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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
I knew there’d be Hitler, but not this much.
A fitting cap to the series, both because it stops on an end/middle superposition and because it effectively points back to the previous sections that merit revisiting.
A fitting cap to the series, both because it stops on an end/middle superposition and because it effectively points back to the previous sections that merit revisiting.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Suicidal thoughts
As Knausgard writes of reading Proust in the beginning of book 1, I read this series so fast I practically imbibed it as one would a potion with the transformative effect of falling in love with an alien work of art, because beneath the trivial, everyday, and routine, is a reality that we come into contact with that the novel has been negotiating with as long as it's been a form. Six volumes in, we're out of the heartbreaking cycle of life and death that Karl Ove the protagonist has been grappling with, and he confronts that form directly; mostly through musings on art and the realm of the sociopolitical, interspersed with that familiar dose of everyday life that has come to define the series. Though, I would say Knausgaard intentionally makes the center fall apart; the musings, bolstered by the notorious 400 page essay on Hitler, the holocaust, the old and new testament, and the industrial revolution, further fractures and complicates (if only because it remains partially remote from, in a sort of negative space) the everyday, interpersonal calamities Karl Ove goes through between his relatives, and marital life.
What made this book so damned fascinating and readable, for me, was this attention to the imbalance that Knausgaard never minded in prior volumes, where art is a little too rigidly suffused with the everyday; although it lingers, it contains no palpable force which reckons anything outside of the interior. Here, it does. And that's what seems to further back the force of a family conflict, a mental breakdown, or even the day to day struggle of maintaining children; obliterated (at Knausgaard's most tepid, halfway dilapidated) is the solipsism of the first five volumes. It finally feels like he is acknowledging you and I.
What made this book so damned fascinating and readable, for me, was this attention to the imbalance that Knausgaard never minded in prior volumes, where art is a little too rigidly suffused with the everyday; although it lingers, it contains no palpable force which reckons anything outside of the interior. Here, it does. And that's what seems to further back the force of a family conflict, a mental breakdown, or even the day to day struggle of maintaining children; obliterated (at Knausgaard's most tepid, halfway dilapidated) is the solipsism of the first five volumes. It finally feels like he is acknowledging you and I.
Leden 2019 - červenec 2022. Tři a půl roku, přes 3.500 stran.
Můj boj je rozhodně jedna z nejvyčerpávajících věcí, které jsem četla. Tolik se mnou rezonuje. Karl Ove je mi strašně blízký a zároveň je někde úplně jinde. Nesnesitelný, nafoukaný, ublížený, ukňouraný, autentický, ryzí... Je tam spousta částí, která mě štvala, nudila, ubíjela. Takzvaná "esej o Hitlerovi" patří mezi mě, protože mezi celkem zajímavými částmi o Hitlerovi se Knausgaard trochu utápí v balastu dalších úvah, které vrší přes sebe. Zhruba 400 stran, které narušují tok textu a každodennosti. Poslední část Konce je strašně silná, protože se v ní Karl Ove vyjadřuje k tomu, jak veřejnost přijímala tuhle sérii, jak mu novináři dávali bídu za to, co psal. Vysvětluje, co je pravda a co až tolik ne. A především proč to všechno psal. A popisuje, jak psal vůbec poslední část během doby, kdy se jeho druhá žena Linda propadala do deprese a z ní vzlétala do snad ještě nesnesitelnější fáze mánie.
Je to strašně dobrý. A zároveň je strašně strašný se takhle otevírat před světem a především takhle dávat všanc svoji rodinu a blízké. Ale... Asi to chápu.
Tohle je série, která ve mně zůstane dlouho. Možná už napořád. Brečela jsem, dvakrát. Miluju to.
Můj boj je rozhodně jedna z nejvyčerpávajících věcí, které jsem četla. Tolik se mnou rezonuje. Karl Ove je mi strašně blízký a zároveň je někde úplně jinde. Nesnesitelný, nafoukaný, ublížený, ukňouraný, autentický, ryzí... Je tam spousta částí, která mě štvala, nudila, ubíjela. Takzvaná "esej o Hitlerovi" patří mezi mě, protože mezi celkem zajímavými částmi o Hitlerovi se Knausgaard trochu utápí v balastu dalších úvah, které vrší přes sebe. Zhruba 400 stran, které narušují tok textu a každodennosti. Poslední část Konce je strašně silná, protože se v ní Karl Ove vyjadřuje k tomu, jak veřejnost přijímala tuhle sérii, jak mu novináři dávali bídu za to, co psal. Vysvětluje, co je pravda a co až tolik ne. A především proč to všechno psal. A popisuje, jak psal vůbec poslední část během doby, kdy se jeho druhá žena Linda propadala do deprese a z ní vzlétala do snad ještě nesnesitelnější fáze mánie.
