the newspaper found out about the real name: ████████; and it looks like this:
Can’t say I love this book. Can’t say I hate it either. Of the four books I read this is the weakest though, and I doubt this impression will change within the last quarter of the book.
·•●•·
At 100%. Four down, two to go. At age 18/19 Karl Ove seemed to have been some nasty piece of work with all his drinking and selfishness. Not so much of a whiny boy any more though (cf. Book #3). I believe if you don’t like Holden Caulfield from Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye you certainly won’t like the Karl Ove Knausgård in this book. On the other hand, if you do like Holden (like I do) you don’t necessarily also like Karl Ove. Hm. But this is not the reason why I down-starred this volume in relation to the other ones. Volume four seems kind of rushed to me. I’m missing the threads that hold the text together and I also don’t quite get the point of this book within the whole six-volume-novel. Somewhere near the end his first novel, Ute av verden, gets mentioned. I would really like to read this one some time. Perhaps it’ll shed some light on the story here. Unfortunately there’s neither a German nor an English version of Ute av verden available.
So, bye-bye, Karl Ove Knausgård – for now; see you again in Book #5 which I’m going to start reading at the end of May – at least that’s my plan.
[to be continued here]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
March 22, 2016
"Book 4 is also the airiest book in the series. The pages are rarely dense with text. The essayistic passages that elevate the earlier volumes, bold in their old-fashioned European profundity and full of keen, original, brilliantly associative thinking, are nowhere to be found. Everything here is dramatized, scene after scene, compellingly so but without the gravitas of the earlier books and suggestive of a lighter, more carefree period in Knausgaard’s life.
The reason these books feel so much like life is that there’s only one main character. For all of his gifts, Knausgaard never leaves an indelible impression of other people. I have only a limited sense of his father and mother despite having read hundreds of pages about them, and the figures Knausgaard meets in Hafjord, his teaching colleagues, the girls he falls for and his students, tend to merge. You never get inside these people. It’s impossible to be inside them without altering the focus of Knausgaard’s solipsism. This wouldn’t work with most writers. They wouldn’t be interesting enough, tormented enough, smart, noble, pitiless or self-critical enough. With Knausgaard the trade-off is more than worth it. His is such an interesting brain to inhabit that you never wish to relinquish the perspective any more than, in your own life, you wish to stop being yourself. One of the paradoxes of Knausgaard’s work is that in dwelling so intensely on his own memories he restores — and I would almost say blesses — the reader’s own."
Jeffrey Eugenides, The New York Times
Eugenides hits the nail right on the head here. As much as I will give 10 stars to the entire My Struggle series (and I have yet to read installments 5 and 6), this one felt much, much lighter than the previous three. There were a lot less flights of the mind between the past relived and the present moment of writing the book. There were a lot less of the existential digressions and philosophical asides that I loved so much in the first two books. There was a lot less free play and improvisation in the writing.
There was a lot of sexual yearning. A lot of booze. A lot of (very) young girls with perfect bums and breasts outlined underneath their shirts. A lot of self-awareness. A lot of hunger for life, for transcendence, for excitement, for heat in all its manifestations, for independence. The adolescent male in its primeval glory.
And yet. There is absolutely nothing like living inside Karl Ove Knausgaard's mind. If this volume is more airy than the previous ones, it is precisely because it portrays a shifty, self-conscious, arrogant and confused period of life. There is no room for much complexity here because the entire self is pointed and taut like an arrow, aimed at one thing and one thing only: sex. So it must be.
And this is where Knausgaard's genius lies. If you trust him, if you are willing to tread through the mundane as well as the sublime, you will be rewarded in ways that you will never suspect. You will experience what it's like to be in someone else's head, literally. Lives are messy, boring, mucky and repetitive. Lives are also unique, unpredictable, elegant and heartbreaking. As Oscar Wilde said, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
The reason these books feel so much like life is that there’s only one main character. For all of his gifts, Knausgaard never leaves an indelible impression of other people. I have only a limited sense of his father and mother despite having read hundreds of pages about them, and the figures Knausgaard meets in Hafjord, his teaching colleagues, the girls he falls for and his students, tend to merge. You never get inside these people. It’s impossible to be inside them without altering the focus of Knausgaard’s solipsism. This wouldn’t work with most writers. They wouldn’t be interesting enough, tormented enough, smart, noble, pitiless or self-critical enough. With Knausgaard the trade-off is more than worth it. His is such an interesting brain to inhabit that you never wish to relinquish the perspective any more than, in your own life, you wish to stop being yourself. One of the paradoxes of Knausgaard’s work is that in dwelling so intensely on his own memories he restores — and I would almost say blesses — the reader’s own."
Jeffrey Eugenides, The New York Times
Eugenides hits the nail right on the head here. As much as I will give 10 stars to the entire My Struggle series (and I have yet to read installments 5 and 6), this one felt much, much lighter than the previous three. There were a lot less flights of the mind between the past relived and the present moment of writing the book. There were a lot less of the existential digressions and philosophical asides that I loved so much in the first two books. There was a lot less free play and improvisation in the writing.
There was a lot of sexual yearning. A lot of booze. A lot of (very) young girls with perfect bums and breasts outlined underneath their shirts. A lot of self-awareness. A lot of hunger for life, for transcendence, for excitement, for heat in all its manifestations, for independence. The adolescent male in its primeval glory.
And yet. There is absolutely nothing like living inside Karl Ove Knausgaard's mind. If this volume is more airy than the previous ones, it is precisely because it portrays a shifty, self-conscious, arrogant and confused period of life. There is no room for much complexity here because the entire self is pointed and taut like an arrow, aimed at one thing and one thing only: sex. So it must be.
And this is where Knausgaard's genius lies. If you trust him, if you are willing to tread through the mundane as well as the sublime, you will be rewarded in ways that you will never suspect. You will experience what it's like to be in someone else's head, literally. Lives are messy, boring, mucky and repetitive. Lives are also unique, unpredictable, elegant and heartbreaking. As Oscar Wilde said, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
December 22, 2015
My Struggle, Book 4, AKA:
Dancing in the Dark
or
Drunk with Ideas of a Young Girl
or
Premature Explication
or
Drunk, Cold and Unsatisfied in the North
"But there was something about the darkness. There was something about this small, enclosed place. There was something about seeing the same faces every day. My class. My colleagues. The assistant at the shop. The occasional mother, the occasional father. Now and then the young fishermen. But always the same people, always the same atmosphere. The snow, the darkness, the harsh light inside the school."
Book four of Knausgård's literary six-pack centers on Karl Ove teaching at a small, remote school in Håfjord Norway. This isn't a simple narrative, so it jumps back to periods with both his mother, his brother, and his family. It also allows Karl Ove time to wallow in the premature ejaculations of his youth. At once, this is a novel about a young man working out who he is as an artist, a man, and a member of his family. He has gained some independence, but doesn't always use this independence wisely. He has started to publish musical reviews his last year in gymnasium and takes a job in Håfjord to save up money so he can later tour Europe. He struggles with girls. Like most men of 18, Karl Ove is super-focused on getting in the pants of the opposite sex, but circumstance, his own lack of control, and sometimes his own unwillingness to compromise makes this journey a long one for him.
Not my favorite book of the series, so far, but still an interesting one. This novel is both a Bildungsroman and a Künstlerroman of sorts. I would probably point to this novel as being primarily a coming of age novel (so Bildungsroman) and it sounds like the next book will focus more on his attempts at publishing his first novel (so Künstlerroman?), but since Knausgård jumps around and the boundaries between the books in this work are often arbitrary, I'm not too concerned with labeling. I enjoy how Karl Ove focuses on the darkness and claustrophobia of the place:
"I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with other I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.
When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carreid the promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.
But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning."
So, I'm now 4/6 done and all I can do now is wait until they publish the next two English translations.
Dancing in the Dark
or
Drunk with Ideas of a Young Girl
or
Premature Explication
or
Drunk, Cold and Unsatisfied in the North
"But there was something about the darkness. There was something about this small, enclosed place. There was something about seeing the same faces every day. My class. My colleagues. The assistant at the shop. The occasional mother, the occasional father. Now and then the young fishermen. But always the same people, always the same atmosphere. The snow, the darkness, the harsh light inside the school."
Book four of Knausgård's literary six-pack centers on Karl Ove teaching at a small, remote school in Håfjord Norway. This isn't a simple narrative, so it jumps back to periods with both his mother, his brother, and his family. It also allows Karl Ove time to wallow in the premature ejaculations of his youth. At once, this is a novel about a young man working out who he is as an artist, a man, and a member of his family. He has gained some independence, but doesn't always use this independence wisely. He has started to publish musical reviews his last year in gymnasium and takes a job in Håfjord to save up money so he can later tour Europe. He struggles with girls. Like most men of 18, Karl Ove is super-focused on getting in the pants of the opposite sex, but circumstance, his own lack of control, and sometimes his own unwillingness to compromise makes this journey a long one for him.
Not my favorite book of the series, so far, but still an interesting one. This novel is both a Bildungsroman and a Künstlerroman of sorts. I would probably point to this novel as being primarily a coming of age novel (so Bildungsroman) and it sounds like the next book will focus more on his attempts at publishing his first novel (so Künstlerroman?), but since Knausgård jumps around and the boundaries between the books in this work are often arbitrary, I'm not too concerned with labeling. I enjoy how Karl Ove focuses on the darkness and claustrophobia of the place:
"I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with other I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.
When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carreid the promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.
But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning."
So, I'm now 4/6 done and all I can do now is wait until they publish the next two English translations.
October 15, 2020
"Χορεύοντας στο σκοτάδι "
Άκρως αποκαλυπτικός ο τέταρτος τόμος της σειράς.
Εδώ ο συγγραφέας αποκαλύπτει πιο προσωπικές του στιγμές κυρίως σεξουαλικού περιεχομένου.
Περιγράφει την αποκατάσταση της σχέσης του με τον πατέρα του. Βέβαια, θα μπορούσαμε να πούμε πως η απόσταση κ οι συνθήκες ζωής που τους είχαν μακριά τον ένα από τον άλλο καθόρισαν την αλλαγή αυτής της σχέσης.
