My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons (from many years ago) showed the stairs to a concert hall with a sandwich board announcing the concert of the day as "All the Georg Philipp Telemann you can stand."

Well, I am on page 200 and I have flipped through the remaining 373 pages and I have had all the

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Karl Ove Knausgård I can stand.

Not to say he isn't a good writer, he is. There are passages in this that I really like, especially when he is talking about something other than himself and his daily life. Unfortunately it's mostly all about him.

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In Book Two of this acclaimed series of autobiographical novels, subtitled "A Man in Love", Knausgaard is living in Bergen, Norway with his wife Tonje and their two young children. Although his family adores him he feels trapped, and after his debut novel "Ute av verden" ("Out of the World") was

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awarded the 1998 Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature he feels both vindicated as a writer, and pressured by internal and external demands to continue to write, and he resents that his responsibilities as a father and house husband are interfering with his work. He begins to look outside of his marriage for release, and he ultimately separates from Tonje and his children, then moves to an isolated Norwegian village to get away from them, and everyone else he knows. After a few months he moves to Stockholm, Sweden, strikes up friendships with the literary community there, and rekindles friendships with Geir, a fellow Norwegian who is a struggling writer, and, more importantly, Linda, a troubled poet who he met and fell in love with in the past, before he met Tonje.

As in Book One, in which Knausgaard writes about his teenage and young adult years and his difficult relationship with his father, whose chronic alcoholism led to his premature and sordid death, Book Two features superb reflections on family relationships, responsibility to one's family and one's self, and Knausgaard's struggles with his fears, insecurities, and personal demons. The characters' conversations and everyday occurrences are almost always interesting, and made this reader feel as if he was sitting next to Knausgaard and whomever he is talking to, and although I didn't find this book nearly as compelling as Book One it kept my interest from the first page to the last.

Knausgaard, to his credit, portrays himself as a flawed man, whose occasional selfishness and thoughtlessness make him a somewhat unsympathetic figure, but also make him more human. However, as he has said previously, he seems to have struck a "Faustian bargain" (his words) in his naked portrayal of his family, lovers and friends, who are not allowed to defend themselves or explain their actions and thoughts. I was also somewhat disturbed by the apparent lack of regard for Tonje and their children, who are almost entirely cut out of this book after he leaves them. Hopefully Knausgaard will return to the breakup and his self imposed isolation in one of the subsequent books in the series, as this part of his story feels incomplete.

"My Struggle: Book Two" is another superb accomplishment and a book I found hard to put down, similar to Book One, and I look forward to reading Book Three next month.

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I'm hooked on Karl Ove and I would be reading book 3 now ... if I only had it. If I only had a birthday coming up.

Ah I just loved this book, even more than the first volume. Read it as my daughter was in the last stages of pregnancy and had a difficult delivery - so the descriptions of his wife's labor really resonated. It's amazing to me the way his writing moves from minute quotidian details to philosophical

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rumination, sometimes in a single page. The first book reminded me of Proust, this one somehow of Tolstoy. (Of course not as masterful as either, but he is a master in his own way, or at least of his own life.)

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One of the few new fiction novels that I could get thru. The day to day descriptions of the characters life were engrossing, and the detours into discourses about philosophy or writing or art where always entertaining.

I so enjoyed the first book that I was eager to begin this, but it disappointed me. The detail of lifestyles, resentments, and frustrations it lists, serially, become tedious, quite apart from the repellant character the author lays bare in this period of his life. This is indeed what ambition

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looks like in academic worlds: vain, unscrupulous, self-righteous, and above all, petty. The gender politics are fascinating, but the key term here would have to be cynicism. In fact, to be honest, I didn't finish it, but went straight from about half-way through, when it is evident we will only get more of the same, and the same, and the same, to Book 3.

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Karl Ove takes one right to the center of what it means to be him, for better, worse, or worser. His description of his reaction to taking his 8 month old child to a Rhythm Time class is so painfully honestly remarkable that it makes one laugh to think about the sheer anti-PC of it and him. This is

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the 2nd in a series of 6 books, of which the first two are his best writing. Brilliant introspection alternates with chilling self exposure.
I hope that the final book returns to the promise of the early ones.

