Podcasts about knausgaard

The Third Realm is the next instalment of the series Karl Ove Knausgaard began with The Morning Star and continued in The Wolves of Eternity; like its two precursors, it is a breathtaking exploration of ordinary lives on the cusp of irrevocable change, ‘re-enchanting the cosmos with those beguiling secrets science had stolen from it' (in the words of The Guardian).Knausgaard read from The Third Realm and was joined in conversation about its mysteries and complexities by Helen Charman, author of Mother State.Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A second guest post from our friends at Method & Madness. Support Brad and Aaron's new literary podcast, and thank you. "We discuss the mysterious mastery of Karl Ove Knausgaard's 'My Struggle,' go on a crash tour of the history of the memoir/autobiography, and examine the other book from which Knausgaard borrowed his title. Finally, [...]

After enjoying her new book Open Socrates so much (and having written about her previous book Aspiration in Second Act), I was delighted to talk to Agnes Callard, not least because, as she discusses in Open Socrates, she is a big Tolstoy admirer. We talked about Master and Man, one of my favourite Tolstoy stories, but also about the value of reading fiction, the relationship between fiction and a thought experiment, and other topics of related interest. George Eliot makes an appearance too. In the discussion about the use of fiction in philosophy classes, I was slightly shocked to hear about how much (or how little) reading her undergraduates are prepared to do, but I was interested that they love Pessoa. Agnes has previously written that the purpose of art is to show us evil. Here is Agnes on Twitter. Transcript below, may contain errors!I found this especially interesting.Exactly, and I mean, 10 seconds, that's a wild exaggeration. So do you know what the actual number is? No. On average. Okay, the average amount of time that you're allowed to wait before responding to something I say is two tenths of a second, which, it's crazy, isn't it? Which, that amount of time is not enough time for, that is a one second pause is an awkward pause, okay? So two tenths of a second is not long enough time for the signal that comes at the end of my talking, so the last sound I make, let's say, to reach your ears and then get into your brain and be processed, and then you figure out what you want to say. It's not enough time, which means you're making a prediction. That's what you're doing when I'm talking. You're making a prediction about when I'm going to stop talking, and you're so good at it that you're on almost every time. You're a little worse over Zoom. Zoom screws us up a little bit, right? But this is like what our brains are built to do. This is what we're super good at, is kind of like interacting, and I think it's really important that it be a genuine interaction. That's what I'm coming to see, is that we learn best from each other when we can interact, and it's not obvious that there are those same interaction possibilities by way of text at the moment, right? I'm not saying there couldn't be, but at the moment, we rely on the fact that we have all these channels open to us. Interestingly, it's the lag time on the phone, like if we were talking just by phone, is about the same. So we're so good at this, we don't need the visual information. That's why I said phone is also face-to-face. I think phone's okay, even though a lot of our informational stream is being cut. We're on target in terms of the quick responses, and there's some way in which what happens in that circumstance is we become a unit. We become a unit of thinking together, and if we're texting each other and each of us gets to ponder our response and all that, it becomes dissociated.Transcript (AI generated)Henry: Today, I am talking to Agnes Callard, professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, author of Aspiration, and now most recently, Open Socrates. But to begin with, we are going to talk about Tolstoy. Hello, Agnes: .Agnes: Hello.Henry: Shall we talk about Master of Man first?Agnes: Yeah, absolutely.Henry: So this is one of Tolstoy's late stories. I think it's from 1895. So he's quite old. He's working on What is Art? He's in what some people think is his crazy period. And I thought it would be interesting to talk about because you write a lot in Open Socrates about Tolstoy's midlife crisis, for want of a better word. Yeah. So what did you think?Agnes: So I think it's sort of a novel, a story about almost like a kind of fantasy of how a midlife crisis could go if it all went perfectly. Namely, there's this guy, Brekhunov, is that his name? And he is, you know, a landowner and he's well off and aristocratic. And he is selfish and only cares about his money. And the story is just, he takes this, you know, servant of his out to, he wants to go buy a forest and he wants to get there first before anyone else. And so he insists on going into this blizzard and he gets these opportunities to opt out of this plan. And he keeps turning them down. And eventually, you know, they end up kind of in the middle of the blizzard. And at kind of the last moment, when his servant is about to freeze to death, he throws himself on top of the servant and sacrifices himself for the servant. And the reason why it seems like a fantasy is it's like, it's like a guy whose life has a lacuna in it where, you know, where meaning is supposed to be. And he starts to get an inkling of the sort of terror of that as they're spending more and more time in the storm. And his initial response is like to try to basically abandon the servant and go out and continue to get to this forest. But eventually he like, it's like he achieves, he achieves the conquest of meaning through this heroic act of self-sacrifice that is itself kind of like an epiphany, like a fully fulfilling epiphany. He's like in tears and he's happy. He dies happy in this act of self-sacrifice. And the fantasy part of it is like, none of it ever has to get examined too carefully. It doesn't like, his thought doesn't need to be subjected to philosophical scrutiny because it's just this, this one momentary glorious kind of profusion of love. And then it all ends.Henry: So the difficult question is answered the moment it is asked. Exactly, exactly, right?Agnes: It's sort of, it's, I see it as like a counterpart to the death of Ivan Ilyich.Henry: Tell me, tell me more.Agnes: Well, in the death of Ivan Ilyich, the questions surface for even, you know, when death shows up for him. And he suddenly starts to realize, wait a minute, I've lived my whole life basically in the way that Brekhunov did. Basically in the way that Brekhunov does as, you know, pursuing money, trying to be a socially successful person. What was the point of all that? And he finds himself unable to answer it. And he finds himself, it's the exact opposite. He becomes very alienated from his wife and his daughter, I think.Henry: Yeah.Agnes: And the absence of an answer manifests as this absence of connection to anyone, except an old manservant who like lifts up his legs and that's the one relief that he gets. And, you know, it's mostly in the gesture of like someone who will sacrifice themselves for another. Right, that's once again where sort of meaning will show up for a Tolstoy, if it ever will show up in a kind of direct and unashamed way.Henry: Right, the exercise of human compassion is like a running theme for him. Like if you can get to that, things are going great. Otherwise you've really screwed up.Agnes: Yeah, that's like Tolstoy's deus ex machina is the sudden act of compassion.Henry: Right, right. But you think this is unphilosophical?Agnes: I think it's got its toe in philosophical waters and sort of not much more than that. And it's in a way that makes it quite philosophical in the sense that there's a kind of awareness of like a deep puzzle that is kind of like at the heart of existence. Like there's a sensitivity to that in Tolstoy that's part of what makes him a great writer. But there's not much faith in the prospect of sort of working that through rationally. It's mostly something we just got a gesture at.Henry: But he does think the question can be answered. Like this is what he shares with you, right? He does think that when you're confronted with the question, he's like, it's okay. There is an answer and it is a true answer. We don't just have to make some, he's like, I've had the truth for you.Agnes: Yes, I think that that's right. But I think that like the true answer that he comes to is it's compassion and it's sort of religiously flavored compassion, right? I mean, that it's important. It's not just. Yeah, it's a very Christian conclusion. Right, but the part that's important there in a way, even if it's not being Christian, but that it's being religious in the sense of, yes, this is the answer. But if you ask for too much explanation as to what the answer is, it's not going to be the right answer. But if you ask for too much explanation as to why it's the answer, you're going the wrong way. That is, it's gotta, part of the way in which it's the answer is by faith.Henry: Or revelation.Agnes: Or, right, faith, exactly. But like, but it's not your task to search and use your rational faculties to find the answer.Henry: I wonder though, because one of the things Tolstoy is doing is he's putting us in the position of the searcher. So I read this, I'm trying to go through like all of Tolstoy at the moment, which is obviously not, it's not currently happening, but I'm doing a lot of it. And I think basically everything in Tolstoy is the quest for death, right? Literature is always about quests. And he's saying these characters are all on a quest to have a good death. And they come very early or very late to this. So Pierre comes very early to this realization, right? Which is why he's like the great Tolstoy hero, master of man, Ivan Ilyich, they come very, and Tolstoy is like, wow, they really get in under the wire. They nearly missed, this is terrible. And all the way through this story, Tolstoy is giving us the means to see what's really going on in the symbolism and in all the biblical references, which maybe is harder for us because we don't know our Bible, like we're not all hearing our Bible every week, whereas for Tolstoy's readers, it's different. But I think he's putting us in the position of the searcher all the time. And he is staging two sides of the argument through these two characters. And when they get to the village and Vasily, he meets the horse thief and the horse thief's like, oh, my friend. And then they go and see the family and the family mirrors them. And Tolstoy's like, he's like, as soon as you can see this, as soon as you can work this out, you can find the truth. But if you're just reading the story for a story, I'm going to have to catch you at the end. And you're going to have to have the revelation and be like, oh my God, it's a whole, oh, it's a whole thing. Okay, I thought they were just having a journey in the snow. And I think he does that a lot, right? That's, I think that's why people love War and Peace because we go on Pierre's journey so much. And we can recognize that like, people's lives have, a lot of people's lives happen like that. Like Pierre's always like half thinking the question through and then half like, oh, there's another question. And then thinking that one through and then, oh, no, wait, there's another question. And I think maybe Tolstoy is very pragmatic. Like that's as philosophical as most people are going to get. Pierre is in some ways the realistic ideal.Agnes: I mean, Pierre is very similar to Tolstoy just in this respect that there's a specific like moment or two in his life where, he basically has Tolstoy's crisis. That is he confronts these big questions and Tolstoy describes it as like, there was a screw in his head that had got loose and he kept turning it, but it kept, it was like stripped. And so no matter when you turned it, it didn't go. It didn't grab into anything. And what happens eventually is like, oh, he learns to have a good conventional home life. Like, and like not, don't ask yourself these hard questions. They'll screw you up. And I mean, it's not exactly compassion, but it's something close to that. The way things sort of work out in War and Peace. And I guess I think that you're sort of right that Tolstoy is having us figure something out for ourselves. And in that way, you could say we're on a journey. There's a question, why? Why does he have us do that? Why not just tell us? Why have it figured out for ourselves? And one reason might be because he doesn't know, that he doesn't know what he wants to tell us. And so you got to have them figure out for themselves. And I think that that is actually part of the answer here. And it's even maybe part of what it is to be a genius as a writer is to be able to write from this place of not really having the answers, but still be able to help other people find them.Henry: You don't think it's, he wants to tell us to be Christians and to believe in God and to take this like.Agnes: Absolutely, he wants to tell us that. And in spite of that, he's a great writer. If that were all he was achieving, he'd be boring like other writers who just want to do that and just do that.Henry: But you're saying there's something additional than that, that is even mysterious to Tolstoy maybe.Agnes: Yeah.Henry: Did you find that additional mystery in Master in Man or do you see that more in the big novels?Agnes: I see it the most in Death of Ivan Ilyich. But I think it's true, like in Anna Karenina, I can feel Tolstoy being pulled back and forth between on the one hand, just a straight out moralistic condemnation of Anna. And of, there are the good guys in this story, Levine and Kitty, and then there's this like evil woman. And then actually being seduced by her charms at certain moments. And it's the fact that he is still susceptible to her and to the seductions of her charms, even though that's not the moral of the story, it's not the official lesson. There's like, he can't help but say more than what the official lesson is supposed to be. And yeah, I think if he were just, I think he makes the same estimation of himself that I am making in terms of saying, look, he finds most of his own art wanting, right? In what is art? Because it's insufficiently moralistic basically, or it's doing too much else besides being, he's still pretty moralistic. I mean, even War and Peace, even Anna Karenina, he's moralistic even in those texts, but his artistry outstrips his moralism. And that's why we're attracted to him, I think. If he were able to control himself as a writer and to be the novelist that he describes as his ideal in what is art, I don't think we would be so interested in reading it.Henry: And where do you see, you said you saw it in Ivan Ilyich as well.Agnes: Yes, so I think in Ivan Ilyich, it is in the fact that there actually is no deus ex machina in Ivan Ilyich. It's not resolved. I mean, you get this little bit of relation to the servant, but basically Ivan Ilyich is like the closest that Tolstoy comes to just like full confrontation with the potential meaninglessness of human existence. There's something incredibly courageous about it as a text.Henry: So what do you think about the bit at the end where he says he was looking for his earlier accustomed fear of death, but he couldn't find it. Where was death? What death? There was no fear whatsoever because there was no death. Instead of death, there was light. Suddenly he said, oh, that's it, oh bliss.Agnes: Okay, fair enough. I'd like forgotten that.Henry: Oh, okay. Well, so my feeling is that like you're more right. So my official thing is like, I don't agree with that, but I actually think you're more right than I think because to me that feels a bit at the end like he saw the light and he, okay, we got him right under the line, it's fine. And actually the bulk of the story just isn't, it's leading up to that. And it's the very Christian in all its imagery and symbolism, but it's interesting that this, when it's, this is adapted into films like Ikiru and there was a British one recently, there's just nothing about God. There's nothing about seeing the light. They're just very, very secular. They strip this into something totally different. And I'm a little bit of a grumpy. I'm like, well, that's not what Tolstoy was doing, but also it is what he was doing. I mean, you can't deny it, right? The interpreters are, they're seeing something and maybe he was so uncomfortable with that. That's why he wrote what is art.Agnes: Yeah, and that's the, I like that. I like that hypothesis. And right, I think it's like, I sort of ignore those last few lines because I'm like, ah, he copped out at the very end, but he's done the important, he's done the important, the important work, I think, is for instance, the scene with, even on his wife, where they part on the worst possible terms with just hatred, you know, like just pure hatred for the fact that she's forcing him to pretend that he isn't dying. Like that is like the profound moment.Henry: What I always remember is they're playing cards in the other room. And he's sitting there, he's lying there thinking about like the office politics and curtain, like what curtain fabrics we have to pick out and the like, his intense hatred of the triviality of life. And I love this because I think there's something, like a midlife crisis is a bit like being an adolescent in that you go through all these weird changes and you start to wonder like, who am I? What is my life? When you're an adolescent, you're told that's great. You should go ahead and you should, yes, lean into that. And when you're like in your forties, people are going, well, try and just put a lid on that. That's not a good idea. Whereas Tolstoy has the adolescent fury of like curtains and cards. Oh my, you know, you can feel the rage of his midlife crisis in some of that seemingly mundane description. Yeah. I think that's what we respond to, right? That like his hatred in a way.Agnes: Yeah. I mean, maybe we, many of us just have trouble taking ourselves as seriously as Tolstoy was able to, you know? And that's something, there's something glorious about that, that anyone else would listen to the people around them telling him, hey, don't worry, you're a great guy. Look, you wrote these important novels. You're a hero of the Russian people. You've got this wife, you're an aristocrat. You've got this family, you've got your affairs. I mean, come on, you've got everything a man could want. Just be happy with it all, you know? Many of us might be like, yeah, okay, I'm being silly. And Tolstoy is like, no one's going to tell me that I'm silly. Like I'm the one who's going to tell myself, if anything. And that kind of confidence is, you know, why he's sort of not willing to dismiss this thought.Henry: Yeah, yeah, interesting. So how do you think of Master and Man in relation to all the others? Because you know Tolstoy pretty well. You teach him a lot. How do you place it? Like how good do you think it is?Agnes: I don't teach him a lot. I'm trying to think if I ever taught Tolstoy.Henry: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I read that you had.Agnes: I've taught The Death of Ivan Ilyich. That's the one, I have taught that one. I wish, I mean, I would love to teach. I just can't imagine assigning any of these novels in a philosophy, my students wouldn't read it.Henry: They wouldn't read it?Agnes: No.Henry: Why?Agnes: It's pretty hard to get people to read long texts. And I mean, some of them certainly would, okay, for sure. But if I'm, you know, in a philosophy class where you'd have to kind of have pretty high numbers of page assignments per class, if we're going to, I mean, you know, forget War and Peace. I mean, even like Ivan Ilyich is going to be pushing it to assign it for one class. I've learned to shorten my reading assignments because students more and more, they're not in the habit of reading. And so I got to think, okay, what is the minimum that I can assign them that where I can predict that they will do it? Anyway, I'm going to be pushing that next year in a class I'm teaching. I normally, you know, I assign fiction in some of my classes but that's very much not a thing that most philosophers do. And I have to sign it alongside, you know, but so it's not only the fiction they're reading, they're also reading philosophical texts. And anyway, yeah, no, so I have not done much, but I have done in a class on death, I did assign Ivan Ilyich. I don't tend to think very much about the question, what is the level of quality of a work of art?Henry: Well, as in, all I mean is like, how does it compare for you to the other Tolstoy you've read?Agnes: I, so the question that I tend to ask myself is like, what can I learn from it or how much can I learn? Not, it's not because I don't think the question of, the other one is a good one. I just think I trust other people's judgment more than mine unlike artistic quality. And I guess I think it's not as good as Death of Ivan Ilyich and I kind of can't see, like, it's like, what do I learn from it that I don't learn from Death of Ivan Ilyich? Which is like a question that I ask myself. And, there's a way in which that like that little final move, maybe when I'm reading Death of Ivan Ilyich, I can ignore that little final bit and here I can't ignore it. Tolstoy made it impossible for me to ignore in this story. So that's maybe the advantage of this story. Tolstoy makes his move more overt and more dominating of the narrative.Henry: Yeah, I think also, I've known people who read Ivan Ilyich and not really see that it's very Christian. Yeah, oh yeah.Agnes: I don't think I- Much less.Henry: Yeah.Agnes: That's what I'm doing. I'm erasing that from the story.Henry: But that's like much less possible with this one. I agree.Agnes: Right, exactly. That's sort of what I mean is that- Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, here the message is more overt. And so therefore I think it's actually a pretty important story in that way. Like, let's say for understanding Tolstoy. That is, if you were to try to take your view of Tolstoy and base it on Death of Ivan Ilyich, which sometimes I do in my own head, because it's occupied such an important place for me, then this is a good way to temper that.Henry: Yeah, they make a nice pairing. