Addictive, as expected. Ca. 250 pages in, and it's already compelling me to write:
https://expositrix.wordpress.com/2023/07/23/a-cue-from-knausgaard-or-the-differe...

Update: I can now add this volume to a list of legendary big books with a section where everyone gets stalled, along the lines of Moby Dick's "all about whales" chapter, and the section on almonds in Guns, Germs, and Steel (which I admittedly, tho' apparently freakishly, did find interesting). Here? Very lengthy analysis of a Paul Celan poem that's gone on for pages and pages, and which so far shows no sign of ending any time soon.

Final thoughts: although I understand why the middle "names and numbers" section was included, the 400-plus page interruption of the narrative was a bit puzzling; it could've stood on its own and/or been pared down. That latter option, though, somehow wouldn't have been true to the spirit of the project. ( )

i liked this volume the most. I especially liked the Celan and the hitler parts. ( )

Bad naming of the german titles makes it nearly impossible for me to remember which parts of "Min Kamp" i´ve read and which not. I guess I read four of them and i think now it´s also enough. Even if i enjoyed all of them but there are so many other books to read :D ( )

At long last I have reached the final page of this saga. As I've mulled over the full experience experience of the work, 1-6, the overarching subject is the emergence of a human (male) (artist) from childhood to maturity. At the same time Knausgaard assumes that while his is particular and further tempered by his personality, he is nonetheless the same in the essentials as everyone else. K believes (and I agree) that human society demands that we not be open about many aspects of our life experiences--even if what is taboo shifts and changes through time and cultures--so that early on we are taught to dissemble, hide, outright lie etcetera, about things we have done or not done that are not 'the norm' and we do not tell the truth about our experiences or how we feel about them.

He attempts to do so here. Ambitious in both the good and bad senses of the word (as in, a worthy endeavour/doomed to failure) So much of the writing in the previous five books had a transparency and flow--I mean simple language, simple sentences, often simple subject matter too. It's easy to scoff and mutter that all he is doing is writing about himself and anybody could do that. But that's the point: WE TURN EVERYTHING WE EXPERIENCE OR FEEL INTO A STORY, A FICTION. And it is impossible not to skew that story in our favor.

Humans crave coherence, need to maintain order in our heads as well as in our homes. Some argue that a biography says more about the writer of the biography than the subject. An autobiography is naturally skewed and we expect and forgive (especially if there are a few unflattering stories to give an impression of balance). A novel can be more truthful than either of the above by honing in on the actual experience creating a person who doesn't 'exist' and therefore doesn't have to observe any norms. (Well, usually there are repercussions for that individual within the novel itself for violating those norms, but we get to be in the person's head meanwhile.)

This need to create order is arguably one of the most distinguishing characteristics of homo sapiens. Not a necessity, but a compulsion.

This final novel brings clarity to the whole. The structure of Book 6 while anchored to a particular time period in K's life (he's around forty, the oldest child is 6ish and about to start 'real' school) is loosely threefold.

First. The issues of the public and family response to the books that have emerged so far (that was confusing to me as here the books came out more slowly)--in particular K's conflict with his uncle over whether he was telling 'the truth' about his father's death and his subsequent role in the aftermath. All else aside, K has violated a norm and has dragging the family name through a tragedy and a disgraceful ending that should have been kept secret.

The second part involves a close look first, at a particular poem by Celan and then at the earlier part of Hitler's life. In the poem K explores Celan's theme--the chilling question, so central to Hitler's success, of turning individuals 'someones' into 'no ones', from 'we' to 'they' and from there to 'other' and therefore not having any rights as human beings at all. Hitler, the frustrated artist, grew up to be a man driven to try to make the vision of a perfect order, the fantasy that sustains him, in his brain come true. He was a man who found his true home and calling in the orderliness of the army life in WWI. K is, of course, putting together his own version of how Hitler came to be but I would say he tries to work forwards making an effort to figure out what the hell went so wrong for this man as a child and young man that he felt obliged/inspired/driven to murder millions of people as a kind of living nightmare/fantasy made manifest, instead of painting landscapes and designing buildings.

Getting through this section of the book was an ordeal. I could not read more than ten or so pages about Hitler at a time and that meant slow going. I felt tainted also reading the actual quotes from Mein Kampf.

K is not comparing himself to Hitler -- not even remotely -- or maybe possibly as an example of the artist gone bad in the most extreme manifestation. (Ok, I am simplifying). There are many questions embedded here, among them the most disturbing: We seem to have to make some individuals into nobodies in order to feel like a somebody. This is possibly the single scariest and tragic aspect of the human psyche.

In the third and last section K returns to his 'ordinary' family life, as he grinds along trying to finish this very last book, his wife succumbs to a major bipolar episode alternating between pure chaos and pure absence. Some feel the episode is triggered by his 'success' overshadowing her own writing life. Well, maybe, but I think it has just as much to do with having had three children bing bang bong, all of them five or under at the start of this book.

There are always very funny and touching moments, as well as some incredibly annoying ones when you want to yell at K (the K's are terrible with money, just shockingly bad). K's aversion to strangers means there's no chance of, say, spending the money wasted on a country cottage (which they trash) on a bigger apartment with room for an aupair or whatever or at least hiring someone to look after the children for a few extra hours, or clean the house, or shop and prepare meals! But whatever. When Linda is in hospital K even refuses the household help that would have been free! They depend on their two mothers (and what a cliché that is, like grandmas have no other lives but to serve their children and grandchildren?). I am sympathetic--small children are a full-time job and you can't imagine ever having an uninterrupted moment and yet you are so in love with your children you have trouble letting others care for them--you lose most of your ability to make rational choices. All understandable.

You see how easy it is to criticize K's choices because he puts it all out there, all the dirty laundry, mistakes, bad days, and so on. That's why we generally don't let on what is really happening!

The whole of this last book circles around the question of the private and the public selves and how they interact, intertwine and affect our perceptions and behaviour. I would say that K's view of the matter would be, as demonstrated by the work itself, that the more that is out in the open, aired so that an attempt to understand can be made, is better.

If I had ten stars to award I would *********. ( )

I was reading Klemperer in the early days of Manny's reading this series and it stood out like dog's balls that this book here was simply a Hitler act. The guy writes like Hitler, behaves like Hitler, and collects the salivating fans, just like Hitler.

I myself read the first 2 and a half pages of volume one, which was quite enough to determine that the next 3,008 pages were well avoided. Meanwhile, I remain mystified as to why people would want to be part of this Norwegian-Hitler craze; as mystified as I hope I would have been if I'd had the misfortune to have been around during the first Hitler's reign.

The thing that mystifies me most is that people are hooked because they want it to be true, just like people wanted the original Hitler's bullshit to be true. If the Norwegian-Hitler hadn't got up and said a bunch of times in public, as well as in his own fucked-up writing that it was all true, nobody would be reading it. And yet, because the dude was willing to stand up and say it was all true it's what it is. OMG it's like SO amazing? He talks about how his neighbour's a hooker? And about his wife's being SO fucked-up? I mean, more than he is, even? It's like one of those TV shows with weird fucked-up people in it? Except that is's like literature? So you can read it and you aren't JUST getting the vicarious pleasure of reading shit about people? You can say it's like an amazing work of art too? And OMG, everybody's reading it?

Sigh.