My Struggle, Book One [Paperback]

Knausgård's first volume in his 6 volume My Struggle has finally been published in English. This is one of the most successful books ever published in Norway and deserves a wider audience. Book One introduces us to Knausgård's life with his recollections of his earliest memories through his teenage years. The second half, focused on arranging his father's funeral while finishing his first novel, deals with his complicated relationship and feelings about his very strange and pathetic father.

The series itself is a strange venture. On one level it is simply a memoir by a 40 year old writer who has achieved great acclaim in Norway (but is almost unknown outside the Scandinavian countries). On a more lurid level, it is a "reality show" in book form, its essence being a brutally honest intrusion into the author's life, and more notably, the lives of everyone around him. But the value and genius of this book is that Knausgård has an extraordinary ability to articulate the feelings and perceptions of ordinary people as they live their ordinary lives, make choices, and deal with the consequences of those choices. His self-awareness is refreshing and hilarious. Poetry in prose.

The book was released this morning. I intended to read a few pages this morning, but was unable to put it down. It is that good.

I read a lot of Norwegian literature in translation and Don Bartlett, the translator, is one of the best. He has always impressed me with his focus on retaining the feel of the original language and did a great job with My Struggle.

Here's hoping Book Two is published soon.

This is a difficult book to categorize, but whatever it is - novel or memoir - it is hard to put down down even when it bogs down in minute details. Perhaps the only complaint I have is how much time is spent on his teenage years. Nothing extraordinary happens and the insights into his relationships with his family are wonderful, but the day-to-day stuff of an average teenager was less interesting to me - who cares what he smoked or drank, where he walked, whom he saw - I wanted more about relationships (familial or otherwise). But I suppose that is necessary if he is going to cover his whole life. And he does get back to the relationships. His comments on fatherhood, marriage, his parents, his siblings, his grandparents are brutally honest - they are all good people whom I'll bet weren't completely happy when this book first came out in Norway. You feel like you have stepped into another's person's life and are sitting on their shoulder watching it unfold hour by hour - and even understanding their thoughts. But the whole book is mesmerizing and I can't wait for a translation of the other five volumes. His memories (or recreations) of details are incredible. In most books details aren't mentioned unless they have some further meaning in the plot, but for him he wants to give us all the details even those that are more or less meaningless - which is how it is in real life. His struggles to balance writing with family life are heartbreaking and anyone with young children will sympathize, though few would state it so bluntly. The whole final section of the book dealing with the death of his father is a masterpiece of reality writing. I hope the translators are rushing with the next volumes (this can't be easy stuff to translate so my hat goes out to them).

Categorized as a novel, but this is the first of six volumes published with the title Min Kamp, My Struggle. In English Hitler's memoir is known by its German title, Mein Kampf. But the English translation is My Struggle, and the author of this "novel" starts his 3,500 page six volume exploration by giving it an incendiary title. The author goes on to analyze himself and those nearest to him with an attempt at complete honesty. While writing the private lives of those closest to him outraged much of the Norwegian public, there is no sensationalism anywhere in the book. Events and people are examined without magnification, without editorializing. "Art does not know a beyond, science does not know a beyond, religion does not know a beyond, not anymore. Our world is enclosed around itself." The author is constantly striving to understand what he is seeing and experiencing, and how that fits in with what others are simultaneously experiencing. While the result is different, very different, than that obtained by Proust, there is a similar refusal to prettify or objectify. "Nostalgia is not only shameless, it is also treacherous."

The example quoted most often to demonstrate the inappropriate content of the book is the factual discussion of his grandmother's incontinence. It is clearly presented as a fact, and given the age and general mental and physical condition of this woman, to be expected. The author doesn't hide this fact, why should he? But he spends more time examining the phenomena of a bodily function hidden that is now not hidden, yet is instead simply ignored by family members. Better not to mention an embarrassment than to actually deal with it. And he freely admits that while he haphazardly cleans up the results, he also does virtually nothing to actually acknowledge that there is a problem requiring affirmative action. The woman needs a new mattress, clean clothes and a diaper. But because these are personal, intimate, female details, they are beyond the male members of the family. So maybe he breaks some Norwegian taboo about making things public, but what he is really exploring is his own ineptness, innocence, and fear.

There is a time shift between when he is a father with young children who he avoids in order to get some work done and a young boy wanting his father to both notice him and leave him alone. Between these is the time slot where most of the book takes place: returning to his grandmother's house with his brother the day after their father dies. They have returned to clean-up the physical mess while at the same time trying to wade through the psychological damage caused by their father.

The background narrative is the author's continual struggle to be a writer. "Modernist literature with all its vast apparatus was an instrument, a form of perception, and once absorbed, the insights it brought could be rejected without its essence being lost, even the form endured, and it could then be applied to your own life, your own fascinations, which could then suddenly appear in a completely new and significant light."

The author successfully examines his life in a literary novel that definitely sheds "new and significant light" on how we perceive ourselves within the context of our lives. I hope the entire 3,500 pages are translated into English.