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A review by grayjay
My Struggle: Book 6 by Karl Ove Knausgård
4.0
This book is just the right weight that it feels like holding a head in my hands, perhaps Knausgaard's. As many have said, reading these six volumes makes me feel like I know Knausgaard better than I could know any other person. Six volumes of personal musings, on everything from his childhood, youth, marriage, art, music, literature, philosophy, and history. A great maximalist internal narrative. Typical of his style, he moves from idea to idea fluidly.
The sixth volume begins with the events of the publication of the first. Knausgaard sends manuscripts to everyone who is written about and offers to change names. His uncle Gunnar is upset by the portrayal of their family and threatens legal action. He discusses the impact of this series on his life and his family.
He says that what we expect of great writers is that they express a unique "I" while representing the collective "we" which is an impossible contradiction. He discusses the "I" in literature at great length, including the work of Hamsun and Joyce. He talks about the work of several painters and a story by Borges. He says that Art is unique and local. It can never be recreated because it is fixed in time and place by an individual's expression. He phrases many of his discussions around a scale of human identity moving from the impersonal "it", the body, to the personal "I" to the personal "we" to the impersonal "we", the masses.
He discusses the life of Hitler at great length. Apparently this is not much biography of Hitler that doesn't paint an evil pictures of him from birth to death, which is a kind of narrowing of discourse to one person, putting all the blame for the atrocities of the Holocaust on one evil person. What Knausgaard tries to do is look at Hitler's life as well as the historical, cultural, and political situation in Europe that Hitler grew up in, that allowed for him to become what he became and do what he did, which is relevant now in our time of wavering democracy.
The sixth volume begins with the events of the publication of the first. Knausgaard sends manuscripts to everyone who is written about and offers to change names. His uncle Gunnar is upset by the portrayal of their family and threatens legal action. He discusses the impact of this series on his life and his family.
He says that what we expect of great writers is that they express a unique "I" while representing the collective "we" which is an impossible contradiction. He discusses the "I" in literature at great length, including the work of Hamsun and Joyce. He talks about the work of several painters and a story by Borges. He says that Art is unique and local. It can never be recreated because it is fixed in time and place by an individual's expression. He phrases many of his discussions around a scale of human identity moving from the impersonal "it", the body, to the personal "I" to the personal "we" to the impersonal "we", the masses.
He discusses the life of Hitler at great length. Apparently this is not much biography of Hitler that doesn't paint an evil pictures of him from birth to death, which is a kind of narrowing of discourse to one person, putting all the blame for the atrocities of the Holocaust on one evil person. What Knausgaard tries to do is look at Hitler's life as well as the historical, cultural, and political situation in Europe that Hitler grew up in, that allowed for him to become what he became and do what he did, which is relevant now in our time of wavering democracy.