nastya 's Reviews > The Other Name: Septology I-II

Not gonna lie, the first time I encountered this book and saw that Karl Ove Knausgård praised it, I immediately was turned off.(view spoiler)[ I have this strange antipathy towards Karl, I have never read him, but, I mean, anyone who names his magnum opus same as Hitler’s autobiography to me instantly looks like a pretentious edgelord. And then I read reviews and it sounded like he’s an untalented pretentious edgelord. (hide spoiler)]

But then the same critics, who were critical of Karl, praised this book, so I gave it a second thought.

It turned out to be… interesting.

I don’t even know how to describe this. All written in one sentence without full stops, it’s like a prayer, uttered by a deeply religious artist, mourning the death of his love, a contemplation and recollection of his life as a child, his life with the love of his life, losing her. About his art, about his God. Contemplation about “what could’ve beens” if he married and had children, like this alternative Asle, his doppelganger without faith, all alone and with advanced destructing alcoholism. Maybe? I don’t know, nothing is clear here and interpretations are multitudes. At one point I, inspired perhaps by Solar Bones, thought that our narrator is in Purgatory, the cold world where directions are meaningless and there’s always snow. And sorrow, pain and suffering. There’s a lot of that.

as if Asle was too hard, as if his pain, or his suffering, maybe that’s the better word, made me want to keep driving, not because I didn’t want to see him or spend time with him but because, no, I don’t know, but I wanted to get away, and maybe I thought I could drag his pain with me in a way, pull it behind me, that I could pull his suffering off of him and away from him if I kept driving?
as if Asle was too hard, as if his pain, or his suffering, maybe that’s the better word, made me want to keep driving, not because I didn’t want to see him or spend time with him but because, no, I don’t know, but I wanted to get away, and maybe I thought I could drag his pain with me in a way, pull it behind me, that I could pull his suffering off of him and away from him if I kept driving?

I think and suddenly I feel miserable, I feel grief, yes, it’s like grief is bursting from inside me, from nowhere, from everywhere, and it feels like this sorrow is about to choke me, like I’m breathing the sorrow in and I can’t breathe it out and I fold my hands and I breathe in deeply and I say to myself inside myself Kyrie and I breathe out slowly and I say eleison and I breathe in deeply and say Christe and I breathe out slowly and say eleison and I say these words again and again and the breaths and the words make it so that I’m not filled with sorrow any more, with fear, with sudden fear, with this sorrow in the fear so strong that’s suddenly come over me and that overpowers me and it’s like it’s made what’s I in me very small, turned it into nothing, but a nothing that’s nonetheless there, lodged firm

because all of this, is it even really happening? or do I just think it’s happening? or remember it happening? is it something that happened to me once? it must have been a long long time ago because I can’t remember it

because it’s like he’s fallen out of himself, out of where he usually is, like he no longer knows himself, like he’s gone, away from himself,

could someone be an artist and consider himself an artist just because he had something all his own in the pictures he painted? doesn’t a person need more

no, I probably don’t, no one can believe something like that, it goes against all wisdom and understanding, because either God is all-powerful and then there’s no free will, or God isn’t all-powerful and there is free will, within limits, but in that case God is not all-powerful, so ever since God gave humanity free will he gave up his omnipotence, something like that must be true, because without a will that’s free there can’t be love, and God is love

And there’s a st. Andrews cross, always looming in the background and foreground, I had always felt as if only I had more knowledge in theology or Catholicism (I have none), I could unearth another layer of meaning.

Anyways, a strange lulling metaphysical theological contemplation, the first two books of septology, that I enjoyed? I don’t think it’s the right word. Admired maybe? But do I want to continue with the next five? I'm not sure.