some reason, My Struggle AKA, in the UK 'A Death in the Family' made it into James Wood's Books of the Year, Woods is, like Kakutani, a doyen of critics, and his word always carries a weight of sensitivity and intelligence gained from years of reading and teaching about literature, With Woods' nodding imprimatur bestowed upon it one would imagine the literary cachet of Knausgard's book is beyond reproach,
But having read my Struggle and boy, what a struggle I fear for Mr, Wood's critical acumen. I nearly wrote "I think he's lost his goddamn mind", Woods is such a perspicacious reader that I fear somehow I've read a different My Struggle or that he's read a different one, or that I'm in a parallel universe where my struggle with my Struggle is not the same as everyone elses everyone else having from it, like, significant insights into the human condition, deep engagement with fictionalised wisdom, harrowing journeys into grief and sadness, the soul eclipsing throes of love, the constancy and Love for family etc.
, the sadness of growing older, etc etc,
The reason I say this, is that My Struggle PartAKA, in the UK 'A Death in the Family' was pretty damn bad, Boring bad. Pointless, bad. Why this is being compared to Proust is way beyond me, A handy way of selling more copies perhaps, All I know is that I don't think it is quite in the league of Proustian prosemajesty to reminisce how you went to the shop with your brother and bought a Lion bar and.
litres of Sprite to wash it down with before spending the night watching TV getting hammered, Or wait, how you looked after your dementiaridden grandmother for a while and on the trip to see her, . . you stopped off at the petrol station and bought a Bounty and had a ciggie leaning against the car, His brother calls him to say his dad has died and after they hang up he wanders to the shower and wonders whether he should "have a wank", This is hardly the realm of an enduring classic, 'War and Peace', this ain't, I truly don't think anyone will care about it in ten years time, I situate it in the "Scandanavian Cultural Renaissance" which has like some Nordic phagocyte, like the Vikings of old but with less swords n' longboats taken over the realms of detective novels, detective TV shows, detective movies, trendy retailing HampM hautecuisine Noma is the best restaurant in the world, say some.
Sure, they can do Volvos and cheap priced flat pack furniture but the world's eating their stuff up, and the Scans are happy, So, seeing a popularly written book about Weighty Subjects, the Scandimedia probably just saw an opportunity to make money from their native readers, and when people got reading it, it was decided to export the book by the bucketload by hyping it to the mesosphere.
Notice many quotes about its Proustian might come from Scandanavian newspapers/magazines/reveiwers, Hmmmmmmmm .
Frankly the book waspage waste of my time, crammed full of trite observations, I would say "D minus, Could do better," but really I don't think he can, If I want to read detailed memoirs in I'll read them from someone who actually has something interesting to memoir about, Knausgard doesn't. In my defence, Wood says "even when I was bored, I was interested, " at least Woods admits he was bored, and lets face it "I was interested" isn't quite "I was moved, I was edified, I was transported, I as shocked, I was touched," all those things we demand from quality fiction, but at least HE was interested.
But, hey, I could be wrong, Maybe it picks up in books, but I'm not getting my hopes up, Sorry, Karl, but you'll have to struggle on without me, Jawdroppingly good. Somehow both a memoir and a pageturner, As smart as it gets, beautiful, and unusually simple for something this deep, A couple of knockout sequences New Year's Eve party and especially cleaning his Grandma's house, I read it in a day, lagging only when
he approached art history,
I am continually amazed, years later, after rereading, by how many people have ideas about what this is, without having even tried it, I still remember,years ago, the sun in Long Island as I read the sequence about his father's alcoholism, I was drinking a Miller Lite, and felt such nausea, such revulsion, that I had to go to the kitchen and pour it out, Ich setzte mich an meinen Schreibtisch, der trotz seiner Möglichkeit der Höhenverstellbarkeit meist auf einem unteren Niveau verharrte, blickte aus dem Fenster und fragte mich, wie lange das warme Spätsommerwetter noch anhalten würde.
Währenddessen kippte der Nachbar im gegenüberliegenden Haus sein Küchenfenster, so dass die Sonne gespiegelt durch das Glas direkt in mein Gesicht schien, was mich störte, Folglich änderte ich die Sitzposition etwas nach links und verrückte auch die Tastatur, Unter ihr kamen Krümel von unbekannter Herkunft zum Vorschein, die mich daran erinnerten, die Sauberkeit in meinem Arbeitsraum zu verbessern, Während ich dem sich nach rechts ausbreitenden Balken der StartprogrammFortschrittsanzeige bei seiner Veränderung zusah, strichen meine Finger über die moderne Tastatur und ich erinnerte mich, wie ich auf der Olympus damals meine Wehrdienstverweigerung tippte, mit den abrutschenden Fingern immer mal wieder zwischen den Tasten der Schreibmaschine hängen blieb, was zu Hautabschürfungen und der Verwendung eines TippexStreifens führte.
