Last Sunday morning, after a brutal night in the ER, Michael told me about an article he read the night before on a writer named Karl Ove Knausgaard. He was very animated and excited about this man and the excerpt he read from his first book in a six book series called My Struggle.
I was delirious to tell you the truth, but he was so excited and moved by the work that I decided to look him up and read a little bit of the opening of the first book. I was blown away by the deep, raw, stark, intense honesty in his work. It wasn't flashy or showy. It was full of description of the mundane life he leads, but it is not any different than the life we all lead and I think that is what makes the connection so immediate and cutting. We have this book on order and we are both clamoring to read it.
“Now I saw his lifeless state. And that there was no longer any difference between what once had been my father and the table he was lying on, or the floor on which the table stood, or the wall socket beneath the window, or the cable running to the lamp beside him. For humans are merely one form among many, which the world produces over and over again, not only in everything that lives but also in everything that does not live, drawn in sand, stone, and water. And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor.” --Karl Ove Knausgaard
Not all of the books in the series have been translated from Norwegian yet, but they are in the works. I listened to a video of him speaking at the Library of Congress and I was in tears by the end of it. My heart ripped out and bleeding in my hand. His words so powerful and true...so relative to any of us. It is hard to find these books on the shelves and you may have to order them in. It will be worth it.
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