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sweetcuppincakes's review against another edition
4.0
Interesting to read reviews of this book here, and the variance in people's preferred sections from the book. It's definitely a book sandwiched within a book, but it can also seem like the two slices of bread of this Min Kamp sandwich are quite different from one another.
Part 8, in its most Knausgaardian rhythm and style, feels more continuous with the previous books in his seamless switching between autobiographical recollection - the meaningless/meticulous/mystifying/maddening/mendacious minutiae of the ordinary - to his insights and musings of Big Themes and Life, as well as the meta-narrative - infused with guilt and grandiose artistic purpose - that addresses what he's actually doing (does he even know?) in writing what he's written... and writing. It's great. Uncle Gunnar, who never had much of a presence in Book 1 or the others, suddenly looms large in Knausgaard's conscience, much like his father always has throughout the series.
Part 9, some of the most uncomfortable reading in the whole series, with his depiction of his wife Linda as being a hopeless case who can't do her share of household duties when he has to work - a revisited theme from Book 2 that is considerably harsher, more critical... and quite unfair. One sides with Knausgaard to an extent, feeling the frustrations of marital divisions of labor and bread-winning (with a comical interlude when Knausgaard's prodigality - which we've read before in his pocket hole-burning proclivities when he's flush with book royalties cash - takes the best of him as he considers buying a timeshare in the Canary Islands with the intriguing perk that they can use any of the hotel chain's properties around the world (kinda cool, no?), and it's actually Linda, surprised by Karl Ove's keenness for wasting a small fortune, who brings him around), but it takes a quick 180° when Linda's shopping habits and inability to cope with her motherly duties reveal themselves to be the return of her bipolar disorder, taking her into a deep, despairing depression (and Knausgaard into a comparatively less deep, ankle-soaking puddle of guilt), followed by a frightening period of mania in which the Linda he knew has just gone - on a long journey, as she later says - only to, quite suddenly, return. And then the book basically ends. This part feels rushed, breathless, perhaps both in his writing of it (as the deadline is a constant reminder, and the mention of the looming deadline and the beginning of Linda's depression seems to be around the time he's writing about Turner and Claude, somewhere in the first half of The Name and the Number section, so he still has more than half of the book to write at that point!), but also rushed in his jettisoning of his usual insights and memory-meanderings amidst the 'straight-forward' auto-biographical narrative. The imbalance between parts 8 and 9 (with different English translators as well - that can't help) might become even more apparent if one were to just read parts 8 and 9 back to back, upon a second reading... something I thought I would do myself as I was struggling through the middle Name and Number section... because that section, well, what can one say? It's fairly divisive, to say the least...
The Name and the Number, smack-dab in the middle of your regular Knausgaard programming, comes this sprawling, 452-page long-form essay, [pseudo-]philosophizing, and regurgitation of big chunks of Hitler's Mein Kampf and his various biographies. It's Knausgaard at his biggest, boldest - flexing his literary prowess to show the world (but probably mostly himself) that he's worth it, dammit! It's at times brilliant - a non-philosopher's philosophical journey through meaning, the 'I', the 'we', the 'they', the tension in art of being both singular and unique on the one hand, yet universal and understandable on the other to have the greatest impact. It's also at times vexing, inane, and utterly tedious - going literally word by word in an onanistic exegesis of a Paul Celan poem. Page after page, me thinking to myself, 'Karl Ove, why are you doing this to me? Please come back...' (Fun Book 6 drinking game: take a shot every time the phrase 'to all intents and purposes' pops up. So annoying! Shouldn't it be 'for all intents and purposes', anyway?) But once you get to the Hitler biography, even if it's quite secondarily sourced by its nature, and coming from someone who has not known much about Adolf before he was Hitler, it's quite riveting. People expecting broad strokes and dot-connecting between Min Kamp and Mein Kampf obviously weren't paying much attention, and Manny's review here is dead on.