Μετεφηβική ηλικία του Καρλ Ούβε γεμάτη πάθος, έρωτες, απογοητεύσεις, ξενύχτια κ πολύ ποτό. Μια κληρονομική συνήθεια που τον οδήγησε πολλές φορές σε δύσκολη θέση.
Σε αυτή τη φάση της ζωής του ενώ διδάσκει σε ένα σχολείο αποφασίζει να ασχοληθεί πιο ενεργά με τη συγγραφή χωρίς επιτυχία.
Η αλήθεια είναι πως ενώ αναλύει πολλές στιγμές της ζωής του με πάμπολλες λεπτομέρειες η γραφή του σε ταξιδεύει δημιουργώντας την αίσθηση κινηματογραφικών εικόνων.
Το θετικό είναι πως θα ξεκινήσω κ τον 5ο τόμο κ πως δεν έχω κουραστεί από τ��ν όγκο κ τη συνεχόμενη ανάγνωσή τους.
Άκρως αποκαλυπτικός ο τέταρτος τόμος της σειράς.
Εδώ ο συγγραφέας αποκαλύπτει πιο προσωπικές του στιγμές κυρίως σεξουαλικού περιεχομένου.
Περιγράφει την αποκατάσταση της σχέσης του με τον πατέρα του. Βέβαια, θα μπορούσαμε να πούμε πως η απόσταση κ οι συνθήκες ζωής που τους είχαν μακριά τον ένα από τον άλλο καθόρισαν την αλλαγή αυτής της σχέσης.
Μετεφηβική ηλικία του Καρλ Ούβε γεμάτη πάθος, έρωτες, απογοητεύσεις, ξενύχτια κ πολύ ποτό. Μια κληρονομική συνήθεια που τον οδήγησε πολλές φορές σε δύσκολη θέση.
Σε αυτή τη φάση της ζωής του ενώ διδάσκει σε ένα σχολείο αποφασίζει να ασχοληθεί πιο ενεργά με τη συγγραφή χωρίς επιτυχία.
Η αλήθεια είναι πως ενώ αναλύει πολλές στιγμές της ζωής του με πάμπολλες λεπτομέρειες η γραφή του σε ταξιδεύει δημιουργώντας την αίσθηση κινηματογραφικών εικόνων.
Το θετικό είναι πως θα ξεκινήσω κ τον 5ο τόμο κ πως δεν έχω κουραστεί από τ��ν όγκο κ τη συνεχόμενη ανάγνωσή τους.
May 15, 2024
He really is a magician. Social cringe and faux pas is my kryptonite. I turn off lots of TV shows and films if I find it unbearable. Knausgaard has managed to leave me needing more. He does little else but meander through his first teaching job, get drunk, and attempt to have sex. Somehow you want to keep reading about this. Don’t ask me how.
I really appreciate his honesty, even if the events are not strictly speaking “real” or “factual”. I see little positive social clout arising from Karl Ove sharing that he has never masturbated, or that he ejaculates criminally early in any sexual encounter for a few years (these two are linked, I believe, but you do you young Karl Ove). Lots of head in the hands moments, thinking about the absolute babbling fool that he must have been the previous night, having had bottles and bottles of wine to drink. But it’s all okay, right? Writers drink. Alone. And sad. And damn if he isn’t a writer.
I really appreciate his honesty, even if the events are not strictly speaking “real” or “factual”. I see little positive social clout arising from Karl Ove sharing that he has never masturbated, or that he ejaculates criminally early in any sexual encounter for a few years (these two are linked, I believe, but you do you young Karl Ove). Lots of head in the hands moments, thinking about the absolute babbling fool that he must have been the previous night, having had bottles and bottles of wine to drink. But it’s all okay, right? Writers drink. Alone. And sad. And damn if he isn’t a writer.
July 21, 2023
Ο Κάρλ Ούβε, στην ηλικία των 18, πηγαίνει να διδάξει ως αναπληρωτής καθηγητής γυμνασίου σε ένα μικρό χωριό της Βόρειας Νορβηγίας. Είναι η πρώτη φορά που μένει εντελώς μόνος του μακριά από όλους. Θέλει να αφοσιωθεί στη συγγραφή γιατί έχει αποφασίσει ότι αυτό είναι που θέλει να κάνει. Μας περιγράφει την άφιξή του, την καθημερινότητά του στο ψαροχώρι αυτό, τους μαθητές και τον τρόπο διδασκαλίας του. Κάποια στιγμή αναπόφευκτα, επιστρέφει στην περίοδο του διαζυγίου των γονιών του, τις αλλαγές που αυτό έφερε στις ζωές όλων τους. Ο Κάρλ Ούβε αισθάνεται ανακουφισμένος - απλά επισκέπτεται τον πατέρα του, δεν ζει μαζί του. Κι ενώ βλέπει την κατάχρηση του ποτού που εκείνος κάνει, έχοντας προχωρήσει τη ζωή του, αυτό δεν τον εμποδίζει να κάνει το ίδιο. Βρίσκει κι ο ίδιος διέξοδο στο ποτό και προσπαθεί να αποκτήσει εμπειρίες.
Μέσω της γραφής του που είναι γνώριμη πλέον, απογυμνώνεται μπροστά μας, χωρίς να στρογγυλέψει τις γωνίες των συμβάντων στη ζωή του.
3,5 αστέρια
Μέσω της γραφής του που είναι γνώριμη πλέον, απογυμνώνεται μπροστά μας, χωρίς να στρογγυλέψει τις γωνίες των συμβάντων στη ζωή του.
3,5 αστέρια
March 28, 2024
36th book of 2024.
4.5. We move on with Knausgaard, over halfway now. This was far better than the underwhelming volume 3 about his childhood. He is now (mostly) 18 years old, working as a teacher in Northern Norway and believes he is slightly in love with one of his 13-year-old students. He is also desperately trying to get laid. As ever, the most evocative parts of the book involve his father and the growing alcoholism (thanks to Knausgaard's structural choices, we've already seen it kill his father in vol. 1), the distant but clearly strong relationship with his brother (as a brother, some of the ruminations on brotherhood speak to me) and slowly but surely, he is beginning to realise he wants to be a writer and if he never makes it, he sees no alternative but to kill himself.
Knausgaard, like Hemingway, makes writing seem easy; it feels as if the words have just fallen out of him and arranged themselves as they are. I have no doubt that these novels are incredibly refined and drafted. Of course they are. His shifting from the colloquial to the philosophical is heightened in this volume. I must say the final line was so unromantic, I was shocked, almost laughed. The next volume recounts his time at writing school and he has already said one of the teachers is some "obscure Vestland writer": Jon Fosse. That hasn't aged well.
More than before, I sensed Knausgaard's own fear of death in this volume. In some ways I think all novels are about the fear of time passing/death. I wonder if that will continue to deepen as I read the final two volumes. It feels strange to be closing in so quickly on the end.
4.5. We move on with Knausgaard, over halfway now. This was far better than the underwhelming volume 3 about his childhood. He is now (mostly) 18 years old, working as a teacher in Northern Norway and believes he is slightly in love with one of his 13-year-old students. He is also desperately trying to get laid. As ever, the most evocative parts of the book involve his father and the growing alcoholism (thanks to Knausgaard's structural choices, we've already seen it kill his father in vol. 1), the distant but clearly strong relationship with his brother (as a brother, some of the ruminations on brotherhood speak to me) and slowly but surely, he is beginning to realise he wants to be a writer and if he never makes it, he sees no alternative but to kill himself.
Knausgaard, like Hemingway, makes writing seem easy; it feels as if the words have just fallen out of him and arranged themselves as they are. I have no doubt that these novels are incredibly refined and drafted. Of course they are. His shifting from the colloquial to the philosophical is heightened in this volume. I must say the final line was so unromantic, I was shocked, almost laughed. The next volume recounts his time at writing school and he has already said one of the teachers is some "obscure Vestland writer": Jon Fosse. That hasn't aged well.
More than before, I sensed Knausgaard's own fear of death in this volume. In some ways I think all novels are about the fear of time passing/death. I wonder if that will continue to deepen as I read the final two volumes. It feels strange to be closing in so quickly on the end.
A sense of jubilation filled me, for the silence was as vast as an ocean, while there was also something painful about it, as there is in all joy. The silence high up in the mountains, surrounded on all sides by beauty, allowed me to see myself or become aware of myself, not in relation to my psyche or my morality, this had nothing to do with personal qualities, this was all about being here, this body which was ascending, I was here now, I was experiencing this and then I would die.
April 2, 2023
Re-editing of my review of 5 years ago)
I wrestled through the first three parts of the ‘My Struggle’ series by Knausgard with a lot of difficulty, asking myself every time where he was heading for. Especially the first and the second installment were such a mixture of introspection and description, constantly jumping through time and space, and associating trivial scenes with almost brilliant reflections, that I did not know what to think of this writer. The third part was a chronologically told story from his childhood to his teenage years. The common theme obviously is the autobiographical focus: it seemed as if the mature Knausgard through his writing was searching for his soul and, in particular, analyzing how that soul had become what it is today.
And that is what also stands out in this fourth part. Knausgard focuses on the one year when he was 18 years old (1987-1988), working as a teacher in a small secondary school in northern Norway (apparently, due to the shortage of teachers that is possible at this early age). In the Dutch edition that I read, this part was given the title 'Night', and that certainly refers to the fact that almost all year round that northern region is shrouded in darkness. But the metaphor of course also refers to the young man who is searching his way in the dark forest of life: groping, falling and standing up again. In this book 'Night' sometimes is to be taken literally: Knausgard regularly has blackouts as a result of excessive drinking (a legacy from his father); but it also refers to his dealings with other people, and especially with women or let's say girls (because in the small village and in the school almost all women are younger than him). Knausgard describes painstakingly his obsession with losing his virginity and how difficult that is.