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Let's pick up on this question about philosophers and fiction because you write about that in Open Socrates. You say, great fiction allows us to explore what we otherwise look away from. So it makes questions askable, but then you say only in relation to fictional characters, which you think is a limitation. Are you drawing too hard of a line between fictional characters and real people? Like if someone said, oh, we found out, we were in the archives, Ivan Ilyich, he didn't, it's not fiction. He was just a friend, just happened to a friend, basically word for word. He just did the work to make it kind of look okay for a novel, but basically it's just real. Would that really change very much?Agnes: I think it wouldn't, no. So it might change a little bit, but not that much. So maybe the point, maybe a better thing I could have said there is other people. That is one thing that fictional people are is resolutely other. There's no chance you're going to meet them. And like they are, part of what it is for them to be fictional is that, there isn't even a possible world in which you meet them because metaphysically what they are is the kind of thing that can't ever interact with you. And, like the possible world in which I run into Ivan and Ivan Ilyich is the world in which he's not a Tolstoy character anymore. He's not a character in a novel, obviously, because we're both real people. So I think it's that there's a kind of safety in proving the life of somebody who is not in any way a part of your life.Henry: The counter argument, which novelists would make is that if you gave some kind of philosophical propositional argument about death, about what it means to die, a lot of people just wouldn't, they'd like, maybe they'd understand what you're saying, but it just wouldn't affect them very much. Whereas if they've read Ivan Ilyich, this will actually affect them. I don't want to say it'll resonate with them, but you know what I mean. It will catch them in some way and they're more likely then to see something in their own life and be like, oh my God, I'm appreciating what Ivan Ilyich was telling me. Whereas, this is the argument, right? The statistics of social science, the propositions of philosophy, this just never gets through to people.Agnes: Yeah, so one way to put this is, novelists are fans of epiphanies. I mean, some novelists, like Tolstoy, it's quite explicit. You just get these epiphanies, right? Like in this story, epiphany. James Joyce, I mean, he's like master of every story in Dubliners, epiphany. Novelists have this fantasy that people's lives are changed in a sudden moment when they have a passionate, oh, I just read this story and I'm so happy about it. And I don't actually doubt that these things happen, these epiphanies, that is people have these passionate realizations. I don't know how stable they are. Like they may have a passionate realization and then, maybe it's a little bit the novelist's fantasy to say you have the passionate realization and everything is changed. In this story, we get around that problem because he dies, right? So, that, I don't know. I somehow am now James Joyce. I don't know. I somehow am now James Joyce is in my head. The final story in Dubliners is the dead. And there's this like, amazing, I don't know who read the story.Henry: Yeah, yeah. Also with snow, right?Agnes: Yeah, exactly.You know, and it's this amazing where this guy is realizing his wife, their relationship is not what he thought it was, whatever. But then the story ends, does he really change? Like, do they just go on and have the same marriage after that point? We don't know. I mean, Joyce avoids that question by having the story end. But, so you might say, you know, novelists like epiphanies and they're good at writing epiphanies and producing epiphanies and imagining that their readers will have epiphanies. And then there's a question, okay, how valuable is the epiphany? And I think, not nothing. I wouldn't put it at zero, but you might say, okay, but let's compare the epiphany and the argument, right? So, what philosophers and the social scientists have, what we have is arguments. And who's ever been changed by an argument? And I think I would say all of human history has been changed by arguments and it's pretty much the only thing that's ever done anything to stably change us is arguments. If you think about, like, what are the things we've moved on? What are the things we've come around on? You know, human rights, there's a big one. That's not a thing in antiquity. And it's a thing now. And I think it's a thing because of arguments. Some of those arguments, you know, are starting to come in their own in religious authors, but then really come in, the flourishing is really the enlightenment. And so you might think, well, maybe an argument is not the kind of thing that can change very easily an adult who was already pretty set in their ways and who is not going to devote much of their time to philosophizing. It isn't going to give them the kind of passionate feeling of your life has suddenly been turned around by an epiphany, but it might well be that if we keep arguing with each other, that is how humanity changes.Henry: I think a lot of the arguments were put into story form. So like the thing that changed things the most before the enlightenment maybe was the gospels. Which is just lots of stories. I know there are arguments in there, but basically everything is done through stories. Or metaphor, there's a lot of metaphor. I also think philosophers are curiously good at telling stories. So like some of the best, you know, there's this thing of micro fiction, which is like very, very short story. I think some of the best micro fiction is short stories. Is a thought experiment, sorry. Yeah. So people like Judith Jarvis Thompson, or well, his name has escaped my head, Reasons and Persons, you know who I mean? Derek Parfit, right. They write great short stories. Like you can sit around and argue about long-termism with just propositions, and people are going to be either like, this makes total sense or this is weird. And you see this when you try and do this with people. If you tell them Parfit's thought experiment that you drop a piece of glass in the woods, and a hundred years later, a little girl comes in and she cuts up. Okay, everyone's a long-termist in some way now. To some extent, everyone is just like, of course. Okay, fine. The story is good. The famous thought experiment about the child drowning in the pond. And then, okay, the pond is like 3000. Again, everyone's like, okay, I get it. I'm with you. Philosophers constantly resort to stories because they know that the argument is, you have to have to agree with you. You've got to have the argument. The argument's the fundamental thing. But when you put it in a story, it will actually, somehow it will then do its work.Agnes: I think it's really interesting to ask, and I never asked myself this question, like what is the relationship between a thought experiment and a story? And I think that, I'm fine with a thought experiment with saying it's a kind of story, but I think that, so one feature of a thought experiment is that the person who is listening to it is given often a kind of agency. Like, which way do you push the trolley? Or do you care that you left this piece of glass there? Or are you, suppose that the pond was so many miles away but there was a very long hand that reached from here and you put a coin in the machine and at the other end, the hand will pull the child out of the water. Do you put the coin in, right? So like you're given these choices. It's like a choose your own adventure story, right? And that's really not what Tolstoy wrote. He really did not write choose your own adventure stories. There's a, I think he is-Henry: But the philosopher always comes in at the end and says, by the way, this is the correct answer. I'm giving you this experiment so that you can see that, like, I'm proving my point. Peter Singer is not like, it's okay if you don't want to jump into the pond. This is your story, you can pick. He's like, no, you have to jump in. This is why I'm telling you the story.Agnes: That's right, but I can't tell it to you without, in effect, your participation in the story, without you seeing yourself as part of the story and as having like agency in the story. It's by way of your agency that I'm making your point. Part of why this is important is that otherwise philosophers become preachers, which is what Tolstoy is when he's kind of at his worst. That is, you know, the philosopher doesn't just want to like tell you what to think. The philosopher wants to show you that you're already committed to certain conclusions and he's just showing you the way between the premises you already accept and the conclusion that follows from your premises. And that's quite-Henry: No, philosophers want to tell you the particular, most philosophers create a thought experiment to be like, you should be a virtue ethicist or you should give money away. Like they're preaching.Agnes: I don't think that is preaching. So I think that, and like, I think that this is why so many philosophical thought experiments are sort of meant to rely on what people call intuitions. Like, oh, but don't you have the intuition that? What is the intuition? The intuition is supposed to be somehow the kind of visceral and inchoate grasp that you already have of the thing I am trying to teach you. You already think the thing I'm telling you. I'm just making it clear to you what you think. And, you know, like there's like, I want to go back to the gospels. Like, I think it's a real question I have. I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but I feel like something I sometimes think about Jesus and I say this as a non-Christian, is that Jesus was clearly a really exceptional, really extraordinary human being. And maybe he just never met his Plato. You know, he got these guys who are like telling stories about him. But like, I feel like he had some really interesting thoughts that we haven't accessed. Imagine, imagine if Socrates only ever had Xenophon. You know, if Socrates had never met Plato. We might just have this story about Socrates. Oh, he's kind of like a hero. He was very self-sacrificing. He asked everyone to care about everybody else. And he might like actually look quite a bit like Jesus on a sort of like, let's say simplistic picture of him. And it's like, maybe it's a real shame that Jesus didn't have a philosopher as one of the people who would tell a story about him. And that if we had that, there would be some amazing arguments that we've missed out on.Henry: Is Paul not the closest thing to that?Agnes: What does he give us?Henry: What are the arguments? Well, all the, you know, Paulian theology is huge. I mean, all the epistles, they're full of, maybe, I don't know if they're arguments more than declarations, but he's a great expounder of this is what Jesus meant, you should do this, right? And it's not quite what you're saying.Agnes: It's conclusions, right?Henry: Yes, yes.Agnes: So I think it's like, you could sort of imagine if we only had the end of the Gorgias, where Socrates lists some of his sayings, right? Yes, exactly, yes. You know, it's better to have injustice done to you than to do injustice. It's better to be just than to appear just. Oratories should, you should never flatter anyone under any circumstances. Like, you know, there's others in other dialogues. Everyone desires the good. There's no such thing as weakness of will, et cetera. There are these sort of sayings, right? And you could sort of imagine a version of someone who's telling the story of Socrates who gives you those sayings. And yeah, I just think, well, we'd be missing a lot if we didn't hear the arguments for the sayings.Henry: Yeah, I feel stumped. So the next thing you say about novelists, novelists give us a view onto the promised land, but not more. And this relates to what you're saying, everything you've just been saying. I want to bring in a George Eliot argument where she says, she kind of says, that's the point. She says, I'm not a teacher, I'm a companion in the struggle of thought. So I think a lot of the time, some of the differences we're discussing here are to do with the readers more than the authors. So Tolstoy and George Eliot, Jane Austen, novelists of their type and their caliber. It's like, if you're coming to think, if you're involved in the struggle of thought, I'm putting these ideas in and I'm going to really shake you up with what's happening to these people and you're going to go away and think about it and Pierre's going to stay with you and it's really going to open things up. If you're just going to read the story, sure, yeah, sure. And at the end, we'll have the big revelation and that's whoopee. And that's the same as just having the sayings from Socrates and whatever. But if you really read Middlemarch, one piece, whatever, Adam Bede is always the one that stays with me. Like you will have to think about it. Like if you've read Adam Bede and you know what happens to Hetty at the end, this has the, oh, well, I'm not going to spoil it because you have to read it because it's insane. It's really an exceptional book, but it has some of those qualities of the thought experiment. She really does put you, George Eliot's very good at this. She does put you in the position of saying like, what actually went right and wrong here? Like she's really going to confront you with the situation but with the difficulty of just saying, oh, you know, that's easy. This is what happened. This is the bad thing. Well, there were several different things and she's really putting it up close to you and saying, well, this is how life is. You need to think about that.Agnes: So that last bit, I mean, I think that this is how life is part. Yeah. Really do think that that's something you get out of novels. It's not, so here's how you should live it or so here's why it makes sense, or here are the answers. It's none of the answers, I think. It's just that there's a kind of, it's like, you might've thought that given that we all live lives, we live in a constant contact with reality but I think we don't. We live in a bubble of what it's, the information that's useful to me to take in at any given moment and what do I need in order to make it to the next step? And there's a way in which the novel like confronts you with like the whole of life as like a spectacle or something like that, as something to be examined and understood. But typically I think without much guidance as to how you should examine or understand it, at least that's my own experience of it is that often it's like posing a problem to me and not really telling me how to solve it. But the problem is one that I often, under other circumstances, I'm inclined to look away from and the novelist sort of forces me to look at it.Henry: Does that mean philosophers should be assigning more fiction?Agnes: I, you know, I am in general pretty wary of judgments of that kind just because I find it hard to know what anyone should do. I mean, even myself, let alone all other philosophers.Henry: But you're the philosopher. You should be telling us.Agnes: No, I actually just don't think that is what philosophers do. So like, it was like a clear disagreement about, you know, is the, like George Eliot's like, I'm not a teacher, but the philosopher also says I'm not a teacher. I mean, Tolstoy was like, I am a teacher.Henry: Yeah, I'm a teacher.Agnes: I'm ready to guide you all.Henry: You should take notes.Agnes: But I think it's right that, yeah. So I think it's like, you know, maybe they have some other way of forcing that confrontation with reality. But I, my own feeling is that philosophers, when they use examples, including some of the thought experiments, it's sort of the opposite of what you said. It's kind of like they're writing very bad fiction. And so they'll come up with these, like I am philosophy. We have to, we're forced to sort of come up with examples. And, you know, I discuss one in my aspiration book of, oh, once upon a time, there was a guy. And when he was young, he wanted to be a clown, but his family convinced him that he should be an investment banker and make money. And so he did that. But then when he was older, he finally recovered this long lost desire. And then he became a clown and then he was happy. It's a story in an article by a philosopher I respect. Okay, I like her very much. And I haven't read it in a long time. So I'm hoping I'm summarizing it correctly. But my point is like, and this is supposed to be a story about how sort of self-creation and self-realization and how you can discover your authentic self by contrast with like the social forces that are trying to make you into a certain kind of person. But it's also, it's just a very bad piece of fiction. And I'm like, well, you know, if I'm say teaching a class on self-creation as I do sometimes, I'm like, well, we can read some novelists who write about this process and they write about it in a way that really shows it to us, that really forces us to confront the reality of it. And that story was not the reality. So if you have some other way to do that as a philosopher, then great. I'm very instrumental about my use of fiction, but I haven't found another way.Henry: Which other fiction do you use in the self-creation class?Agnes: So in that class, we read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. And we also read some Fernando Pessoa.Henry: Pessoa, what do your students think of Pessoa?Agnes: They love it. So when I first assigned it, I'm like, I don't know what you guys are going to make of this. It's kind of weird. We're reading like just, you know, 20 pages of excerpts I like from the Book of Disquiet. I mean, it's like my own text I'm creating, basically. I figure with that text, you can do a choose your own adventure. And they like it a lot. And I think that it really, that, you know, the thing that really resonates with them is this stuff where he talks. So there are two passages in particular. So one of them is, one where he talks about how he's like, yeah, he meets his friend. And he can't really listen to what his friend is saying, but he can remember with photographic precision the lines on the face when he's smiling, or like, it's like what he's saying is, I'm paying attention to the wrong thing. Like I'm paying attention to the facial