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4.09 AVERAGE
4.09 AVERAGE
In the first part of this final volume of "My Struggle" we encounter the same Knausgård who has been holding our interest for so long in the previous volumes. The focus here is on the extremely angry objections of his uncle Gunnar to how Karl Ove wrote Volume 1.
The publication date for Volume 1 is imminent but Gunnar has intervened, with very heavy emails and letters, to object that Karl Ove's description of his father's harshness, and then of his descent into alcoholism, and finally of his death and funeral, are all completely incorrect, figments of Karl Ove's twisted imagination, etc. He vows that he is going to bring in the lawyers and stop the book from being published. This is a major crisis; Karl Ove turns to his brother and his friends, particularly his old mate Geir, for advice and reassurance.
This is interspersed with scenes from his family life with really touching, affectionate descriptions of getting the children up in the morning, making their breakfast, and taking them to the nursery before returning to face this big problem with Gunnar. Karl Ove's publisher stands up for him and the book goes ahead, but with far-reaching revisions to change names and events. This is the book we now have as Volume One of his "Struggle". He goes on trips to publicise it; these are all described in detail; fascinating to read, as usual.
But then without warning, in the second part of this Vol 6. he suddenly stops talking about his book and his family life and embarks on an endlessly long, tedious, meandering quasi-intellectual rumination about the nature of writing and thinking, along with what he intends to be in-depth analyses of everything from James Joyce to Adolf Hitler.
Here it becomes evident - embarrassingly so - that Karl Ove Knausgård is not one of the world's great thinkers. He is undisciplined and directionless, and the reader has no idea what the purpose is. It all seems to have been sparked off by the Gunnar episode: it's a looking inwards, an amateurish effort to become a philosopher. It's so tedious, unstructured, and painful to follow that I ended up speed-reading through it.
At the end of this middle part of the book (which is a massively thick volume) I paused to read the reviews of it here on Goodreads, as well as on Amazon and elsewhere because before launching into the final part of this Volume, I was in a state of shock caused by the really bad writing in the middle part. I wanted to know what was coming next. Would we finish on a note of hope? Had the overall experience of reading the whole series been an uplifting one? The reviews warned me to expect an account of his wife Linda's mental breakdown, so I was not optimistic and I considered not finishing at all - to just stop here. But there was the book lying on my sofa, unread, and there had been so many magic moments in the previous volumes. So I cautiously decided to go on to the end.
The last part of the book is more of the now-familiar, and very readable "scenes from family life": keeping the children amused and maintaining some semblance of family life, whilst still trying to write but tussling with the exigencies of the publishing world and the need to play the Famous Writer at all manner of public events. There is an increasing stress between what Karl Ove wants to be, and what the world (the world of other people) expects. He has become more and more introverted and given to quasi-philosophical ruminations that are not as profound or interesting as he probably intended them to be.
He is bedevilled by the same stress that has dogged him ever since the beginning of Book 1 of the series. He was only really happy when he was a young boy, going on adventures in the local area and discovering the world. He has now turned into a tortured chain-smoking slave to his own thirst for celebrity; the stress of keeping up a family life and staying on good terms with his wife Linda seems to also have affected her.
The last pages of the book are an account of her mental breakdown and the treatment she's given in what seems to have been a very third-rate mental hospital. As Knausgård describes it without understanding what is going on, this simply overlays Linda's deep-seated troubles with very heavy medication that alters her behaviour in alarming ways. What a terrible ending to this long saga. I don't know if I'll read any more Knausgård. It has all added up to not very much.
To sum up this whole series in a few words: compared to other writers, Knausgård's prose isn't elegant, or witty, or beautifully constructed. It doesn't fly. It plods.
Above all, thanks to all the other reviewers and their excellent comments, which chime with my own feelings. In the unlikely event that Karl Ove ever reads this review, let me just add that he completely failed to understand how bad the psychiatric treatment was that Linda was given. If he had bothered to do some research into antipsychiatry, instead of wasting his time writing all that drivel about Celan, Hitler, etc. his life (and this book) might have turned out very differently. He could, for instance, have read Joanna Moncrieff's book The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment.
The publication date for Volume 1 is imminent but Gunnar has intervened, with very heavy emails and letters, to object that Karl Ove's description of his father's harshness, and then of his descent into alcoholism, and finally of his death and funeral, are all completely incorrect, figments of Karl Ove's twisted imagination, etc. He vows that he is going to bring in the lawyers and stop the book from being published. This is a major crisis; Karl Ove turns to his brother and his friends, particularly his old mate Geir, for advice and reassurance.
