My Struggle: Book 1 (My Struggle, 1)

Just finished this book. I had discovered this author via a radio interview and subsequently hearing him speak, read from the work at a panel I attended at the recent Brooklyn Book Festival. The panel was described as:"Ice or Salt:The Personal in Fiction.W.B. Yeats wrote, "All that is personal soon rots; it must be packed in ice or salt." Authors Siri Hustvedt (Living, Thinking, Looking), Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård (My Struggle) and Sheila Heti (How Should a Person Be?) will consider how writing technique--"ice or salt"--transforms the personal into art that connects to a broad audience. Moderated by Phillip Lopate."I appreciated and immediately bought each author's work. I was, however, most drawn to the Norwegian's work. An author from Norway who manages to penetrate the infotainment telesector bubble of American culture. "Hell", I thought, "I gotta see this."Sure enough the man friggin' looked like a Viking. Not like Thor of the recent Avengers movie. I have an eight year old son and have seen the film twice - thinking about My Struggle while watching it - perhaps not in the way that Knausgard intended. But f'real - Karl Ove has that Viking look thing going on, long hair, chiseled looks, deep sonorous voice: the real thing, more lean, mean even wolf-like. But gentle too. I'd cast him in a Lord of the Rings film in a heartbeat.It was explained by Ms. Hustvedt, an American-Norwegian I believe, that his work was ripping a new one in Norway's repressive, "we don't talk about such things in public" cloak of stoic silence on things related to the personal, the family; on things that mattered. I realized, reading My Struggle, they may not talk much about it in private either.Statistics were provided on just how many people were reading all seven volumes of the work in Norway. Massive attack at the bookstores and in the hearts of other Nordic writers, for sure.I was most intrigued by this author and his reading. I went up to him afterwards where he was standing outside having a cigarette and speaking to an attractive woman. I congratulated him on the work and, based on the selection he'd read, became hyper self-conscious that this fellow might not really care to conversate. I couldn't blame him. Besides, I had the book on my kindle (that's right damn it, as I'd purchased it on the spot) and could start getting to know him at my own pace.This is a great book for anyone with a drinking problem and an estranged relationship with a father and/or family they love dearly. This is a great book for anyone who loves writing; detailed, descriptive, "open a soul vein and bleed-draw it on the page" writing. This is a great book for anyone who likes Vikings, and/or any kind of spiritual warrior. This is because Karl Ove Knausgard is a kind of modern day Viking spiritual warrior. He's an artist and a craftsman. Folks inculcated with the need for bullet point documents and/or suffering from ADD may have a hard time with this one.It strikes me - seeing him in person, listening to him talk, watching his movements, reading the book reflecting on what he has done here with this work; etc, - this fellow is also a guy, a man who seems to be writing to accomplish two things: to realize the extraordinary wonder of being an ordinary imperfect human being and to truly realize (as the American writer Raymond Carver once explained as a goal of his own) what it means to love and to be loved.It's also a great book for anyone who knows nothing or a little or a lot about Norwegian culture.The only dangerous thing about reading this book is one's fear that the other six won't come out in the English language. I'm too old to learn Norwegian.The only shameful thing you will feel in regards to this book is when anyone asks you to clean something up. This dude does not mess around when it comes to cleaning up a mess. Guys who avoid housework - get ready to be inspired or die.The only sad thing about this book is how his family and/or friends are perceiving it. There seems to be some controversy. They don't like seeing their own names in print attached to descriptions that may or may not mirror their own perceptions of themselves.I identify. I was once described in a famous writer's book as an English film maker who wore animal print underpants when I'm actually an American who wears boxers. I knew immediately upon reading the book that this was the writer's way to punish me for canceling a REAL DATE we were supposed to have IN REAL LIFE because she called me about eight times prior to the date to discuss how it would go. Hell hath no fury. The woman's book was writing about her delusional struggles, abuse of all kinds of legal and illegal drugs, and she attached my real name to a fictional character (or some other guy she'd scared away) to mix fiction and memoir in the very exact opposte way that this writer does. I also heard through trusted sources that she was spotted hanging out at AA meetings in Manhattan looking for stories to write about.SHE SHOULD DEFINITELY READ KNAUSGARD'S MY STRUGGLE.So, I feel your pain - but honestly - it really has no lasting effect. Let's be Nordic about this and agree that what doesn't kill us - makes us stronger - if we relate to it with knowledge, understanding, compassion and skillful means.I hope those offended by Knausgard's work can inhabit the literature in the same way as so many others seem to be doing: as a work of fiction dressed up as memoir. As a fictionalized memoir that edges ever closer to very human truths by forging lies like truth and/or telling the truth in imaginary circumstances. After all, none of us are the same person we were yesterday or even a moment ago...and we are all edging closer to the truth when we tell our stories - even if we are lying through out teeth. But those dualistic notions - what's "really true" what's "not really true" - fall away like snow on a leaf as the work takes us to another dimension where truth is like the water is to the fish, or the wind to the falcons, hawks and eagles.The one most inspiring thing from this work is that Karl Ove now wants to open a publishing house. He's written himself out of writing in a way that conveys a sense of liberation, emptiness and luminosity.Oh Mr. Knausgard, let's be life long friends!! Or look for me in the Park Slope Reader...Siri will send it to you...winter edition!! Coming out soon!! (I'm using first names not because I'm a personal friend of these folks - just because they are so personable and I used to work in a community book store in Park Slope that both Siri and her husband - Paul Auster - would come and buy books there. I would stood in reverential silence (for a while) then eased back into the nothing special ethos of Brooklyn culture. All readers of this should come to the Brooklyn Book Festival next year to get a taste of Brooklyn, our famous book-reading culture and a slice of pizza!!Bravo to the writer. Bravo to you who buy and read Knausgard's My Struggle!!You will have amazing dreams, want to have some good fish, be looking under your elderly mother whenever, wherever she is sitting in a chair; possibly forgiving anyone (particularly a father) whom you are holding resentments against; looking up obscure punk rock bands and reading wiki biographies of other Norwegian writers and poets. You may cry but it will be a good cry. You will never look at or see clouds the same way again. You may even go to Norway to see them. You may even, as I was lucky enough to have happen, discover new depths of feeling and consciousness in your own being - just by reading a book - on a KINDLE, no less.Bravo once again to Karl Ove who is now cursed to live as if everyone is related to him now that he has written a work that has revealed the universal kinship of humanity. A drink from an ancient well we could all use more of.Heck, I might want to disappear too.Enough - Get the book - and enjoy!!