Wie verletzungsunanfälliger doch das Schreiben geworden war, Während meine Fingerkuppen kreisend die kleinen Erhebungen auf den Tasten F und J erkundeten, fragte ich mich, warum ich eigentlich den PC hochgefahren hatte, Ach ja, ich wollte eine Rezension schreiben zu STERBEN
Ich könnte das jetzt im KnausgardStil fortsetzen, in dem ich erstmal die fehlende Möglichkeit beklagen würde, das norwegische a mit Bommel obendrauf am PC zu schreiben, was auf dem iPad viel leichter zu finden ist.
Das meine Ignoranz gegenüber den fremdsprachlichen Lettern mich eventuell unter Knausgabommelrdianern als wenig skandinavienaffin abqualifizierte, Doch spätestens nach dem zweiten Absatz würden die an meiner Beurteilung des Buchs Interessierten sich fragen, wann dieser Semjon endlich mal auf den Punkt kommen würde, Ich würde dann entgegen, dass ich alle an meinem Findungsprozess bei der Frage, wie mir das Buch denn gefallen habe, möglichst authentisch teilhaben lassen wollte, Dass ein bloßer Zweizeiler denSeiten teils faszinierenden und teils ermüdenden Realismus des gerade Gelesenen nicht gerecht werden würde, Ein Teil meiner Follower amp Friends würden mich gelangweilt entfreunden auf Goodreads, aber eine feste Schar an Semjonianern würde künftig an meinen Lippen kleben und die Echtheit in meinen Rezensionen feiern.
Kurz um: Das Buch, im Original MEIN KAMPF heißend, war über weite Strecken auch mein Kampf mit der Frage gewesen, ob das gute Literatur ist, Oder ist das sogar Kunst Ich hatte in diesem Jahr ein Buch über Literaturwissenschaft von Prof, Gelfert gelesen und mich dabei etwas über den folgenden Satz lustig gemacht: Das Prinzip der Dichtung ist die Einkleidung der auszudrückenden Subjektivität in den Schleier einer sinnlich wahrnehmbaren Form.
Wenn der Schleier dabei zum Selbstzweck wird und das Verschleierte übertrumpft, verstimmt das den Leser genauso wie schleierlose Subjektivität, “
Ich konnte mir nicht so recht vorstellen, was mit schleierlosen Subjektivität gemeint sein soll, Nach dem Lesen von STERBEN, weiß ich es, Die Form des Buchs ist klar strukturiert und wie ein Musikstück aufgebaut, bei dem der Komponist immer wieder zum eigentlichen Thema zurückfindet und am Ende einen dort abholt, wo er einen zu Beginn hat stehen lassen.
Der Stil ist nach meinem Empfinden aber keineswegs von einem kunstvollen sinnlichen Schleier geprägt, sondern knallharte Detailverliebtheit bis zur Schmerzgrenze, Da kann sich der Rückblick auf einer Silvesterfeier in der Jugendzeit des Autors schon mal auf deutlich überSeiten erstrecken, Der Autor hat in einem Interview gesagt, er wollte sich völlig entblößen, alles aufschreiben, was ihn betrifft, seine Gedanken, seine Erlebnisse, seinen Kampf mit den Widrigkeiten der Jugendzeit, der Familie und insbesondere mit dem Vater.
Und die Leserschaft scheint dies zu lieben, Warum Das war für mich das eigentlich Interessante an dem Buch, Ich sehe da Parallelen zur Big BrotherShows und Social Media, Und genauso ein leichter Zeitvertreib wie das Scrollen durch Instagramm und Facebook ist das Lesen von Knausgard für mich, Ich kann hier jede Bewertung zwischenbisSterne nachvollziehen, Ich war gerade im. Teil des Buchs sehr kritisch gegenüber dem Stil, Der. Teil, in dem Karl Ove mit seinem Bruder nach dem Tod des Vaters in die Heimatstadt fährt, die Beerdigung organisiert und sich um die Großmutter kümmert, hat mir wesentlich besser gefallen.
Insofern kann ich mir durchaus vorstellen, auch die Folgebände zu lesen, aber nun brauche ich erstmal eine Authentizitätspause, Part I
I can see the crystal clarity of the writing, and appreciate it, But so far the domestic subject matter is dull, Living with mother and father in that particular house, playing loud rock n roll at a local shopping center, Meh. Its only pageso my hopes remain keen, Knausgaards greatest strength is character, When he delves into local relationships the prose can feel a little like Manns sitelinkBuddenbrooks,
Ugh, the petty vanity and lust and insecurity of teens, . . So far theres no justification for recounting their blasé stories, There seems to be something stiff and ill at ease among the social interactions depicted here, The humor is thin and I cant always be sure some of the formality, the stiffness, isnt a peculiarity of the translation,
The translator Don Bartlett was interviewed in The Paris , He said: “Personally, I think Book Two is the best, I have suggested to people that they should start at the beginning, but I also know Book One has put some readers off, I think some readers check out very quickly because of the theme of death and the focus on self, ” April,.
I think the narrators obnoxious, He has been raised well and had every advantage, Happiness writes white. I want to see him fall, keep hoping for that, but thats unlikely given thevolumes to follow,
Part
I much prefer the narrator here in his adult guise, There is agony to the book thats completely unsettling, But very little mitigating humor, I speak of the way sitelinkWilliam Shakespeare would use humor, And what is all this matter about art and intellect Its completely opaque, He should get back to telling a story, Hes not Schopenhauer.
