Karl Ove Knausgård - Min kamp

Whoa.

This is basically a variant of this

In any case, Handke is trying to understand something, to find a way to approach understanding and write about it, he is not trying to "be understanding" and come away with a teachable moment talk show best seller.

yeah talk about missing the point

hmmm, jumping aroudn Handke reviews on Goodreads has made me wanna check him out again. My fave, "The Left Handed Woman", also seems an influence on "Min Kamp"

Big row in Norway in the aftermath of that Ibsen award, Knausgård heavily involved in a pretty hostile debate over the debate over Handke winning and his supposed politics.

Wiki sez:

In 2014, the prize was awarded to the controversial playwright and historical revisionist Peter Handke, who is noted for denying the Srebrenica genocide and for his support of Slobodan Milošević.[2] The award led to calls for the jury to resign.[3] A large number of people protested against him as he arrived to receive the prize, shouting "fascist, fascist" repeatedly and calling him a "genocide denier."[4] The award was condemned by PEN Norway.[5] Bernt Hagtvet, an expert on totalitarianism, called the award an "unprecedented scandal," stating that "awarding Handke the Ibsen Prize is comparable to awarding the Immanuel Kant Prize to Goebbels."[5]

I only know bits and pieces about it (having never read the actual articles from Handke) so...yes its a hole to have started from Celan and Holocaust to the comparative silence over Serbia: K deals with it in a couple of paragraphs towards the end..

yeah it was pretty mortifying seeing Handke dig himself in an increasingly deep hole by going to ever greater length to defend Serbia 15 years ago. He really did lose it.

Steered clear of him once he went that route but in addition to Sorrow I recommend Afternoon of a Writer and especially The Weight of the World.

Reviewed by Michael Hofmann! But I can't see it:( http://www.lrb.co.uk/v07/n04/michael-hofmann/winking-at-myself

I guess we should start a Handke thread but I'd also recommend Goalie/Penalty, Left-Handed Woman and Short Letter, Long Farewell

After a deliberate wait I am about to start Book Three. In spite of all of the detractors I think what matters to me is the sense of fate or destiny apart from urgency or authenticity because how could you be urgent and authentic about what is so abundant yet never enough? A part of this could be my romanticizing Norway and roles and callings and knowing your neighbors (also acknowledging the seeming foreignness and isolation of the writers' workshop and everlasting seventies, etc -- hey reminds me of the Jacques Tati films made with Scandinavian audiences ... Swedish?).

3/4 through Part 2. Structurally doesn't seem to work as well at Part 1, much more "this this happened, then this happened." Still great.

reading part three made me realize that i hate this dude

i felt like i was dying like cell by cell just physically decaying and that every minute i spent reading about his struggle my body was atrophying

sorry i - it took you three books to figure this out?

yeah idk - i really liked the first one and enjoyed the second but the third i just couldnt take

my unhappiness with it was the physical thing that felt like death

he definitely seems less sympathetic - relatable lol - as things go on but ... surely there's no way that i'll end up feeling like you ... i'm totally gonna read that 400-page essay on Hitler

i would not think that part three the would be the one that broke the spell

it's just about him being a dumb kid, why'd that seal the deal for you?

was not into the second one at all, loved the first

After reading all 3, I thought the third was the weakest. Maybe I just don't enjoy childhood reveries though. Not a lot of drama for an adult to get into except for the tension with his dad.

Got volume 2.

I got Vol. 2 a year ago, but just started reading it last week.

i've now read the first three volumes and will have to wait until next month for the fourth to come out in english before continuing. i am reading his novel "a time for everything" now, and i also picked up a copy of the times today, which included a copy of the magazines that featured the first part of this story of his: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-travels-through-america.html

i think the next fiction writer i'm going to focus on is tom mccarthy

"my struggle" is totally worth reading by the way. i might buy a copy of the first volume for one of my former professors. but i can't recommend "a time for everything" yet, and i'm not sure i will be able to. there are at least one or two paralells to his own life in here though, as least to his life as he tells it in "my struggle"

honestly, the nyt piece wasn't the best either. heh. he does cause a toilet to overflow, though

did your enthusiasm hold all through the third volume, marks? w me as soon as the past-time sequence opened it just hit me that i'd stopped caring somewhere in the middle of book two

i like to say

'mah struggel'

I guess I'll have to read this thing eventually.

thomp: i have a shit memory, so i don't remember exactly how i felt at different points in the book off the top of my head. i don't think we had the same experience though.

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

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!

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.

i can't have a wank, my fathers just died

isn't this being translated slower than it was written at this point

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?

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".

isn't this being translated slower than it was written at this point

― ♛ 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.

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.

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.

i liked it to. we have the same norwegian fisherman's sweater which is very warm

guy needs to straighten out his credit sitch

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.

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.

both of you should read it! it's worth it imo.

plus, if you catch up now, you'll be all ready for when the next volume drops next month

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).