His travelogue in the New York Times was tedious and unworthy of him, however much money they advanced. This time, he did not make The Dull compelling reading.

And, as ?#!^^?# and arrogant as he has seemingly become, he is a total original who surpasses most Madelines.

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There's a lot to be said about Knausgård, both positive and not-so-positive, and I am a little hestitant to offer a comprehensive opinion mid-stream, as it were. For one thing, it's not really clear that these are six "separate" books - or instead six sections of one master-narrative.

I will say

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that the second 600 page section was more of a "slog" for me than the first page 600 page section - there were several longer passages here where I wearied of the narrator's whining and obsessive self-focus (which tipped over in several places into self-pity.)

Sociological and historical interest abounds. Knausgård expresses well the conundrum of the modern straight white male in modern/postmodern western society: that wistful regret for the passing of a purely patriarchal society, combined with repressed anger at having to push strollers and change diapers and do the daily grind of what in the past was looked down upon as "women's work." At the same time, it should be acknowledged that Knausgård _does_ push the stroller, _does_ change diapers, _does_ shop and cook and prepare fantastic meals and act as a good host for dinner parties at their very comfortable middle class urbane center-city apartment - first in Stockholm, then in the somewhat smaller and less glamorous city of Malmö.

(Interesting to read about the realities of real estate and rentals in Stockholm - how important it was to maintain good relations with your neighbors, and that renters signed life-contracts for their properties. I really enjoyed the sections that dealt with a crazy Russian neighbor.)

There's also the interest inherent in the depiction of an difficult human relationship. The author builds upon a rich Scandinavian tradition: not only from the legacy of Ingmar Bergman (to some degree, this is "Scenes from a Marriage" redux), but going even further back to the domestic marital dramas of August Strindberg. Nobody does bitter quarrelsome married couples better than the Scandinavians.

I did find Karl Ove to be difficult company after a while, which meant that I could only read small doses of this section at a time. That's why it took me almost six weeks to read it. He's not really interested in other people, only himself. He has a wife and a best friend, but you only get to know them from outside, from Karl Ove's perspective, and neither one of them has a life or an existence beyond him. That's a big shortcoming for me.

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Book 2 of my Karl Ove addiction. His descriptions of being a parent and raising his children is so spot-on.

I wandered beneath the sun-dappled shade from the trees, surrounded by the warm fragrances of the forest, thinking that I was in the middle of my life. Not life as an age, not halfway along life’s path, but in the middle of my existence. My heart trembled.

Rather late in this volume, Karl Ove

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reflects on ascribing a utility to literature especially fiction. He confesses a desire to read only essays and diaries at the moment. [all the verbs and gerunds need to be qualified in this endeavor (My Struggle, as opposed to my reviews thereof), that will be self evident to those familiar with the enterprise. The specificity does strike me as artifice, unlike say the project of Jacques Roubaud.] If that is the case his accounts of reading appear more towards the modernist or late 19C novel, particularly in the Russian approaches.

There is something electric and narcotic in this prose. That’s a remarkable feat given the attention to smoke breaks. I found myself lighting my pipe for the first time in years yesterday in empathy. It was most natural to finish the second volume out here on the porch this morning. Knausgård appears to crave such solitude. Lovely cool weather has arrived after a daylong deluge which took me away from Karl Ove and some delicious Berlin Sour ale last night to aid our struggling sub pump. I did think of his work while carrying buckets of water out to the alley.

I have never been one for completing entire series of books. My caprice governs. My gaze typically wanders. My inner Augie March. That is not the case at present. Opening the third installment as soon as possible.

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Denser than the first volume, but the banality of detail is still mesmerizing. It's possible he overthinks things, but it makes way better reading than the masses who write when they're underthinking.

It was good, but I can't read another one of these.