expressions and not to the content. And that I'm somebody who's in a world where my organization of my own experience is not following the rules that are sort of being dictated to me about how my experience is supposed to be organized. And that's sort of his predicament. So that's a thing that they like. And then there's a wonderful passage about how I keep trying to free myself from the social forces oppressing me. And I take away this noose that's around my neck. And as I'm doing it, I realize my hand is attached to a noose and it's pulling me. Like I'm the one who's doing, I'm the one who's suffocating myself all along when I'm trying to free myself from social forces, it's me who's doing the oppressing. Anyway, so those are some passages that we talk about that they like. They like it a lot. They have a lot less trouble making something of it than I had expected that they would.Henry: Is this because he, is he well-suited to the age of social media and phones and fragmented personalities and you're always 16 different people? Is it that kind of thing?Agnes: Partly it's the short texts. I mean, as I said, meeting a problem, right? And so, yeah. So like they like Nietzsche too, probably for the same reason, right? I mean, anything where the-Henry: The aphorism.Agnes: Yeah, exactly. Like no joke. You know, it's not the era for War and Peace. It's the era for the Nietzschean aphorism.Henry: This is so depressing. I thought this wasn't true.Agnes: Yeah, I think it's true. I like, I had a conversation with a student in my office yesterday about this and about how like just his own struggles with reading and how all his friends have the same problem. And, you know, I have made some suggestions and I think maybe I need to push them harder in terms of, you know, just university creating device-free spaces and then people having like, I think we have to view it the way we view exercise. Like none of us would exercise if we didn't force ourselves to exercise. And we use strategies to do it. Like, you know, you have a friend and you're going to go together or, you know, you make a habit of it or whatever. I mean, like, I think we just have to approach reading the same way. Just let's accept that we're in an environment that's hostile to reading and make it a priority and organize things to make it possible rather than just like pretending that there isn't a problem. But yeah, there is. And it's hard for us to see. So you're not as old as me, but I'm old enough that all of my reading habits were formed in a world without all of this, right? So of course it's way easier for me. Even I get distracted, but, you know, for me spending a couple of hours in the evening reading, that's like a thing I can do. But like a lot of people, okay, I was at a like tech, in a little tech world conference in California. And it was early in the morning and my husband wasn't awake yet. So I was just, and it was one of these conferences where there's like a little group room and then you have your own, like we had like a hotel room type room, but like then I would had to be in the room with my husband who was sleeping. I couldn't turn the light on. So it was early. I woke up at four. So I went to the group room just to read. And I'm sitting there reading and someone came up to me and they were like, I can't believe you're just sitting there like reading. I don't think I've seen someone read a book in, you know, he's like ever or something, maybe. I mean, he's a half my age. Like he's like, that's just not a thing that people do. And it was like, he's like, it's so on brand that you're reading, you know? But it's like, it's, I think it's just, it's much harder for people who have grown up with all of this stuff that is in some way hostile to the world of reading. Yeah, it's much harder for them than for us. And we should be reorganizing things to make it easier.Henry: Yeah, I get that. I'm just, I'm alarmed that they can't read, like the depth of Ivan Ilyich. It's like, I don't know, it's like 50 pages or.Agnes: Yeah, for one class, no.Henry: It's very short. It's very short.Agnes: That's not short. 50 pages is not short.Henry: It's an hour or two hours of reading.Agnes: It's like, yeah, between two and three. They also read slower because they don't read as much.Henry: Okay, but you know what I'm like…Agnes: Yeah, right, three hours of reading is a lot to assign for a class. Especially if, in my case, I always also assign philosophy. So it's not the only thing I'm assigning.Henry: Sure, sure, but they read the philosophy.Agnes: Same problem. I mean, it's not like some different problem, right? Same problem, and in fact, they are a little bit more inclined to read the fiction than the philosophy, but the point is the total number of pages is kind of what matters. And from that point of view, philosophy is at an advantage because we compress a lot into very few pages. So, but you know, and again, it's like, it's a matter of like, it's probably not of the level. So I can, you know, I can be more sure that in an upper level class, students will do the reading, but I'm also a little bit more inclined to assign literature in the lower level classes because I'm warming people up to philosophy. So, yeah, I mean, but I think it is alarming, like it should be alarming.Henry: Now, one of the exciting things about Open Socrates, which most people listening to this would have read my review, so you know that I strongly recommend that you all read it now, but it is all about dialogue, like real dialogue. And can we find some, you know, I don't want to say like, oh, can we find some optimism? But like, people are just going to be reading less, more phones, all this talk about we're going back to an oral culture. I don't think that's the right way to phrase it or frame it or whatever, but there's much more opportunity for dialogue these days like this than there used to be. How can Open Socrates, how can people use that book as a way of saying, I want more, you know, intellectual life, but I don't want to read long books? I don't want to turn this into like, give us your five bullet points, self-help Socrates summary, but what can we, this is a very timely book in that sense.Agnes: Yeah, I kind of had thought about it that way, but yeah, I mean, it's a book that says, intellectual life in its sort of most foundational and fundamental form is social, it's a social life, because the kinds of intellectual inquiries that are the most important to us are ones that we can't really conduct on our own. I do think that, I think that some, there is some way in which, like as you're saying, novels can help us a little bit sort of simulate that kind of interaction, at least some of the time, or at least put a question on the table. I sort of agree that that's possible. I think that in terms of social encounters doing it, there are also other difficulties though. Like, so it's, we're not that close to a Socratic world, just giving up on reading doesn't immediately put us into a Socratic world, let's put it that way. And for one thing, I think that there really is a difference between face-to-face interaction, on the one hand, where let's even include Zoom, okay, or phone as face-to-face in an extended sense, and then texting, on the other hand, where text interaction, where like texting back and forth would be, fall under texting, so would social media, Twitter, et cetera, that's sort of- Email. Email, exactly. And I'm becoming more, when I first started working on this book, I thought, well, look, the thing that Socrates cares about is like, when he says that philosophy is like, you know, when he rejects written texts, and he's like, no, what I want to talk back, I'm like, well, the crucial thing is that they can respond, whether they respond by writing you something down or whether they respond by making a sound doesn't matter. And I agree that it doesn't matter whether they make a sound, like for instance, if they respond in sign language, that would be fine. But I think it matters that there is very little lag time between the responses, and you never get really short lag time in anything but what I'm calling face-to-face interaction.Henry: Right, there's always the possibility of what to forestall on text. Yeah. Whereas I can only sit here for like 10 seconds before I just have to like speak.Agnes: Exactly, and I mean, 10 seconds, that's a wild exaggeration. So do you know what the actual number is? No. On average. Okay, the average amount of time that you're allowed to wait before responding to something I say is two tenths of a second, which, it's crazy, isn't it? Which, that amount of time is not enough time for, that is a one second pause is an awkward pause, okay? So two tenths of a second is not long enough time for the signal that comes at the end of my talking, so the last sound I make, let's say, to reach your ears and then get into your brain and be processed, and then you figure out what you want to say. It's not enough time, which means you're making a prediction. That's what you're doing when I'm talking. You're making a prediction about when I'm going to stop talking, and you're so good at it that you're on almost every time. You're a little worse over Zoom. Zoom screws us up a little bit, right? But this is like what our brains are built to do. This is what we're super good at, is kind of like interacting, and I think it's really important that it be a genuine interaction. That's what I'm coming to see, is that we learn best from each other when we can interact, and it's not obvious that there are those same interaction possibilities by way of text at the moment, right? I'm not saying there couldn't be, but at the moment, we rely on the fact that we have all these channels open to us. Interestingly, it's the lag time on the phone, like if we were talking just by phone, is about the same. So we're so good at this, we don't need the visual information. That's why I said phone is also face-to-face. I think phone's okay, even though a lot of our informational stream is being cut. We're on target in terms of the quick responses, and there's some way in which what happens in that circumstance is we become a unit. We become a unit of thinking together, and if we're texting each other and each of us gets to ponder our response and all that, it becomes dissociated.Henry: So this, I do have a really, I'm really interested in this point. Your book doesn't contain scientific information, sociological studies. It's good old-fashioned philosophy, which I loved, but if you had turned it into more of a, this is the things you're telling me now, right? Oh, scientists have said this, and sociologists have said that. It could have been a different sort of book and maybe been, in some shallow way, more persuasive to more people, right? So you clearly made a choice about what you wanted to do. Talk me through why.Agnes: I think that it's maybe the answer here is less deep than you would want. I think that my book was based on the reading I was doing in order to write it, and I wasn't, at the time, asking myself the kinds of questions that scientists could answer. Coming off of the writing of it, I started to ask myself this question. So for instance, that's why I did all this reading in sociology, psychology, that's what I'm doing now is trying to learn. Why is it that we're not having philosophical conversations all the time? It's a real question for me. Why are we not having the conversations that I want us to be having? That's an empirical question, at least in part, because it's like, well, what kinds of conversations are we having? And then I have to sort of read up on that and learn about how conversation works. And it's surprising to me, like the amount of stuff we know, and that it's not what I thought. And so I'm not, maybe I'm a little bit less hostile than most philosophers, just as I'm less hostile to fiction, but I'm also less hostile to sort of empirical work. I mean, there's plenty of philosophers who are very open to the very specific kind of empirical work that is the overlap with their specialization. But for me, it's more like, well, depending on what question I ask, there's just like, who is ready with answers to the question? And I will like, you know, kind of like a mercenary, I will go to those people. And I mean, one thing I was surprised to learn, I'm very interested in conversation and in how it works and in what are the goals of conversation. And of course I started with philosophical stuff on it, you know, Grice and Searle, speech act theory, et cetera. And what I found is that that literature does not even realize that it's not about conversation. I mean, Grice, like the theory of conversational implicature and you know, Grice's logic on conversation, it's like if you thought that making a public service announcement was a kind of conversation, then it would be a theory of conversation. But the way that philosophers fundamentally understand speech is that like, you know, speakers issue utterances and then somebody has to interpret that utterance. The fact that that second person gets to talk too is not like part of the picture. It's not essential to the picture. But if you ask a sociologist, what is the smallest unit of conversation? They are not going to say an assertion. They're going to say something like greeting, greeting or question answer or command obeying or, right? Conversation is like, there's two people who get to talk, not just one person. That seems like the most obvious thing, but it's not really represented in the philosophical literature. So I'm like, okay, I guess I got to say goodbye philosophers. Let me go to the people who are actually talking about conversation. You know, I of course then read, my immediate thought was to read in psychology, which I did. Psychology is a bit shallow. They just don't get to theorize. It's very accessible. It's got lots of data, but it's kind of shallow. And then I'm like, okay, the people who really are grappling with the kind of deep structure of conversation are sociologists. And so that's what I've been reading a lot of in the past, like whatever, two months or so. But I just wasn't asking myself these questions when I wrote the book. And I think the kinds of questions that I was asking were in fact, the kinds of questions that get answered or at least get addressed in philosophical texts. And so those were the texts that I refer to.Henry: So all the sociology you've read, is it, how is it changing what you think about this? Is it giving you some kind of answer?Agnes: It's not changing any, my view, but any of the claims in the book, that is the exact reason that you brought out. But it is making me, it's making me realize how little I understand in a sort of concrete way, what like our modern predicament is. That is, where are we right now? Like what's happening right now? Is the question I ask myself. And I get a lot of, especially in interviews about this book, I get a lot of like, well, given where things are right now, is Socrates very timely? Or how can Socrates help or whatever? And I'm like, I don't think we know where things are right now. That is that given that, where is it? Where is it that we are? And so part of what this kind of sociology stuff is making me realize is like, that's a much harder question than it appears. And even where do we draw the lines? Like, when did now start happening? Like my instinct is like, one answer is like around 1900 is when now started happening. And, and so like, so I guess I'm interested both at the very micro level, how does the conversational interaction work? What are the ways in which I am deciding in this very conversation, I'm deciding what's allowed to be in and what's not allowed to be in the conversation, right? By the moves I'm making, and you're doing the same. How are we doing that? How are we orchestrating, manipulating this conversation so as to dictate what's in it and what's out of it in ways that are like below the surface that we're not noticing, that we either that we are doing it or that we're doing it ourselves. Neither of us is noticing, but we're doing that. So that's at the micro level. And then at the macro level is the question about when did now start happening? And what are the big shifts in like the human experience? And, are we at a point somehow in human history where culture like as a mechanism of coordination is a little bit falling apart and then what's going to come next? That's like a kind of question that I have to put in that kind of vague way. So maybe the right thing to say is that reading all these sociology texts has like, has given me a sets of questions to ask. And maybe what I'm trying to do is, it's like, what my book does is it describes a kind of ideal. And it describes that ideal, you know, using the power of reason to see what would it take to sort of set us straight? What is the straightened version of the crooked thing that we're already doing? And I think that that's right, but that's not at all the same thing as asking the question like, what's our next step? How do we get there from here? That's the question I'm asking now. But part of trying to answer the question, how do we get there from here is like, where are we now? And where are we both very, very locally in an interaction, what are we doing? And then in a big picture way, where are we? What is the big, what is like, you know, in the Taylor Swift sense, what era are we in? And, you know, I guess I still feel like we are, we are living in the world of Fernando Pessoa, Robert Musso, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Hermann Bruch, Franz Kafka, like that set of writers, like around 1900-ish set of writers who didn't all know each other or anything, didn't coordinate, but they all, there was this like primal scream moment where they were like, what the hell is going on? What has happened to humanity? Where are the rules? Like, who are we supposed to be? I mean, of all of those, I would pull out Musso as like the paradigm example. So this is me, I guess, taking inspiration from literature again, where I feel like, okay, there's something there about we're lost. There's an expression of, there's a thought we're lost. And I'm trying to understand, okay, how did we get lost? And are we still in that state of being lost? I think yes. And let's get a clear, once we get very clear on how lost we are, we'll already start to be found. Cause that's sort of what it is to, you know, once you understand why you're lost, like that's situating yourself.Henry: Those writers are a long time ago.Agnes: Yeah, I said around 1900.Henry: Yeah, but you don't, you don't, but there's nothing more recent that like expresses, like that's a very long now.Agnes: Yeah. Well, yes, I agree. So I say, when did now start happening? I think it started happening around 1900. So I think-Henry: So are we stuck?Agnes: Yeah, kind of. I think, so here's like a very, he's like a very simple part of history that must be too simple because history is not, is like, it's very mildly not my strong suit. I can't really understand history. But it's like, there is this set of writers and they don't really tell stories. It's not their thing, right? They're not into plot, but they are issuing this warning or proclamation or crisis, like flashing thing. And then what happens? What happens after that? Well, World War I happens, right? And then, you know, not very long after that, we got World War II and especially World War II, the result of that is kind of, oh no, actually we know what good and bad are. It's like fighting Nazis, that's bad. And, you know, so we got it all settled. And, but it's like, it's like we push something under the rug, I guess. And I think we haven't dealt with it. We haven't dealt with this crisis moment. And so, you know, I think I could say something very similar about Knausgaard or something that is, I think he's kind of saying the same thing and his novel has a novel, whatever you want to call it, the, you know, I'm talking about the later one. That's the kind of weird sort of horror quadrilogy or something. It has this feeling of like trying to express a sense of being lost. So there's more recent stuff that, a lot of it's autofiction, the genre of autofiction has that same character. So yeah, like maybe there is some big progress that's been made since then, but if there is, then it has passed me by.Henry: Agnes: Callard, thank you very much. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe

With The Picture Not Taken: On Life and Photography (NYRB), Benjamin Swett brings us a subtly beautiful series of essays that explore memory and identity and what we really see in the viewfinder. We talk about the role of photography in his life, how Musil, Sebald, and Knausgaard and taught him to trust digressions, the freedom to be found in the essay, how working in the NYC Parks Dept. led him into some strange career choices, and the challenge (& reward) of photographing trees. We get into our respective rebellions against our fathers and linearity, the loss of his daughter and how her shadow looms over the book, his idea for a negative-autobiography and my own photo-text project, how his family felt about being included in the essays, and the moment he felt comfortable moving from film to digital. We also discuss his 9/11 and what it revealed to him about himself, how the constraint of Instagram captions can lead to good storytelling, the ~30-year gap he took to finish his MFA, the benefits of leaning in to awkwardness and self-revelation, and a lot more. Follow Benjamin on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard continues the story of a world where change is set in motion when a new star appears in the sky and the lives of those affected. Knausgaard joins us to talk about creating his many characters, crafting a narrative across many books, writing from points of transition and conflict and more with cohost, Jenna Seery. This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Jenna Seery and mixed by Harry Liang.                     New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app Featured Books (Episode): The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard My Struggle, Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard On Writing by Stephen King The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann The Names by Don DeLillo Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