Again very trivial, banal scenes alternate with sometimes beautiful observations of the environment, and continuous introspection and self-reflection. But somehow digesting this was less of a struggle: this book was remarkably easy to read (there’s only one longer passage from an earlier time period) and the ingredients even begin to become familiar. In between, we also get a look at Knausgard's first writing attempts and his relative success with it. That does not mean that this now is a top book, but it remains intriguing and certainly invites you to take on the next part, with – in Dutch – the promising title ‘Writer’. (rating 2.5 stars)
(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)
I wrestled through the first three parts of the ‘My Struggle’ series by Knausgard with a lot of difficulty, asking myself every time where he was heading for. Especially the first and the second installment were such a mixture of introspection and description, constantly jumping through time and space, and associating trivial scenes with almost brilliant reflections, that I did not know what to think of this writer. The third part was a chronologically told story from his childhood to his teenage years. The common theme obviously is the autobiographical focus: it seemed as if the mature Knausgard through his writing was searching for his soul and, in particular, analyzing how that soul had become what it is today.
And that is what also stands out in this fourth part. Knausgard focuses on the one year when he was 18 years old (1987-1988), working as a teacher in a small secondary school in northern Norway (apparently, due to the shortage of teachers that is possible at this early age). In the Dutch edition that I read, this part was given the title 'Night', and that certainly refers to the fact that almost all year round that northern region is shrouded in darkness. But the metaphor of course also refers to the young man who is searching his way in the dark forest of life: groping, falling and standing up again. In this book 'Night' sometimes is to be taken literally: Knausgard regularly has blackouts as a result of excessive drinking (a legacy from his father); but it also refers to his dealings with other people, and especially with women or let's say girls (because in the small village and in the school almost all women are younger than him). Knausgard describes painstakingly his obsession with losing his virginity and how difficult that is.
Again very trivial, banal scenes alternate with sometimes beautiful observations of the environment, and continuous introspection and self-reflection. But somehow digesting this was less of a struggle: this book was remarkably easy to read (there’s only one longer passage from an earlier time period) and the ingredients even begin to become familiar. In between, we also get a look at Knausgard's first writing attempts and his relative success with it. That does not mean that this now is a top book, but it remains intriguing and certainly invites you to take on the next part, with – in Dutch – the promising title ‘Writer’. (rating 2.5 stars)
(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)
May 3, 2022
Ein Portrait des Künstlers als junger Mann. Karl Ove Knausgård erzählt, in einem weiteren Kapitel seines autobiografischen Projekts, davon wie er wurde was er ist. Zwischen Alkoholabstürzen und sexueller Frustration versucht sein jüngeres Ich seinen Weg zu finden. Das Ende der Schulzeit, der erste richtige Job und der Wunsch Schriftsteller zu werden – Stationen im Leben eines Mannes, die für sich genommen nichts Außergewöhnliches sind. Es sind Erfahrungen, die so ähnlich wohl von vielen geteilt werden. Vermutlich macht genau diese Erhebung des Normalen zum Besonderen den eigentlichen Reiz von Knausgårds Prosa aus. Sein introspektiver Blick, dem wirklich kein Detail zu entgehen scheint, führt einem beim Lesen unweigerlich die eigene Vergangenheit vor Augen. Sämtliche Unsicherheiten und Peinlichkeiten der Adoleszenz, aber weckt auch Erinnerungen an eine Zeit, in der alle Möglichkeiten noch offen standen.
February 6, 2017
My initial reaction is to rate it 3 stars but I'm having a hard time actually rationalizing that score. The series as a whole is actually quite difficult to explain to the uninitiated, it usually elicits an increasingly blank stare as I drone on about its merits. But those I've convinced to begin it have all been caught up in its energy.
I would guess that for many, especially women, this fourth book is the least favorite in the series. It mainly consists of the sexual angsts and alcoholic binges of a 17-19 year old Karl Ove. Yet, I read on with much of the same zest I did for the others even if it lacked the same hypnotic magic of 1-3. I'm still trying to figure out why. My working theory is that KO and I are nearly the same age and so his descriptions and cultural references bring me back to that same time period and perhaps I can relate more than I otherwise would? And while I hope that I wasn't the walking hormone he seems to have been, I (and probably most boys/men of that age) likely was.
I suppose book 4 had two interesting effects on me. First to make me intermittently nostalgic for those days when I'd first left home and the world was mine to conquer and second to give me an immense appreciation for being now well beyond that stage of life. True to form, KO was so blunt about his fears and shortcomings (no pun intended but I guess that's a spoiler), that I had to read on just to see how things turned out with each new romantic pursuit, and the dramatic irony (he builds a strong case for failures) produced as a result created a schadenfreude that was difficult to resist.
I would guess that for many, especially women, this fourth book is the least favorite in the series. It mainly consists of the sexual angsts and alcoholic binges of a 17-19 year old Karl Ove. Yet, I read on with much of the same zest I did for the others even if it lacked the same hypnotic magic of 1-3. I'm still trying to figure out why. My working theory is that KO and I are nearly the same age and so his descriptions and cultural references bring me back to that same time period and perhaps I can relate more than I otherwise would? And while I hope that I wasn't the walking hormone he seems to have been, I (and probably most boys/men of that age) likely was.
I suppose book 4 had two interesting effects on me. First to make me intermittently nostalgic for those days when I'd first left home and the world was mine to conquer and second to give me an immense appreciation for being now well beyond that stage of life. True to form, KO was so blunt about his fears and shortcomings (no pun intended but I guess that's a spoiler), that I had to read on just to see how things turned out with each new romantic pursuit, and the dramatic irony (he builds a strong case for failures) produced as a result created a schadenfreude that was difficult to resist.
November 26, 2018
Total slog this one. Something of limited interest at the first 20 pages and the last 40. Everything in between is the repetition of the previous 3 books in different order. I loved the first two, especially the second one. But I would not survive another one like Book 4. If he is not upping his game in the book 5, I would probably need to put his aside. But I hope it is not the case.
October 2, 2018
If my memories were stacked in a heap on the back of my life’s trailer, music was the rope that held them together and kept it, my life, in position.
Just as Brother Townes said, all you keep is the getting there. Heidegger was less than bemused by this preoccupation with the getting-there. Van Zandt is referenced per the musical orientation of the citation. I find myself disagreeing with Knausgård but recognize I am pondering his teenage self filtered nearly thirty years into the future. This thrown-ness brings us to Heidegger and my own angst, especially towards Karl Ove's Marxist uncle.
There's a lesson in Book Four: 18 year-olds shouldn't be allowed to teach junior high.
Joel told me some time ago that in this age of myriad platform and endless self-promotion, only humiliation could retain the poetic gesture. Karl Ove is an acolyte.
Winter in Northern Norway is much like the fate of the Night's Watch on Westeros. Celibacy isn't a requirement in Norway, only endless streams of vodka and white wine. Four was a much more engaging read than Three. The ceaseless crying of the earlier time is replaced by blackouts and premature ejaculation.
Just as Brother Townes said, all you keep is the getting there. Heidegger was less than bemused by this preoccupation with the getting-there. Van Zandt is referenced per the musical orientation of the citation. I find myself disagreeing with Knausgård but recognize I am pondering his teenage self filtered nearly thirty years into the future. This thrown-ness brings us to Heidegger and my own angst, especially towards Karl Ove's Marxist uncle.
There's a lesson in Book Four: 18 year-olds shouldn't be allowed to teach junior high.
Joel told me some time ago that in this age of myriad platform and endless self-promotion, only humiliation could retain the poetic gesture. Karl Ove is an acolyte.
Winter in Northern Norway is much like the fate of the Night's Watch on Westeros. Celibacy isn't a requirement in Norway, only endless streams of vodka and white wine. Four was a much more engaging read than Three. The ceaseless crying of the earlier time is replaced by blackouts and premature ejaculation.
January 29, 2022
У четвртом делу "Моје борбе" пратимо младог Карл Увеа, који са тек свршеном гимназијом одлази да буде наставник у школи на далеком северу Норвешке.
Пратимо прве пијанке, прве симпатије, несигурности, прва сексуална искуства, проблеме несхваћености... укратко, све оно што одувек одређује све адолесценте у било ком делу света.
Осим што је, као и до сада, Кнаусгор веома детаљан у описивању свега што га окружује, свих детаља прозаичне стварности, промичу повремено и догађаји који суштински формирају његову личност. Однос са рођацима, однос са оцем и мајком (увек тај отац као сенка која се надвија над њим), њихов развод, утицај старијег брата итд.
Веома ми прија Кнаусгорово писање и навијам да Бука преведе и његове неаутофикцијске романе.
Пратимо прве пијанке, прве симпатије, несигурности, прва сексуална искуства, проблеме несхваћености... укратко, све оно што одувек одређује све адолесценте у било ком делу света.
Осим што је, као и до сада, Кнаусгор веома детаљан у описивању свега што га окружује, свих детаља прозаичне стварности, промичу повремено и догађаји који суштински формирају његову личност. Однос са рођацима, однос са оцем и мајком (увек тај отац као сенка која се надвија над њим), њихов развод, утицај старијег брата итд.
Веома ми прија Кнаусгорово писање и навијам да Бука преведе и његове неаутофикцијске романе.
June 2, 2015
In this installment of his six-volume fiction, Knausgaard is eighteen years old. He relates his first year teaching lower secondary school in Håfjord, a small town by the sea in far north Norway. This is his first full-time paid employment outside of a month’s summertime stint at a nursing home. The excitement of being on his own to earn money, to write, to be all he can be is palpable in the beginning. Only a few short months into the teaching gig he calls his mother: he wants to quit. Ah, callow youth!
It turns out what he really wants to do, what absorbs his attention, is shag girls. "I would have given anything to sleep with a girl. Any girl actually…But it wasn’t something you were given, it was something you took. Exactly how, I didn’t know…" A great deal of the time and energy of his sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth years revolved around this quest. The wider world was there: the colleague he lived with continually asked him to go on tramps in the countryside but he refused: "not my thing." When at Christmas that year he returns to Lavik in southern Norway he notices trees: "I’d had no idea that I had missed trees until I was sitting there and saw them."
