i do wonder how much my positive view of the books is influenced by positive things i've heard about the books, but i am not forcing myself to enjoy them. i just do
― markers, Sunday, 1 March 2015 23:24 (nine years ago) link
reading one of his novels after reading half of "my struggle" is an odd experience though. *SPOILER ALERT* there's some dude who sees angels. at another point, wow, there are cain and abel! and then later on they're gone, and now we're talking about noah!
― markers, Sunday, 1 March 2015 23:26 (nine years ago) link
alfred, i've started reading vol. 1 (thought i had posted about that here, maybe i mentioned it in the sheila heti thred). at least that much does seem like it's worth a good look, for writery types. he's onto something.
― j., Monday, 2 March 2015 00:16 (nine years ago) link
i can't have a wank, my fathers just died
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 2 March 2015 00:30 (nine years ago) link
isn't this being translated slower than it was written at this point
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 2 March 2015 00:31 (nine years ago) link
upthread xyz is complaining about the banality of 'writing without a sense of shame' but in volume one the banality of some of the shameful memories revealed along with the big ones is what makes it interesting, like he's already gone beyond that point of view. vol two seemed sort of a retrograde step in that there were revelations of big dramatic moments instead
also vol one had some intriguing mysteries of ellipsis in re working out what happened in his life and others lives in the time skipped over + what was the whole thing with his dad's name about?
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 2 March 2015 00:36 (nine years ago) link
One Swede took the extreme critical step of setting fire to the K section of a Malmö bookstore, telling police that he did it because Knausgaard was "the worst author in the world".
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 2 March 2015 00:48 (nine years ago) link
isn't this being translated slower than it was written at this point― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 2 March 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 2 March 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
We need to allow for 100 companion pieces to appear per vol published. Iron law.
Yet another piece. He has a 'writerly' beard.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/01/karl-ove-knausgaard-interview-shame-dancing-in-the-dark
The first two volumes were written together and published before he began the third. But such was the pain that the first two inflicted on family and friends that he pulled back in the third, fourth and fifth. In the sixth he returned to full disclosure, cataloguing the breakdown his wife, Linda, suffered during the fall-out over the first two volumes of My Struggle.
Wonder whether this is behind the perceived fall off (Lamp had given up on this around vol. 3)
Look at the pic in his writing studio, you can see a book with the word HITLER in block letters. Bastard.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 2 March 2015 11:25 (nine years ago) link
He met Bostrom at a writer’s conference while he was still married to his first wife, the journalist Tonje Aursland. He made a pass at her, which she rejected, and, in a drunken state of demoralisation, he deliberately cut up his face with broken glass. He later left Aursland and moved to Sweden, but she only learned of the initial episode with Bostrom when she read the second volume, A Man in Love, where it is recorded with characteristically scrupulous candour. Deeply upset, she made a radio documentary in which she confronted Knausgaard.
Hilarious or what? Anyone heard it? Makes you wonder whether everyone is in it and the whole controversy was made up.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 2 March 2015 11:31 (nine years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-travels-through-america.html
― markers, Sunday, March 1, 2015 4:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark
I thought this was cool. I enjoyed when he was confused by hot wings.
― Hungry4Ass, Monday, 2 March 2015 20:30 (nine years ago) link
i liked it to. we have the same norwegian fisherman's sweater which is very warm
― no (Lamp), Monday, 2 March 2015 20:53 (nine years ago) link
guy needs to straighten out his credit sitch
― johnny crunch, Monday, 2 March 2015 21:38 (nine years ago) link
love the whole nyt thing. read part 2 last night. don't know if i can read all the books, but the nyt thing should make a lot of people put their pencils down.
― scott seward, Thursday, 12 March 2015 15:21 (nine years ago) link
Based on the amount of ILB love expended on this, I checked volume one out of my local library. I may get to it in the next few weeks.
― Aimless, Thursday, 12 March 2015 17:57 (nine years ago) link
both of you should read it! it's worth it imo.
― markers, Thursday, 12 March 2015 21:59 (nine years ago) link
plus, if you catch up now, you'll be all ready for when the next volume drops next month
― markers, Thursday, 12 March 2015 22:00 (nine years ago) link
I finished Book 2 recently. I'm actually relieved to hear that he pulls back a bit on Book 3 and returns to the (more distant) past. I was starting to get a bit uncomfortable reading about all the fights with his wife (and felt bad for the mother in law too).