I dont believe that all the detail about getting on planes and kissing his wife and making coffee and looking out the window is actual memory, not that much description in an accurate sequence over pages and pages.
No. And anyway he says his memory is bad, especially about childhood, Go figure.
“After a few hundred pages of this, I started to grumble: I understood that this was "My Struggle" but did it also have to be my struggle sitelinkDavid Mitchell's captivating novel "Black Swan Green" has crossed this territory roughly: the hideousness of a Northern European adolescence in the nineteeneighties with greater liveliness and comedy than
Knausgaard summons.
And if we must have hundreds of pages of autopsied minutiae, then let them be as well written as the last two enormous volumes in sitelinkAdam MarsJones's unfinished project in novelistic microrealism.
” except from James Woods review: The New Yorker, August,,
Knausgaards comments here about nightowls struck me as a revelation, Its that the night is a less structured time of day, as such it possesses a sense of freedom that one doesnt get during the day because of its association with thetogrind.
Obvious, no doubt, but the explicit connection with freedom is one I had never made,
I stopped page, It was just too tedious to bear, Despite some inspired pages, I dont care about this stranger, There was too little narrative pleasure, He did not delight this particular reader, My first impression of Karl Ove Knausgaard came from a black and white photograph published with a review of his book "A Time For Everything" in The New York Books.
He is seen smoking against the rugged Norwegian landscape, hair disheveled, wearing an old, battered teeshirt, lost in thought, Completely and unabashedly himself, yet ill at ease, Entirely present, feet deeply rooted in the present moment, yet his mind is clearly in flight, flickering at the surface of his gaze,
The striking portrait somehow encompasses all of the qualities of his writing: intense, raw, physical, elusive, inquisitive and elemental,
sitelink nybooks. com/articles/archi
What Knausgaard achieves in "My Struggle", his mad yet mesmerizingvolume autobiographical enterprise, is simply the most "real" depiction of the movements of the mind that I have ever read.
A life told in its most boring minutiae and its most elemental highs and lows, as it moves from the most mundane to the most transcendent,
Knausgaard plays alongside Proust or Virginia Woolf in his desire to encapsulate all of his experience as a human being, a teenager, a son, a friend, a lover, a father but most of all: a writer.
But he does it with even more urgency, more radicality, more anger and more modernity, An Everyman of thest century with ath century temperament,
The second volume of this autobiography, which tackles the fire and vagaries of love as well as the deep ambivalences that lie at the heart of domestic life and parenthood, is utterly engrossing.
Read him, and listen to him below speak about Book, which deals with his youth and the death of his father, and he might very well change the way you look at the world around you and your own reaction to events.
sitelink be/ODhMVOYg “Life's a pitch, as the old woman said, She couldn't pronounce her bs, ”
Im not sure I can say much of anything about this work that hasnt already been said, I still have several volumes to finish, The next one is nearlypages, so in a way, Im just getting started on this enterprise,
Perhaps the best I can do is to offer a few of my observations, All I keep thinking is that this is the best boring book Ive ever read, I cant believe how utterly boring it is and that I cared, Every detail seemed mundane and lead to nowhere, I cant believe that Knausgaard actually made me care about his first beer run or the detailed cleaning strategy he used to prepare his deceased fathers home for a wake.
In the London Book of s, the novelist Ben Lerner writes, “Its easy to marshal examples of what makes My Struggle mediocre, The problem is: its amazing, ”
And thats exactly right, This boring book is amazing, Ask me why, and I doubt I could adequately answer,
The only fleck of amazement I can even begin to articulate is the genius it took to actually remember or create an allusion to memory that had to occur for this book to be written.
How in the world could anyone remember such detail from a decade ago I can barely remember five minutes ago, I found it almost unbelievable that Knausgaard remembered how deep he dipped his teabag into the cup at his Grandmothers house back in the earlys,
The only way I could continue reading and find it believable was to devise some theories as to how he remembered these details, I know this is a novel and categorized as fiction, so theres always liberties, But, I also know that its been marketed as autobiographical and that many of his own family members were so mortified by this book that they have refused to speak to him again.
Here are my theories about how Knausgaard constructed the details in this book:
He knew he was going to write this novel from a very early age and therefore set about remembering and notating every single detail of his life, mundane or not.
Genius.
His memory failed him and he couldnt remember anything, except for the major incidences, and therefore was forced to make up all the details, and every single minor observation is fiction.
Genius.
Its a combination of both, He remembered some things, and what he didnt, he had to relive or reobserve, He literally went back to his grandmothers home and cleaned the railings with a rag and detergent and then recorded his observations as they wouldve occurred had he remembered every detail.
Genius!
He does write that at one point he burned all of his journals from when he was younger, so my first theory may not be correct, He also states that his memory is weak, which supports the theory that the details were made up, Again, just a theory. There may be proof otherwise,
I dont know how he did it, Perhaps Ill gain some insights in the next volume,
Either way, I cant undo whats been done, I have a feeling this book will forever change the way that I read and observe life,
I wish I could say more or review more eloquently, but this is one of those you just have to see for yourself,
.