My Struggle: Book 6
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Read between August 29 - December 30, 2019
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Hitler was on his way to Bayreuth when she shot herself in her room with his pistol.
Brent Woo
wow he made two girls attempt suicide. one did it
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She was eighteen years old, her name was Eva Braun, and she too would end up committing suicide.
Brent Woo
i guess 3. but eva doesnt count
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Each and every one of us lives as though we were our own statesman at the center of the world, where all that we believe and think is accorded the greatest weight, quite regardless of the fact that everyone else believes and thinks exactly the same thing.
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ten foolscap pages
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Therefore I keep my distance, but not without observing the effect he has on everyone else in his presence, and in that I am consumed by jealousy, sometimes to unreasonable degrees, because I want to be him.
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If I write the word “cunt,” I am overstepping the boundaries set by normal style; if I do so fully cognizant of this it is because I am trying to achieve a certain stylistic effect,
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This is a duplication of Darwin’s notion of the survival of the fittest, laden with values. Delimitation, purity, development, these are Hitler’s key concepts,
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Cephalic index is the percentile relation between head breadth and head length, German Kopfindex, not to be confounded with the corresponding relation for the cranium, German Schädelindex, as is stated in the introduction to one of the book’s chapters,
Brent Woo
facial recognition of the 20th century
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never has a society been further from revolution as our own, never has any human population been so comfortably dulled in hygge as our own, but our world too has its downside, the so-called Third World,
Brent Woo
cozyplaces needs to see this
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When letters of the alphabet were to be made clear over the telephone, it was no longer permitted to say “D for David” – this was actually banned by the authorities in 1933.
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In such a system, speech, or logos, is neither language nor reason, Heidegger’s Norwegian translator Lars Holm-Hansen writes, but the articulation of what is understandable, that which is possible to understand. Speech is not the same as language, but is the foundation of language. Language is a representation of what is already articulated in speech. Speech also suggests listening, and that we may also refrain from speech. In these instances we are quite beyond the rational. Moods, silence, listening, all that cannot be articulated by language but nonetheless is present in speech, the speech ...more
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Personally I have never felt myself to belong to any we; right from when I was small, I have always felt myself to be on the outside.
Brent Woo
it takes him 700 pages to get to this point
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Always, I have had only one friend at a time, never more, never any we.
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Hitler’s pathological hatred and charisma,
Brent Woo
pathological charisma is a GREAT collocation
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We still don’t know who died. They lost their names and became a number,
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listen attentively to the story of a day in the life of each and every one of them,
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vollmanns europe central
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As I write about the Holocaust I sense its unmentionable nature. It feels as if there exists some right of ownership to it that means not just anyone can write about it, one has to have earned the right in some way, either by having lived through it or by writing about it in a manner that is morally binding and unambivalent.
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Hitler made his name the all,
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can you imagine a time where this phoneme sequence wasnt universally reviled
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If a person stands outside the law, they may be killed. If a person stands outside the social world, they are no one. If a person stands outside the name, they are a number.
Brent Woo
is this the whole goddamn thesis
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It’s evening already. I’m on my own at home,
Brent Woo
sigh. how often does he return to the present
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sat down again, poured myself some tepid coffee from the thermos, and lit another cigarette.
Brent Woo
oh my GOD FINALLY the END.
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I was what they call a sound sleeper. I could sleep on the floor without any problem, and with children screaming a meter away from me, it didn’t make any difference; if I was asleep, I was asleep. Once I had thought it was a sign that I wasn’t a real writer. Writers slept badly, had ravaged faces, at the crack of dawn they sat at the kitchen table staring out the window, tormented by their inner demons, which never rested. Who had ever heard of a great writer who slept like a child?
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I donned my Ted Baker shirt, which stuck to my still-damp shoulder blades and would not hang straight at first, then I got into my Pour jeans with the diagonal pockets, which usually I didn’t like, there was something so conventional about them, all Dockers trousers had slanting pockets, but on a pair of jeans there was so much else working against the Dockers look that they actually looked good, for then it was the jeans style that was being challenged and as a result a kind of tension grew, not much, but in a world where all denims looked identical, it was enough to make these just that ...more
Brent Woo
haha see this crap is so good
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For nearly two years I had worked as a language consultant on the new Norwegian translation of the Bible,
Brent Woo
ok. so his cain and abel story
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In the process everything apart from a couple of points was filtered away, and these were then so squeezed and wrung dry until the book completely lost any signs of life and lay dead and buried in a warehouse somewhere outside Oslo.
Brent Woo
interviews kill a book
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Why did I write about myself? What was it that made me so interesting that I could write not only one novel based on my life but six? Was I a narcissist? Why did I use people’s real names?
Brent Woo
so he does call it 6 novels and not one 6 part novel or w e
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the flight attendant’s voice welcomed us to Oslo and asked us to keep our seat belts fastened, which almost everyone ignored, we knew it wasn’t dangerous anymore, no one would punish us if we didn’t obey, that was what you call freedom.