Je to strašně dobrý. A zároveň je strašně strašný se takhle otevírat před světem a především takhle dávat všanc svoji rodinu a blízké. Ale... Asi to chápu.
Tohle je série, která ve mně zůstane dlouho. Možná už napořád. Brečela jsem, dvakrát. Miluju to.
Despite thinking the first two books in this series to be masterpieces, I had long since fallen out of love with this series (I found book 3 and 4 to be fairly boring), but still thought it had merit, still thought that the ethical issues involved in this guy essentially using his entire family´s lives for content were outweighed by the merits of the series as a whole, by the merits of Karl Ove´s (usually) tight and focussed narratives which dealt with the poetry of the mundane, of the everyday minutiae and the typical concerns of self-centered young men, to which I and obviously many others could relate on some level.
Book six starts in this vein, focussing on his family life and the chaos living with three young children brings. It is funny, bright and breezy and I thought, even if book six is 1000 + pages long, if it´s all like this it won´t be too much of a slog. But then, towards the end of the first part, there comes a 75 page-odd "essay" on the nature of "the I, the we, the they" which sounds like it has been written by an undergraduate who forgot about their impending deadline and had to bash out a load of waffly, abstract bollocks in order to meet his word count; a section that is so far removed from the everyday realities about which Karl Ove writes so well, that you think "why? Why is he doing this?"
The answer is because he is a massive narcissist. Anyone who gets as far as book six knows this anyway, but the ugly side of Karl Ove´s narcissism really comes out in this book. By the time he was writing book six, he had already achieved fame for the first few books, and the acclaim had obviously gone to his head. That´s the only reason he could think anyone would give a shit about his musings on society, about his pseudo-philosophical waffle, about his intellectual pretentions, about his close reading (line by fucking line) of a Celan poem which a fraction of his readers would have ever read, about his 500 page essay on Hitler.
He obviously thought he must have accumulated an endless reserve of good-will on behalf of his readership that he could afford to be so ridiculously self-indulgent. This is sheer arrogance and cannot be forgiven. Neither can the "editor" of this book. Part 8 did not need to exist and has arguably ruined the whole series.
I haven´t even mentioned his portrayal of his wife Linda in this book. In brief, he uses his wife´s bi-polar condition for content, and goes as far to imply that she is neglectful of her children, not to mention generally lazy and irrational. Not surprised they are divorced now.
In short, WTF, Karl?? You had me as a fan. I recommended your stuff to countless people, but by the end of this book I felt like I was trapped in a basement listening to the ramblings of a slightly sociopathic relative. Now I´m free. And I never want to hear your voice again.
Book six starts in this vein, focussing on his family life and the chaos living with three young children brings. It is funny, bright and breezy and I thought, even if book six is 1000 + pages long, if it´s all like this it won´t be too much of a slog. But then, towards the end of the first part, there comes a 75 page-odd "essay" on the nature of "the I, the we, the they" which sounds like it has been written by an undergraduate who forgot about their impending deadline and had to bash out a load of waffly, abstract bollocks in order to meet his word count; a section that is so far removed from the everyday realities about which Karl Ove writes so well, that you think "why? Why is he doing this?"
The answer is because he is a massive narcissist. Anyone who gets as far as book six knows this anyway, but the ugly side of Karl Ove´s narcissism really comes out in this book. By the time he was writing book six, he had already achieved fame for the first few books, and the acclaim had obviously gone to his head. That´s the only reason he could think anyone would give a shit about his musings on society, about his pseudo-philosophical waffle, about his intellectual pretentions, about his close reading (line by fucking line) of a Celan poem which a fraction of his readers would have ever read, about his 500 page essay on Hitler.
He obviously thought he must have accumulated an endless reserve of good-will on behalf of his readership that he could afford to be so ridiculously self-indulgent. This is sheer arrogance and cannot be forgiven. Neither can the "editor" of this book. Part 8 did not need to exist and has arguably ruined the whole series.
I haven´t even mentioned his portrayal of his wife Linda in this book. In brief, he uses his wife´s bi-polar condition for content, and goes as far to imply that she is neglectful of her children, not to mention generally lazy and irrational. Not surprised they are divorced now.
In short, WTF, Karl?? You had me as a fan. I recommended your stuff to countless people, but by the end of this book I felt like I was trapped in a basement listening to the ramblings of a slightly sociopathic relative. Now I´m free. And I never want to hear your voice again.
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Final book of the Knasgaard My Struggle series and thank god. Behemoth of a book. Half of it is dedicated to Hitler's life and Knausgaard's interpretations of how Nazism related to life, death, religion, science and just about everything in life. It was quite a lot to get through. I enjoyed the parts of how writing this series affected his relationships in real life and the consequences of such an action.
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes