The six-part autobiographical novel My Struggle by the
Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard has made a huge splash in the literary
world. In Norway the books have sold in
unheard of numbers, and since the English translations have started to appear,
they have received immense critical acclaim here as well.
Book 1 is over 400 pages and focusses on the teenage and
young adult years of the ‘fictional’ character Karl Ove Knausgaard. The
autobiographical subject and the intense inward focus can't help but point to Proust,
but it’s hard to think of Marcel’s life as a struggle exactly. It’s a life full of emotion, color, close
observation, some pain, and relentless self-examination, but it doesn’t come
off as a struggle. There’s too much
pleasure and a surprising amount of comedy for that. But for Knausgaard it is indeed a
struggle. There’s little self-pity here
but true empathy for others is also in very short supply. This is a character (are we talking about a
character or about Knausgaard himself … or both?) with limited social skills,
strong self-reliance, and a seemingly unlimited capacity to keep staring into
the void no matter how uncomfortable he becomes. He just keeps looking even if it makes
connections with others difficult
.
The books best moments are about silence and stillness. Here Knausgaard offers real insight into the
mind and its ability to project thoughts and feelings and read them back as
observation. It’s like meditation in a
way. Just keep the stillness. Let the thoughts come, let them go.
There are also interesting passages about art and aesthetics
that are truly provocative. It’s a very
personal vision and doesn’t attempt to explain anything other than what he
himself is trying to accomplish. In
spite of the overwhelming amount of knowledge and virtual experience available
to an educated person today, Knausgaard ‘struggles’ to stay in contact with the
unknown, and especially the unknowable, because for him therein lies the
inexplicable beauty, the truly aesthetic experience. This is not an easy task for someone who is a
bit of a know-it-all asshole, and the obsessiveness with which he sticks to the
mission is both admirably self-effacing and egotistical at the same time.
It’s easy to see that he’s profoundly scarred by his awful
father. The scenes surrounding the death
of his father are difficult to read, and we are left to wonder how Karl Ove
manages any kind of quasi-normal life for himself. Of course we don’t know how much is
real. We do know that some members of
the author’s family were very upset by the books and felt that various family
members were not accurately portrayed.
But I don’t think truth is exactly the point here. He does have an uncanny ability to put the
reader inside his head.
But I’m not sure I want to spend all that much time there. We'll see.
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