85th book of 2024.

Karl Ove Knausgaard is a hypocrite and a liar. Volume Six becomes a metafiction and turns My Struggle into an ouroboros. It details, in part, the fallout surrounding the publication of the first few volumes. It also details Linda Boström Knausgaard’s mental breakdown, and includes a 500-page essay on ‘I-you-we-they-it’, otherwise exploring the dehumanisation of the Jews through a biography of Hitler’s early years, an analysis of Mein Kampf (he had to!), as well as Paul Celan, Holderlin, James Joyce, William Turner, Hermann Broch, Thomas Mann . . . among numerous other writers, artists, etc. It is the most demanding book. I started it two months ago, roundabout, left it for a month as I read The Magic Mountain then returned to it. Since Monday I’ve been ill, which is something that doesn’t happen often to me, so I’ve been miserable, perhaps insufferable for my girlfriend to be around me, but it has given me the opportunity to read some 400 pages and finish at long last. At the beginning of 2024 I finished Volume Two and now we are finished.

Alan and I have been discussing Knausgaard’s character throughout our journey, a journey which we embarked upon together. In Volume Three, Alan decided that Knausgaard must be telling the truth, or a lot of the truth, because his child self in that volume is so recognisable to his adult self. Too much so to be an invented self. In this volume, he starts complicating the whole matter. I think he does this on purpose. I mentally underlined many, many sentences and passages and thought to myself, Liar! Hypocrite! Knausgaard hates to be spoken about. Knausgaard criticises Kubizek, who wrote a book about being childhood friends with Hitler. So many years had passed by the time he wrote the book about him and young Hitler, so the conversations transcribed must be invented. Knausgaard baulks — no one remembers entire conversations from twenty years ago. And yet his own books are made of fully constructed and conversations from decades ago, sometimes more than twenty. In a way, certain elements reminded me of W.G. Sebald, who, like Knausgaard, sometimes seemed to be daring the reader. Go on, believe me. They seem to prove something and then in the same breath disprove it. The whole thing feels like a game or a trick. And yet, how addictive it is. I believe My Struggle is one of the great literary achievements of this century so far. I hardly doubt it for a second. For the past year, I have spoken about him to friends, colleagues, I have lived a life parallel to his. Knausgaard’s life has made me more aware and self-conscious of my own. I’ve started to think about myself in different contexts and ways. How am I perceived, and how do I perceive others? I’ve been more critical of myself: yes, I am at times selfish, miserable, more often than not, dour, melancholic. I joked in one volume, I forget which, that it was becoming uncomfortable how similar I am to Knausgaard, by my own perceptions. Knausgaard, in turn, seems, in this volume, to suggest he is very similar to Hitler. I joked further with Alan. I am partly German, Aryan, and once wanted to be an artist. Hitler and I even share the same birthday.

It’s no surprise that Knausgaard’s writing of Hitler is bold. He openly attacks the ‘definitive’ biography of Hitler by Kershaw, claiming it is biased and foolish. It’s biggest flaw, he says, is that it spins everything Hitler did as evil. Even as a sixteen year old boy. There is a passage from Kershaw he quotes that describes Hitler as being a lazy, selfish layabout. How he sits writing short stories, reading, visiting the theatre. Knausgaard asks us (dares us!) to swap the name Hitler for Rilke and see if we have the same opinions. So, Knausgaard spends his time defending young Hitler, who, at fourteen years old, sixteen years old, a child, was not evil. The biography, for this reason, was fascinating. A completely fresh look at Hitler, not as a monster, but as a regular boy, who was abused and had high aspirations. A budding artist. Not, we may think, so dissimilar to Knausgaard himself, who lived in fear of his own father and dreamed of being an artist. The essay however, at around 500 pages, was taxing. The volume would get 4-stars, but its 5-star is a reflection of the overall feeling, not only of the volume itself but its position, its stance and the way in which it concludes the series.

The beginning and ending are top-form Knausgaard. The mundane is exploded into something more. Something both genuine and profound. The act of putting your children to bed, making coffee in the morning, finding an hour to write. Once again the reader is invited into the private world of a family, to eavesdrop, observe. The whole thing works because it exploits the nosiness of human nature. As when I finished Proust, I put the book down and felt something like relief, yes, a kind of weightlessness, perhaps even unreality. I could feel the book, all six volumes, sinking into me, finding the places they will reside. Everything we read is in us, most of the time dormant, but part of our makeup. Alan and I decided we probably wouldn’t want to be friends with Knausgaard. But a pint? To sit down with a tall glass of lager and talk to him about this and that? That is hard to refuse.