― o. nate, Monday, 16 March 2015 02:09 (nine years ago) link
About sixty percent through Volume One and I remain mostly unmoved except when he admitted in the first third that the cries of his children irritate him.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 23 April 2015 20:24 (nine years ago) link
and this Beckett-esque bit: "Soon I will be forty, and when I’m forty, it won’t be long before I’m fifty. And when I’m fifty, it won’t be long before I’m sixty."
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 23 April 2015 20:28 (nine years ago) link
"And when I’m sixty, it won’t be long before I’m seventy. And that will be that."
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 23 April 2015 20:30 (nine years ago) link
Volume 4 is coming to my house . . . on Tuesday(?).
― markers, Friday, 24 April 2015 15:57 (nine years ago) link
http://the-toast.net/2015/04/29/karl-ove-knausgaard-reviews-everything-else-in-america/
― entry-level umami (mild bleu cheese vibes) (s.clover), Saturday, 2 May 2015 16:29 (nine years ago) link
this is a really bad parody of his style
― Treeship, Saturday, 2 May 2015 16:37 (nine years ago) link
I think I liked his American travelogue thing better than I liked Vol. 1. Not sure if I'll continue on with the series. I've got a copy of Swann's Way, gonna see how that hits me.
― circa1916, Saturday, 2 May 2015 19:51 (nine years ago) link
Maybe there is life in the old dog yet:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/the-inexplicable
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 19 May 2015 18:25 (nine years ago) link
oh shit thanks for the link! hadn't seen this
― markers, Tuesday, 19 May 2015 19:54 (nine years ago) link
Øystein:
http://lithub.com/lydia-davis-at-the-end-of-the-world/
Do you like Dag Solstad?
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 22:13 (nine years ago) link
http://www.vulture.com/2015/05/saltz-how-kim-kardashian-became-important.html
DWW: And what do you make of the book itself?JS: I won't buy the book because in a way, the book is within me already, and we all have our own Selfish. Selfish is a kind of American My Struggle — that’s Karl Ove Knausgaard's epic, not Hitler’s. I mean, a chorus of one, written in a personal language of compassion, infinite theater, stage sets, setpieces, ceremony, shallowness, despairs, self-awareness, sexuality, unable to curtail one's selfishness and obsession with one's own image. Extras enter and leave the stage, but photography, rather than writing, as homeopathic medicament, remedy, used to relieve and express painful malaise. As with Knausgaard, I can imagine Selfish soon being forgotten; another struggle of a young girl inventing herself in and out of the spotlight amidst Southern California insanity, hedonism, and wealth, but at the epicenter of the most highly charged racial trial of an era; where the black man won at the same time as her body became deformed, shaped, changed. All while she does something in public that so many women do it private: look at herself in the mirror and through a camera at the same time. Some kind of love is born and maybe dies in this book, a sort of nervousness, inaccurate explanations, liberation. And I only need to see it once to get all this.
JS: I won't buy the book because in a way, the book is within me already, and we all have our own Selfish. Selfish is a kind of American My Struggle — that’s Karl Ove Knausgaard's epic, not Hitler’s. I mean, a chorus of one, written in a personal language of compassion, infinite theater, stage sets, setpieces, ceremony, shallowness, despairs, self-awareness, sexuality, unable to curtail one's selfishness and obsession with one's own image. Extras enter and leave the stage, but photography, rather than writing, as homeopathic medicament, remedy, used to relieve and express painful malaise. As with Knausgaard, I can imagine Selfish soon being forgotten; another struggle of a young girl inventing herself in and out of the spotlight amidst Southern California insanity, hedonism, and wealth, but at the epicenter of the most highly charged racial trial of an era; where the black man won at the same time as her body became deformed, shaped, changed. All while she does something in public that so many women do it private: look at herself in the mirror and through a camera at the same time. Some kind of love is born and maybe dies in this book, a sort of nervousness, inaccurate explanations, liberation. And I only need to see it once to get all this.
― j., Thursday, 21 May 2015 01:43 (nine years ago) link
xyzzz: fwiw I think "Novel 11, Book 18", the second of the three Solstad novels so far published in English, is effing brilliant; I even think you might like it.
― Tim, Friday, 22 May 2015 16:08 (nine years ago) link
Ah yes I think you told me about it in the pub!
