My Struggle: Book 1

My Struggle: Book1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard (2009) My friend Elissa and I once joked how we'd write a book called the Bible—just the idea seemed like the most punk rock thing you could do—but seeing how “bible” has been appropriated by everyone writing guides, from experts to idiots, it feels much more punk rock to name your book Min Kamp, since Hitler is a guy most people still shy away from sharing a bunkbed with. And seeing how the English title, My Struggle, practically gift-wraps easy, humorous reviews by lazy book critics, you kind of have to admire Karl Ove Knausgaard as someone who seems not to give a fuck. And writing about barely or not disguised close friends and family in intimate detail would seem to confirm that. On the other hand, you sense he cares deeply about people, as well, and the world at large, as well as the most minute corner of his experience—and I think those seemingly contradictory elements are partly responsible for this six volume literary home-run. Personally, I did have trouble getting through Book One, but then I was really impressed with how he slowed things down to such an insane extent the further you got into it—so the ending section, about putting things in order at his father's house, after his death—it's kind of incredible. It might take him a page to roll a cigarette. Seeing how I love the approach of elevating the mundane, blurring memoir and fiction, and all with straight-ahead crystal clear style, you'd think this is the book for me. I did like it, too, even if it took my slow reading self a long time to get through it. Where I didn't connect, I guess, is just the slightly alien flavor of another country, a marriage, children (his childhood, and I'm guessing, in later books, his children). So I did enjoy reading this one, but the next five, I don't think so.