This book is brilliant, but it is frustrating. I want to give it a high rating for it’s undeniable magnificence, but a lower rating for the actual experience I had reading it. I suppose I’ll rate it somewhere in the middle.It begins with a beautiful, deeply philosophical (yet entirely unemotional) musing on the nature of death. Then, the bulk of the book is dedicated to the mundane micro-details of Knausgaard’s childhood and family life—including 100 or so pages about a New Years Eve party he attended when he was a teenager. Diversions lead to other diversions, to the point where I skimmed full pages at a time, eager to get back to the good stuff.Finally, it all comes full circle in the final third: his father has died, and this book is Knausgaard’s attempt to cope with it. Suddenly, as Death becomes personal for him (no longer abstract as it was in the beginning) the mundane descriptions all start to make sense within the larger context of the book: they allow Knausgaard to apply that same detailed scrutiny to his father’s death, and in doing so, reduce it to a similar level of banality.It’s a frustrating read in its unevenness. There are passages of sheer beauty, depth and intimacy alongside boring recollections of past events. This is purposeful, but that doesn’t necessarily make it less frustrating as a reader.It’s certainly one of those books whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I feel satisfied and fulfilled upon completing it, yet there were times in the middle when I was tempted to bail.Will I read the next one? My answer is a begrudging yes. Knausgaard has a hold on me now, whether I like it or not.