Brent Woo
im reading this right now in a plane from sea to bos lel
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everywhere. I usually waited until almost everyone had left the plane before I got up, but now I was short of time, so
Brent Woo
weirdo, why
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I pushed my way into the aisle, shrugged on my backpack, and switched on my phone, as everyone around me was doing. I hadn’t received any text messages of course, I never did, but no one else knew that.
Brent Woo
hahha 2 true
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I put the phone in my inside pocket and met the gaze of a woman in her fifties, she had just lifted a bag down from the overhead bin and was twisting around to place it on the floor. “Fantastic books you write,” she said. “Thank you very much.” Embarrassed, I returned her gaze, my cheeks warm, my lips forming a half smile. “A Time for Everything is the best book I’ve read in years,” she continued. “Thank you,” I said. “That’s nice. I’m happy to hear that.” She gave me a warm smile and then turned to face the front again. A stranger had never addressed me to talk about my books before. If that ...more
Brent Woo
in the whole series thats right he never once talks about being on the street and someone recognizing him!
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buzzed the door open without asking who I was, I hated standing in front of those little boxes and introducing myself.
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He told me the book hadn’t arrived yet. It was supposed to have been here the day before, but the truck had been involved in an accident in Sweden; as far as he understood, it had gone off the road to avoid a wild boar.
Brent Woo
the first book was delayed bc the truck flipped?
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I had never gone looking for trouble in my life, as far as possible I tried to be kind and friendly and polite and decent, I just wanted everyone to like me, that was all, and here I was, in such a storm of aggrieved people and lawyers, not through ill fortune but following a reasonable response to an act I had committed. I wanted nothing more than to write and be an author, so how could I have ended up in a situation where lawyers had to read everything I wrote?
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Apart from the opening, which we considered removing because the tone was so different from the rest of the manuscript, and the long passage about the new year’s party, which he wanted to take out, I did exactly what he recommended.
Brent Woo
the opening is the thing about the heart? that’s interesting. and which of the books were edited, was it just the first two?
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The idea was that I should write about my life as it was now and then go back in time, through my childhood, up through my teenage years into adulthood, to end with meeting Linda in Sweden, in such a way that our love story, which was so intense, would cast its light back on the events of the second book.
Brent Woo
the order of books
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The voice at the other end spoke Bergen dialect, and whenever I’ve heard anyone speaking Bergen dialect since, I have heard that voice resonate and it’s sent shivers down my spine. It is the most unpleasant voice I have heard in the forty-nine years I have been alive and it was the
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For the first time that day I spoke about literature. What I said was vague and not very good, but it was about literature and that in itself felt cathartic. I imagined it was a bit like how a shy plumber might feel after having to speak all day to the media about himself and his feelings, his family and friends, when at long last, late in the afternoon, he was able to talk about pipes and washers.
Brent Woo
that’s pretty rough. after a day of interviews about the book “at long last he can talk about literature.” so all these interviews were just news stories
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Sometime later, walking toward the center along the streets in the western part of town, the night sky was dense and star-spangled.
Brent Woo
who actually used this adjective? was it karl or the translator?
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Cathrine Sandnes, who was the emcee, was there, she gave me a hug and said something and laughed, she was one of those rare people who laughed all the time,
Brent Woo
lol it me
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One of his books opens with a person who is alone and out of shame raises his hands to his face. Reading that, I thought I had done a much better job and with greater profundity in my debut novel, in which the main character is constantly ashamed and no stranger to the gesture and impulse that occasions the shame.
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I was given a pile of clothes, all white, stepped into a cubicle and put them on. The trousers were much too big, they hung off me like a sack, but with suspenders they were fine, the assistant said when I emerged, and away we went. We lined up for the photo, Thorenfeldt played some Frank Sinatra at full blast, laughed and shouted as we three squeezed together and posed, with and without hats, and finally Hanne was given confetti, which she threw into the air as a kind of finale.
Brent Woo
i have to find these photos they sound hilarious
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She was a novelist to her fingertips, uncompromising with regard to her books, and incorruptible. Rare qualities, both of them. As a person she was sensitive and there was something vulnerable about her,
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If the krone dropped during the flight she would know why I had turned away so obviously and the situation would be embarrassing for both of us;
Brent Woo
if the KRONE dropped hahaha
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from their dancing bodies came nothing, all their movements seemed to stay inside them as they gyrated and jumped and sallied back and forth across the stage, every step a thud on the floor.
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“But this isn’t for you,” Yngve said. “It’s to give everyone you know a chance to make a fuss over you. And to have a party.
Brent Woo
birthday parties arent for YOU
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There aren’t any mysteries in Greek art. The Pyramids are an enigma, but not Doric or Ionic temples.
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The peppermint taste spread like a miniature storm in my mouth.
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the atmosphere of transience and slow demise was irresistible,
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Mom, on the other hand, had never been bothered by noise. Perhaps she was more at peace inside herself, perhaps she was more closed to the world, perhaps it was only that her tolerance levels were higher. But Dad really lived on his nerves, nothing was at peace inside him, one sudden noise and he exploded. Now it was my turn. Not so loud! No, no, no! Stop it! DO YOU HEAR ME? BE QUIET!
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But I was still annoyed that she had been so miffed. She didn’t have to be so pissed off, for Christ’s sake!
Brent Woo
its these rough married thoughts geez