/lit/ - Literature

What are his books even about? Are they actually good?

>>19181058
read the book(s) (6) and find out

>>19181058
>modern books
>good

>>19181058
Certain ones are better than others, but they're pretty good yeah.

>>19181081
>>19181079
>>19181073
But what are they about? Has anyone actually read his writing or is he just getting shilled because he is a rare example of a successful contemporary male author

>>19181058
my struggle is autobiographical and it’s the greatest thing i’ve read that’s been published this century. Hos debut Out of the world is about a teacher who falls in love with a 13 year old. I liked it. Haven’t read his latest book yet.

>>19181051
For what? There are other more deserving writers.

>>19181087
Just his life in general. Fist book is about his upbringing in norway and the death of his father. He describes teenage feelings in such a precise way that you can’t avoid loving it. Self humiliation is a common theme throughout. Later books are about new life in sweden, his wife etc. Last book has a 400 page essay about Hitler lmao.

I want Pynchon to win. He deserves it more than anyone else imo

>>19181087
I'm sure plenty of people here have read him. I've read 5 of the 6 books from the Min Kamp series.

His writing is good because it eloquently reflects the every day attitudes and feelings that each of us experience in life but are unable to put into words. His life itself is not particularly remarkable, but is made interesting by the manner in which he addresses the subject matter.

>>19181051
What's his fascination with Hitler?
first naming his series mein Kamph then the essay on him.

>>19181341
Name one person not fascinated by Hitler

>>19181341
>What's his fascination with Hitler?
>first naming his series mein Kamph then the essay on him.
I don't wanna read a 400 pages essay about how Hitler is bad

>>19181370
>I don't wanna read a 400 pages essay about how Hitler is bad

Knowing him, it's probably a bit more nuanced than that. The man got famous in Norway for writing a novel about a pedophile, after all.

>>19181403
>The man got famous in Norway for writing a novel about a pedophile, after all.
Man, how did he get away with that?

>>19181135
>his wife

It's funny that his wife stated that his opinion of her, as communicated through his writing, was a major factor in their divorce.

>“I have made my peace with the books now but in reality I was so angry about what he wrote,” she says. “As a writer, I respect his right to use his own life as material and, objectively, I thought the books were very good. But on a personal level I was really angry about the way he looked at me. His view of me was so limited, he saw only what he wanted to see. It was as if he didn’t know me at all. Reading it felt like suffering a loss. Now I just wonder if maybe he’s one of these male writers that can’t really write about women.”

>>19181430
Holy—

>>19181058
Death, doom, mundanity, taboos, angels, God. The man is just a fucking good storyteller. And some of you shits will meme "autofiction", but he writes great characters too. Try reading some of his non-autobiographical novels (ok technically Out of this World is autobiographical). I'm reading The Morning Star and it's amazing.

>>19181140
Save this comment, anon. You will look back and cringe when you are older than 20. Not saying Pynchon is bad, but he only wrote two good books. One of them is Mason and Dixon.

>>19181411
Not only that, but it was his debut novel and it won Norway's highest literary prize, which also made it the first debut novel to ever win the prize.

>>19181411
>Man, how did he get away with that?

Connections in publishing.

>>19181430
>It's funny that his wife stated that his opinion of her, as communicated through his writing, was a major factor in their divorce.
Fuck man, the guy is a high risk player.
Respect.

Has anyone read his Seasons quartet? I'm interested in Winter but it's apparently volume 2 so I'm not sure if I can read that first?

>>19181430
Looks like he's really missing out.

>>19181497
haven’t read them yet, but i don’t think they’re connected

>>19181430
I know she has a tiny woman brain, but you'd think—as a writer—she'd understand that any author's depiction of you is going to be simplistic compared to your own inner knowledge of yourself.

>>19181503
lol
>>19181430
>>19181523
yeah I honestly don't understand why people give women a platform to speak about shit like this. there's no reason for it.

>>19181403
>>19181411
>How did he get away with it?
Even in Yankeeland, Nabokov got away with it

>>19181573
If the book is good enough, not as many people care if it involves child molestation. The only unpardonable crime in storytelling is not being good enough. It's why nobody cares that Roman Polanski drugged and anally raped a girl.