This is interspersed with scenes from his family life with really touching, affectionate descriptions of getting the children up in the morning, making their breakfast, and taking them to the nursery before returning to face this big problem with Gunnar. Karl Ove's publisher stands up for him and the book goes ahead, but with far-reaching revisions to change names and events. This is the book we now have as Volume One of his "Struggle". He goes on trips to publicise it; these are all described in detail; fascinating to read, as usual.
But then without warning, in the second part of this Vol 6. he suddenly stops talking about his book and his family life and embarks on an endlessly long, tedious, meandering quasi-intellectual rumination about the nature of writing and thinking, along with what he intends to be in-depth analyses of everything from James Joyce to Adolf Hitler.
Here it becomes evident - embarrassingly so - that Karl Ove Knausgård is not one of the world's great thinkers. He is undisciplined and directionless, and the reader has no idea what the purpose is. It all seems to have been sparked off by the Gunnar episode: it's a looking inwards, an amateurish effort to become a philosopher. It's so tedious, unstructured, and painful to follow that I ended up speed-reading through it.
At the end of this middle part of the book (which is a massively thick volume) I paused to read the reviews of it here on Goodreads, as well as on Amazon and elsewhere because before launching into the final part of this Volume, I was in a state of shock caused by the really bad writing in the middle part. I wanted to know what was coming next. Would we finish on a note of hope? Had the overall experience of reading the whole series been an uplifting one? The reviews warned me to expect an account of his wife Linda's mental breakdown, so I was not optimistic and I considered not finishing at all - to just stop here. But there was the book lying on my sofa, unread, and there had been so many magic moments in the previous volumes. So I cautiously decided to go on to the end.
The last part of the book is more of the now-familiar, and very readable "scenes from family life": keeping the children amused and maintaining some semblance of family life, whilst still trying to write but tussling with the exigencies of the publishing world and the need to play the Famous Writer at all manner of public events. There is an increasing stress between what Karl Ove wants to be, and what the world (the world of other people) expects. He has become more and more introverted and given to quasi-philosophical ruminations that are not as profound or interesting as he probably intended them to be.
He is bedevilled by the same stress that has dogged him ever since the beginning of Book 1 of the series. He was only really happy when he was a young boy, going on adventures in the local area and discovering the world. He has now turned into a tortured chain-smoking slave to his own thirst for celebrity; the stress of keeping up a family life and staying on good terms with his wife Linda seems to also have affected her.
The last pages of the book are an account of her mental breakdown and the treatment she's given in what seems to have been a very third-rate mental hospital. As Knausgård describes it without understanding what is going on, this simply overlays Linda's deep-seated troubles with very heavy medication that alters her behaviour in alarming ways. What a terrible ending to this long saga. I don't know if I'll read any more Knausgård. It has all added up to not very much.
To sum up this whole series in a few words: compared to other writers, Knausgård's prose isn't elegant, or witty, or beautifully constructed. It doesn't fly. It plods.
Above all, thanks to all the other reviewers and their excellent comments, which chime with my own feelings. In the unlikely event that Karl Ove ever reads this review, let me just add that he completely failed to understand how bad the psychiatric treatment was that Linda was given. If he had bothered to do some research into antipsychiatry, instead of wasting his time writing all that drivel about Celan, Hitler, etc. his life (and this book) might have turned out very differently. He could, for instance, have read Joanna Moncrieff's book The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment.
[2011 - translated to English, 2018] So sad, it's over. Just finished probably the longest book I’ve ever read, 1160 pages. In this book, Book 6, the final of the My Struggle series, Books 1 and 2 are out and he’s dealing with the fallout of its success, his family, primarily his father’s brother, and the struggles of his wife, Linda. Mostly the book is about the day to day of his life during this time, but there is a section of about 400 pages that go in a different direction - an exploration of Hitler and his book Mein Kampf. His youth and rise to power, the idea of “I”, “you”, and “we”, charisma, language, and threaded throughout this exploration of Hitler, the question of identity, literature, poetry, painting, philosophy, how art and politics are closely linked, the universality of life and death and how we experience it, and so much more. All his books dip a toe into the philosophical and existential questions, but this section went a little deeper. Some of his points I would need to go back and reread to fully understand but what I could grasp I found fascinating. And now it is all over, and it wasn’t a struggle at all; it was a pleasure.
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Things get meta as Karl Ova’s life is turned upside down by the release of the first volume in the series. The middle of the book is a very long analysis of a Celine poem and (maybe I should’ve guessed?) Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Fortunately while I don’t care for poetry I’m fascinated by Hitler but people who enjoy neither might be in for a rough ride as it makes up at least a quarter of the book.
I can only guess that analyzing the memoir of a monster helped him come to terms with his being perceived as a monster himself after the release of Volume 1.
When he returns to chronicling his escalating family dramas in the last third it’s a welcome relief. I won’t go into details but it was somewhat frustrating, as it ends very abruptly when the subject matter could’ve made a fascinating book in its own right.
