His struggle

Karl Uve Knausgor and his novel "My Struggle"

The international bestseller of the Norwegian Karl Uve Knausgora with a slightly absent -minded title “My Struggle” was translated into Russian. Gorky shares the first impressions of the book.

Karl Uwe Knausgor. My struggle. Book One. Parting. M.: Sinbad, 2019. Translation from Norwegian Inna Strebleva

The book begins with a short discussion of death, which the author examines at first from a medical point of view (“huge hordes of bacteria, spreading in the body, no longer meet any resistance”), then from the philosophical (“life capitulates according to some specified rules like a gentlemanly agreement”), finally, with the philistine (“an elderly person, who suddenly died during the film settlement, could have sat down on the spot until it. endings, or even the next session ”). The reasoning is saturated with images and ideas, the text is dense, thick, impassable, something very important, fundamental in each phrase unfolds in each phrase - both for the author and the reader. But this density will end quickly, and then the text awaits us in which dozens of pages will happen almost nothing. Only impassability and the gloomy atmosphere set by the first pages will remain. The narrator recalls how he watched the TV in childhood - they talked about how a fishing ship died in the sea - and how he saw a huge face in the ocean on TV. “It was not a man. And something like a picture on the water. " The hero reports this to his father, no one believes him, he is asked if it was Jesus, but no, it was not Jesus.

An unprepared reader, probably, is already waiting that this person will then pursue the hero all his life, will cause a psychological trauma that the hero will write off all his failures or, conversely, attribute his success to this vision. Well, or what will be given to us some logical or unusual explanation for this strange optical phenomenon. But instead, a confused story awaits us about the present time in which the author writes the book, simultaneously thinking about his children and vicissitudes of fate; then about your previous marriage; then about parents; then about the most beautiful girls of the places where he grew up; then about some important, axial memories; then about the memories - well, completely unimportant.

Perhaps you have not heard anything about Carla Uwe Knausgor, but I had been waiting for a long time when someone in Russia dares to translate him. Gorky has already mentioned Knausgor and his method here and here . Like it, this is an international bestseller. The claiming literary innovation is a conscious rejection of fixtures, instead of which the writer simply tolerates his entire endless stream of memories to the paper. Of course, the name was somewhat confused, and not only in Russia. But the Sinbad publishing house dared. It is worth noting right away that it is not easy to read Knausgor. And not only due to the fact that dozens of pages in a row do not happen.

You are in the novel as a minefield - there are continuous traps for readers everywhere. Well, for example, we know that if a gun hangs on the stage, then it should shoot. That the details are important, and if the details are prescribed especially accurately, they will shoot sooner or later. Knausgor in details are very accurate. “There was a washing machine near the wall, next to it was a basket with dirty linen, near the other wall - a freezer, on top of which waterproof trousers and jackets were piled. There was also a stack of crabolists, a net, a fishing rod and a rack with tools and all sorts of rubbish. ” And you, the reader, even with minimal experience, is convinced that all this will play its most important role in the book, sooner or later, but still play. But no - these are just details, they are important and not important at the same time, then they will not play any role, but the details are the book itself. Endless, sometimes monotonous descriptions that tighten you like a swamp in which you are looking for a way out - plot, plot turns, plot development. And sometimes, yes, it can show off something like the plot. The author complains that his father was cold to him - we were in the past tense. The author complains that he loves his family, but they are all stubborn and he is hard for him - it seems like now. And it seems that we are about to grab onto this thread that will pull us out of a swamp of aimless memories, now Knausgor will bind us then and now. But no, there will be nothing like that. The thread breaks off. And then - again hope, here it is a tie for the plot. The school has problems. A hero like an anarchist and rebel - well, in the sense, he does not really want to study.

“I was an anarchist, an atheist, and every day anti -bourgeois sentiments were enveloped in me. I was thinking about piercing my ears, cringe. Natural science - what did it give to me? Mathematics - what is she for me? I wanted to play in a rock band, I wanted freedom, I wish it myself, and not as it should. Not to teach lessons, not to listen to the teacher in the class of the same opera. Previously, I was one of the best in all subjects and loved others to notice it, but now-no, now good grades have become almost shameful, they meant that you were sitting at home and corporating over the lessons that you were a sore and loser. Another thing is Norwegian, this subject in my view was connected with writing and bohemian life, besides, you can’t take itching here, you need something else - instinct, your handwriting, individuality. ”

If you expect that after that we will be told about the problems of adolescents and we will find the next version of the conditional “over the abyss in rye”, then not at all. We are in war-and all the paths are false: any attempts to compare Knausgor with any other prose will not be very successful. Even the first experience of joint pastime with a girl, not the most successful for both, will sink in endless memories of a seemingly less significant events. Somewhere by the middle, the storyline will nevertheless begin to draw and with great caution can be said that the location of descriptions, memories, complaints, days, trips to the toilet, eaten cookies are not accidentally eaten, but is subordinated to some logical goal and this goal is not only the training and submission of the reader. But you still have to get to that. Through paragraphs like this:

“The thought that time flies irresistibly flows like sand through his fingers, but meanwhile ... And what - me? My floor, I wash my linen, prepare lunch, my dishes, go to the store, play with my children on the playground, lead them home, undress, bathe, drink with them, put it to sleep, hang my clothes in the dryer, put it in a closet, clean up, wipe the table, chairs, cabinets. This is a struggle, albeit not heroic, but unequal, because no matter how much I work around the house, the apartment is still dirt and mess, and children from whom they do not sleep, I do not take my eyes off for a minute, these are the most harmful children known to me; At times, we have just a crazy house here, perhaps because we have not developed the necessary balance between the pedagogical distance and parental proximity, which is even more important when passions boil. ”

Probably, Knausgor himself would be glad to compare Proust, especially since he was recognized as in childhood “not just read“ in search of lost time ”by Marseille Proust, but directly reveled in this book”, but in reality “my struggle” to the methods of the French writer is of little relation. The main thing for Knorgol is still a consistent mockery of the reader who is waiting for something, but will not wait. This is his struggle. And he clearly wins.