Outside of shagging girls what Karl Ove wanted to do is write. And not just write: “I will be the bloody greatest ever…I had to be big. I had to.” Actually, it is this certainty in his own talents that makes Karl Ove interesting to listen to for five hundred-odd pages in this installment. It has been said that a novel is just words on paper until it is read; that is, the reader brings imagination, understanding, and empathy to a novel to make it cohere or not. This installment of Knausgaard’s six-part novel, subtitled Dancing in the Dark, is a particularly good example of the need for reader insight. Karl Ove is a special kind of boy, but he can fail. That we don’t want him to fail is only partly his doing.
This section of the linked novels is also more claustrophobic than earlier installments of Knausgaard’s story. We have less of the older authorial voice, and any distance history might provide. All thought and action takes place entirely within Karl Ove’s own head, and outside of a section in which he moves back to his final year in high school and occasional comments by the then 40-year-old author, we have only the binocular vision of his two eyes and his underdeveloped prefrontal cortex to guide us through six months living in the perpetual dark of the an Arctic winter.
The dark plays a large role in developing this teenager into a man. He has to fight against the dark within and without, and doesn’t always manage it. We readers give him ample room for mistakes in this environment, seeing as how we can hardly imagine ourselves pulling it off. The endless cycles of weekend drinking are both horrible and understandable; we just wish our bright young narrator were not so susceptible to alcohol’s siren song.
Knausgaard finishes Min Kamp Volume #4 on a high note and with a flourish worthy of his hormonal anguish. He has us laughing that he finally scaled the hills and valleys of his testosterone-soaked internal landscape. While the story of his eighteenth year has insufficient perspective in itself to have much meaning, the rest of the volumes and readers themselves provide context and meaning. We learn fractionally more about the elusive Yngve, who has small speaking parts in this novel, and marginally more about his father’s decline. We feel Karl Ove’s desperation and confusion when he realizes the place his mother rented is only home when his mother and brother are there: "...home is no longer a place. It was mum and Yngve. They were my home."
This novel is the written equivalent of Karl Ove staring into the bathroom mirror while washing his hands, looking and being looked at, inside and outside at the same time, purely and unambiguously expressing his inner state. It is forgotten the instant the pen is put down or the book closed until someone else opens the book, picks up the soap, stares at their reflection, and examines their soul.
It turns out what he really wants to do, what absorbs his attention, is shag girls. "I would have given anything to sleep with a girl. Any girl actually…But it wasn’t something you were given, it was something you took. Exactly how, I didn’t know…" A great deal of the time and energy of his sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth years revolved around this quest. The wider world was there: the colleague he lived with continually asked him to go on tramps in the countryside but he refused: "not my thing." When at Christmas that year he returns to Lavik in southern Norway he notices trees: "I’d had no idea that I had missed trees until I was sitting there and saw them."
Outside of shagging girls what Karl Ove wanted to do is write. And not just write: “I will be the bloody greatest ever…I had to be big. I had to.” Actually, it is this certainty in his own talents that makes Karl Ove interesting to listen to for five hundred-odd pages in this installment. It has been said that a novel is just words on paper until it is read; that is, the reader brings imagination, understanding, and empathy to a novel to make it cohere or not. This installment of Knausgaard’s six-part novel, subtitled Dancing in the Dark, is a particularly good example of the need for reader insight. Karl Ove is a special kind of boy, but he can fail. That we don’t want him to fail is only partly his doing.
This section of the linked novels is also more claustrophobic than earlier installments of Knausgaard’s story. We have less of the older authorial voice, and any distance history might provide. All thought and action takes place entirely within Karl Ove’s own head, and outside of a section in which he moves back to his final year in high school and occasional comments by the then 40-year-old author, we have only the binocular vision of his two eyes and his underdeveloped prefrontal cortex to guide us through six months living in the perpetual dark of the an Arctic winter.
The dark plays a large role in developing this teenager into a man. He has to fight against the dark within and without, and doesn’t always manage it. We readers give him ample room for mistakes in this environment, seeing as how we can hardly imagine ourselves pulling it off. The endless cycles of weekend drinking are both horrible and understandable; we just wish our bright young narrator were not so susceptible to alcohol’s siren song.
Knausgaard finishes Min Kamp Volume #4 on a high note and with a flourish worthy of his hormonal anguish. He has us laughing that he finally scaled the hills and valleys of his testosterone-soaked internal landscape. While the story of his eighteenth year has insufficient perspective in itself to have much meaning, the rest of the volumes and readers themselves provide context and meaning. We learn fractionally more about the elusive Yngve, who has small speaking parts in this novel, and marginally more about his father’s decline. We feel Karl Ove’s desperation and confusion when he realizes the place his mother rented is only home when his mother and brother are there: "...home is no longer a place. It was mum and Yngve. They were my home."
This novel is the written equivalent of Karl Ove staring into the bathroom mirror while washing his hands, looking and being looked at, inside and outside at the same time, purely and unambiguously expressing his inner state. It is forgotten the instant the pen is put down or the book closed until someone else opens the book, picks up the soap, stares at their reflection, and examines their soul.
May 26, 2015
I kept a very close eye on myself as I read this, and worked out why I keep reading: it's just readable. KOK writes ideal airplane literature for those of us who think we're too good for airplane literature. You don't have to keep track of anything, the pages turn, not because you have to keep going, but because it's all so digestible that there's no reason to stop turning them. He captures exactly what it's like to be an 18 year old boy (unpleasant), and throws in a few slightly intellectual paragraphs to salve your conscience while you're otherwise reading about booze and fucking.
I recently read somewhere this definition of literature as opposed to non-literary language: in literature, sentences always mean at least two things (it's a common one, I know; I think I read it in Sartre). That is not true of My Struggle, in which the words very much mean only and always what they appear to mean--again, this makes it an easy read, your brain will not be taxed at all. It's also interesting to think of KOK trying to make literature out of the non-literary, an old avant-garde approach to writing (though the old avant-gardists would, ahem, not appreciate KOK's spin on it). Is that what's going on here? Is this in any way incompatible with my "it's just airplane literature" enjoyment? I don't think so.
In any case, KOK knows this. Karl Ove discusses with his mother her brother's poetry.
"Why," asks Karl Ove, "can't he just write it as it is, straight?"
"Some do," she said. "But there are things you can't say straight."
"Such as?"
Her answer is, roughly, Heidegger's concept of Sorge, which isn't entirely convincing as an answer, but does make me really like his mother.
Later, he describes his teenage nostalgia for childhood, "when the trees were trees, not 'trees', cars not 'cars', when Dad was Dad, not 'Dad.'"
So, despite myself, I managed to intellectualize this non-intellectual book. It reflects on its own non-intellectuality, it's own lack of irony, in such a way that the reader can indulge in the boy as unliterary, unintelligent, unironical--while also being aware that this is just nostalgia. The impressive thing about book four is how it is successful as nostalgic pablum, while inserting *just* enough of the ironic acid to keep my brain engaged.
If only there'd been less stuff about the Tyrannical Family. I just do not care to hear about people's struggles with their family members. We all have them. They are not interesting. KOK as a teenager refusing to beat off might not be interesting to others, I admit.
I recently read somewhere this definition of literature as opposed to non-literary language: in literature, sentences always mean at least two things (it's a common one, I know; I think I read it in Sartre). That is not true of My Struggle, in which the words very much mean only and always what they appear to mean--again, this makes it an easy read, your brain will not be taxed at all. It's also interesting to think of KOK trying to make literature out of the non-literary, an old avant-garde approach to writing (though the old avant-gardists would, ahem, not appreciate KOK's spin on it). Is that what's going on here? Is this in any way incompatible with my "it's just airplane literature" enjoyment? I don't think so.
In any case, KOK knows this. Karl Ove discusses with his mother her brother's poetry.
"Why," asks Karl Ove, "can't he just write it as it is, straight?"
"Some do," she said. "But there are things you can't say straight."
"Such as?"
Her answer is, roughly, Heidegger's concept of Sorge, which isn't entirely convincing as an answer, but does make me really like his mother.
Later, he describes his teenage nostalgia for childhood, "when the trees were trees, not 'trees', cars not 'cars', when Dad was Dad, not 'Dad.'"
So, despite myself, I managed to intellectualize this non-intellectual book. It reflects on its own non-intellectuality, it's own lack of irony, in such a way that the reader can indulge in the boy as unliterary, unintelligent, unironical--while also being aware that this is just nostalgia. The impressive thing about book four is how it is successful as nostalgic pablum, while inserting *just* enough of the ironic acid to keep my brain engaged.
If only there'd been less stuff about the Tyrannical Family. I just do not care to hear about people's struggles with their family members. We all have them. They are not interesting. KOK as a teenager refusing to beat off might not be interesting to others, I admit.
January 17, 2020
My friend M Sarki (read his work, and find him on here; he’s worth your time and an exceptional human to boot) summed up KOK’s writing far better than I in one of his reviews for this cycle. While I paraphrase, his attribution of ‘sophisticated simplicity’ is right on the money. No more so than here, Book Four.
I would add that Karl Ove writes with a lilt of smoothness rarer than hen’s teeth, something that is disguised by the sheer forward momentum of his storytelling. Further: he earns his renowned (maligned by some) revelations/admissions; without the preceding four-digit page count, some herein would just seem juvenile or solipsistic at best. But, almost a few thousand leaves in, he has become our Odysseus. Sure, his Heroic/Homeric epic may be a bit more carnal, but his Sirens are simply removed from the Classical myth tradition and given very real, very temptingly human form. And breasts. Lots of breasts. And “mons” (no less sensual word exists, and KOK knows and exploits this to skewer himself). And, fuck me, what should we regard as his cyclops other than that one-eyed nemesis between his legs so consistently thwarting him?
Which is all to say that I’m in love with Karl Ove. Deal with it. We’re here, there’s beer—get used to it.