The first volume held me spellbound. While still weighty in comparison with many other books, it felt lean, with no fluff. Every discursion served the novel in the end. Unfortunately, it's not so for the second.

For whatever reason, in the second

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volume Knausgård seems to have lost his razor sharp focus on theme. While the text itself is enjoyable to read, the deeper connection between events is just missing for me. It's like this. The sacred in the mundane is a very Knausgårdian feature. He achieved it here, but in fits and starts. What I couldn't stand were the absolutely banal passages [see pg. 430 below] that neither served as a peak moment nor as groundwork towards future peaks.

What's more, this book was decently longer than the first. I can only suspend judgment for so long, and the style of the series demands suspension of payoff- through long sections that diverge from the points of the previous section. And all this is exacerbated by the lack of chapters. Yes, it's just text and story from start to finish, 660 pages of it in a row.

And in the end, it feels like it's not about anything at all. I feel like some people say that's the point of these books, but the first volume was clearly about the juxtaposition of death and growing up. It had a strong vision that volume two lacks.

On the whole, I cannot imagine wading through 4 more similarly sized books of this. What I've written above may sound like I hated the book, but I liked it for what it is. Still, I've gotta be done now. But I'm still really interested to see what his other (non My Struggle) works are like. Maybe i'll grab Autumn next.

[pg. 430: (don't worry, this spoils absolutely nothing)

My mobile rang in my pocket. I took it and looked at the display. Yngve.
'Hi?' I said.
'Hi,' he answered. 'How's it going?'
'Fine. How about you?'
'Yep, fine.'
'Good. Yngve, we're about to go into a cafe. Can I ring you later? This afternoon some time? Or was there something in particular?'
'No, nothing. We can talk later.'
'Bye.'
'Bye.'
I put the mobile back in my pocket.
'That was Yngve,' I said.
'Is he all right?' Linda asked.
I shrugged.
'I don't know. But I'll call him afterwards.'

(All that apropos of nothing, for nothing's sake. Really.)]

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Took a while to get into it and I left it aside after around 100 pages for almost 2 months, but was hooked again after the break. For better or worse, I've never read an author who so perfectly captures how I see the world.

I'm torn between taking part in the backlash against the Knausgaard hype--because, let's be honest, there are plenty of authors more deserving of front page attention from every newspaper, magazine and website with 'New York' in the title--and trying to get in early on the revisionism to the

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backlash, by pointing out that although Knausgaard is not Proust or Woolf, nor is he trying to be, and it's not his fault that every newspaper, magazine and website with 'New York' in the title decided to put him on their cover at the same moment. Frankly, the idea that any serious author could possibly drum up that level of support before s/he is dead is rather heartening.

Which will it be, I wonder, backlash or revisionism-to-the-backlash? Probably more backlash, I admit, but while lashing back I will try to remember that, read on its own terms rather than in the context of Knausgaard-is-the-new-black rhetoric, this book is an ideal airplane novel. In fact, Knausgaard's real achievement is probably that he's written a book that compels you to turn the pages, while also not being a complete idiot. If contemporary literture is any guide, that puts him in a class of one.

On the other hand, I'm more than a little concerned that the book is so readable just because it makes the life I (and probably most of his other readers) lead seem epic and worthy of attention. That makes me feel a warm glow. I recognize the things that Karl Ove goes through in the book. I relate to him.

Karl Ove Knausgaard, in short, turns me into a high school senior, reading only books in which the main character looks, feels, talks and acts like the reader him or herself. I look forward to finishing the series and writing an essay or review: "Karl Ove Knausgaard is More Dangerous to Literature than Harry Potter."

More seriously: Knausgaard is a literary existentialist who knows that i) he's a literary existentialist and ii) knows that being a literary existentialist is more than a little silly. He very self-consciously flips back and forth between his Holderlin mood (oh world! how beauteous thou art!) and his Bernhard mood (fuck off). He is ultra-individualistic, and recognizes that this causes him problems and pain, but can't quite break out of it. This level of reflection raises this volume far above the first, and gives me reason to keep reading. No mean feat.