I denne ukens sending av TBP, har tekstbehandlere Sarah Idsøe og Arthur Henriksen storfint besøk. I studio har de med seg redaktør i BLA, eller Bokvennen Litterær Avis, Sigrid Strømmen. Strømmen svarer på spørsmål om alt fra den daglige driften av et tidsskrift, til KI, format, og til BLM. Tematikken holder seg lettbeint, men samtidig informativ. Avslutningsvis snakker Arthur og Sarah om en tekst fra BLA angående Lord Byrons skandaler. I studio var Arthur Henriksen, Sarah Idsøe, og Sigrid Strømmen. På teknikk var Thien Quang Le. 

More than a decade after reaching worldwide acclaim with his six-volume autobiographical novel ‘My Struggle', the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard has returned to the fictional form in ‘The Morning Star' series. Knausgaard sat down with Gunnar Gronlid to talk about the latest entry ‘The Third Realm', embodying new perspectives and his fixation with death, family and freedom. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Matt Bucher interviews Matt Lowell of the band Lo Moon.  They discuss the genesis of Lo Moon's new hit song, "Water." Lowell shares how he discovered David Foster Wallace's writing and he also breaks down his collaborative writing process. Later, he digs into some of his literary influences and the two Matts discuss Salinger, Fitzgerald, Knausgaard, and more. You can order the new album on vinyl here: https://www.lomoonofficial.com/ and there you can learn more about Lo Moon's 2024 tour schedule here: https://lomoon.komi.io/.  Check out their private fan community, Raincoat Chronicles. You can keep up with Lo Moon on X: https://twitter.com/lomoon   Contact Dave & Matt:  Email - concavityshow@gmail.com Twitter - https://twitter.com/ConcavityShow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/concavityshow/ Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/concavityshow Threadless Merch Store - https://concavityshow.threadless.com/

Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard (b. 1968) became known in his home country - or at least its literary circles - when he put out two well-received novels in the late 1990s. But it was the publication of his six-volume autobiographical series Min Kamp, or My Struggle, that turned him into a household name - and when the books were translated into English in 2012, he became a worldwide publishing phenomenon. In this episode, Jacke talks to editor Bob Blaisdell about his own reading of Knausgaard, the experience of interviewing him, and the editing of the new book Conversations with Karl Ove Knausgaard, which collects twenty-two interviews with Knausgaard, all conducted as this curious and controversial writer was gaining worldwide attention. PLUS author Nicholas Dames (The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ep. 80: With philosopher, author, and Auerbach scholar Matthias Bormuth (b.1963), a professor of Comparative Intellectual History at University of Oldenburg. On Erich Auerbach's MIMESIS: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), and how it was influenced by the great Neapolitan thinker Giambattista Vico's NEW SCIENCE (1744). I first met Matthias at this Phillip Roth festival in Newark I wrote about back in March for the Paris Review: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/04/19/reading-myself-and-others-roth-festival-dispatch/ Giambattista Vico was born in Naples in 1668 and was a relatively unknown Professor of Rhetoric at the city's university. He'd work on and revise his ambitious work NEW SCIENCE throughout his life, publishing preliminary versions in 1725 and 1730, though it wasn't till his death in 1744 that the third and final version appeared. Vico's text, most of all his literal and historical view of Homer, would go on to hugely influence James Joyce's writing of Ulysses (a literal retelling of the Odyssey), along with other modernists. Erich Auerbach's 1946 work of literary criticism MIMESIS treats canonical texts from the Bible to Homer to Dante to Don Quixote to Zola up to Virginia Woolf as literal-historical writers trying to understand their time, only speaking from their provisional perspective, rather than as deific texts to unpack as divine providence. A German-Jew who fought for Germany in the first World War, Auerbach worked at a library from 1922-1929, during which time he translated Vico's NEW SCIENCE into German for the first time. Matthias and I try to unpack the connection between these two texts, and to find the relevance between them and our current age. Some notes: Overview of Giambattista Vico (4:22); Auerbach's early years following World War One translating Vico (9:24); Auerbach on Zola's Germinal (40:22); Matthias's critique of Heidegger (50:22); writing as Letter Writing / Auerbach's letters (1:07:33); Matthias on Knausgaard (1:11:55).

Karl Ove Knausgaard is the author of the novel The Wolves of Eternity, available from Penguin Press. Translated by Martin Aitken. Knausgaard's My Struggle cycle of novels is one of this century's most celebrated works of literature and it has been heralded as a masterpiece all over the world. Over the course of his career, Karl Ove has been awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature, the Brage Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. His work, which also includes the novels The Morning Star, Out of the World, A Time for Everything and the Seasons Quartet, has been published in thirty-five languages. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram  YouTube TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lee Klein https://www.litfunforever.com/about/ @leeklein0 twitter @lee.klein_ Instagram Buy Chotic Good here: @saggingmeniscus https://www.saggingmeniscus.com/catalog/chaotic_good/ Gateway Books Peter Pan. Where the Wild Things Are. The Big Book of Jokes and RiddlesBlack Stallion series. D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. Gary Gygax (D&D)  Judy Blume's ForeverNarnia/LOTRs (competitively read)Sherlock HolmesThe Bounty Trilogy (Mutiny on the Bounty)Count of Monte Cristo  Gatsby, Prufrock, The WastelandBorges (in Spanish)Crime and Punishment (2x)Narcissus and Goldmund   Steppenwolf, Demian, Siddhartha, Journey to the EastKafka storiesKerouac (Subterraneans, Dharma Bums, Big Sur)One Flew Over the Cuckoo's NestFear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, The Doors of Perception, Island Another Roadside Attraction and Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, Deadeye Dick)The Crying of Lot 49Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Stories by Terry SouthernThe Beat Reader – Burroughs, Corso, Ginsberg >> Blake  BelovedLight in AugustSee Under: Love (Grossman -> Bruno Schulz)Maus (graphic novels, Raw vols 1 and 2, Richard McGuire, Here)Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog/Adventures in the Skin Trade (Dylan Thomas) The Tin Drum, A Personal Matter, The Box Man, Carver, Steinbeck short novels, Hamsun (Hunger), Cheever stories, Auster, Beckett, Kafka, Handke, Artaud, Barthelme, Maupassant, Chekhov, TC Boyle, Philip Roth, Sontag essays, Ulysses, Moby Dick DFW essays, Mark Leyner, DeLillo, Moody, The Recognitions, George Saunders, Pnin, The Last Samurai, Bernhard, Sebald, Gogol stories, Salinger stories, Geoff Dyer, Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials)    War and Peace, Proust, Musil, Mann, Hamsun Bolano (Between Parentheses) Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk, Houellebecq, Enard, Gracq, Perec, Zweig, Grace Paley, Hrabal, Aira, The Waves   Currently reading Ute Av Verden, Knausgaard (in Norsk)  Reader's Block, Markson Henri Cartier-Bresson interviews Ubik, Philip K. Dick Looking forward to Middlemarch, Trollope The Wolves of Eternity, KOK MJ Nicholls stories  Steinbeck (shorter novels)  The rest of Hrabal in English (four books) Cormac McCarthy (his first four books) BTZ-inspired purchases: Monument Maker (David Keenan), The Salt Line (Shimoni), The Logos (Mark de Silva), Traveler of the Century and How to Travel Without Seeing (Andreas Neuman), The Kindly Ones (Littel), Too Much Life (Lispecter), Kafka Diaries Recently read All of Us Together in the End, Matthew Vollmer Bang Bang Crash, Nic Brown All Dag Solstad in English (Novel 11, Book 18) All Tomas Espedal in English (Love, Tramp) I Served the King of England, Hrabal  The Belan Deck, Matt Bucher Annie Ernaux (Happening, A Man's Place, I Remain in Darkness) Philip Roth (Zuckerman Unbound, Patrimony, The Facts, The Counterlife) The Magus, John Fowles Desert Island Books   The Birds, Tarjei Vesaas (Archipelago)Weight of the World, Handke  A Time to Live and a Time to Die, Erich Maria Remarque Garden, Ashes, Danilo Kis A Balcony in the Forest, Julien GracqA Musical Offering, Luis Sagasti (Charco, Fionn Petch)Atomik Aztex, Sesshu Foster (Grove Press)Amazons, Cleo Birdwell (DeLillo)A Time for Everything, KOK (Archipelago)Joseph and His Brothers, Thomas Mann (John E. Woods translation; Modern Library)  

