Karl Ove Knausgaard: The Alchemist of the Ordinary

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Novelists worship him. Critics fall over themselves to explain his genius. His celebrity fans say his books are like drugs. ‘I just read 200 pages and I need the next volume like crack. It’s completely blown my mind,’ Zadie Smith tweeted. What they’re all raving about is Karl Ove Knausgaard’s bestselling series of six autobiographical novels, My Struggle. The books recount in microscopic detail every aspect of Knausgaard’s own life: his bullying alcoholic father, his marriages, the raising of his children. As James Wood, the literary critic at the New Yorker, has said: ‘Many writers strive to give you the illusion of reality. Knausgaard seems to want to give his readers the reality of reality. And he achieves this. You read Knausgaard as if in real time.’
What is it that makes Knausgaard’s highly confessional books so addictive? What does it say about our voyeuristic urges that the minutiae of his life are so gripping? On October 29, Karl Ove Knausgaard came to the Intelligence Squared stage for an exclusive UK appearance to discuss how - by a remarkable process of literary alchemy - he has made the mundane episodes of his own life both utterly compelling and of universal significance for so many readers.

[@sabajoshi]

Knausgård writing about the moment 9:30 when he is struggling to find an English word and keeps mumbling, while the host doesn't get the hint that he should help him out. "My face burned with shame. I sounded like an idiot mumbling errm errm in front of a large audience, and kept saying 'what's the English word for..' erm"

[@user-wh5mk2ew8m]

i didn't know he wrote about that, i find it a very relatable moment and not shameful at all. very hard on himself.

[@paxdriver]

"writing a novel is just a really really slow way of thinking" lol I love that! Just finished my first novel, took me over 8 years. Fully agree

[@paxdriver]

***** Leo Percara my name is my name lol you guys can pick it up on amazon or kindle. Find links to the amateur soundtrack that goes with it for free download (20 tracks) on fb.com/emergencenovel/ "Emergence - Luctor et Emergo" by Kristopher Driver

[@Michael-Esparza]

Congratulations. I know that is a significant accomplishment.

[@michaellinch5828]

Kristopher Driver - congrats

[@wormsnake1]

It’s took Jack Kerouac a couple a less than a month!!😂🤷‍♂️.x

[@mr.knownothing33]

Your books looks good. Goin in my Amazon cart lol

[@SyedWajahatAli90]

They say he is the modern day Proust. But I think he is more of a Camus - the episode of his father's death (and how he goes to have a shower) is reminiscent of how Camus's Meursault goes about his daily life when confronted with the news of his mamma's death. He operates between the sentimentality of Proust, and the aloofness of Camus.

[@havefunbesafe]

Syed Wajahat Ali well said sir.

[@Progenitor1979]

Very different but I feel Kafka. So mundane but so strange

[@marcschelz]

Still don't know how or why it works but I have never been so much into a book or a couple of books by a certain author. Major motivation for writing. :)

[@paxdriver]

Michael Sandel and Sean Carroll hooked me on philophy and physics the same way. Forever grateful for eventually learning to appreciate metaphysics and quantum physics (believe it or not lol).

[@felixwegner4713]

I want to say a huge thank you also to the audience for their qualitative questions

[@49jbrash]

Excelente entrevista. Los comentarios del entrevistador son sensibles, sensatos y pertinentes, lo que no es común encontrar.

[@TessPoem]

I love a slow read. Reading poetry is good training for seeing the power of the ordinary. I was captivated by the journey down the road.

[@Medietos]

Thanks for expressing your thought, it helps me getting the point of poetry. I don't like it much, firstly because I mostly don't understand it, which is frustrating, but also because they are too short,finish too soon, I need the the length solace of a whole book. Maybe I should read this series. Just have to manage my own survival first, and fear getting addicted and lost in it, neglecting to fight for a solution to my dire situation.

[@etrevmh]

I think that his life is not ordinary, and by this reason he is so good writer.

[@theschmidy]

I really appreciate the bit about how much easier it is to be honest to an audience than an individual or within certain social encounters. I think that's also what makes these books possible. If he were writing these books with a certain person in mind to read them, they would certainly be less true. But because he writes them for everyone and anyone, the truth is somehow paradoxically allowed, if not honorable.

