The End by Karl Ove Knausgaard
You may recall when I wrote about Haruki Murakami's Killing Commendatore a while back I mentioned I was about 500 pages into another novel that I had set aside for a couple of years waiting for the right moment to tackle the beast. At 1153 pages I finally finished Karl Ove Knausgaard's sixth and final book in his epic series My Struggle.
Anyone who knows me and who has had the misfortune to talk books with me will know about Karl Ove Knausgaard and the My Struggle series of books. That's because I impress upon every person I know that they must read these books. I am obviously quite unpersuasive as only a handful of people I know have bothered to read any of them. And the world is a poorer place for it. If nothing else, everyone should the first book - A Death in the Family.
Knausgaard is a Norwegian writer who first started the series about 15 years ago and they immediately became a sensation in Scandinavian countries. At this point something like 30% of Norwegians have read the books. I can't think of another author who may have captured a country's national attention to that extent. Particularly as these books are what is called modern literature. They are not page turning Norwegian-noir crime thrillers.
The books first started to be translated into English about 10 years ago with the final book, The End, translated and released about two years ago. My strategy has been to read one book a year so as not to overdo it. That seems about right.
Knausgaard calls these books novels, but in truth they are an autobiography of his life. The author was about 40 when he started the books and was not particularly well known outside of Norway or Sweden. He had enjoyed some success with his first novel and then endured a period of writer's block for about 10 years or so. The My Struggle series was his way of writing his way out of that block. Hardly the stuff to warrant something like 3,500 pages of autobiography.
However, there are two aspects about the books which mark them as different from nearly every other autobiography you may ever read. First, there is no 'truth' that Knausgaard is not prepared to tell about himself and others. Throughout the books we live inside Knausgaard's every thought, no matter how trivial, awful, cruel, self-hating and petty. In my experience autobiographies are more like exercises in self -promotion, Knausgaard's books are anything but. They present a side that nearly all of us keep hidden from the conscious world, and it can be ugly.
The second aspect which is different is the excruciatingly close examination of everyday life minutiae throughout the books. From every cigarette he smokes, every cup of coffee he drinks (he does a lot of both) to the seeming inconsequential conversations he has in the course of his day. They are all documented and detailed. On the face of it this sounds too much, but there is something about it that makes it compulsive reading.
The My Struggle books are not linear in their trajectory. Book one deals with the death of Knausgaard's father when he is aged about 30, while book two describes his first marriage, its dissolution and his second marriage. Other books deal with his childhood, university days and early days establishing himself as a writer.
In The End we come a full circle to where book one is about to be published. A legal dispute ensues between Karl Ove and members of his family over the description of his father's death and how certain family members are depicted in the story. The author is wracked with self-doubt and anxiety over what he has done and cannot believe his naivety and inability to foresee the consequences of the story he is about to publish.
From there Knausgaard explores the notion of identity and how the naming of people: I, we, they, the other, can shift our notions of humanity. This was the most difficult part of any of the books I have read, with the author spending about 100 pages examining a post-Holocaust poem by Paul Celan and another 300 pages on the early life of Adolf Hitler and Mein Kampf.
How did we arrive here? Well the title My Struggle, which in the Norwegian translates to Mein Kamp, offers a clue. Knausgaard tries to make sense of Hitler's descent into antisemitism and the German nation's collective insanity in the 1930's and 40's. Antisemites and neo-Nazis need not bother, Knausgaard is not a sympathiser.
Then we're back into the release of books one through five and the controversy that follows with each release. In what is probably the saddest parts of the series, the final couple of hundred pages of The End detail his second wife's debilitating mental illness. This a raw and deeply personal story and very compelling.
So my friends, that is the My Struggle series of books. I will miss them I must say as they have been captivating reading for some years. He has other books to read, but somehow I haven't been as enthused about them as much.
Until next time, peace and love.
