My Struggle: Book 1 (My Struggle, 1) Paperback – May 28, 2013

Just finished this book. I had discovered this author via a radio interview and subsequently hearing him speak, read from the work at a panel I attended at the recent Brooklyn Book Festival. The panel was described as:"Ice or Salt:The Personal in Fiction.W.B. Yeats wrote, "All that is personal soon rots; it must be packed in ice or salt." Authors Siri Hustvedt (Living, Thinking, Looking), Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård (My Struggle) and Sheila Heti (How Should a Person Be?) will consider how writing technique--"ice or salt"--transforms the personal into art that connects to a broad audience. Moderated by Phillip Lopate."I appreciated and immediately bought each author's work. I was, however, most drawn to the Norwegian's work. An author from Norway who manages to penetrate the infotainment telesector bubble of American culture. "Hell", I thought, "I gotta see this."Sure enough the man friggin' looked like a Viking. Not like Thor of the recent Avengers movie. I have an eight year old son and have seen the film twice - thinking about My Struggle while watching it - perhaps not in the way that Knausgard intended. But f'real - Karl Ove has that Viking look thing going on, long hair, chiseled looks, deep sonorous voice: the real thing, more lean, mean even wolf-like. But gentle too. I'd cast him in a Lord of the Rings film in a heartbeat.It was explained by Ms. Hustvedt, an American-Norwegian I believe, that his work was ripping a new one in Norway's repressive, "we don't talk about such things in public" cloak of stoic silence on things related to the personal, the family; on things that mattered. I realized, reading My Struggle, they may not talk much about it in private either.Statistics were provided on just how many people were reading all seven volumes of the work in Norway. Massive attack at the bookstores and in the hearts of other Nordic writers, for sure.I was most intrigued by this author and his reading. I went up to him afterwards where he was standing outside having a cigarette and speaking to an attractive woman. I congratulated him on the work and, based on the selection he'd read, became hyper self-conscious that this fellow might not really care to conversate. I couldn't blame him. Besides, I had the book on my kindle (that's right damn it, as I'd purchased it on the spot) and could start getting to know him at my own pace.This is a great book for anyone with a drinking problem and an estranged relationship with a father and/or family they love dearly. This is a great book for anyone who loves writing; detailed, descriptive, "open a soul vein and bleed-draw it on the page" writing. This is a great book for anyone who likes Vikings, and/or any kind of spiritual warrior. This is because Karl Ove Knausgard is a kind of modern day Viking spiritual warrior. He's an artist and a craftsman. Folks inculcated with the need for bullet point documents and/or suffering from ADD may have a hard time with this one.It strikes me - seeing him in person, listening to him talk, watching his movements, reading the book reflecting on what he has done here with this work; etc, - this fellow is also a guy, a man who seems to be writing to accomplish two things: to realize the extraordinary wonder of being an ordinary imperfect human being and to truly realize (as the American writer Raymond Carver once explained as a goal of his own) what it means to love and to be loved.It's also a great book for anyone who knows nothing or a little or a lot about Norwegian culture.The only dangerous thing about reading this book is one's fear that the other six won't come out in the English language. I'm too old to learn Norwegian.The only shameful thing you will feel in regards to this book is when anyone asks you to clean something up. This dude does not mess around when it comes to cleaning up a mess. Guys who avoid housework - get ready to be inspired or die.The only sad thing about this book is how his family and/or friends are perceiving it. There seems to be some controversy. They don't like seeing their own names in print attached to descriptions that may or may not mirror their own perceptions of themselves.I identify. I was once described in a famous writer's book as an English film maker who wore animal print underpants when I'm actually an American who wears boxers. I knew immediately upon reading the book that this was the writer's way to punish me for canceling a REAL DATE we were supposed to have IN REAL LIFE because she called me about eight times prior to the date to discuss how it would go. Hell hath no fury. The woman's book was writing about her delusional struggles, abuse of all kinds of legal and illegal drugs, and she attached my real name to a fictional character (or some other guy she'd scared away) to mix fiction and memoir in the very exact opposte way that this writer does. I also heard through trusted sources that she was spotted hanging out at AA meetings in Manhattan looking for stories to write about.SHE SHOULD DEFINITELY READ KNAUSGARD'S MY STRUGGLE.So, I feel your pain - but honestly - it really has no lasting effect. Let's be Nordic about this and agree that what doesn't kill us - makes us stronger - if we relate