I would add that Karl Ove writes with a lilt of smoothness rarer than hen’s teeth, something that is disguised by the sheer forward momentum of his storytelling. Further: he earns his renowned (maligned by some) revelations/admissions; without the preceding four-digit page count, some herein would just seem juvenile or solipsistic at best. But, almost a few thousand leaves in, he has become our Odysseus. Sure, his Heroic/Homeric epic may be a bit more carnal, but his Sirens are simply removed from the Classical myth tradition and given very real, very temptingly human form. And breasts. Lots of breasts. And “mons” (no less sensual word exists, and KOK knows and exploits this to skewer himself). And, fuck me, what should we regard as his cyclops other than that one-eyed nemesis between his legs so consistently thwarting him?
Which is all to say that I’m in love with Karl Ove. Deal with it. We’re here, there’s beer—get used to it.
June 27, 2015
This is volume 4 of Karl Ove Knauusgaard’s monumental work, My Struggle. I have loved all the books and read them almost as obsessively as they seem to have been written and this one is my favorite so far (although I was especially impressed by the first volume as well).
The long seemingly minute by minute accountings of Karl Ove’s life as an 18 year who has taken a job as a teacher in northern Norway. The book is the most comic of the books so far, punctuated by beautiful lyrical passages. The atmosphere of the very cold northern town is powerfully evoked-the long darkness of winter and the brightening of spring, the power of the appearance of the sun after a seemingly endless dark winter, how like a triumph over death it may be to survive winter and see the spring.
As with Knauusgard’s previous volumes, the book is filled with the minutiae of daily life which somehow add up to more than can be explained by looking at any particular scene or description. The book is funnier than the others, the story of an 18 year old boy obsessed with sex and his virginity. He is always falling in love, and always unable to consummate it, even when given the opportunity. There is a tender pretentiousness in his decision to be a writer-a choice partly driven by a genuine impulse and partly by an adolescent need to be extraordinary, to be special, to rebel against the perceived expectations of family and community and live on the dark side. Karl Ove is swept up in the romanticism of a dissolute life and when he’s not teaching or writing, he’s usually getting drunk. The author portrays this struggle as both funny and touching.
I love this work, often without understanding why. In this volume, for me, it was clearer how the ordinary sets off the extraordinary, how the mundane can be both comic and sweet.
The long seemingly minute by minute accountings of Karl Ove’s life as an 18 year who has taken a job as a teacher in northern Norway. The book is the most comic of the books so far, punctuated by beautiful lyrical passages. The atmosphere of the very cold northern town is powerfully evoked-the long darkness of winter and the brightening of spring, the power of the appearance of the sun after a seemingly endless dark winter, how like a triumph over death it may be to survive winter and see the spring.
As with Knauusgard’s previous volumes, the book is filled with the minutiae of daily life which somehow add up to more than can be explained by looking at any particular scene or description. The book is funnier than the others, the story of an 18 year old boy obsessed with sex and his virginity. He is always falling in love, and always unable to consummate it, even when given the opportunity. There is a tender pretentiousness in his decision to be a writer-a choice partly driven by a genuine impulse and partly by an adolescent need to be extraordinary, to be special, to rebel against the perceived expectations of family and community and live on the dark side. Karl Ove is swept up in the romanticism of a dissolute life and when he’s not teaching or writing, he’s usually getting drunk. The author portrays this struggle as both funny and touching.
I love this work, often without understanding why. In this volume, for me, it was clearer how the ordinary sets off the extraordinary, how the mundane can be both comic and sweet.
March 22, 2016
In this fourth instalment of his literary struggle, Karl Ove Knausgård continues his backward quest to describe and come to terms with his growing up. The book begins and ends with his going to northern Norway for a year as a substitute teacher, though he is only 18 and fresh out of high school. He paints a vivid portrait of life in small-town Norway in a village of only some 250 houses and so far north that the school he teaches at changes teachers almost every year because no new people move to the place. There is darkness for weeks on end during the winter and endless light during the summer. There is also quite a lot of drinking for what else is there to do up there?
The tone of his existential musings from the previous three instalments carry over in this one, too, but too many pages are dedicated to his lusting after girls and wondering when on earth someone will help him put an end to his painful state as a virgin. I realize this is what a lot of teenage boys feel, but that doesn’t necessarily make it interesting as literary material – certainly not when, as I often felt, it was described in real-time.
In the first three instalments I was often full of sympathy for the young Karl Ove, especially in volume three when he allows us to revisit his childhood and his tyrant of a father. His father looms large in this volume also and is well on his way to becoming the alcoholic we met in volume one. In this volume, however, Karl Ove was often extremely unlikeable and selfish, not just flawed as in the other volumes. I felt sorry for his mother sometimes, but I suppose I would feel sorry for my own mother, too, if I had the empathic hindsight to remember some of the things I put her through back then.
Knausgård’s story-telling abilities are still powerful, and we begin to see the single-minded writer he would become. He glosses over nothing but lays bare his immaturity and humiliations, his delusions of grandeur, his desire for sexual release and existential freedom. Karl Ove Knausgård is the Nordic anti-hero of his own time.
The tone of his existential musings from the previous three instalments carry over in this one, too, but too many pages are dedicated to his lusting after girls and wondering when on earth someone will help him put an end to his painful state as a virgin. I realize this is what a lot of teenage boys feel, but that doesn’t necessarily make it interesting as literary material – certainly not when, as I often felt, it was described in real-time.
In the first three instalments I was often full of sympathy for the young Karl Ove, especially in volume three when he allows us to revisit his childhood and his tyrant of a father. His father looms large in this volume also and is well on his way to becoming the alcoholic we met in volume one. In this volume, however, Karl Ove was often extremely unlikeable and selfish, not just flawed as in the other volumes. I felt sorry for his mother sometimes, but I suppose I would feel sorry for my own mother, too, if I had the empathic hindsight to remember some of the things I put her through back then.
Knausgård’s story-telling abilities are still powerful, and we begin to see the single-minded writer he would become. He glosses over nothing but lays bare his immaturity and humiliations, his delusions of grandeur, his desire for sexual release and existential freedom. Karl Ove Knausgård is the Nordic anti-hero of his own time.
July 2, 2020
Érdeklődve figyelem, ahogy Knausgård elképesztően hosszú lére eresztett, de soknak mégsem bizonyuló könyveit tudom olvasni. Ebben pl. egészen sok időt töltöttem azzal, hogy kiderítsem, konkrétan melyik norvég halászfaluban húzott le egy évet Karl Ove s miután megtaláltam (más néven szerepel), nem sajnáltam arra az időt, hogy végignézzem az egész falut Google Maps-en. Abszolút izgalmas volt, úgy tudom elképzelni az ottani életet, főleg télen, mint egy szigetlakóét. Az idén lerándultam a nagy szigetről egy incifincire néhány hétig és teljesen izgalmas élmény volt, szinte hermetikusan zárt, annak minden előnyével és hátrányával. Én szívesen kipróbálnám egy teljes évig is. Ez Karl Ove esetében nem bizonyult nyerő ötletnek, legfőképpen életkori alapon, az izoláció s az, hogy ugyanazt a kb. 130 embert látta állandóan, nem volt rá valami benefikus hatással. Mindenféle előképzettség nélkül tanítani sem lehet valami diadalmenet, pláne akkor, amikor az ember éppen abban a korszakában van, ahol minden erejével azon dolgozik, hogy minél felnőttebbnek látsszon s ez nyilván néha (na jó: a legtöbbször) kontraproduktív.
Milyen furcsa amúgy, hogy ott van állandóan a háttérben, átsző mindent az időközben alkoholistává váló apjától való rettegés, de ez nem gátolja meg abban, hogy nagyjából heti rendszerességgel valami ijesztő alkoholos kómaszerűségbe igya magát, így menekülve minden elől. Pedig hát van az életében két olyan ember is, akikben teljesen megbízik s akiket rajongva szeret (inkább Yngve esik ebbe a kategóriába, de azért az anyája is ide tartozik), de ez nem akadályozza meg abban, hogy teljesen bezárkózzon, titkolózzon s ezáltal még mélyebbre merüljön. Érdekes karrier egy tizenéves számára, bár nem egyedi. A felnőtt vagyok, ha mondom-attitűd pedig ezen is csak rontott, hiszen egy felnőtt minden problémát egyedül old meg, azaz egy felnőttnek inkább nincsenek is problémái.
Az izgalmas benne, hogy - mint a legtöbben, akik nagyon jók a szakterületükön - konok elszántsággal vonul előre, de legalábbis valamerre azon az úton, amelyet kijelöl magának: író lesz. Mint tudjuk, ez sikerült is neki, de az főleg az ehhez hasonlóan fantáziátlan* magyar című ötödik kötetből fog kiderülni. Addig is Karl Ove maturizálódgat, próbálgatja magát és írói készségeit, dicséretes kitartásal írogat, közben állandóan üldözi a tizenévesek szinte élettel összeegyeztethetetlen mértékű kanossága, 13 évestől felfelé mindenkihez vonzódik. Emellett meg ijesztően viselkedik, folyton kölcsönkér, hiszen elissza az utolsó øréig minden pénzét, adósságokat csinál, tovább vergődik az apja miatt, és próbálja feldolgozni a mindenféle rendű és rangú változásokat. Magányos, nagyon. Mindehhez pedig ott van díszletül a fenséges norvég táj.
Örülök annak, hogy vártam az ötödik kötet megjelenéséig ennek az elolvasásával, hiszen a második-harmadikban egyértelműen lezárult egy-egy korszak, a negyedik-ötödik kötet viszont szervesen együvé tartozik, ez már inkább az írópalántára koncentrál.
Gyorsan egy sort a fordításról is: én nagy rajongója vagyok Patat Bence fordításainak, szép, gördülékeny, választékos szöveg kerül ki a keze alól, élvezet olvasni.
* Mennyivel szebb, elegánsabb, egyúttal kifejezőbb cím lenne a Tánc a sötétben, még tükörfordításként is. Az angolok okosabbak voltak. Élet. Hát juj.