>>19181591
Look up Assisted Living by Nikanor Teratologen; the Scandis are not as moralising as the anglosphere regarding literature. They still give the Nobel to people like Handke after all. Imagine him getting the Booker.

>>19181523
She's mad because he portrayed her as a BPD schizo who couldn't handle/nearly endangered her own children.

>>19181430
>Now I just wonder if maybe he’s one of these male writers that can’t really write about women.”

>>19181573
He didn't. Lolita was first published in France.

>>19181353
I more meant how does that fascination plays out in his writing.
is the 6 part series only connection to Hitler's book of the same name only the title or does it go deeper than that?

>>19181503
they're both very beautiful people and the 2nd volume of My Struggle, where he writes about falling in love with her, is amazing.

not that I would expect many people here to ever understand such feelings

>>19181353
Me

>>19181503
I'm sure he's doing fine without her.

>>19181079
the prerequisite to find good books is reading, anon

>>19182057
>I would expect many people here to ever understand such feelings

I understand the feeling of falling in love with someone and then having it go stale, or having that person come to resent you. Knausgard is an aesthete and sentimentalist. When you're that kind of person it makes you a great writer, but you get bored with individual women, and then you feel guilty about wanting to leave them. Being able to gain the affection of multiple women—if you're the type who felt unloved by your family growing up—also functions as an attempt to fill that loveless hole you've been left with from your upbringing. It makes you a sensitive and sensual person, but it also makes you seem capricious to others.

To put it simply, to his wife (and others), Knausgard seems like a good writer, but a terrible person. His crime is his ability to have taken his every day struggles and give voice to them; to turn them into something. He has taken the experiences that most of us have to take on the chin and suffer silently—personal tragedies, broken romances, and personal slights of honor—and has successfully aired them. The people in his personal life, and others, resent him for this because they (like you and I) are awe struck and envious that someone was able to not only publicly voice such things, but to gain fame and fortune doing so. Knausgard's crime is doing what you and I or anyone else would like to do—to give our own personal suffering meaning through literature—but which we have been unable to do so.

>>19182202
good post
good owning of presumptuous retard
A+

>>19182202
>Knausgard seems like a good writer, but a terrible person
What makes you say that, Anon?
>When I look at a beautiful painting I have tears in my eyes, but not when I look at my children. That does not mean I do not love them, because I do, with all my heart, it simply means that the meaning they produce is not sufficient to fulfil a whole life. Not mine, at any rate.

>>19182238
I mainly meant from the perspective of either people he's had personal relationships with and then has had a falling out with, and various members of the Norwegian and Swedish literary establishment. His books detail him—while in college—committing petty crimes such as damaging people's cars while drunk, and in one instance he hit his brother's face with a glass. He also had affairs with other women while in committed relationships. I'm of the opinion that none of these things are particularly evil, but you might see how someone could make the case that he has a disreputable personality.

Here's him in his own words, in his essay "In the Land of the Cyclops," which is a term he uses to refer to certain members of the progressive Scandinavian literati:

"I'm a writer, and many of the cyclopes have read my books. Some have got very angry indeed. One cyclops, writing in their biggest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, compared me with Anders Behring Breivik [who] murdered seventy-seven-seven people [...] most of them hardly more than children. [...] The cyclops believed I could be compared with the man who did that because of the books I'd written. Another cyclops wrote that I was a Nazi. [...] Many cyclopes have publicly contended that I
am a misogynist, that I hate women. And now, only last week, another cyclops writing in Dagens Nyheter has claimed that I'm a literary pedophile who has abused young girls. She writes too that I'm pursuing a clandestine homosexual relationship with my best friend, behind my wife's back. It's a piece that's full of hatred and disdain, and its aim is to say that there's something dubious about me, something unpleasant, alarming, abnormal, sick. To call it slanderous would be an understatement. It makes me out to be a criminal. So what was my crime? I wrote a novel." –"In the Land of the Cyclops: Essays," pp. 226-7, Archipelago Books, advance reading copy, 2021.

>>19181051
Why would Dave Grohl get a nobel prize? Was it because he keeps trolling baptists?
https://youtu.be/PEVFRrMYDX4?t=240