Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "knausegaard"

I take zero pleasure in negative book reviews, of anyone's work (which doesn't mean I don't think there should BE negative book reviews; but there's nothing to celebrate in them). But few pieces of harsh criticism have filled me with so much...no, not joy, but relief, as William Deresciewicz's skewering of Karl Ove Knausgaard 's MY STRUGGLE in THE NATION. The supposed REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST for our age (only purposely stripped of any attempt at insight or poetry or meaning)? The 3600-page second-by-second accounting of the mundanity of one man's life, rendered as flatly as possible--that's its goal, that's the only struggle--that really seems likely to win its author (if that's even the right word--I suspect he'd say it isn't) the Nobel Prize?

Here's Deresiewicz: "His book is like a box of snapshots--no, a steamer trunk; a shipping container. Their very profusion makes each of them null. What's needed is attention of a different kind. One painting, not a thousand pictures. The patience to create the beauty than in turn creates significance."

Here's me: EMPEROR!! CLOTHES! NOT WEARING...