(np) Knausgaard

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n10/ben-lerner/each-cornflake

Do P-listers have experience with Knausgaard? The first 100 or 150 pages 
of volume one I really liked because of the wild heterogenity of the 
text, then it becomes more and more conventional. But the story of his 
father's dying was still interesting enough to make me finish. Volume 
two, the copy from the public library is still in the house (btw, the 
Luchterhand publishing house does not use the childish general title 
from the original), bored me too much and so I stopped. "Even when I was 
bored, I was interested," James Wood says. And Zadie Smith: "I need the 
next volume like crack." Really? To me these statements sound as if they 
were made about one's daily telenovela (nothing wrong with that), not 
about literature. Neither regarding style - the promising chaotic 
beginning, which reminded me of the later writings of Rolf Dieter 
Brinkmann, gets completely lost before page 200 of volume one - nor 
regarding content - Knausgaard knows some things about art history, 
though - the statements by Smith and Wood do make much sense to me. The 
emperor wears no clothes. Anyone for disagreement?
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