Milyen furcsa amúgy, hogy ott van állandóan a háttérben, átsző mindent az időközben alkoholistává váló apjától való rettegés, de ez nem gátolja meg abban, hogy nagyjából heti rendszerességgel valami ijesztő alkoholos kómaszerűségbe igya magát, így menekülve minden elől. Pedig hát van az életében két olyan ember is, akikben teljesen megbízik s akiket rajongva szeret (inkább Yngve esik ebbe a kategóriába, de azért az anyája is ide tartozik), de ez nem akadályozza meg abban, hogy teljesen bezárkózzon, titkolózzon s ezáltal még mélyebbre merüljön. Érdekes karrier egy tizenéves számára, bár nem egyedi. A felnőtt vagyok, ha mondom-attitűd pedig ezen is csak rontott, hiszen egy felnőtt minden problémát egyedül old meg, azaz egy felnőttnek inkább nincsenek is problémái.
Az izgalmas benne, hogy - mint a legtöbben, akik nagyon jók a szakterületükön - konok elszántsággal vonul előre, de legalábbis valamerre azon az úton, amelyet kijelöl magának: író lesz. Mint tudjuk, ez sikerült is neki, de az főleg az ehhez hasonlóan fantáziátlan* magyar című ötödik kötetből fog kiderülni. Addig is Karl Ove maturizálódgat, próbálgatja magát és írói készségeit, dicséretes kitartásal írogat, közben állandóan üldözi a tizenévesek szinte élettel összeegyeztethetetlen mértékű kanossága, 13 évestől felfelé mindenkihez vonzódik. Emellett meg ijesztően viselkedik, folyton kölcsönkér, hiszen elissza az utolsó øréig minden pénzét, adósságokat csinál, tovább vergődik az apja miatt, és próbálja feldolgozni a mindenféle rendű és rangú változásokat. Magányos, nagyon. Mindehhez pedig ott van díszletül a fenséges norvég táj.
Örülök annak, hogy vártam az ötödik kötet megjelenéséig ennek az elolvasásával, hiszen a második-harmadikban egyértelműen lezárult egy-egy korszak, a negyedik-ötödik kötet viszont szervesen együvé tartozik, ez már inkább az írópalántára koncentrál.
Gyorsan egy sort a fordításról is: én nagy rajongója vagyok Patat Bence fordításainak, szép, gördülékeny, választékos szöveg kerül ki a keze alól, élvezet olvasni.
* Mennyivel szebb, elegánsabb, egyúttal kifejezőbb cím lenne a Tánc a sötétben, még tükörfordításként is. Az angolok okosabbak voltak. Élet. Hát juj.
September 1, 2017
Bitirmemek için özel çaba harcadım ama artık yeter... :) Çok sevdim!
October 4, 2022
Pasipiktinau, koks amoralus Knausgårdas vaikystėje (trečioj sagos daly), o žiū, jis ir toliau amoralus. Šįkart manęs taip labai nenervino, gal dėl to, kad jis daug aiškiau rodo, koks wannabe badass yra. Ir dar buvo gerokai mažiau trigerinančių temų, kaip ant prievartos ribos balansuojantys jo "išgyvenimai" trečioje "Mano kovos" dalyje.
Visoje ketvirtoje dalyje Karlą Uvę kankina mintis, kad jis dar neturėjęs lytinių santykių (18-kos, ojezus!!!!!!!! bet šiaip skaitant buvo iš tiesų weird ta trauma ir užsiciklinimas, nors gal čia eiliniai davatkos mintijimai), ir per visą knygą jis stengiasi jų turėti. Kad pratęstų tą temą, pasakodamas dar nušoka į savo vėlyvos paauglystės metus (15-17), kai dar lankė mokyklą ir neturėjo lytinių santykių. Kita pasakojimo dalis - kaip jis, sulaukęs 18, dirba mokytoju atokiame šiaurės Norvegijos kaimelyje ir visus tuos metus neturi lytinių santykių. SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER turi tik atidėstęs pirmus ir vienintelius mokslo metus ir išvažiavęs!!! Kaip tai gražiai įsipaišo į gyvenimo naratyvą, nes tada jis skaitosi jau suaugęs!!! Tipo.
Šiaip Knausgårdo kuriamas antiherojus gana nuobodus, nerasi nieko, ko nebūtum mačiusi pas Bukowskį ar Ellisą. Jis: meluoja, reketuoja senelius ir juos apvaginėja, reketuoja mamą, nuolat geria, yra pasipūtęs ir nuolat žemina kitus, nuolatos neįtikėtin....neįtikimai daug geria (5 buteliai vyno per vakarą, aha gali nepasakot), nusiaubia namus, nusiaubia viešbutį, žodžiu elgiasi kaip visiškas narcizas-marozas. Kai dėsto vaikams, tai visas mergaites vertina pagal tai, ar graži (taip pat ir 13-metes), o berniukai jam visi arba lopai, arba konkurentai, arba stori ir durni. Bet mane asmeniškai kažkaip labiausiai įžeidė, kad jis NIEKO NESKAITO. Tačiau nori būti rašytoju, sėdi ir slebizavoja savo noveles, kurios sukurptos iš praeitoj knygoj papasakotų vaikystės patirčių (pvz kaip berniukas užsimauna rastą tuščią butelį ant pimpalo, VAU). Tai tu bent knygą perskaityk, kvėša. Šitas nervino labiau negu tas piktybinis gėrimas ir piktybinis turto naikinimas. Netgi labiau negu tai, kad, jam nusiaubus namus, mamai teko juos parduoti ir užmigdyti jų katiną, į naują butą negalėjo jo vežtis. Bet Karlui Uvei visiškai px.
Ne apie katiną, bet tooooks (kai atsiplėši nuo jo bjaurumo) wannabe American Psycho! -
Daug labiau nei antiherojiškumas čia įdomus kitas klausimas - kam to reikia? Pirmose dviejose "Mano kovos" dalyse jau suaugęs Karlas Uvė lyg ir nėra toks nevykėlis ir šlykštukas. Aišku, jis nuolat skundžiasi ir pateikinėja save kaip nenusisekusį, bet vis tiek pasakoja apie tikras, nesumeluotas patirtis (tėvo mirtis iš pirmos dalies išvis yra įspūdingiausia vieta visoj sagoj, bet ir Lindos susitikimas ir meilė - labai paveiku). Ar jis nori parodyt vaiką save kaip amoralų antižmogų, o dabartinį - jau tokį tipo apsisocializavusį? Ar čia naujas būdas pasakoti apie "vaikystės traumas" - kai trauma esi tu pats? Nesuprantu, gal tas išryškės tik sagos pabaigoje. Bet kuriuo atveju, Knausgårdui, atrodo, geriau pavyksta kas antra knyga: pirma - smūgiškai skausminga, trečia - baisi atgrasumu, o antra ir ketvirta - kaip pirmųjų šešėliai, iš kurių tiesiog geriau supranti jo strategijas. Tai dabar laukiu, kas naujo išlįs penktoj.
Vis dėlto kartais ir pro šlykštukiškumą prasimuša kažkas labai gražaus, kas paskui matysis jo eseistikoje:
Ir dar šita vieta, vienintelė tokia pažeidžianti romano pasakojimo laiko juostą, labai graži ir žiauriai parulskiška (tai komplimentas):
Geri tie intarpai, gera pamatyti žmogų anapus visos tos pozos. Ten juos ir palikim, iki kitos serijos.
Visoje ketvirtoje dalyje Karlą Uvę kankina mintis, kad jis dar neturėjęs lytinių santykių (18-kos, ojezus!!!!!!!! bet šiaip skaitant buvo iš tiesų weird ta trauma ir užsiciklinimas, nors gal čia eiliniai davatkos mintijimai), ir per visą knygą jis stengiasi jų turėti. Kad pratęstų tą temą, pasakodamas dar nušoka į savo vėlyvos paauglystės metus (15-17), kai dar lankė mokyklą ir neturėjo lytinių santykių. Kita pasakojimo dalis - kaip jis, sulaukęs 18, dirba mokytoju atokiame šiaurės Norvegijos kaimelyje ir visus tuos metus neturi lytinių santykių. SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER turi tik atidėstęs pirmus ir vienintelius mokslo metus ir išvažiavęs!!! Kaip tai gražiai įsipaišo į gyvenimo naratyvą, nes tada jis skaitosi jau suaugęs!!! Tipo.
Šiaip Knausgårdo kuriamas antiherojus gana nuobodus, nerasi nieko, ko nebūtum mačiusi pas Bukowskį ar Ellisą. Jis: meluoja, reketuoja senelius ir juos apvaginėja, reketuoja mamą, nuolat geria, yra pasipūtęs ir nuolat žemina kitus, nuolatos neįtikėtin....neįtikimai daug geria (5 buteliai vyno per vakarą, aha gali nepasakot), nusiaubia namus, nusiaubia viešbutį, žodžiu elgiasi kaip visiškas narcizas-marozas. Kai dėsto vaikams, tai visas mergaites vertina pagal tai, ar graži (taip pat ir 13-metes), o berniukai jam visi arba lopai, arba konkurentai, arba stori ir durni. Bet mane asmeniškai kažkaip labiausiai įžeidė, kad jis NIEKO NESKAITO. Tačiau nori būti rašytoju, sėdi ir slebizavoja savo noveles, kurios sukurptos iš praeitoj knygoj papasakotų vaikystės patirčių (pvz kaip berniukas užsimauna rastą tuščią butelį ant pimpalo, VAU). Tai tu bent knygą perskaityk, kvėša. Šitas nervino labiau negu tas piktybinis gėrimas ir piktybinis turto naikinimas. Netgi labiau negu tai, kad, jam nusiaubus namus, mamai teko juos parduoti ir užmigdyti jų katiną, į naują butą negalėjo jo vežtis. Bet Karlui Uvei visiškai px.
