From "Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Haunting New Novel/In 'The Morning Star,' the Norwegian novelist gives voice to the feeling that something terrible is coming for us all" (The New Yorker).
The article writer — Brandon Taylor — deploys "you" in describing a feeling he can't possibly know that I have ever had. He's had it, and he's challenging me to think about whether I have ever had it? I wonder! It's a pretty specific delusion.
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Shocking! Terrible! Click here!
Something terrible is coming for us all.
Yeah, the Green New Deal which means energy poverty.
We philosophical skeptics have always had our doubts about them.
"For shockingly long stretches of time, you felt as though your own excellent taste and sensitivity were powering you to have NO INTEREST in the novels."
"You wanted to live in your own world, which you recognized, not some Norski dude's version of a world that you had Absolutely NO INTEREST IN"
fift!
I don’t get the recent über obsession with the apocalypse. There’s Ted Lasso but the rest if the recent batch are apocalypse shows. I figured it was to help push the climate agenda but now I have this…sense of impending doom, like its something more…
How do you know Brandon has had that feeling?
More importantly, why are you still encouraging The New Yorker to produce such tripe?
Lautreamont, in Maldoror, has a chapter describing the (excessive) rape and murder of a young girl, making it clear somehow that he's describing the rape readers by authors. Something that's pretty general.
Ah Nordic gloom! There’s something about living in such darkness from late Fall to late Winter that drives Scandinavian drinking, depression and suicide rates. Having Russia continuously breathing on your neck and occasionally threatening your very existence may contribute to that doomish gloomy tendency.
For shockingly long stretches of time, you felt as though your own excellent taste and sensitivity were powering the novels.
In a previous life, he wrote advertising copy for Cosmopolitan.
Perhaps "'One' wanted to live..."
Sort of like the royal 'we.'
The article writer — Brandon Taylor — deploys "you" in describing a feeling he can't possibly know that I have ever had. He's had it, and he's challenging me to think about whether I have ever had it? I wonder! It's a pretty specific delusion.
On the other hand, we're all allowed to pick our own pronouns now, aren't we?
Maybe "you" is his (whoops, "your's")... "I"?
Foreboding
Is he challenging you to think or asserting that this is how you will think? Or at least how you should think, because that's how he does and he's a writer for the New Yorker.
The article writer — Brandon Taylor — deploys "you" in describing a feeling he can't possibly know that I have ever had.
Let's Go Brandon!!
Last time I bought a novel due to breathless praise like this, I ended up tossing it in the footwell in the back of my car, after giving up on it at Starbucks, and a friend found it and was like "I heard this was great! Can I borrow it?" and I said, "Just be sure to recycle it when you finally give up on it too."
I should ask her how she liked it next time I see her.
You reach a perfect world which is completely secularized even in religion, where everyone is OK or cared for and you feel very uneasy because all the haunts from all the horror stores including Christianity are also present. The world is ending, not with a bang, but in the format of a long Norwegian novel. The first of a trilogy, the second novel will show what happens after the world ends. You are in Hell. It looks like your Norwegian homeland. A bright star shines overhead. On page 2 the second novel starts to repeat the first novel. You read it all the way through look for a slight significant change. There's typo on page 63. Significant? You read on, the world ends as before. The third book of the trilogy mentions the success of book 2 on page 1 including the fact of the typo. One page 2 you find page 1 of book 2. Then the book repeats the whole of book 2, i.e., the whole of book 1. Entire book clubs are now devoted to looking for discrepancies. You enter into the debates which are part of the book according to your theories. The Nobel prize is awarded - to the typo, amid great applause.
It's a symbol of a lack of a symbol, I said. (You never really recover from being an English major when there was English to major in.)
When I was young, if I remember correctly, I would sometimes feel the delusion — not really believed in, but felt — that I had written the book I was reading. I knew I hadn't, but in some way, it seemed that I essentially had and this author-person had just — almost unfairly! — gotten the jump on me and put the words on the page and published.
Now, even then, I had to know that's to the great credit of the author, that he has written words that so perfectly transfer his mind into yours, so that you see his thoughts in your head as if they were your thoughts.
"that he has written words that so perfectly transfer his mind into yours, so that you see his thoughts in your head as if they were your thoughts"
= me, deploying "you"
"When I was young, if I remember correctly, I would sometimes feel the delusion — not really believed in, but felt — that I had written the book I was reading. I knew I hadn't, but in some way, it seemed that I essentially had and this author-person had just — almost unfairly! — gotten the jump on me and put the words on the page and published."
Perhaps our world is a simulation run over and over again, and you did write it the first time.
Althouse said...
= me, deploying "you"
A-ha? It all comes back to ABBA, doesn't it.
"Knowing Me, Knowing You... ah-ha"
I don't get why Knausgaard is such an acclaimed author. I was never tempted to start his My Struggle series, but I thought I'd give it a try when Covid gave me lots of free time. Living in Norway, I was able read the original and get the cultural references. There was nothing in his style or story that was particularly compelling. Just pages and pages detailing mostly minor events with no pay-off at the end.
That's why I only read technical manuals because of the underlying hope of success and accomplishment
To be fair, I find a lot of the articles in The New Yorker also give voice to the feeling that something terrible is coming for us all.
I will wait for the HBO series. My Brilliant Friend, the other big European literary sensation, was quite good on TV.
Or maybe Knausgaard should be on the History Channel. I hope My Struggle isn't all just rantings about Hitler.
"In 'The Morning Star,' the Norwegian novelist gives voice to the feeling that something terrible is coming for us all"
Ditto 'Birdbox' and 'The Tomorrow War.'
I used to sort books in my head into books I could have written and those I couldn't have. I am amazed at the apocalyptic tone of current fashionable thought. I think it goes with the widespread impostor syndrome our hyper-educated elites seem to suffer. Those who aren't worried that their fakery will be found out, seem to work on the assumption that everyone is a fake and can be bullied out of their ideas because they are just posing anyway.
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