A DEATH IN THE FAMILY by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Harvil Secker, 2012)
"Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows"
After writing relatively conventional novels, the Norwegian author, Karl Ove Knausgaard declared, as he approached the age of 40, that he was sick of fiction.
He felt that making up stories was essentially a dishonest practice. As an alternative, he decided to tell the story of his own life but this, the first of six volumes, is far from being a conventional autobiography. The original title is Min Kamp 1 (My Struggle) which is, it is to be hoped, an ironic reference to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
The books could be seen as an exploration of a mid-life crisis with all the doubts, self-loathing and shame that go with the territory. His decision not to change any of names inevitably leaves family, friends and acquaintances exposed too. This is all the more pronounced given the huge success of the books, particularly in his native country where he has achieved a strange mix of celebrity and notoriety.
He writes: “to judge you have to stand outside and that is not where creativity takes place”. Much of his reputation, and repudiation, derives from the fact that he has opted not to omit uncomfortable thoughts or events. He immerses himself in minutiae of his daily life, making a point of not excluding banal activities like shopping or tea making. “I wanted to see how far it was possible to take realism before it would be impossible to read”, he says. Large parts of it are intentionally tedious, boring in the sense that life is often boring. Continue reading