The first book of the autobiography is entitled A Death in the Family. The whole work is entitled "My Struggle" after Hitler's Mien Kamph. I understand why there is talk of the Nobel prize. And the talk of the Nobel prize is all the more piquant since Karl Ove thinks that to be awarded the Nobel prize for Literature is that greatest disgrace that can befall a writer. I really enjoyed it. It is full of thought about art, theology, beauty, philosophy and just life in general. He is a hyper-educated man. Self-educated as far as I can gather. He seems to have done a Fine arts Degree, but that is all as far as I have been able to discover. He looks as if he could kill small children with his deep wrinkles and "lived-in" looking face, wild eyes. The first book spends a lot of time describing his teenage-self. It is strangely, wonderfully ordinary. All the teenage things - like buying beer and trying to hide it from his parents etc. It is interesting and not at all pretentious. Yet, there is something about this child that is not at all ordinary. He records things. I showed a friend a section where he muses on paintings and I had a bit of trouble getting the book back from him. A meditation on Paintings and theology. Just fascinating.I have finished the second volume. I just could put it down. The second volume starts describing his life as a young father. I just read it all night. I had about 2 hours sleep. It deals with changing nappies, pushing baby buggies around, going to nursery school with his toddlers and meeting the other parents. All the other parents he tries very hard to keep his distance from. He is a most fascinating person. He weeps like a child at the drop of a hat. Amazingly sensitive and yet so senseless and difficult. The reviews say that his first wife read about how he felt when he left her for his second wife along with the whole of Norway and she demanded that he do a public interview with her to answer her complaints. He did so and the article I was reading said "He did not acquit himself well." I looked it up on the net, but it is in Norwegian.He reminds me of that series of interviews that Anthony Clare (the British Psychiatrist) did with a string of famous people. Germaine Greer, Ertha Kit, Ken Russell and others. Soon it became obvious that there was something very wrong with these high achieving people. They all claimed to experience shame, but they were ashamed only before themselves in a totally narcissistic way. No one else's opinion on the planet really mattered because they were locked into a battle with themselves. They thought it perfectly sensible to go on BBC radio and confess themselves and the difficulties of their families to an audience of the entire world. In a paradoxical way they were only interested in their own suffering and that is what motivated them to become great artists. Total egoism and madness. Something missing in their poor heads that enables them (forces them) to do these amazing things that the rest of us benefit from. The reviews said that reading My Struggle is like reading someone else's diary and discovering all your own secrets there. Just what was said about Proust. These writers think about themselves all day (as we all do) and they use the art as therapy. Too bad for everyone else in their families. The rest of us suffer the same griefs and so on, but we don't let it take over our worlds. We are not quite so damaged as to become completely selfish and self-absorbed. We can, as Freud puts it, understand our lives as "ordinary, every-day unhappiness". These people believe there is something almost sacred and noble about the quality of their suffering (there isn't) and they devote their lives to turning it into art. That they can turn it into art which we can all learn from is what makes it sacred. Not the suffering itself. It is just the ordinary suffering and boredom etc that we all endure and cope with. Except their way of coping is to turn it into art. Van Gough for example.I read an interview done with Karl Ove and it seems that he has no (or very little) understanding that he has done anything wrong and betrayed his family, his wives, his children his friends. He just does not recognise the boundaries. He tries to understand because the world is in such an uproar about his work and he tips his hat in the direction of understanding by saying in a puzzled tone "It is sort of immoral in a way". But the "in a way" reveals that he doesn't really understand it. He is his only judge and he does not think he has done anything wrong. He has internalised his father's censure. I don't like him much; he would be impossible to live with, but I understand him and have enjoyed his work. Not that he would care about that - he is his only judge.

the book is beautifully built, the jacket has a nice papery texture, the formatting needs some getting used, since the book is square, but you quickly get accustomed to it.as for the content, Knausgaard writes precise, crystalline prose, he makes the very mundane life of a white Norwegian guy seem relatable to you. The translation shows a real labour of love.

Not an avid reader, but I finished the book in 4days. Just couldn’t stop reading this book.I didn’t jump to Book 2 after finishing the Book 1. But my mind kept going back to Knausguard’s world.And ordered Book 2.Love his writing and the way he observed the world. Very relatable.

The English words are easy to understand.

Have only just started reading this but find it really hard to put down. Glad I bought the series.

So much has been written about this novel, but I was unprepared for its impact. Knausgaard owes a debt to Proust and Henry James, among others. He also has followed (or begun) the trend that many younger North American novelists follow where they, or someone very like them with their names and in their circumstances are the protagonists in their own work, and the supporting cast & setting are equally similar. But he doesn't engage in quite the same type of over sharing as some of the others do. His sentences are complex, but rigorously and beautifully wrought. I found his descriptions of the world around him crystalline both because of and in spite if the various emotional filters he would apply. Rather than finding these passages tedious, I found it a joy to parse the sentences, to stop and read aloud the cinematic description of life as it passed him in front of the convenience store, or the achingly beautiful images of the sea and the harbour.While Knausgaard's life is nothing like mine, his childhood and adolescent selves are universal - in the western world at any rate. And the uneasiness, agony of his relationship with his father, the awkwardness with his grandmother, are songs we all know, with infinite variety.