Karl Ove Knausgård - Min kamp

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."

i read a lot of crit and not everyone can write a review like that. trust me!

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!

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.

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.

that's a bewildering reading of that line.

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

the present perfect sense is generally used in english to refer to an unspecified time in the past

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.

^willfully thick poster of the day award, this guy

You might be right my understanding of English grammar is poor despite (or because) of being a native speakers. But e.g. I could definitely say something like "I have never eaten Thai food. But I ate at a Thai restaurant last week and it was good". Would be perfectly correct way of expressing myself as far as I know.

all right then, thanks for the clarification. i learnt something new tonight.

what would the I Love Books equivalent of the michael jackson popcorn gif be? something tamer...

I think it's more the context than the grammar doing the work here tbh, it sort of depends on understanding "read his books" as meaning "generally, on my own initiative" as opposed to on commission for this review. Sort of like saying "I've never traveled in Europe" at the beginning of a travel article about Rome or something. It can be sort of elegant to write minimally and let context do the rest of the work, rather than "Prior to getting assigned to write this review, I had never read his books"

maybe a gif of dame margaret smith eating toffee really slowly...

thanks, i get the gist but how far does context go? one page, ten pages, hundred pages? it's only in the third paragraph after many sentences that he admits that he finally read the book in question. i never reached that point in the review.

Thanks for the link Scott will look at it later! There is def a theme to his newspaper/lit. rev pieces - the piece I linked on Brevik, his appreciation of controversial writers like MH or Handke, which all goes back to his writing on Hitler (covered in that LARB piece) as well.

Ouch http://www.sindrebangstad.com/the-artist-as-provocateur-handke-and-knausgard/

I think it's more the context than the grammar doing the work here tbh, it sort of depends on understanding "read his books" as meaning "generally, on my own initiative" as opposed to on commission for this review. Sort of like saying "I've never traveled in Europe" at the beginning of a travel article about Rome or something. It can be sort of elegant to write minimally and let context do the rest of the work, rather than "Prior to getting assigned to write this review, I had never read his books"

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Tuesday, November 3, 2015 9:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this usage of present perfect is kinda shibboleth-y and points to a particular kind of university education i think. its deployment here however is probably more to do with the translator than it is knausgaard -- who knows how you indicate this sort of thing in norwegian, though

hey the review actually kinda makes me want to read houllebecq for the first time in a while, though i feel like it would mostly infuriate me

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/vanishing-point

acceptance speech for the Welt Literaturpreis, November 6th, berlin.

new times piece is soooo goooooooood

excerpt from book 5 in the new yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/at-the-writing-academy

Just finished book 4. Waiting for book 5 to come out in paperback before I buy it.

thoughts after listening to him reading from vs naipaul's the enigma of arrival on the new yorker podcast - http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction/karl-ove-knausgaard-reads-v-s-naipaul

1. this is a brilliant story, i need to read the book.
2. knausgaard is a good voice actor and also maybe should read children's bedtime stories.

one of the best new yorker podcasts imo.

I'm somewhat biased by being friends with two of the writers, but I've been enjoying this series of letters on My Struggle, which has covered the first volume so far, and will continue through book 5 by the end of the summer: http://post45.research.yale.edu/2016/06/the-slow-burn-volume-2-an-introduction/

i still have uh a ways to go w/ karl's struggle and the gradual slumping of his press has been giving me the slightest of misgivings

so i found this reassuring even if it does imply that the middle books would still be kinda meh

http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-struggle-against-language

started the second one recently, a year or more since finishing the first. i am generally enjoying the mixture of feelings i have towards him, as i go on. in book 1 i often thought "what an idiot" and occasionally enjoyed the long, tedious descriptions of things. it felt sort of sub-musil or like a trashy airport novel for people who enjoy literature. in book 2 after 100 pages or so i'm finding myself laughing at his juvenile, petty, pretentious anger, about his kids or swedish parents or his life, but not to the point that it makes me ridicule him. it's like a mixture of boorishness, sensitivity, sexism, and alternative thinking. as a writer he's almost impossible to pin down. there are so many feelings at war with each other - it can be trite or bad-tempered one second, and profound the next.

overall good page-turners, but still feel like airport or holiday reading.

the stuff about him being a parent in this liberal swedish milieu and being a small c conservative and basically finding it awful but having no choice but to be around because of his kids is the funniest stuff in the books so far for me and I've read the first 3. there's this really funny bit - well for some reason it jumped out at me as particularly funny - where people are talking about immigration and he intentionally says nothing because one of the guys there works in refugee settlement and his views on immigration have previously made people think he's a racist

also his view of childrearing - he is a house husband because he can't justify not being one - his wife needs to go out to work, he's a writer and can work from home - but basically finds it unfulfilling and emasculating because he is really, despite his extreme sensitivity, someone who prescribes to traditional gender roles

the mixture of profundity and basic misanthropy makes for a fairly amusing read. p sexist tho throughout.