So the turn for me - being fixated on my future re-reading schedule for all the books (I'd re-read Books 1 and 2 while waiting for 5, and want to go back to 3, 4, 5, and eventually 6 again) - was that, while I thought or felt I grasped the theme or point of Name and Number, and that any future re-reading could just skip it and go from parts 8 to 9, I think that I may only want to read Name and Number again - to really grasp it, hold and juggle all the ideas simultaneously in appreciative awe. I seemingly give Knausgaard short shrift here for this section, critical because I don't buy its audacity or necessity to even be in this book (and not edited down a bit - where was Geir, whichever one, or both, when you needed them!). But it definitely deserves closer reading. And an index wouldn't have hurt - I mean, thanks for the bibliography, but we really need an index.
And I do think I felt the theme, rather than understood it or ratiocinated it, because if there's one thematic kernel that repeats itself throughout Min Kamp, through his relationship with Linda, and seems to be driven toward in Name and Number, is that he values emotions and feeling over understanding and rigor. It's just ironic that his means of getting to this 'conclusion' are completely antithetical, especially in his Celan analysis (I secretly hope that Knausgaard was very self-aware of how annoying it would be for his readers to read the analysis, so as to prove his point in the end). It's also ironic that, in Book 5, what he claimed he would be relegated to as a failed author who could never find his unique voice, and which he seemed he was very capable of and could do in spades, was literary criticism. But if Name and Number is an example of such literary criticism, juxtaposed with the Knausgaard we've come to know and feel to be alive, in many of us, sharing his first-world, white guy problems Struggle that celebrates and prods to death the 'human condition', then I much prefer that voice, and he's obviously found it. And rather than re-reading it all again, I must also read Out of the World and A Time for Everything, to experience his voice somewhere - possibly - removed from himself.
Part 8, in its most Knausgaardian rhythm and style, feels more continuous with the previous books in his seamless switching between autobiographical recollection - the meaningless/meticulous/mystifying/maddening/mendacious minutiae of the ordinary - to his insights and musings of Big Themes and Life, as well as the meta-narrative - infused with guilt and grandiose artistic purpose - that addresses what he's actually doing (does he even know?) in writing what he's written... and writing. It's great. Uncle Gunnar, who never had much of a presence in Book 1 or the others, suddenly looms large in Knausgaard's conscience, much like his father always has throughout the series.
Part 9, some of the most uncomfortable reading in the whole series, with his depiction of his wife Linda as being a hopeless case who can't do her share of household duties when he has to work - a revisited theme from Book 2 that is considerably harsher, more critical... and quite unfair. One sides with Knausgaard to an extent, feeling the frustrations of marital divisions of labor and bread-winning (with a comical interlude when Knausgaard's prodigality - which we've read before in his pocket hole-burning proclivities when he's flush with book royalties cash - takes the best of him as he considers buying a timeshare in the Canary Islands with the intriguing perk that they can use any of the hotel chain's properties around the world (kinda cool, no?), and it's actually Linda, surprised by Karl Ove's keenness for wasting a small fortune, who brings him around), but it takes a quick 180° when Linda's shopping habits and inability to cope with her motherly duties reveal themselves to be the return of her bipolar disorder, taking her into a deep, despairing depression (and Knausgaard into a comparatively less deep, ankle-soaking puddle of guilt), followed by a frightening period of mania in which the Linda he knew has just gone - on a long journey, as she later says - only to, quite suddenly, return. And then the book basically ends. This part feels rushed, breathless, perhaps both in his writing of it (as the deadline is a constant reminder, and the mention of the looming deadline and the beginning of Linda's depression seems to be around the time he's writing about Turner and Claude, somewhere in the first half of The Name and the Number section, so he still has more than half of the book to write at that point!), but also rushed in his jettisoning of his usual insights and memory-meanderings amidst the 'straight-forward' auto-biographical narrative. The imbalance between parts 8 and 9 (with different English translators as well - that can't help) might become even more apparent if one were to just read parts 8 and 9 back to back, upon a second reading... something I thought I would do myself as I was struggling through the middle Name and Number section... because that section, well, what can one say? It's fairly divisive, to say the least...
