Translating Knausgaard: An Interview with Don Bartlett

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

What takes me by surprise in all the debates on Knausgaard is that no 
one discusses his success in relation to diary writing. Don't know about 
other countries, but In the 1990s diaristic books by Victor Klemperer 
(/Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten/), Ernst Jünger (/Siebzig 
verweht/) or Rainald Goetz (/Abfall für alle/ --- a 'novel,' posted day 
by day on the publishing house's website, co-founding the literary form 
of the 'Blog') were very popular in Germany. It simply felt like the 
right thing to read. More open than novels or novellas, let alone 
stories. And of course closer to everyday life. I think that 
Knausgaard's success has to do with this. (Me I stopped the reading in 
volume 2; if you've been through this yourself that 'We're having kids 
now, everything is so new and hardly anyone understands' Blog is not so 
terribly interesting; I also missed the meta-level reflections from 
volume 1.) People are sick of conventional narrative constructions and 
feel their activity of reading closer to life with a writer like 
Knausgaard. I understand the impulse and would suggest to try diary 
writing yourself.

Should we read /My Struggle/ in dialog with /The Diary of Samuel Pepys/?


On 03.05.2015 21:52, Dave Monroe wrote:
> http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/28/translating-knausgaard-an-interview-with-don-bartlett/
> -
> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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