The Man Who Speaks Volumes
Karl Ove Knausgaard comes to New York
This week Karl Ove Knausgaard, the celebrated Norwegian writer behind the epic six volume autobiographical novel titled My Struggle, visited New York for a whirlwind of talks with some of America’s most acclaimed novelists. His work has shaken both the general public and the literary elite, as evident by the caliber of his interviewers, which included Nicole Krauss, Zadie Smith, and Jeffrey Eugenides.
The magnitude of his popularity presented itself in full during his first stop, at the Community Bookstore, in Park Slope on Wednesday. The local bookstore, which warmly welcomed guests free of charge, was packed from wall to wall. Having gotten there a mere thirty minutes early, I was only able to see his face once, as he cut through the crowd, head down, and made his way to the stage. The event Friday evening, at the New York Public Library with Jeffrey Eugenides — who was an outstanding host, digging into content while adding intimacy and humor — was thankfully less cramped but by no means in less demand.
“I was diving in a sea of banality and triviality” explained Knausgaard as he spoke with Eugenides about My Struggle. The statement conjured a distinctive visual of the work, which sprawls his life in painstaking detail from childhood to present day. Over the course of 3,600 pages the reader, too, feels like they are swimming in the minutiae of everyday life. And this is the brilliance of his writing. Knausgaard’s attention to the smallest sensory and emotional detail is unparalleled in today’s literature. He observes, dissects, and interprets every object, thought, and emotion, unraveling each moment with complete and utter honesty.
This dissection of everyday moments carries particular weight today, in our culture of unbridled stimulus and distraction. In his pages we are plunged into banality, but if anything this pointed untangling of everyday detail feels more like a warm bath than an cold sea. In getting to know Knausgaard’s most intimate reflections, we’re ultimately reacquainted with ourselves, our own thoughts, and with humanity. In unveiling the truth in the mundane, he makes us remember and appreciate its beauty.
“Writing is becoming,” he explained “it opens layers inside of you.” Discovery played a major theme in his comments about writing, as did movement. Each time he described his process his hands instinctively raised in front him and moved circularly, mimicking a flow. He explained, more than once, that without discovery or movement there is death. The use of the word death in this context seemed dramatic at first, but as he detailed the importance that writing plays in his ability to experience life, it was clear that he was simply being direct. There was no fear in his voice, simply a fierce desire to live.
In his exploration of life, death is paramount. He plunges into it on page one and confronts it throughout. This willingness to acknowledge something so essential to our being but which we refuse to examine is what sets him apart and compels us to him. In his “lust for describing a thing that doesn’t have language”, he is fighting to understand and capture the essence of living. “There are a thousand ways to find meaning in everyday life,” he explains, and this search is ultimately what Knausgaard is after. It is the conflict that lies behind the title My Struggle. A search for purpose, through the power of art, in an otherwise banal existence. A desire to make something bigger than the self.
Both Nicole Krauss and Jeffrey Eugenides (unfortunately I missed the Zadie Smith event) were as intrigued by his form as they were his content, looking for some kind of method to his madness. To each he denied having any intentional format in his writing. Despite the grandeur of his work, this lack of structure is believable. The novels are reckless in their flow, a stream of consciousness, each sentence beholden to nothing but the sentence before.
“The enemy of writing is wanting to please” he told Eugenides. Knausgaard repeatedly said he felt completely free when he was writing My Struggle. Reading his work, in which he describes at length his crippling desire to please others, one can understand how important this feeling of freedom is for him. In his writing he is released from judgement and distraction and able to interpret the world around him in earnest.
This sincerity is what pervades not only the novel but the person himself. Before responding to questions Knausgaard almost always paused, sometimes for close to thirty seconds, which in case you’re wondering, is definitely an awkward silence, before putting forth a reply. He took time to think about each subject. You would expect someone, especially someone so eloquent with words, to skirt the awkwardness and make something up. But true to his writing, he was more concerned with truth than with style. He so visibly wanted to formulate exactly what he was thinking and deliver it with accuracy.
He is a tall man with a strong voice. He has a slight hunch, but coupled with his furrowed brow and flowing hair, it comes off as tough, almost rock star-esque. As he read a passage about his disillusionment with modern fiction, he swayed rhythmically back and forth. He hovered over the book appearing slightly uncomfortable, but read slowly with care and without pretense. As he continued it seemed he did not want to stop, like he would rather have continue reading that book — aloud or not — than continue a conversation about himself.
Before hearing him, I wondered what more I could gain from seeing him in person. After all, I had just read over a thousand pages of raw material on his life. And as it turns out I didn’t really learn anything new. The self-effacing, humble, genius that I had imagined from the page was so precisely embodied by the person standing in front of me. Hearing the words come to life, and that life so perfectly matching those words, simply bounded my belief in one of the most beautifully honest novelists of our time.
