Post by sturgeon on Oct 24, 2020 22:30:49 GMT
I haven't read Karl Ove Knausgaard, but I imagine his sprawling autobiography feels a bit like this. The slowest of slow burns, focussing on every little detail of an ordinary man's ordinary day - until, in its own time, it transcends the ordinary and leaves you with a profound feeling of shared existence.
To pull this off, the writing has to be top drawer, which this almost is. There are a few slips, like rings instead of wrings, starring instead of staring, Foldger's instead of Folgers, and about a dozen too many redundant "that of"s - but the narrative largely avoids flabbiness. It's a fine tightrope to walk, and I admire the author for making a bold stab at it. But...
The day in a life in question is "that of" a labourer, who wakes up early, admires his wife, sneezes, urinates, washes, shaves... you get the idea. His day starts off ok, and gets (modestly) better and better, for which he is endearingly grateful. Eventually, he finds himself cooking at the birthday party of a little girl who has the same name, and the same birthday, and even a similar appearance, as his daughter who long ago died. It's a kind of mythical ideal that shortcuts logic to appeal to deep-seated emotion.
And it almost works. Which leaves me feeling conflicted. Because despite the writing being only good and not great, I felt something. Was I manipulated, or did the author genuinely tap into something profound?
But ultimately, I admired the ambition, the vision, the idea, more than the actual execution. So, a no from me.
To pull this off, the writing has to be top drawer, which this almost is. There are a few slips, like rings instead of wrings, starring instead of staring, Foldger's instead of Folgers, and about a dozen too many redundant "that of"s - but the narrative largely avoids flabbiness. It's a fine tightrope to walk, and I admire the author for making a bold stab at it. But...
The day in a life in question is "that of" a labourer, who wakes up early, admires his wife, sneezes, urinates, washes, shaves... you get the idea. His day starts off ok, and gets (modestly) better and better, for which he is endearingly grateful. Eventually, he finds himself cooking at the birthday party of a little girl who has the same name, and the same birthday, and even a similar appearance, as his daughter who long ago died. It's a kind of mythical ideal that shortcuts logic to appeal to deep-seated emotion.
And it almost works. Which leaves me feeling conflicted. Because despite the writing being only good and not great, I felt something. Was I manipulated, or did the author genuinely tap into something profound?
But ultimately, I admired the ambition, the vision, the idea, more than the actual execution. So, a no from me.