Still I’m happy to have undertaken this journey with an author who is willing to sacrifice almost everything in his pursuit of “literary realism”—or at least a convincing imitation.
I also want to compliment the narrator who did a terrific job with a wide range of characters at a wide range of ages.
I can only guess that analyzing the memoir of a monster helped him come to terms with his being perceived as a monster himself after the release of Volume 1.
When he returns to chronicling his escalating family dramas in the last third it’s a welcome relief. I won’t go into details but it was somewhat frustrating, as it ends very abruptly when the subject matter could’ve made a fascinating book in its own right.
Still I’m happy to have undertaken this journey with an author who is willing to sacrifice almost everything in his pursuit of “literary realism”—or at least a convincing imitation.
I also want to compliment the narrator who did a terrific job with a wide range of characters at a wide range of ages.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders
Moderate: Infidelity, Suicidal thoughts, Pregnancy
challenging
emotional
reflective
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
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
And with the ending of this book, I've now officially finished the "My Struggle" series, capping off what has not only been a transformative reading experience and a journey with what will easily be one of my favourite book/s of all time, but, in my opinion, the beginning of several new thoughts into what literature can be.
"The End" goes so much further than the 5 books before it. Not only does it chronicle the daily adventures (that are oh so mediocre but made to be so riveting!), but it now covers the experience of writing and publishing the book. In the previous books, you realise that he's writing about real people and might be using their real name. In this book, you understand just how significant this is, and it is also revealed that those people are indeed real, and those are indeed their names. You can search them up online and there they are - real people.
From then on, this is no longer just a novel. "The End" - no, the entire "My Struggle" body of work - goes further than any piece of literature I've ever read. It is an experiment by the end of it, and one that I would never, ever take on myself. I was speechless reading Karl Ove's comments on why he wrote this book, and if it was all worth it. In fact, I think the last book is that very point - was it worth it? Why did I do it?
Unlike anything I've ever read and, I'm sure, it will be unlike anything I will ever read. Incredible!
"The End" goes so much further than the 5 books before it. Not only does it chronicle the daily adventures (that are oh so mediocre but made to be so riveting!), but it now covers the experience of writing and publishing the book. In the previous books, you realise that he's writing about real people and might be using their real name. In this book, you understand just how significant this is, and it is also revealed that those people are indeed real, and those are indeed their names. You can search them up online and there they are - real people.
From then on, this is no longer just a novel. "The End" - no, the entire "My Struggle" body of work - goes further than any piece of literature I've ever read. It is an experiment by the end of it, and one that I would never, ever take on myself. I was speechless reading Karl Ove's comments on why he wrote this book, and if it was all worth it. In fact, I think the last book is that very point - was it worth it? Why did I do it?
Unlike anything I've ever read and, I'm sure, it will be unlike anything I will ever read. Incredible!
reflective
slow-paced
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is possibly just the worst thing I’ve ever read. Karl Ove must have been reading a lot of modernist literature while writing this, and then allowed it to take over his style, because I see him mentioning James Joyce, and I see him trying his absolute hardest to be all intellectual and philosophical, but he utterly fails. When he tries to sound smart, he sounds like a kid trying to sound smart. His takes are painfully stupid. He spends pages asking himself what a name is. “It’s the uniting of reality and unreality into the idea of the concept and blah blah blah.” He spends pages describing picking up his kids toys. He spends pages discussing the word, “gales.” He spends practically four hundred pages geeking out about Hitler. He thinks that every country in Africa is incapable of running a government or schools, which is demonstrably false. He thinks Africa should be cut off from the rest of the world to “preserve their culture.” He hates the rules and morals of society and wishes he could do what he wants (what does he want to do that would be so bad from a moral perspective I wonder???) but then he admits that he hates it when people are angry or upset with him. So shut up about your little “no morals” fantasy then, my dude? He thinks that the reason the Nazis were bad was because they didn’t view themselves as “I” but as “we” and therefore every version of “we” is bad. Yeah, violent nationalism and antisemitism weren’t the problem, it was the word “we.” Any sort of solidarity with others is now a bad thing. We should all be “I”s, but we can’t of course, because I just said “we” and “we” is a bad thing, so all of us individually has to be an individual, because to be an individual is to be more moral than to be part of a “we”, even if “we” refers to the human race. Somebody who goes against modern morals by mourning the death of Hitler and sympathizing with Nazism is far more moral than those who who view themselves as “we” because that person is an individual, which is good. Karl Ove isn’t making any sense here, and he does it for over 1,000 pages. Never bothering to read from him again. How minuscule do your problems have to be for you to write a 1,100 page book and in it you complain that you can’t hear your racist national anthem anymore???
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
relaxing
sad
medium-paced