As far as I know, I own all of this dude’s works that’ve been published in book form in English. If you’re a My Struggle superfan, check out A Time for Everything, which is different from My Struggle, but there’s a connection there that might be interesting to you.

Here’s a link: https://archipelagobooks.org/book/a-time-for-everything/

There’s also some more books of his coming out in the future listed on that website here: https://archipelagobooks.org/book_author/knausgaard-karl/

the mixture of profundity and basic misanthropy makes for a fairly amusing read. p sexist tho throughout.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Friday, May 12, 2017 4:57 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh it's very sexist. i mean, it's very candid, so, i think most men being extremely candid would come across somewhat sexist. but he really takes the cake, i feel completely chaste compared to his constant lechery.

the saving grace for me is that in writing this autobiographical account of being a drunk, sometimes pretentious, chauvinistic, male writer he doesn't ever really try to do the male writer thing and elevate himself by romanticizing himself as a struggling artist, or charming rogue, or whatever. his frailty, banality, and weakness is constantly apparent. you're often laughing at him and rarely with him.

I got tired of the guy 3/4 of the way through Book 1. Not really interested in checking out more by him tbh

his frailty, banality, and weakness is constantly apparent. you're often laughing at him and rarely with him.

― -_- (jim in vancouver), Friday, May 12, 2017 5:08 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

do you think this is a central part of the project? like, is the book a masochistic deconstruction of the heroic male author archetype?

i think knausgaard would have no interest in that in the abstract, or like from a point of principle. but it is that in effect.

the central conceit is his relationship with his abusive father and his desire to not be like him and perhaps part of that is the openness and nakedness of this book. contrasts greatly with his father who remains an enigma throughout.

I got tired of the guy 3/4 of the way through Book 1. Not really interested in checking out more by him tbh

i found book one sporadically engaging, mostly a bit bemusing, even with the melancholy. book 2 has a lot more intellectual heft. both are page-turners imo. maybe his approach is building through me as i go too.

the scene in book 2 where his wife gives birth was incredibly powerful imo, don't think i've ever read somebody detail childbirth from a viewer's perspective like that, it was extremely moving.

book 2 is so much better than the first one. he does like some shit indie music tho.

he does like some shit indie music tho.

the cardigans just emerged in book 2. and i mean, i guess damon albarn's mali album might not be shit, idk, but just seems the kind of lame thoughtless indie-fan purchase of the time. i realise he does like some good things as well, i think, based on his interviews.

wtf Lovefool is the best song ever

i dunno if it's diff in diff parts of the world but that record is one of the most irritating i can remember - the earlier stuff was fine i guess but that era is basically like texas or the stereophonics in my mind.

i really do not know what to make of this guy. he is so bloody talkative. i get bored after one page. how can someone take himself so seriously. "min kamp" reminds me of rousseau's confessions which are unsupportable as well. on the other hand he thinks "engführung" by paul celan is the best poem in the world. paul celan and knausgard, that is about the largest distance you can have between two authors. weird guy.

"boring" is definitely the right word but i dunno, the tediousness is kind of key to the whole experience. i'm a bit torn about him, parts of it are weaker than others. i find myself tearing through the books tho, there's something addictive about them, in a sort of trashy way.

Pretty good interview. Anyone read/is planning to read his new book?

ranked:

part 2
part 5
part 3
part 1
part 4

part 6 - waiting for translation.

hmm, that's a conundrum. i've read 1-3. do i push through struggle through 4 in order to get to 5 and the promise of learning about how his trip to the grocery store goes in 6?

ultimately i think i will, because for the most part i just really enjoy reading him describe his non-adventures. and it helps me to see someone who is about as successful as one can be, at least in terms of his career and standing among peers, feel like utter shit so much of the time.

Not strictly related but interesting profile of Gunnhild Øyehaug in the NYer. Somehow I'd never heard of her.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/magazine/a-literary-road-trip-into-the-heart-of-russia.html

Reading Part 6 now. i will really miss those books.
The most important novels in the last 20 years i think.
part 6 is more meditative than the rest, and i think it makes it just a little weaker.
part 2 and 5 are the best imo.
1 is the worst (though it is great on it's own regardless).
He kinda learned to write them along the way.