My rating has to be extended to the entire endeavor itself, the stones required for such a project. Do I at this moment feel manipulated? Possibly. If Hamlet is indeed about Bosnia and AIDS (as was once asserted in a brilliant Branagh satire) then Knausgård and his Min kamp is a meditation on Trump/Erdogan/Abe, Brexit and #MeToo.

There are astonishing readings of Paul Celan and Hitler here, much more on the latter than one would assume. This discursive turn arrives when one is accustomed to something different. The My Struggle project isn't Proust, though the author is most aware and lards matters with the stated appreciation thereof. There is also a questionable diary of his wife's mental illness: things went suddenly Through A Glass Darkly. (that analogy is interesting with Bergman's relationship to Linda)

I read most of this on a mountain in Tennessee, Sierra Nevada was at hand. Quite a bit. Do I want to plumb further, perhaps consider Anne Sexton and Kawabata in this light? Do the Kavanaugh hearings have a bearing on ontology? My wife and I discussed a host of aspects regarding the meta-confession. I feel the better for such. I just spent a month reading Karl Ove. Let's see what daylight brings.

Hier zit ik, net boek 6(!) van Knausgårds "Mijn strijd"-cyclus uit, en ben weer ongelooflijk onder de indruk.
"Vrouw" is veruit het meest onconventionele boek van de reeks en dat zit 'm in de structuur.
In het eerste deel ontmoeten we de schrijver vlak voor boek 1 zal uitgebracht worden en hoe moeilijk hij het heeft nu alles openbaar zal worden. Er is een nonkel die 'not amused' is en dreigt met een rechtszaak en wat zal zijn vrouw Linda er van vinden?! Geschreven in de ondertussen bekende stijl, leest dit weer vlot weg.
En nu komt dat onconventionele; het tweede deel is een essay "De naam en het getal". En we moeten eerlijk zijn, dit essay leest niet gemakkelijk. Het begint met een zeer intensieve, taalkundige bespreking van een gedicht van Paul Celan. Verder wordt Hitlers Mein Kampf geanalyseerd en hoe taal een rol heeft gespeeld in de radicalisering in vooroorlogs Duitsland. Echt zware kost, ik ga niet liegen en mijn samenvatting dekt uiteraard niet de volledige lading. Het was veruit het lastigste om te lezen, maar ik begrijp wel waarom het hier staat en hoe het essay staat ten opzichte van de hele reeks maar vooral ten opzichte van de schrijver zelf. Het is even doorzetten maar toch enorm de moeite waard.
Over het laatste deel kan ik relatief kort zijn. Hier staat zijn vrouw Linda en haar strijd met haar bipolaire stoornis centraal en hoort bij het ontroerendste dat ik ooit heb gelezen. Magnifiek.
Conclusie, ook dit laatste boek wist mij weer enorm te verrassen en diep te raken.
5sterren uiteraard.

A colleague once said to me that a 5-Star rating should be worthy of your remembering when and how you experienced reading the book. I could not agree more. The End, or Min Kamp Volume 6, was a slightly more disrupted read than Volumes 1-5. The narrative is broken by a 400-page essay on literature and Mein Kampf. While the essay may be incredibly important to fans of the project of Min Kamp and its literary motive, I could help but feel that it removed me too far from enjoying the closing of the narrative.

As a single entity Min Kamp may well be one of the most momentous, important, personally consequentially, or individually resonant books of my reading life. There are very few books which have made me self-reflect so deeply and intimately on what it means to have my own experience of life and values. A caveat: this may well be amplified by becoming a father myself during the time of my reading the 6 volumes (1-month before to 6-months after).

Putting that personal relationship aside for now, Min Kamp is a literary juggernaut. Knausgaard’s intent to contribute to literary history (a very ambitious and arrogant idea itself!) is unambiguously achieved. This is it. 21st century literature. Equal in stature (I’ll spend the rest of my life investigating qualitative comparisons) to Proust, Joyce, Broch (Knausgaard’s oft referenced 20th century canon).

I look forward to waiting a year or five to read this for a second time. I already miss it.

Three stars for the final book, but more for it’s predecessors. I don’t know why there was such an extended essay about art, culture, Hitler and philosophy in the middle. Best skipped. A bit like the final 50 pages of War and Peace.

I'm hot off of the last page, and on my phone, so this is rushed, but I HAD TO write something.

It's finished! Wow. What an odyssey. What a romance. And what a marvelous mess.

There is a different piece of life-writing (one I intend to read ASAP) which bears the title "Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story", and as I finished this series, I couldn't help but recall that phrase. The spectral imagery is also emphasized in my mind by Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler (a simul-read which I don't think could have tied into Book 6 more perfectly). All that to say, there is something like a ghost in these pages... Or maybe even more than a ghost...

One night, after closing the book, near the 1,000th page maybe, I said to myself, "I think someone's in there." That such a phrase might be used in reference to a portable toilet is not lost on me whatsoever, haha. These books are "occupied", in much the same way. They're dirty, but real, and can be quite comedic, but are consistently shameful. So, if someone were to pick these up, I imagined I might say, "Oh, don't open that." "Why not?" "I think someone's in there." Haha!

And that's about where I've landed on these books: don't read them. Not yet. Wait until they (the Knausgaards) are done.

After Book 6, it really seems like the best intentioned review I can give to Knausgaard - whom I owe for this pleasure, and who owes so many others for their patience, forgiveness, and grace - is to recommend that these books are kept out of anyone else's hands!

I didn't think this until late in Book 6, but these books should have maybe gone unpublished. Maybe these should've just been gifts to his children, so they could decide if/when to release them... But...

[mild spoiler]

He was reportedly miserable when he began writing these, and he thought he didn't have anything to lose. Oy vey. The drama.

I understand the reasons why these books exist, and I'm glad that he wrote them, and that he has become a "successful" writer largely because of them, but I get the feeling that Karl Ove is no stranger to Regret. Alas, this is the world we live in, where "reality entertainment" and exposure are in vogue. So now, of course, "revenge writing" will trend, and all sorts of aspiring authors will flock to "Keep up with the Knausgaardians" haha. But maybe just keep a journal, and show it to a small handful of discreet individuals. Be kind to your loved ones, especially your children. Tell your story, but grant them the right to be forgotten, should they so desire.

[another mild spoiler here]

Karl Ove says he'll never forgive himself for what he's exposed his family to, but that he'll have to live with it. I hope that's not the case. I hope he can forgive himself, and I hope others forgive him as well. I hope he finds peace, and I wish the best to his family and friends. I feel like I've spent a lot of time with them now. They are stronger characters than maybe any I've ever encountered in another book.

That said... I wonder if I'm not just a sucker for believing these are much more than fiction. The lines are forever blurred now, and yet so much more vividly exciting, haha. It really does feel like a reinvention of the novel.

Taken together, books 1-6 are all truly great, and the series gets 5 full stars from me, overall.

I'd give Book 6 probably 4.5/5 stars (rounding up), because some sections weren't my cup of tea (the poetry analysis in particular), but it was a great ending and exactly what I hoped for. Something I'll continue thinking about for a long time.

I would probably only recommend this to writers. And I can't remember who said this, but it seems relevant: if you don't absolutely have to write, then don't, haha. I think more of us have to than we realize though.

I will miss Karl Ove's voice. I hope I will find it again in the author's other work :) A Time For Everything will be on deck soon, for sure.