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

9:16 "Confront your own feelings of inadequacy and confront your own ghosts and demons."

[@toutlemonde5008]

The best interview with Knausgaard! Although he disagrees that it is rebellion against society in reality - it is! That is why the book is so popular in Norway, it is a clear rebellion against janteloven everyone in Scandinavia is sick of. Perhaps unconscious rebellion ...

[@elisabetsalzer9019]

Perhaps...

[@elisabetsalzer9019]

This was great! Thank you!

[@ameliefrenken]

It is rebellious considering Jante's law.

[@faintscrawl]

"If you know how to write a novel, then it's not a novel."

[@ameliefrenken]

He is ought to be a thinker, but I sense a lot of emotion that needs to be mapped by reason.

[@ThvonS]

Brilliant comment, but dont expect anyone to understand it...

[@samf8887]

@@ThvonS agreed

[@amableodiable]

the face of the girl on 11:48

[@gypsy4932]

hilarious

[@guyfromthe80s92]

I think shes narcoleptic

[@saucemoran4781]

Víctor Pérez maybe deaf...

[@Johnconno]

Catatonia from reading Nietszche.

[@wesbrinsfield9770]

Víctor Pérez hun sliter

[@robertholland8283]

Not much effort in this conversation but I still watched all.

[@ameliefrenken]

Open questions Mr. Hands, about being rebellious.

[@larsonf8105]

At least he is honest.

[@larsonf8105]

so much honesty in his answers

[@mjamesharding]

I feel/think that everything that Knaasguard writes about is contrary to where this interviewer wants to go. The interviewer is trying to celebrate the narrative as capital "L" literature and KO has stated the contrary in his writing--I'm not looking to celebrate or give voice to the banal, no, that's just what we are and literature makes the mundane visible (and glorious).

[@DagaanGalakticos]

The natural comparison of Knausgaard is Proust. But Proust is fairly convincingly dense with the literary intent to express the meanings harvested or illustrated by experience. Knausgaard - (I've read the first two, skimmed the 3rd) - just seems to write anything down as it happens day to day - much of which is shallow and boring. A recent article in the New Yorker asks about the My STruggle series - Where's the Struggle? Good point. A novel reaches for closure, is far different than autobiographical writing, which doesn't. My own novel took me 8 years to re-write so as to try and hit a target with an arrow. Which I did. Knausgaard however did inspire me to write my own journal in finished sentences and complete literary paragraphs - so that when offered a publishing deal for my 14 volume autobiography, I won't have to edit it! Ha ha.

[@liamshope2838]

The struggle, I would assume is that of trying not to be like his father (even though has a lot of his characteristics), writing, and his distance from others. The reason it can seem so benign is because he doesn't deal with his struggle's in a thematic way like most stories are told, instead his many struggle's are interlaced with real life, day to day activities. Proust is WAY overrated by the way, I don't even find Proust and Knausgaard to be alike at all, the only relation they have is they both wrote long books. Knausgaard, in my mind, is more akin to Bukowski.

[@MrJacobsen]

I think this guy is my father wtf

[@MichBelgik]

i think i have a crush. now i get the hype.

[@Johnconno]

14 years old?

[@MrJacobsen]

You crush on him?

[@conor3754]

karl is not fuckin with this dude

[@maryfletcher4]

The making of two lists of what are feminine and masculine qualities is no help at all and can be resisted.

[@Medietos]

It feels painful not to hear him talk in his mother tongue. I have sought in vain for videos of his in Norwegian. I believe it would flow better, while now the faltering staccato and clumsiness of the handicap of the strange language feels boring and annoying and the heaviness too similar to my own liver qi stagnation, awful stuckness of feelings and blood. Unfortunately this puts me off from wanting to read him. I am so sensitive and influenced by the quality and flow of speech. I get almost angry at him destroying it by he wrong language. Why is there nothing in Norwegian?

[@beardedskyrim8652]

He is a narcissist.

[@elisabetsalzer9019]

Oh, you recognize youself?