Nicolás es uno de los editores de Nexos. Estudió Filosofía en Yale y Escritura Creativa en la Universidad de Iowa. En su segunda visita al Telescopio hablamos sobre guitarristas mormones, Foster Wallace, canciones neoyorquinas, la épica, Knausgaard y Nick Cave.

In this episode with cult fave 6'4" writer SAM KRISS, all motifs are on the table - literally. Drew has been heroically managing dry January by replacing alcohol with weird food and on the Wednesday evening we gathered at the Park Slope Manse, he presented Sam and Lauren with the most deranged assortment of snacks imaginable. As we loudly munched our way through the spread (to the great delight of audiophile listeners, we're sure), the madness of the snacks began to infect us, resulting in folie a trois to remember. cheat sheet: 2:00 - Drew itemizes our meal and Sam explains how it's possible to be British and Jewish at the same time. 46:00 - Sam delivers a startlingly lucid lecture on Kristeva's the sign and the symbol and explains how, hopefully, literature is headed back to the Middle Ages. This has to do with Knausgaard! 1:30:00 - We declare Sam to be the UK's new Blurber in Chief and Sam flawlessly impersonates American TikTok teens. 2:00:00 - Complete madness sets in at this point; not sure what we were talking about here. Many thanks to Sam for joining us! Listeners: Feedback about the audio quality is NOT welcome. PLUGS: Subscribe to Sam's substack Help us enliven our snack budget with mischief --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod/message

Why do we read? In this essay, the Norwegian author explores meaning and purpose in the novel, from the work of Claire Keegan to Dostoevsky and DH Lawrence. The form's power lies in its openness, he writes, its capacity to defy the absolutes of politics, philosophy or science: “It pulls any abstract conception about life… into the human sphere, where it no longer stands alone but collides with myriad impressions, thoughts, emotions and actions.” Knausgaard considers how best to achieve this – through the emotional realism of Lawrence, or the more experiential modernism of Joyce and Woolf? For the latter two, “it was about getting near to the moment – and in the moment there is no story, only actions and thoughts”. It is also about eschewing big themes or strongly-held opinions, and instead “striving towards an actionless state of being”. Persuasively argued, and rooted in close readings – particularly of Keegan's Small Things Like These – this is an edited version of the 2022 New Statesman/Goldsmiths Prize Lecture, delivered at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on 22 October. It was first published in the New Statesman magazine on 28 October; you can read the text version here. Written by Karl Ove Knausgaard and read by Tom Gatti.If you enjoyed this listen to How to grow old in AmericaPodcast listeners can subscribe to the New Statesman for just £1 a week for 12 weeks using our special offer. Just visit newstatesman.com/podcastoffer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Scraping training data for your mind, published by Henrik Karlsson on September 21, 2022 on LessWrong. 2432 pages into Karl Ove Knausgaard's autobiographical My Struggle comes a pivotal plot point: the publication of a new Proust translation in Norwegian. Knausgaard at this point, in his mid-twenties, has spent nearly ten years learning to write. Without success, to put it mildly. His best friend, Tore Renberg, having read the results, in one scene comes over to Knausgaard's flat, looking a little as if he has been drinking before he arrived to work up his nerve. “But Karl Ove”, Renberg says about his writing, “there is. nothing there”. This isn't the first time we've seen how people react to Knausgaard's prose. Earlier in the book, when he is working as a teacher in a remote fishing village in northern Norway, Knausgaard comes home to find his colleagues laughing while reading a sex scene he's written. Knausgaard—still a virgin—walks straight through the kitchen into his study, where he downs a full bottle of wine in one go and proceeds to throw up all over the bookcase. But Renberg's criticism cuts deeper. Renberg, who is younger than Knausgaard, has already become an accomplished writer and knows what he's talking about. There really is nothing there. So Knausgaard stops writing. When the new translation of Prouts's In Search of Lost Time is published he has not written for two years. In the spring light, he reads Proust's memoirs, all seven of them, in one big gulp like “drinking a glass of water”. He has said it was like “visiting a wood you have been in before, a long time ago . . . and when you start walking, the memories start coming back”. After that epiphany . . . he spends another two years not writing. That is about 200 pages of his autobiography. Then, for inexplicable reasons, an editor at Tiden, a subsidiary of Norway's biggest publishing house, an editor who, like everyone else, is unconvinced by Knausgaard's writing, decides that, well, why not give him a book deal anyway. Knausgaard abandons everything, moves back to his mother's town, Arendal, and sets out to write a debut novel. He doesn't know what to write about. He overhears a conversation in the library, writes it down, and then wings it from there. The novel turns into a story about a 26-year-old teacher, Henrik Vankel. Like many debuts, it is hard to not read as autobiographical—which becomes all the tenser as the plot centers on the sexual relationship Vankel has with his 13-year-old pupil Miriam in a small fishing village identical to the one where Knausgaard taught in northern Norway. The book was an immediate critical and financial success. One reason for the success was that the writing is pure Proust. Coursing through every sentence of Ude af verden, like a virus, is the Proustian sensibility, the obsession with time and memory, the rich and clear language. Knausgaard claims he wasn't aware of the influence at the time—but something about The Search for Lost Time had worked itself into him, rearranging his sensibilities. Over the two years when he did not write, his writing had transformed. This is quite common for writers. Reading something powerful, the voice infects them. Sometimes this is a weakness, if the influence has not been transformed into something personal. But there is also no way around it: finding good influences is a prerequisite for writing well. Some writers do this very deliberately. Werner Herzog will spend days reading the Poetic Edda and listening to classical music at full volume to get himself into what he calls an “ecstasy of language” before writing a script. John Frusciante, as we discussed in the last part of this series, does something similar when writing songs. Let's call this scraping good training data for your mind. It is an important skill. Too often...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Scraping training data for your mind, published by Henrik Karlsson on September 21, 2022 on LessWrong. 2432 pages into Karl Ove Knausgaard's autobiographical My Struggle comes a pivotal plot point: the publication of a new Proust translation in Norwegian. Knausgaard at this point, in his mid-twenties, has spent nearly ten years learning to write. Without success, to put it mildly. His best friend, Tore Renberg, having read the results, in one scene comes over to Knausgaard's flat, looking a little as if he has been drinking before he arrived to work up his nerve. “But Karl Ove”, Renberg says about his writing, “there is. nothing there”. This isn't the first time we've seen how people react to Knausgaard's prose. Earlier in the book, when he is working as a teacher in a remote fishing village in northern Norway, Knausgaard comes home to find his colleagues laughing while reading a sex scene he's written. Knausgaard—still a virgin—walks straight through the kitchen into his study, where he downs a full bottle of wine in one go and proceeds to throw up all over the bookcase. But Renberg's criticism cuts deeper. Renberg, who is younger than Knausgaard, has already become an accomplished writer and knows what he's talking about. There really is nothing there. So Knausgaard stops writing. When the new translation of Prouts's In Search of Lost Time is published he has not written for two years. In the spring light, he reads Proust's memoirs, all seven of them, in one big gulp like “drinking a glass of water”. He has said it was like “visiting a wood you have been in before, a long time ago . . . and when you start walking, the memories start coming back”. After that epiphany . . . he spends another two years not writing. That is about 200 pages of his autobiography. Then, for inexplicable reasons, an editor at Tiden, a subsidiary of Norway's biggest publishing house, an editor who, like everyone else, is unconvinced by Knausgaard's writing, decides that, well, why not give him a book deal anyway. Knausgaard abandons everything, moves back to his mother's town, Arendal, and sets out to write a debut novel. He doesn't know what to write about. He overhears a conversation in the library, writes it down, and then wings it from there. The novel turns into a story about a 26-year-old teacher, Henrik Vankel. Like many debuts, it is hard to not read as autobiographical—which becomes all the tenser as the plot centers on the sexual relationship Vankel has with his 13-year-old pupil Miriam in a small fishing village identical to the one where Knausgaard taught in northern Norway. The book was an immediate critical and financial success. One reason for the success was that the writing is pure Proust. Coursing through every sentence of Ude af verden, like a virus, is the Proustian sensibility, the obsession with time and memory, the rich and clear language. Knausgaard claims he wasn't aware of the influence at the time—but something about The Search for Lost Time had worked itself into him, rearranging his sensibilities. Over the two years when he did not write, his writing had transformed. This is quite common for writers. Reading something powerful, the voice infects them. Sometimes this is a weakness, if the influence has not been transformed into something personal. But there is also no way around it: finding good influences is a prerequisite for writing well. Some writers do this very deliberately. Werner Herzog will spend days reading the Poetic Edda and listening to classical music at full volume to get himself into what he calls an “ecstasy of language” before writing a script. John Frusciante, as we discussed in the last part of this series, does something similar when writing songs. Let's call this scraping good training data for your mind. It is an important skill. Too often...