to it with knowledge, understanding, compassion and skillful means.I hope those offended by Knausgard's work can inhabit the literature in the same way as so many others seem to be doing: as a work of fiction dressed up as memoir. As a fictionalized memoir that edges ever closer to very human truths by forging lies like truth and/or telling the truth in imaginary circumstances. After all, none of us are the same person we were yesterday or even a moment ago...and we are all edging closer to the truth when we tell our stories - even if we are lying through out teeth. But those dualistic notions - what's "really true" what's "not really true" - fall away like snow on a leaf as the work takes us to another dimension where truth is like the water is to the fish, or the wind to the falcons, hawks and eagles.The one most inspiring thing from this work is that Karl Ove now wants to open a publishing house. He's written himself out of writing in a way that conveys a sense of liberation, emptiness and luminosity.Oh Mr. Knausgard, let's be life long friends!! Or look for me in the Park Slope Reader...Siri will send it to you...winter edition!! Coming out soon!! (I'm using first names not because I'm a personal friend of these folks - just because they are so personable and I used to work in a community book store in Park Slope that both Siri and her husband - Paul Auster - would come and buy books there. I would stood in reverential silence (for a while) then eased back into the nothing special ethos of Brooklyn culture. All readers of this should come to the Brooklyn Book Festival next year to get a taste of Brooklyn, our famous book-reading culture and a slice of pizza!!Bravo to the writer. Bravo to you who buy and read Knausgard's My Struggle!!You will have amazing dreams, want to have some good fish, be looking under your elderly mother whenever, wherever she is sitting in a chair; possibly forgiving anyone (particularly a father) whom you are holding resentments against; looking up obscure punk rock bands and reading wiki biographies of other Norwegian writers and poets. You may cry but it will be a good cry. You will never look at or see clouds the same way again. You may even go to Norway to see them. You may even, as I was lucky enough to have happen, discover new depths of feeling and consciousness in your own being - just by reading a book - on a KINDLE, no less.Bravo once again to Karl Ove who is now cursed to live as if everyone is related to him now that he has written a work that has revealed the universal kinship of humanity. A drink from an ancient well we could all use more of.Heck, I might want to disappear too.Enough - Get the book - and enjoy!!

My Struggle: Part 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard is the first of a six part autobiographical series through which he details the excruciating intimacies and trifles of life, demonstrating its seemingly insufferable banality amongst shimmers of radiance--an idea this luminous novel mirrors to the letter.It's ironic that Knausgaard begins his tome on life with a digression on death; he muses about how the most profoundly mysterious of human experiences is one that is never consciously experienced at all. In Part 1 of 2 (in the overall Part 1) amidst seemingly endless wanderings and musings, anecdotes and semi-pleasurable yarns on living in Norway in the 80's, Knausgaard grounds the novel between two overarching narratives: that which represents youth--his outing as an adolescent on New Years Eve (the banal), and adulthood--his coming to terms with his father's death (the powerfully radiant) amidst the debris-ridden remnants left behind by a staunch alcoholic.Alternating between adolescence and adulthood, Knausgaard covers events sprawling in topic and impression. From the teenage troubles of trying to sneak drinks on New Years Eve, or desperately vying for the hand of a seemingly bottomless crush, to sifting through the remains, bottles, decay, and debris left behind by his alcoholic father, Kausgaard sporadically covers ideas as they strike him, giving the piece an organic, naturally harmonious cadence. Beneath it all, however, is the fact that despite past misgivings and lingering compunction, death unites us all under the banner of speciel communion--that we are all one in the same and thus will meet the same fate--a fact that is simultaneously beautiful and discomforting.Proust minus the poetry, a meandering chronicler, Knausgaard sets down his life without remorse. He communicates the brutal truth behind past apprehensions and present day aberrations. Successful in its verbosity and marathon scope--prescient in its truthfulness and honesty, My Struggle is unrelentingly digressive and candid.Although the book has glimmers of what I'm going to dub "insouciant prescience," the difficulty behind this text lies in it's inability to linger in any one singular moment. Rather, Knausgaard jet sets between events with little regard for cohesion. But the lack of cohesion is perplexingly beautiful in it's frankness. Knausgaard reminds us throughout that life is not cohesive. More so, it is fragmented and far less linear than we believe--and so, too, is this strangely intriguing novel.For more great book reviews check out www.bookguyreview.com