The Name and the Number, smack-dab in the middle of your regular Knausgaard programming, comes this sprawling, 452-page long-form essay, [pseudo-]philosophizing, and regurgitation of big chunks of Hitler's Mein Kampf and his various biographies. It's Knausgaard at his biggest, boldest - flexing his literary prowess to show the world (but probably mostly himself) that he's worth it, dammit! It's at times brilliant - a non-philosopher's philosophical journey through meaning, the 'I', the 'we', the 'they', the tension in art of being both singular and unique on the one hand, yet universal and understandable on the other to have the greatest impact. It's also at times vexing, inane, and utterly tedious - going literally word by word in an onanistic exegesis of a Paul Celan poem. Page after page, me thinking to myself, 'Karl Ove, why are you doing this to me? Please come back...' (Fun Book 6 drinking game: take a shot every time the phrase 'to all intents and purposes' pops up. So annoying! Shouldn't it be 'for all intents and purposes', anyway?) But once you get to the Hitler biography, even if it's quite secondarily sourced by its nature, and coming from someone who has not known much about Adolf before he was Hitler, it's quite riveting. People expecting broad strokes and dot-connecting between Min Kamp and Mein Kampf obviously weren't paying much attention, and Manny's review here is dead on.
So the turn for me - being fixated on my future re-reading schedule for all the books (I'd re-read Books 1 and 2 while waiting for 5, and want to go back to 3, 4, 5, and eventually 6 again) - was that, while I thought or felt I grasped the theme or point of Name and Number, and that any future re-reading could just skip it and go from parts 8 to 9, I think that I may only want to read Name and Number again - to really grasp it, hold and juggle all the ideas simultaneously in appreciative awe. I seemingly give Knausgaard short shrift here for this section, critical because I don't buy its audacity or necessity to even be in this book (and not edited down a bit - where was Geir, whichever one, or both, when you needed them!). But it definitely deserves closer reading. And an index wouldn't have hurt - I mean, thanks for the bibliography, but we really need an index.
And I do think I felt the theme, rather than understood it or ratiocinated it, because if there's one thematic kernel that repeats itself throughout Min Kamp, through his relationship with Linda, and seems to be driven toward in Name and Number, is that he values emotions and feeling over understanding and rigor. It's just ironic that his means of getting to this 'conclusion' are completely antithetical, especially in his Celan analysis (I secretly hope that Knausgaard was very self-aware of how annoying it would be for his readers to read the analysis, so as to prove his point in the end). It's also ironic that, in Book 5, what he claimed he would be relegated to as a failed author who could never find his unique voice, and which he seemed he was very capable of and could do in spades, was literary criticism. But if Name and Number is an example of such literary criticism, juxtaposed with the Knausgaard we've come to know and feel to be alive, in many of us, sharing his first-world, white guy problems Struggle that celebrates and prods to death the
thisfeministrox's review
3.0
Would have given 4 stars if not for the very long Hitler analysis section. Crikey.
sujuv's review against another edition
3.0
Seems appropriate that my last review of the year is the final book in this series that I've been reading for years. While it doesn't match up to the earlier volumes - largely because of a 400 page digression into Hitler, which might be great but wasn't what I wanted to read in the middle of this book so to be honest I skipped it - he does bring the same honesty to the topic at hand: how the response to his books and his fame affected his life, his family's life, and - most tragically - his wife's life. I was as always thoroughly engaged by his ability to make the mundane and quotidian sparkle. And his exploration of his already fragile wife's descent into mental illness is moving and painful. I am so glad to have read this series. It will stay with me for a long time.
sarahreffstrup's review against another edition
4.0
Okay jeg er rimelig splittet. Den her bog var på næsten 1300 sider. Nogen steder var jeg ved at dø af kedsomhed (jeg kigger på dig Paul Celan digt analyse) og andre steder sad jeg med tårerne løbende ned af kinderne (hans kone bliver indlagt på psykiatrisk og jeg tog mig selv i at blive en lille smule misundelig på deres børn over at de ikke rigtig forstod situationens alvor. Selv var jeg kun lige flyttet hjemmefra da min far blev indlagt engang og beskrivelserne af afdelingen fyldte mig med alt ubehaget og den samme trykkende følelse i brystet som fra den gang da jeg besøgte ham der). Jeg har også tænkt meget over eksperimentet som ligger til grund for bøgerne, for han siger jo selv at det ikke lykkedes, men det lykkedes stadig i sådan en grad at når jeg selv overvejer om jeg kunne gøre det her, ryster jeg straks på hovedet. Det er komplet utænkeligt. Knausgård lyder som om han er bevidst om hvad hans valg har kostet ham og hvilke konsekvenser det har fået, og dog tager jeg mig selv i at sidde og tænke at han må være fuldkommen blank hvis han ikke havde set de ting komme på forhånd.
