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A review by msrdr
The End by Karl Ove Knausgård
5.0
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.
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.