Knausgaard’s second book offers everything I fall for in a novel: authority, execution, audacity, oomph, heft.
Other than a 75-page stretch midway where I worried this might have trouble maintaining the standard of excellence it had established, for ~425 nonconsecutive pages I was rapt, riveted, engaged, associating parts (the flood story, in general, is rising drama par excellence — read 35 pages past bedtime one night to finish the section as the water rose) — and I even ultimately gave the benefit of the doubt to that long stretch about Noah’s sister that at first had comparatively seemed rushed and distracted/off the rails thanks to stuff really about the author’s wife. But it recovered in retrospect — by the end of the section it became clear that her love, her family, particularly the mundane daily tasks (cleaning), all gained significance knowing she and everyone with her would drown unless Noah took her aboard ye olde ark.
Retroactive/spective change, with new sections changing perception of what preceded them, is a great strength and major theme of the novel.
Loved following the author’s lead through biblical stories repositioned in a mythic Norway straight outta Growth of the Soil. Would love to have the time to find the Hamsun line the following Knausgaard line reminds me of:
“the seed corn flows over his fingers when he dips his hand into the bag that hangs over his shoulder, with small, even flicks of his wrist it is sprinkled over the land as he walks across it, as if calling something to him all the time, as if this is some mysterious ritual, an exorcism, a prayer for a miracle, and see! a few weeks later it germinates and each cast of the hand can be read and judged.”
I’d suggest reading that one by Hamsun and the My Struggle series before taking this one on.
Loved how he complexified the Cain and Abel story.
“The only things that have always been remembered are the story of the first people who were driven out of paradise and into the valley, the story of the two brothers Cain and Abel, and the story of the great flood. But all the details about these people and the world they lived in were gradually erased. And as each new age is convinced that it constitutes what is normal, that it represents the true condition of things, the people of the new age soon began to imagine the people of the previous one as an exact replica of themselves, in exactly the same setting. Thus Cain and Abel became nomadlike figures who lived and operated in a flat, burning hot, sand-filled world, of olive and fig trees, oases, camels, asses, robes, tents, and little whitewashed stone houses. Gone were all the pine trees, all the fjords and mountains, all the snow and rain, all the lynxes and bears, wolves and elk. In addition, all the infinitely delicate nuances in the relationship between the brothers were lost over time, such that only the bare details remained: Abel was good, Cain bad, Abel was a shepherd, Cain a tiller of the soil.”
Dramatizing the complexity of black/white archetypes is something really great lit does best — I don’t like to think about lit/art as something that “serves society,” that’s functional or necessary or useful per se, but Complexity Emphasis is one of the arguments in lit’s defense.
A really slant autobiography of sorts that, stylistically at least, ends where My Struggle begins. Daddy issues herein represented via God/angels interactions with us human folk. The autobiographical parallels crop up in Cain or Noah or the narrator at the end. A story from My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love appears in fictional form: in My Struggle it’s pregnant Linda pissed at Karl Ove for not telling his friend to slow his speedboat down, whereas in this it’s Noah’s pregnant sister pissed at her husband for not telling a driver of a carriage going over a rocky road to slow down. The narrator (not named Karl Ove in this) cuts himself up again with a glass shard as he does in My Struggle Vol 2.
In a totally bold first-person coda that changes what you think about the preceding 450-something pages, there’s a suggestion at the end that the narrator (author of the book you’ve been reading, not Knausgaard himself) is a prophet who might one day saw off his legs but there’s no longer anything to prophesize these days, other than the pleasing benefits of noticing natural daily variation in the landscape (reminded me of the bit in My Struggle Vol 2 about how he only really cares about trees and water and sun).
Really an enjoyable, “rigorous” read, in part because the publisher Archipelago created a beautiful paperback with French flaps and a cover image that syncs with a bit toward the end of the novel.
Loved essayistic bits about how the art historical representation of angels changed over time along with their actual changing state. (Why do immortal angels change? Ahhh. Ya gotta read the book.)
Not touched on in the novel, but it struck me that some of these angels, say the one Ezekiel encountered with wheels, could’ve been ancient outerspace aliens.
Not psyched that the angels’ ultimate evolutionary destination was “spoiled” for me by a review I read on Goodreads — I wish I could’ve experienced this clever little perception-shifting turn toward the end with fresh eyes.
Interesting to compare with Thomas Mann’s mega novel Joseph and His Brothers, which also animates and humanizes a familiar bible story.
Highly recommended for all semi-adventuresome readers fortified with a bit of interest in the early bible stories.
Worth it for anyone who appreciates clear, flowing, steady, smart language (translated from Norwegian by James Anderson), and who likes novels that make novels seem like infinitely open art forms.
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To support the publishers who have supported my writing, please acquire a copy of Like It Matters: An Unpublishable Novel, Chaotic Good, Neutral Evil ))), and/or JRZDVLZ (all from Sagging Meniscus). Or my translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador. Or Thanks + Sorry + Good Luck: Rejection Letters From the Eyeshot Outbox directly from the publisher. Or even a copy of The Shimmering Go-Between directly from me (the publisher is kaput).