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 22 May 2015 16:09 (nine years ago) link
Yes, I do like Solstad a great deal. I picked up his recent novel — the one Lydia Davis is reading — but haven't started it properly. From the cursory reading of random pages, it seems a lot more fun than various miffed Norwegian reviewers have made it sound. I suspect it might get tiring as a whole, but that might be interesting too. (But I'll admit that while I'm intrigued by the idea of using boredom as an artistic/literary effect, I'm probably not patient enough to appreciate it.)
Not read Novel 11, but I hear it's really good. I know his terrific novel _Shyness & Dignity_ is available in English and would certainly recommend that. It's often (half-jokingly) described as a novel about a guy who can't get his umbrella open.
― July retires into a shrubbery. (Øystein), Monday, 25 May 2015 22:07 (nine years ago) link
surprisingly few books of his translated in English or French
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Tuesday, 26 May 2015 13:37 (nine years ago) link
That's true - only three at present in English, which is a sadness.
― Tim, Tuesday, 26 May 2015 13:48 (nine years ago) link
"Killing another person requires a tremendous amount of distance, and the space that makes such distance possible has appeared in the midst of our culture. It has appeared among us, and it exists here, now."
seems bleak
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Tuesday, 26 May 2015 16:40 (nine years ago) link
The character I identify most with in these books is the dad
― calstars, Tuesday, 14 July 2015 00:33 (eight years ago) link
https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/me-myself-and-hitler/
Might read vol.5 as soon as
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 6 September 2015 19:49 (eight years ago) link
dude can write a book review like nobody's business:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/books/review/michel-houellebecqs-submission.html
― scott seward, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 18:14 (eight years ago) link
i have no time for this guy. you know there is life and stuff so why should i read reviews of books which have not been read by the reviewer, wtf. whatever kausgard does we all can do. write books about our everyday life. so why should i waste my time? this guy has turned his shitty life in a money machine by writing about every fart he has made but why should i support it? tell me.
― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 20:07 (eight years ago) link
He read the book (allegedly)
― badg, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 20:19 (eight years ago) link
he has read the book he reviews, as you can tell if you read the review.
as for "whatever knausgaard does we all can do"? complete canard of a criticism when it's directed towards art made without the use of technical skill - e.g. some contemporary art, noise or free improv music - and even more redundant when directed towards a large corpus of well-written novel-memoirs.
― you too could be called a 'Star' by the Compliance Unit (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 20:20 (eight years ago) link
so why does he write this first sentence then?"Before I begin this review, I have to make a small confession. I have never read Michel Houellebecq’s books."
― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 20:33 (eight years ago) link
i read a lot of crit and not everyone can write a review like that. trust me!
― scott seward, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 20:41 (eight years ago) link
i've never read his novels. but this and that long-ass NYT magazine piece prove to me that he is really good at what he does. better than i could ever write. and i'm a helluva writer lemme tellya!
― scott seward, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 20:43 (eight years ago) link
so why does he write this first sentence then?"Before I begin this review, I have to make a small confession. I have never read Michel Houellebecq’s books."― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan)
Probably thought it was a good place to start a book review by admitting his unfamiliarity with the works of the author? Then goes on to describe why he hasn't read him, and how he's glad accepting the commission of the book review forced him to finally read him. But keep misreading/deliberately refusing to engage with something while simultaneously trying to criticise it, I'm sure this will be very fruitful and of interest to us all.
― you too could be called a 'Star' by the Compliance Unit (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 20:53 (eight years ago) link
but that means that his first two sentences were a lie. that's the kind of beginning of a review i find loathsome, sorry. and that is where i stop reading as i - naive as i am - think writers try to to be honest. i am not interested in the rest, he has discredited himself there. if he had been sincere he might have added "i have never read mh books before this review." but he didn't.
― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 21:11 (eight years ago) link
that's a bewildering reading of that line.
― you too could be called a 'Star' by the Compliance Unit (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 21:13 (eight years ago) link
I have never read x's books at the start of a book review clearly signposts to me that the reviewer does not mean by that the very book that they are currently reviewing
― you too could be called a 'Star' by the Compliance Unit (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 21:14 (eight years ago) link
the present perfect sense is generally used in english to refer to an unspecified time in the past
― you too could be called a 'Star' by the Compliance Unit (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 21:16 (eight years ago) link
wouldn't that be the past present perfect as in "i had never read his books."? i learnt in my english lessons that the present perfect refers to operations which are not yet finished, which still connect to the present. that is also the reason why it bears the word "present" in its name. but probably i am wrong, you are the native speaker.
― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 21:25 (eight years ago) link
^willfully thick poster of the day award, this guy
― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 21:27 (eight years ago) link