#Scurf161: My Piece of Knausgård
On the Knausgårdian urge to sink one's teeth into the nothings that compose our lives
Knausgaard is the kind of person who says anything and everything out loud. One would think all writers do something to that effect, but in his hands the text is brimming with lived experiences as seen through a well-thought out, intensely immersive and richly felt personhood. A deep reading process with Karl Ove is never aimless, but could seldom be purposeless. It invokes a touch with the deep inner sanctuary and rekindles the reader’s long lost connection with it.
Spurred on my like-minded company, I ventured into his writing earlier this winter and have found myself kneeling before the altar of his hieroglyphic work. There is a painfulness at the depth of feeling so much, being so present and yet so grossly misunderstood. Today as I wrapped up the first of his My Struggles novels I found myself enveloped by a strange sensation. I was going to miss this boy and wandering around the towns and cities in Norway along with the commentary of his boyish consciousness. Through this 490-page novel, Knausgaard creates a vast topography of richly felt, deeply agonised and variously lived experiences of a boy who, among other things, cries so very easily.
Did I feel a bit seen in reading those words? Perhaps, so. But mostly I felt moved by his casual and not-so-casual observations. There is a slimy-ness to the boy too. An affecting sense of innocence. But boy is young Karl Ove so full of himself! In some bits he is almost unbearably self-obsessed. But then again, having lived through my childhood in a similar strain, I was given to assume that almost all children are like this.
While reading this novel his name, his mother’s mannerisms, his brother’s callousness and father’s overbearing protectiveness played with my mind, I also came around to understand the sheer stress of a normal life for a child like him. For a child who feels everything all the time in such excess, it could be dizzying. No wonder he is given to such outbursts of sobs and cries. In present day parlance he’d be called over-sensitive and so will have little to no space in circles outside of himself.
In between jobs, I had the endless stretch of my days and nights to pour over the pages of his novel. But something about this chapter-less saga won me over, making me want to devour it in one sitting. Much like the various books of Annie Ernaux. Four days into the novel, I was waking up with Norwegian names of cuisines, people, locations swimming in my head. I could almost touch Anne Lisbet in my sleep. Daily time spent in the park was more Karl Ove spending his time reading me than me reading him.
Eventually, much in keeping with a Knausgaard-esque tradition, I had a wisdom tooth flare up. This hadn’t happened to me since 2019 and everything, including reading this book, was reduced to a slowmotion background noise in its wake. I didn’t even open the lid of my laptop for two days, stayed glued to my phone for 48 hours straight, scrolling through twitter, creating a carousel of ever changing whatsapp display pictures. In true Knausgaard-ian style I was simmering in the broth of my own misery.
Last night as the pain got out of my jaw and into the head, tonsils, eyes and rest of the face, words on my phone screen got blurrier by the hour. I decided to detach myself from the bed and move into unchartered territory of the living room. I checked the fridge and was happy to find a few pints of beer in there. I popped in a painkiller, checked the clock on the wall which showed 8pm and took out the beers. They were cold, so I soaked them inside a bowl of warm water. Soon I was listening to the latest Hindi movie album I had fallen for the lyrics of and was dancing up and down the length of my dimly-lit house.
I felt unmoored and slightly stupid to be indulging in beers when I was in this deep pain. I thought the beers would lift the placid mood and wear me off the anger and irritation I had amassed. All this while I waited for someone’s call. But the phone never rings when you most want it to, does it!
Moving on, I rang up my mother and father — calling them on the same night was as rare an occasion as the Indian PM giving an interview to the media. Speaking with them for half an hour or so, I realised I had strained the remaining muscles of my throat enough and where there was a throbbing ache before, now existed a sense of exasperation and tiredness. So of course I read this as a sign to open another pint of beer!
My body, if it could speak, would have had quite a few thoughts to share about me last night. Anyway, as I wound my way back to the site of my everydayness that is the bed, I was fingering my way through Boyhood all over again. I had missed him! Contemplating, reflecting, silently wordlessly cribbing alongside Knausgaard about the comings and goings of our absolutely banal everydays, I felt comforted in between passages of him shitting atop a pile of refuse and then masturbating into an empty bottle of beer.
As many times as I might’ve read those passages by various other MALE authors before, when Knausgaard unspooled about the very same exigencies, it felt like a safe space!
Now that I’m through this book and might remotely consider reading his others at least in this series, I also briefly contemplate going back to the bookstore from where I purchased this novel. The cash-keeper there had commented on my purchase asking me to come back and talk to her in person if I do end up reading the book. But then again, would Knausgaard have heeded to such an imploration?