AshehougAgency

My Struggle - vol. 4

“When I straightened my back, I looked straight into Andrea ’s eyes.
There was yearning in those eyes, and I felt a heat spreading through me.
- Alright? I said.
- Not really, she said. – I need a little help, I think.
My heart beat faster when I stopped in front of her. Oh, it was ridiculous, but the awareness that she might be in love with me, suddenly made it impossible to act naturally. I bent down, and she seemed to shrink. The rhythm of her breathing changed. Her eyes locked on the book. I could smell her shampoo, avoided any contact, pointed my finger at the first figure she had written. She pushed her hair aside, leant her elbow against the table. It was as if everything we did became a conscious act, it seemed to surface, in all its glorious detail, no longer a part of anything unconscious and natural, but of something deliberate and artful.
- Here’s where you slipped, I said. – Can you see that?
She blushed, said yes in a soft voice, pointed to the next problem, how about that one, said yes again, softly, and her breath, her breath trembled.“

18 years old and fresh out of high school, Karl Ove Knausgård moves to a tiny fisherman’s village far north of the polar circle to work as a school teacher. He has no interest in the job itself - or in any other job for that matter. His intention is to save up enough money to travel while finding the space and time to start his writing career. Initially everything looks fine: He writes his first few short stories, finds himself accepted by the hospitable locals and receives flattering attention from several beautiful local girls.

But then, as the darkness of the long polar nights start to cover the beautiful landscape, Karl Ove’s life also takes a darker turn. The stories he writes tend to repeat themselves, his drinking escalates and causes some disturbing blackouts, his repeated attempts at losing his virginity end in humiliation and shame, and to his own distress he also develops romantic feelings towards one of his 13-year-old students. Along the way, there are flashbacks to his high school years and the roots of his current problems. And then there is the shadow of his father, whose sharply increasing alcohol consumption serves as an ominous backdrop to Karl Ove’s own life style.

The six novels of the My Struggle cycle can be read independently or as one hugely ambitious project. This breathtaking cycle has been the greatest literary sensation in Norway in decades, and the total print run has passed 400.000 copies for the first 5 volumes. The books have spurred a heated literary debate about the use of autobiographical elements in fiction, and about literary criticism in general. In addition to amazing reviews and several awards and nominations, this fascinating literary experiment has generated an enormous interest among journalists, critics and readers, resulting in hundreds of articles, commentaries, essays, blog posts and discussions.

Constantly wavering between megalomania and extreme self-depreciation, Knausgård writes about his present life, his teenage years, his childhood, his struggle to write his first book, his father’s death, the birth of his first child, his burning wish to write truly great literature, his boredom from changing his children’s nappies – relentlessly revealing his never-ending craving for his father’s approval, and his own endless talent for self-doubt.

Breaking his own life story down to its elementary particles, Karl Ove Knausgård embarks on a Proustian exploration of his past, creating a universal story of the struggles - big and small - that we all face in our lives. My Struggle is a profoundly serious, gripping and hugely readable work written as if the author's very life were at stake. A painfully honest confession, an unparalleled and shocking achievement, an addictive read, a literary suicide, an ambitious piece of hyper-realism , a stunningly original success.

Praise for My Struggle - Fourth Book:

” My struggle is still an amazing project … The intense joy of the extreme sorrow that lies on the surface of young minds is portrayed with precision and humour … Equally impressive is the portrayal of the feeling of omnipotence back to back with the immense lack of confidence … The author takes the adult reader close to the feeling of those teenage years full of questions and emotions, yet simultaneously unclear and with no sense of where one is heading. Despite the lightly repetitive plot and level of reflection, the thread is tied up against this. Thereby it is safe to say that also this volume has enough material to keep the conversations going; among readers and the opinionated, and that in itself is a fine quality”
(NRK)

”The serial publication has ended up making My struggle into something more reminiscent of performance than publication, a large-scale stunt involving the entire literary public in a fascinating cultural process … It is the ambition to reflect the common structure of the experience that makes My struggle great literature … What is most impressive about it is Knausgård’s ability to make this diversity readable, even exciting, for huge numbers of people, through a narrative which is as relentless no matter what the topic is, as a thriller is about absolutely nothing. When was the last time a Norwegian author portrayed nature in such a sincere and un-ironic way?”
(Dagbladet)

”Isolated, volume 4 is a pleasure to read, Knausgård writes with a catching ease. The book is a page-turner without dimension”
(VG)

"To create such amounts of good prose is amazing ... Trivia is universal, and makes the reader recognize the text and identify with It. It is well portrayed"
(Dag og Tid)

”I will read it to the very end. There is a current in Knausgård’s prose, a mobility in his photographic memory and a stubborn penetration into the mind which awakens feelings in me that Proust’s images from the Parisian aristocracy in the early 18th century never succeeded in moving”
(Expressen, Sweden)

"Realistic and believable in its almost pornographical unfolding of life in all its turns and phases (...) Vol. 4 is a page-turner as well as a novel that makes you stop reading and reflect upon your own existence"
(Agderposten)

”An excellent portait … As before, the elegant and apparenty artless prose rhythm creates a flowing sensation … My Struggle is closer to the novel than the auto biography … the time periods told about in all the books are tied together elegantly in a latticework of transitions between numerous levels of time and reality … My Struggle [forms] a complicated layered structure of variations on themes and motives, which alone make Knausgård’s work a reflection of dimensions such as time, memory and story. Volume 4 in a new and interesting chapter … a memorable variation of the young man’s needs”
(Dagens Næringsliv)

”particularly gripping literature … Simultaneously, there is something about the way in which the story frequently turns inwards, away from the trivial to scenes quivering with life and a personal baring, which stands out as My Struggle’s essence, character and motor … The most important reason to follow Knausgård’s struggle this time, is his perspective on the relationship betweem life and literature … fascinating”
(Adresseavisen)

”I am still enthusiastic”
(Fædrelandsvennen)

”It is still pleasant to read about this man’s long and winding road to himself. And even if the narrative style is conventional, it flows. I believe this is because Knausgård has his a spot between the interior and the exterior, between the idealistic and the empiric, between who he was then, and who is now, or, for that matter, between the divine and the human, which make his sentences charming”
(Dagsavisen)

”Again, this is about us all … The novel’s level of identification is high, because Knausgård does not hold back … A rhythmically driven language in a style as shar as anything. Knausgård, the man of his word, keeps his promises”
(Haugesund avis)

”Knausgård’s  Struggle-series  communicate so much more than pure facts about Knausgård’s life, for instance so much about what it feels like to be a person searching for something … My Struggle 4 is, at times, a very amuzing novel, especially due to Knausgård’s self-ironic portait of himself as a young author in Senja … However, below this tragic comedy surface there lies a deep gravity, concerning finding one’s way in the world, discovering one’s identity: in many ways this is a novel about growing up. Knausgård writes painfully well about the dream of becoming an author, the underlying vulnerability, the great longing for a reputation of one’s own”
(Nordlys)

”humanly challenging and artistically exciting … After the fabolous first volume, volume 4 might be the volume to make the strongest impression on this reader … a captivating read … Karl Ove Knausgård [has] written one of the strongest, most artistically amiguous and brutal father/son novels ever published in this country … One reason why volume 4 makes such a strong impression on me, is that the author has no mercy for himself … Knausgård is doubtlessly a rare literary talent”
(Ny Tid)

First published: 2010, Forlaget Oktober
Karl Ove Knausgård: Biography and bibliography

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