Og det er virkelig ikke mange bøger hvor man kan sige sætninger som "passagen med Hitler er ganske god, den glider man lige igennem" (den lå lige efter digtanalysen...)
Om lidt over en måned afleverer jeg eksamensopgaven, men hvem ved. Måske skriver jeg speciale i de her bøger også.
Og det er virkelig ikke mange bøger hvor man kan sige sætninger som "passagen med Hitler er ganske god, den glider man lige igennem" (den lå lige efter digtanalysen...)
Om lidt over en måned afleverer jeg eksamensopgaven, men hvem ved. Måske skriver jeg speciale i de her bøger også.
apollonium's review
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
jennywedde's review against another edition
4.0
Would have been an ending to my greatest reading experience yet definitely worthy of a fiver (and more), had I only been metaphysically inclined to actually enjoy the 500 pages long philosophy/Hitler elaboration in the middle of this last one.
pino_sabatelli's review against another edition
3.0
Tre stelle e mezza
I fatti qui raccontati sono veri, almeno nella misura in cui possono esserlo i ricordi. (Azour Nafisi, Leggere Lolita a Teheran)
Premessa
Nel settembre del 2010 uscì, per i tipi di Ponte alle Grazie e l’eccellente traduzione di Lisa Raspanti, il primo volume di sei de La mia lotta, opera di Karl Ove Knausgård (KOK per gli amici), uno sconosciuto autore norvegese, immediatamente paragonata, sia pur con qualche distinguo, alla Recherche del Sommo. Nel luglio del 2011 fu pubblicato il secondo volume, ma le vendite non dovettero essere sufficienti per consentire a quella piccola casa editrice di completare la pubblicazione. Dopo alcuni anni, chi, come il sottoscritto, non vedeva l’ora di continuare la lettura, ebbe la bella notizia che Feltrinelli avrebbe tradotto nuovamente e pubblicato integralmente l’opera, cosa che effettivamente avvenne, con questa cronologia (fra parentesi l’anno di prima pubblicazione in norvegese)...
La recensione completa su: https://www.ifioridelpeggio.com/quel-che-penso-di-kok-karl-ove-knausgard-la-mia-lotta/
I fatti qui raccontati sono veri, almeno nella misura in cui possono esserlo i ricordi. (Azour Nafisi, Leggere Lolita a Teheran)
Premessa
Nel settembre del 2010 uscì, per i tipi di Ponte alle Grazie e l’eccellente traduzione di Lisa Raspanti, il primo volume di sei de La mia lotta, opera di Karl Ove Knausgård (KOK per gli amici), uno sconosciuto autore norvegese, immediatamente paragonata, sia pur con qualche distinguo, alla Recherche del Sommo. Nel luglio del 2011 fu pubblicato il secondo volume, ma le vendite non dovettero essere sufficienti per consentire a quella piccola casa editrice di completare la pubblicazione. Dopo alcuni anni, chi, come il sottoscritto, non vedeva l’ora di continuare la lettura, ebbe la bella notizia che Feltrinelli avrebbe tradotto nuovamente e pubblicato integralmente l’opera, cosa che effettivamente avvenne, con questa cronologia (fra parentesi l’anno di prima pubblicazione in norvegese)...
La recensione completa su: https://www.ifioridelpeggio.com/quel-che-penso-di-kok-karl-ove-knausgard-la-mia-lotta/
mangliu0130's review against another edition
4.0
回到了第二部的水准，对文学、艺术、死亡、生命意义的思考在我眼中就是克瑙斯高这个作家的独特性所在。没给五星是因为中间讨论诗歌和希那个勒的部分实在太太太长了，删减两百页我觉得没啥问题，他所讨论的内容也没太多的原创性（他自己也在书里和采访里承认过）。最后写琳达进精神病院哭得我稀里哗啦，虽然看他的采访很早已经知道结局怎么写，但还是没准备好这种程度的情感冲击