It helps that his friend Geir is a total champion, and that Knausgaard is willing to let another voice provide some context on his (the author's) life. I hope for more Geir to come.

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“And it is never easy to confront life-changing news, especially when you are deeply embroiled in the everyday and the banal, which we always are. They absorb almost everything, make almost everything small, apart from the few events that are so immense they lay waste to all the everyday trivia

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around you. Big news is like that and it is not possible to live inside it.”

The second volume of Knausgård’s autobiographical epic, My Struggle, is a stirring and scorching unfurling of (perhaps, also a perpetual attempt at reconciling) entangled, intersecting roles performed in life’s existential theatre. There is Knausgård as a writer, Knausgård as a husband, a father, a son, and a friend. As he dons each of them on like costumes from a Scandinavian rack, immense yearning for solitude often cuts the performance, rearing the ugly heads of brief unhappiness and regret opposite the conflict and contradiction of these roles. My Struggle Vol. 2, akin to its predecessor, is not a histrionic account, however. Instead, it firmly holds its candour and sensitivity. It is also an unvarnished contemplation of history and culture, of years accumulated from a quotidian sense of living, how nothing ever stops in its bouts; how time passed cannot be regained, only repetitiously reminisced in different perceptions.

At the beginning of the book, Knausgård is already living with his children and second wife, Linda, in Sweden, until it turns its pages back to his separation with his first wife, Tonje, and his ultimate resolve to leave Norway. The biting Swedish winter upon his arrival thaws in the romantic warmth that gradually flourishes between him and Linda. But it soon becomes a stifling situation—a tumultuous affair where heavenly highs follow hellish lows, where hot and cold throttle each other in a supposed atmosphere of devotion. While My Struggle Vol. 2 pullulates itself with morning and evening walks, dinners with friends, bookshop excursions, and car rides, it is also engrossingly introspective. Knausgård rejoices and laments fatherhood, without censorship and sugar-coated platitudes. This is deftly described during Linda’s labour at the hospital, a profoundly tearful experience for Knausgård until its spell dissipates. A few days later, he is gnawed by his need to be alone and write. Gender norms also hinder him in fully appreciating fatherhood, often questioning the effects of masculinity, the good in him that seems to dissolve every time he can’t subdue his anger and discomfort. These appear in usual activities like pushing the stroller in a park, even dancing with his daughter during a Rhythm Time class for babies. In turn, through his parental anecdotes, fathers and mothers become more human instead of towering figures who can do no wrong; wrongly seen as omniscient and omnipresent. Although male sexuality also appears in a few paragraphs now and then, it is incomprehensible (even alienating) for me as a (lesbian) woman. Physicality of attraction seems to get the gears going for men rather easily. The initial sight of appealing female body parts already arouses the imagination. Knausgård intriguingly inspects this as well though without much force as his other behavioural inspections of the self.

The political ambience of the late 2000s also visits some of the paragraphs of My Struggle Vol. 2. Knausgård is prescient as he challenges the destructive and hypocritical notions of radical-left goodness. Language is currently continuously sifted, even canceled, for reasons that seem to reach preposterous heights, without any room for nuance and respectful discourse. People push for a utopia that only creates more disparity, even more discord.

Similar with its previous instalment, what deems My Struggle Vol. 2 an existential affirmation is its graze with mortality. How it manifests itself clearer when it wears out and wearies the people closest to us. Threads of grey grow from their heads, wrinkles crawl from their eyes and mouths, the slow deterioration of their bodies. Ageing erodes a certain look, a certain movement. Incidentally, we seldom observe them in ourselves until we pay more attention on the mirror, the clock, these rolls of calendars removed from the wall. And it is in these moments that My Struggle Vol. 2 leaves an emptiness entwined with the patches of beauty of living; contentment. Life sure is sharper, more real, even frighteningly fragile, at its closing pages. Aptly subtitled “A Man in Love”, this is loving not restrained by the perimeters of romance, but as an encompassing splendour of truly appreciating art and people and ourselves.

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