Ne apie katiną, bet tooooks (kai atsiplėši nuo jo bjaurumo) wannabe American Psycho! -
Kartą susidūrėme su benamiu, sėdinčiu ant suoliuko parke, tada jį apsupę pasišnekučiavome. Jis papasakojo karo metais plaukiojęs su Šetlando Larsenu. Išgirdęs tai ėmiau jį vadinti Šetlando šūdu. Kvatojau ir taip kreipiausi į jį kiek galėdamas dažniau. Ei, Šetlando šūde! Po akimirkos nuėjau už suoliuko nusišlapinti ir apšlapinau benamį per visą nugarą. (p. 301)
Daug labiau nei antiherojiškumas čia įdomus kitas klausimas - kam to reikia? Pirmose dviejose "Mano kovos" dalyse jau suaugęs Karlas Uvė lyg ir nėra toks nevykėlis ir šlykštukas. Aišku, jis nuolat skundžiasi ir pateikinėja save kaip nenusisekusį, bet vis tiek pasakoja apie tikras, nesumeluotas patirtis (tėvo mirtis iš pirmos dalies išvis yra įspūdingiausia vieta visoj sagoj, bet ir Lindos susitikimas ir meilė - labai paveiku). Ar jis nori parodyt vaiką save kaip amoralų antižmogų, o dabartinį - jau tokį tipo apsisocializavusį? Ar čia naujas būdas pasakoti apie "vaikystės traumas" - kai trauma esi tu pats? Nesuprantu, gal tas išryškės tik sagos pabaigoje. Bet kuriuo atveju, Knausgårdui, atrodo, geriau pavyksta kas antra knyga: pirma - smūgiškai skausminga, trečia - baisi atgrasumu, o antra ir ketvirta - kaip pirmųjų šešėliai, iš kurių tiesiog geriau supranti jo strategijas. Tai dabar laukiu, kas naujo išlįs penktoj.
Vis dėlto kartais ir pro šlykštukiškumą prasimuša kažkas labai gražaus, kas paskui matysis jo eseistikoje:
Kai ką perpasakojau mamai. Su ja gyvenimas buvo kitoks - tikrasis mano gyvenimas, su ja galėjau kalbėti, kas tik į galvą šauna, išskyrus merginų reikalus, tą siaubingą jausmą, kai mokykloje esi atstumtasis, ir dar tai, kas susiję su tėčiu. Visa kita jai pasakojau ir ji manęs klausėsi, kartais su nuoširdžia nuostaba veide, tarsi niekada nebūtų pati apie tai pagalvojusi. Bet, žinoma, buvo pagalvojusi, tik jos įsijautimas buvo toks nuoširdus, kad pamiršdavo save ir savo patirtį. Kartais atrodė, tarsi būtume vienminčiai. Arba bent jau lygiaverčiai. Bet kartais viskas pasikeisdavo ir mudu tarsi nutoldavom vienas nuo kito. Kaip tomis savaitėmis, kai skaičiau Bjornebu ir kelis vakarus iš eilės postringavau apie pasaulio beprasmybę, o ji netikėtai prapliupo nesuvaldomai kvatotis, net apsiašarojo, lygiai kaip močiutė iš tėčio pusės, ir pasakė: na jau, taip nėra, apsidairyk! Koks įsižeidęs buvau iki pat savaitės pabaigos. Bet ji buvo teisi, ir keisčiausia tai, kad mes tarsi apsikeitėme vaidmenimis. (p. 192)
Ir dar šita vieta, vienintelė tokia pažeidžianti romano pasakojimo laiko juostą, labai graži ir žiauriai parulskiška (tai komplimentas):
Šitaip būtų galėjęs parašyti tik keturiasdešimtmetis vyras. Ir man dabar keturiasdešimt, tiek pat, kiek tąsyk buvo mano tėvui, dabar sėdžiu savo bute Malmėje, gretimuose kambariuose miega mano šeima. Linda su Vanja mūsų miegamajame, Heidė ir Jonas vaikų kambaryje, Ingrida, vaikų močiutė, svetainėje. Šiandien 2009 metų lapkričio 25 diena. Devintojo dešimtmečio vidurys dabar nuo manęs nutolęs tiek pat, kiek tada buvo nutolęs šeštasis dešimtmetis. Bet visi šios istorijos dalyviai ten kažkur vis dar yra. Kažkur yra Hanė, kažkur yra Janas Vidaras ir Jogė. Mano motina ir mano brolis Ingvė - su juo prieš dvi valandas kalbėjausi telefonu, mudu planuojame vasarą važiuoti į Korsiką: jis su savo vaikais, aš ir Linda su saviškiais - jie irgi ten kažkur. Bet tėtis miręs, močiutė ir senelis iš tėčio pusės - mirę. (p. 152)
Geri tie intarpai, gera pamatyti žmogų anapus visos tos pozos. Ten juos ir palikim, iki kitos serijos.
July 1, 2017
“Portrait of the Artist as a Young Jerk” --4.5/5
In Book Four, Karl Ove Knausgaard offers up his fictionalized late-teen self stumbling into semi-adulthood. This is by far the funniest installment in the My Struggle series so far; though not as good as Book Two, the writing is more fluent and gentler, with more dramatic irony. Young KOK is ambitious — about writing, and about living and thinking in ways that question and push beyond the norms — including extreme drinking, and the mysteries of love and sex. Sometimes his behavior is outright alarming. But four novels in, he’s under my skin. I cared about him. I worried and groaned, chuckled and sympathized. I wanted him to shape up — but also wanted things to work out well, wanted him not to give up his dreams. This is part of the inexplicable magic of the series.
As in the previous volumes, attention to seemingly insignificant and embarrassing details open a kind of acceptance to all our mundane human lives and to life itself —yet in a low key, complicated way. For the reader these novels themselves become the Proustian cookie that we dip into the tea to conjure up our own memories, as Lee Klein pointed out in his excellent review*
Proust is the patron saint of associative memory, the famous phenomenon in which a cookie dipped in tea revives a forgotten world. KOK and his My Struggle series will become associated with something similar: instead of some innocent trigger evoking memories, Knausgaard’s dramatization of his past evokes memories for readers. My Struggle is the madeleine. (Lee Klein)
Book Four begins as eighteen-year-old Karl Ove Knausgaard takes a one year job as a teacher in a remote fishing village in northern Norway, in order to pursue his ambition to write. Midway, there’s a 200-page flashback to age sixteen and family life. Young KOK is intelligent and focused, concerned with defining an identity, styling himself, setting out an ambitious life-path. It’s the late 1980s; he dresses in black with a studded belt and a cross earring; he listens to new music and writes about it well enough to get a job as a music critic for two newspapers. He eschews nature as banal, refusing every invitation to hike with his outdoorsy colleague though they are surrounded by spectacular mountains(!) He is inspired by books about disaffected, anti-authoritarian young men with whom he longs to identify — sort of.
I wanted to steal, drink, smoke hash, and experiment with other drugs — cocaine, amphetamines, mescaline — to get high and live the great rock-and-roll lifestyle, to feel to the last drop of blood that I couldn’t give a flying fuck about anything. Oh, what appeal there was in that! But then there was all the rest inside of me that wanted to be a serious student, a decent son, a good person. If only I could blow that to smithereens! (320)
On some level I saw this inner conflict as earnest. He longs to escape from the oppression of his humiliating and limited self — an authentic longing that we humans have most likely always sought one way or another. He’s also seeking some kind of direct, raw, experience of reality, beyond the limited world he knows, and the ability to express it artistically.
On another level, this passage was a bit comical as the narrative went on to show his young self to be the slightly spoiled suburban version of the rebel he wanted to be. His rants against authority are followed by rants against his mother on whose drudgery (ironically as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, and in the home) he depends for food, shelter, clothing, and more spending money than she can really afford after his parents’ divorce. And why hasn’t she yet washed the icky underwear that he left for her to wash?!! How thoughtless of her!
On a more serious level, his escalating binge drinking and irresponsibility have already caused some trouble. He seems not so much uncaring as oblivious to its harmful consequences. His mother comes across as extraordinarily calm and fair — but she’s clearly unhappy. It’s even implied that her son’s costly behavior indirectly contributed to her losing her house and her beloved cat Mephisto when she downsizes to a rental apartment.
Meanwhile, young Karl Ove is obsessed with girls and (his imagination of) sex. Good thing he can now deploy his sense of humor against even this humiliation. Here is the sixteen-year-old:
[T]here were only three things I wanted. The first was a girlfriend. The second was to sleep with a girl. The third was to get drunk. Or, if I am being totally honest, there were only two things: sleeping with a girl and getting drunk. I had lots of other interests, I was full of ambition in all sorts of areas … but when it came to the crunch there were only two things I really wanted. No, when I actually came down to it, there was only one. I wanted to sleep with a girl. That was the only thing I wanted. A fire burned inside me, one that never went out. Even when I was asleep, it flared up, a glimpse of a breast in a dream was all I needed, and I came. Oh no, not again, I thought every time I woke up… (122)
Unfortunately, the sight or thought of contact with a beautiful girl often has the same result while he’s awake, and Karl Ove is afraid that his lack of control will condemn him to loneliness forever. Yet it’s not really all about the sex. There’s a great deal of tender and sensitive writing about the mysteries (and imbalances) of love and attraction in his many and varied friendships and relationships with girls and women. He seems to be attractive and well-liked as a friend and as a romantic interest, so I suspect that with his self-critical slant he paints himself worse than he really was.
Poignantly, as a nineteen-year-old teacher he is at pains to understand or conceal his attraction to one of his thirteen-year-old students — who also seems to be concealing an attraction to him. In northern Norway, people take on adult roles at an earlier age, but Karl Ove wisely considers anyone under sixteen, and certainly his own student, as off limits. He thinks he’s handling it well, but one day one of his male students, perhaps innocently, calls him out.
My insides trembled.
Was I in love with Andrea?
Was I in love?
No, no, no.
But I was drawn to her in my thoughts. I was.
When I was at the school during the night, when I stood by the dark, motionless water in the swimming pool, I imagined she was in the changing room, alone, and that soon I would go in. She covered herself, looked up, I knelt down in front of her, she looked at me, at first with apprehension, then tenderness and openness.
