A man for all seasons
The thousand-page volume that completes Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “My Struggle” sextet won’t be released in English for a while yet, but its final line is already well-known here: “And I’m so happy I’m no longer an author.” Undoubtedly the Norwegian meant it
ish novelist Fredrik Ekelund to co-author an epistolary exploration of soccer, duly released in English last year as “Home and Away.” And right after that he began a new mammoth project, a quartet of books based around the four seasons.
The first volume is now with us in Ingvild Burkey’s English translation of “Autumn.” It claims to be a gift to Knausgaard’s unborn fourth child, for as he puts it in an introductory letter to his daughter-to-be, “That is why I am writing this book for you. I want to show you the world, as it is, all around us, all the time.” And yet, more selfishly, he goes on to add, “only by doing so will I myself be able to glimpse it.”
Knausgaard may be out to see the world anew, but he does it via that old modernist mainstay, defamiliarization. He calls our lips “the outermost part of the mouth ... two relatively long and narrow pads ... distinguished
from all other visible parts of the body by being reddish.” He reminds us that the common jellyfish was “the first being to evolve from a single cell to a creature consisting of multiple cells” before swerving into a miraculous childhood memory of hundreds of them “like little suns” in the ocean. And he draws out the implications of snakes having no ears, declaring that “every step of a boot travels through [a snake],” then once again swerves to a childhood memory, this a detested, inexplicable moment when his father pitilessly slew an adder.
The great pleasure of “Autumn” is in watching how Knausgaard starts in commonplace observations — “of all the things we do, pissing is one of the most routine” — but then moves unexpectedly toward surprising conclusions. In the case of “Piss,” he ends with the last time he wet himself, as a teenager, about which he enthuses, “oh God, how delicious it is to pee yourself.” This is an
older, more mature author than the man who wrote “My Struggle,” but he can be just as childishly confessional, indulging his masochistic delight in exposing his shameful moments.
And what about this unborn daughter who seems to have been the instigation for Knausgaard’s project? Other than three brief letters directed at her, accounting for about 10 pages total, there is very little mention of her. Knausgaard does note at one point that “the parents give the child life, the child gives the parents hope,” and he compellingly describes aspects of the pregnancy, but most of this book lacks any ostensible connection to her.
This is too bad, as deeper
reflections on fatherhood, the anxieties of pregnancy, and the expectations of new life might have made “Autumn” more than a series of disconnected reflections. As it is, the book feels like a holding pattern, a bunch of musings that might have been plucked from the essayistic portions of “My Struggle,” but not new ground for Knausgaard.
I can say that I absolutely enjoyed reading “Autumn” and underlined copiously throughout, but this is a work that lacks any desire to add up to more than the sum of its parts. What made “My Struggle” such a sensation was Knausgaard’s singular take on the memoir as a form, his unique perspective on life’s big questions, and his vivid descriptions of coming of age in the 1980s and ’90s. By contrast, the thoughts here feel entirely detached, as though Knausgaard has turned his back on the world and is content to churn out charming, but small, sentiments.
Who can doubt that after writing a generation-defining work of literature that has sold enormously in one’s home country and become a true global sensation, one might need a little rest? If “Autumn” indeed represents a moment of repose for Knausgaard as he casts around for a direction after “My Struggle,” it’s not such a terrible place to be. I’ll look forward to “Winter,” “Spring” and “Summer,” and I’ll very likely enjoy them, but I’ll also expect that Knausgaard finds some new way to reinvent himself, some big idea for a work of literature that has a little more to say than “The Four Seasons.”
Scott Esposito is the editor in chief for the Quarterly Conversation, an online periodical of book reviews and essays. His writing has appeared in Bookforum, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books and other publications. Email: books@ sfchronicle.com