I imagined this and at the same time thought the opposite, that she wasn’t in the changing room, how could I think like that, no one must find out how my mind worked.
My insides trembled, but no one knew because my movements were controlled…nothing of what others saw could betray my inner thoughts.
I hardly knew I had these thoughts, they lived in a kind of no-man’s land, and when they came, in an explosion, I didn’t hold onto them, I let them fall back to where they came from, and so it was as though they didn’t exist.
But what Jørn had said, that changed everything, because that came from the outside.
Everything from the outside was dangerous.
(424)
Everyone knows everything about everyone in this village of 300-some families. Yet it’s also an inclusive, accepting community in a way Karl Ove has never experienced. Everyone is welcome at all social gatherings. Students, teaching colleagues, and fishermen drop in unannounced at his apartment to socialize. (I wonder whether this culture has survived the internet.) And, also unlike the part of Norway where Karl Ove grew up, many people in the north get together at night to drink heavily — and Karl Ove loves, loves to drink.
Why didn’t everyone drink? Alcohol makes everything big, it is a wind blowing through your consciousness, it is crashing waves and swaying forests, and the light it transmits gilds everything you see, even the ugliest and most revolting person becomes attractive in some way, it is as if all objections and all judgments are cast aside in a wide sweep of the hand, in an act of supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful.(426)
Even though drinking his way to transcendence is followed by frightening black-outs and vague memories of alarming or humiliating things he may or may not have done, he doesn’t seem to think it’s much of a problem. His descent into extreme drinking parallels the simultaneous descent into alcoholism by his father after he divorces Karl Ove’s mother.
You might expect that between teaching, drunken revelry, and the pursuit of his desire to bestow his carnal gift, Karl Ove would have found no time to write — but you would be wrong. On that count he’s a disciplined fellow, crafting numerous short stories and sending them to anyone he regards as discerning enough to critique them, in hopes of further refining them for publication. There’s a great, terrible, comically melodramatic scene when he finds someone has left in his typewriter a parody of one of his stories — a good parody, he realizes — but he is hurt, and can’t forgive. He’ll show them! He’ll CRUSH them with his amazing writing!!!
Appropriately, the novel ends with comic triumph -- somewhat undermined by an element of ickiness and degradation. But I’m still on board for the rest of the series, and whatever else Mr. Knausgaard may have translated into English.
*For another view, see Lee Klein’s excellent review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In Book Four, Karl Ove Knausgaard offers up his fictionalized late-teen self stumbling into semi-adulthood. This is by far the funniest installment in the My Struggle series so far; though not as good as Book Two, the writing is more fluent and gentler, with more dramatic irony. Young KOK is ambitious — about writing, and about living and thinking in ways that question and push beyond the norms — including extreme drinking, and the mysteries of love and sex. Sometimes his behavior is outright alarming. But four novels in, he’s under my skin. I cared about him. I worried and groaned, chuckled and sympathized. I wanted him to shape up — but also wanted things to work out well, wanted him not to give up his dreams. This is part of the inexplicable magic of the series.
As in the previous volumes, attention to seemingly insignificant and embarrassing details open a kind of acceptance to all our mundane human lives and to life itself —yet in a low key, complicated way. For the reader these novels themselves become the Proustian cookie that we dip into the tea to conjure up our own memories, as Lee Klein pointed out in his excellent review*
Proust is the patron saint of associative memory, the famous phenomenon in which a cookie dipped in tea revives a forgotten world. KOK and his My Struggle series will become associated with something similar: instead of some innocent trigger evoking memories, Knausgaard’s dramatization of his past evokes memories for readers. My Struggle is the madeleine. (Lee Klein)
Book Four begins as eighteen-year-old Karl Ove Knausgaard takes a one year job as a teacher in a remote fishing village in northern Norway, in order to pursue his ambition to write. Midway, there’s a 200-page flashback to age sixteen and family life. Young KOK is intelligent and focused, concerned with defining an identity, styling himself, setting out an ambitious life-path. It’s the late 1980s; he dresses in black with a studded belt and a cross earring; he listens to new music and writes about it well enough to get a job as a music critic for two newspapers. He eschews nature as banal, refusing every invitation to hike with his outdoorsy colleague though they are surrounded by spectacular mountains(!) He is inspired by books about disaffected, anti-authoritarian young men with whom he longs to identify — sort of.
I wanted to steal, drink, smoke hash, and experiment with other drugs — cocaine, amphetamines, mescaline — to get high and live the great rock-and-roll lifestyle, to feel to the last drop of blood that I couldn’t give a flying fuck about anything. Oh, what appeal there was in that! But then there was all the rest inside of me that wanted to be a serious student, a decent son, a good person. If only I could blow that to smithereens! (320)
On some level I saw this inner conflict as earnest. He longs to escape from the oppression of his humiliating and limited self — an authentic longing that we humans have most likely always sought one way or another. He’s also seeking some kind of direct, raw, experience of reality, beyond the limited world he knows, and the ability to express it artistically.
On another level, this passage was a bit comical as the narrative went on to show his young self to be the slightly spoiled suburban version of the rebel he wanted to be. His rants against authority are followed by rants against his mother on whose drudgery (ironically as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, and in the home) he depends for food, shelter, clothing, and more spending money than she can really afford after his parents’ divorce. And why hasn’t she yet washed the icky underwear that he left for her to wash?!! How thoughtless of her!
On a more serious level, his escalating binge drinking and irresponsibility have already caused some trouble. He seems not so much uncaring as oblivious to its harmful consequences. His mother comes across as extraordinarily calm and fair — but she’s clearly unhappy. It’s even implied that her son’s costly behavior indirectly contributed to her losing her house and her beloved cat Mephisto when she downsizes to a rental apartment.
Meanwhile, young Karl Ove is obsessed with girls and (his imagination of) sex. Good thing he can now deploy his sense of humor against even this humiliation. Here is the sixteen-year-old:
[T]here were only three things I wanted. The first was a girlfriend. The second was to sleep with a girl. The third was to get drunk. Or, if I am being totally honest, there were only two things: sleeping with a girl and getting drunk. I had lots of other interests, I was full of ambition in all sorts of areas … but when it came to the crunch there were only two things I really wanted. No, when I actually came down to it, there was only one. I wanted to sleep with a girl. That was the only thing I wanted. A fire burned inside me, one that never went out. Even when I was asleep, it flared up, a glimpse of a breast in a dream was all I needed, and I came. Oh no, not again, I thought every time I woke up… (122)
Unfortunately, the sight or thought of contact with a beautiful girl often has the same result while he’s awake, and Karl Ove is afraid that his lack of control will condemn him to loneliness forever. Yet it’s not really all about the sex. There’s a great deal of tender and sensitive writing about the mysteries (and imbalances) of love and attraction in his many and varied friendships and relationships with girls and women. He seems to be attractive and well-liked as a friend and as a romantic interest, so I suspect that with his self-critical slant he paints himself worse than he really was.
Poignantly, as a nineteen-year-old teacher he is at pains to understand or conceal his attraction to one of his thirteen-year-old students — who also seems to be concealing an attraction to him. In northern Norway, people take on adult roles at an earlier age, but Karl Ove wisely considers anyone under sixteen, and certainly his own student, as off limits. He thinks he’s handling it well, but one day one of his male students, perhaps innocently, calls him out.
My insides trembled.
Was I in love with Andrea?
Was I in love?
No, no, no.
But I was drawn to her in my thoughts. I was.
When I was at the school during the night, when I stood by the dark, motionless water in the swimming pool, I imagined she was in the changing room, alone, and that soon I would go in. She covered herself, looked up, I knelt down in front of her, she looked at me, at first with apprehension, then tenderness and openness.
I imagined this and at the same time thought the opposite, that she wasn’t in the changing room, how could I think like that, no one must find out how my mind worked.
My insides trembled, but no one knew because my movements were controlled…nothing of what others saw could betray my inner thoughts.
I hardly knew I had these thoughts, they lived in a kind of no-man’s land, and when they came, in an explosion, I didn’t hold onto them, I let them fall back to where they came from, and so it was as though they didn’t exist.
But what Jørn had said, that changed everything, because that came from the outside.
Everything from the outside was dangerous.
(424)
Everyone knows everything about everyone in this village of 300-some families. Yet it’s also an inclusive, accepting community in a way Karl Ove has never experienced. Everyone is welcome at all social gatherings. Students, teaching colleagues, and fishermen drop in unannounced at his apartment to socialize. (I wonder whether this culture has survived the internet.) And, also unlike the part of Norway where Karl Ove grew up, many people in the north get together at night to drink heavily — and Karl Ove loves, loves to drink.
Why didn’t everyone drink? Alcohol makes everything big, it is a wind blowing through your consciousness, it is crashing waves and swaying forests, and the light it transmits gilds everything you see, even the ugliest and most revolting person becomes attractive in some way, it is as if all objections and all judgments are cast aside in a wide sweep of the hand, in an act of supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful.(426)
Even though drinking his way to transcendence is followed by frightening black-outs and vague memories of alarming or humiliating things he may or may not have done, he doesn’t seem to think it’s much of a problem. His descent into extreme drinking parallels the simultaneous descent into alcoholism by his father after he divorces Karl Ove’s mother.
You might expect that between teaching, drunken revelry, and the pursuit of his desire to bestow his carnal gift, Karl Ove would have found no time to write — but you would be wrong. On that count he’s a disciplined fellow, crafting numerous short stories and sending them to anyone he regards as discerning enough to critique them, in hopes of further refining them for publication. There’s a great, terrible, comically melodramatic scene when he finds someone has left in his typewriter a parody of one of his stories — a good parody, he realizes — but he is hurt, and can’t forgive. He’ll show them! He’ll CRUSH them with his amazing writing!!!
Appropriately, the novel ends with comic triumph -- somewhat undermined by an element of ickiness and degradation. But I’m still on board for the rest of the series, and whatever else Mr. Knausgaard may have translated into English.
*For another view, see Lee Klein’s excellent review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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