I Oslo vokser en skov, der skal blive til en antologi, som skal udgives om 100 år og er skrevet af samtidens største forfatternavne. Skoven giver håb om at børn i dag og endnu ufødte generationer har en fremtid på jorden og en tro på, at vores handlinger i dag nytter. Hør Tyra Dokkedahls essay læst op af Josefine Maria Hansen. Tilrettelæggelse og klip: Josefine Maria Hansen

Hivatása a szépirodalom. Szegő János, már több mint egy évtizede a Magvető Kiadó szerkesztője. Olyan szerzőkkel dolgozhatott eddig együtt, mint Bereményi Géza, Krasznahorkai László, Parti-Nagy Lajos vagy Konrád György, de szerkeszthette a kortárs világirodalom megkerülhetetlen szerzői közül Knausgaard és Houellebecq könyveit is. Tolla erősen fog ha kell, szerinte ugyanis az írókkal közösen meghozott döntések, kivétel nélkül a könyv érdekében születnek. A szerkesztői munkafolyamatok kulisszái mellett, meghatározó szakmai élményekről és a jó ideje már általa szerkesztett Szép Versek sorozatról is mesél. Éppen ezért ajánl tizenöt újonnan megjelent verseskötetet Nyáry Krisztián, az epizód elején pedig az Ünnepi Könyvhéten átadott díjakról és díjazottakról lesz szó.

Hivatása a szépirodalom. Szegő János, már több mint egy évtizede a Magvető Kiadó szerkesztője. Olyan szerzőkkel dolgozhatott eddig együtt, mint Bereményi Géza, Krasznahorkai László, Parti-Nagy Lajos vagy Konrád György, de szerkeszthette a kortárs világirodalom megkerülhetetlen szerzői közül Knausgaard és Houellebecq könyveit is. Tolla erősen fog ha kell, szerinte ugyanis az írókkal közösen meghozott döntések, kivétel nélkül a könyv érdekében születnek. A szerkesztői munkafolyamatok kulisszái mellett, meghatározó szakmai élményekről és a jó ideje már általa szerkesztett Szép Versek sorozatról is mesél. Éppen ezért ajánl tizenöt újonnan megjelent verseskötetet Nyáry Krisztián, az epizód elején pedig az Ünnepi Könyvhéten átadott díjakról és díjazottakról lesz szó.

***TICKETS ARE NOW AVAILABLE FOR OUR 6/2 LIVE SHOW! EVENTBRITE LINK HERE*** -KGB is a very small venue and we've already sold 60% of the tickets so if you want to see our first and likely last ever live show, do buy your ticket ASAP! -Friends of the show Christian Lorentzen and Dean Kissick are confirmed as guests. And there will probably be 1 to 2 additional mystery guests ;) ------------------------------------ WE'RE BACK! And this time joined by Peter C. Baker, another novelist dad who supplicated to us. Petey C. made an agenda for his OS appearance, to which we dutifully adhered, although we skipped the item about fatherhood, because -- BORING! Instead we spent probably an hour talking about his tenure at Wendy's, an American fast food franchise. Also can't remember if we let him mention this but Petey has a novel coming out 5/31 and it's called PLANES. The blurbs on the back of my galley copy are too long to read but I feel like they probably say the book is good, so you should buy it. cheat sheet: 0:00 - Drew, clean-shaven and clear-headed, recounts in Knausgaardian fashion his weekend at home in Boston with mom. 11:29 - Petey tells us of his three summers as a Wendy's employee in central Pennsylvania, which led to his first byline - call it a "coming of flippable age story" 44:23 - Lauren, Petey and Drew have a real Gen-x style nerd-out session about indie bands - namely Destroyer and Belle and Sebastian, the latter of which Petey recently wrote about in the New Yorker magazine. We hear about an epic B&S concert Petey saw in Battery Park City in the summer of 2007, a time in which Petey was incidentally subletting Christian Lorentzen's room on the LES, dipping into Christian's Pynchons and "smashing life." 1:26:20 - We finally get to Petey's beef with us (agenda item #4): our oft-repeated claim that Knausgaard is "unmediated." We seriously explore this question for about 3 minutes before getting into Pete's back pain and Phillip Rawdog's Halcion psychosis. Thanks to Petey! See you on the squash court soon homie. And see the rest of you - AT THE LIVE SHOW!!!! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod/message

We're back! And joined by Felix Biederman, a promising young podcaster recently arrived in Los Angeles whom we condescended to let on the show. Although by no means a "bookhead" -- to appropriate his charming coinage -- Felix is a longtime fan of Karl Ove Knausgaard. The Norwegian author became a source of strength for Felix when he first encountered the Struggle books in 2017 amidst an increasingly cloying digital media landscape. With startling lucidity, Felix articulates how Knasugaard, with his undifferentiated and unselfserving stream of thoughts, served as a welcome anecdote to the insanely hypertargeted and overdetermined first person essay boom of the time (should she have pitched a piece about what it's like to be a quarter Portuguese woman in America? Lauren wonders). Then we get into the text: specifically pages 88-94 of book 2, which cover about five minutes of Knausgaard stalking around Stockholm with the stroller and having thoughts. We try to understand Knausgaard's aversion to being recognized as a "regular" as a coffee shop (and utter mortification at being presented with a free croissant) and Felix recounts his stint in cafe society (the LES Dunkin Donuts) as a young man. Also: we discover Knausgaard to have invented main character/NPC discourse, and consider the 2005 fashion trend of knee high black boots for women, which Knausgaard wishes "would last forever" (cruel hindsight: it didn't). If you enjoyed this episode with Felix, make sure to check out his podcast, "Chapo Trap House" As always we can be reached at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com; deohringer@gmail.com LIVE SHOW IS THURS JUN 2 @ KGB BAR. Tickets are not available yet but will be soon. We'll send out an email blast! Mugs are available at ourstruggle.store. Discount code MISTAKE valid for one week! Oh and congratulations to our baby Joshua Cohen (novelist) on his Pulitzer win, which we like to think we are in some part if not all responsible for. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod/support

The valiant crews of the Earth Space Force rockets Vanguard and Knausgaard start a Martin-Earth Space War, an event too big for the font we chose for the title of this episode!

We're still alive! And at the incessant nagging of the Our Struggle Office of Diversity and Inclusion, joined by Canadian woman writer Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?, Motherhood, and the newly out PURE COLOUR (note the canadian spelling). This was a great episode - we didn't talk about Knausgaard so much (although Sheila had a good story about hanging with the man at an Australian continental breakfast), or even Craft (although there was some craft chat), but you all know the drill by now -- the pleasure is in the digression etc. Thanks so much to our new friend Sheila for coming on the show! Look forward to hanging in Toronto soon with Margaret, Alice and the whole gang

Story 14 from 'A Lifetime Doing Nothing' by Ian McCrorie. Many of us are busy with the business of being busy, and Knausgaard was no exception. His writing explores the busyness of his mind, especially with how he deals with his family. He explores the conditioned mind with objective honesty. Being busy can often be an affirmation of our status... narrated by Ian McCrorie 2022 3 minutes 38 seconds Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (2.5MB) Audio copyright, 2021 Pariyatti 'A Lifetime Doing Nothing' as a book and eBook can be found at https://store.pariyatti.org/a-lifetime-doing-nothing. More by Ian McCrorie. View more books and audio resources available in the Pariyatti bookstore.

The crews of the Earth Space Force rockets Vanguard and Knausgaard confront "Administrative Evil"!

WE'RE BACK! In the Our Struggle Pod season 3 premiere, L&D are joined by the author, critic, panelist, flaneur, enfant terrible and Ratatouille character inspiration, the giant (confirmed 6'5") of British letters, Mr Will Self. In this barn burner of an episode, Will talked to us about why he has no time for his fellow towering autofictionist Karl Ove Knausgaard (Will has recently come out with a memoir, titled, perversely, Will, rather than Self). But we also talked about a litany of other, related things: Henry James' mangled penis, namely; as well as trauma, and silent film, and social media, and a youthful frisson with Morrissey. We think you're going to like this one, listener! cheat sheet: 14:56 - We begin discussing Will's recent Harper's cover essay Against Trauma, which argues that trauma is not an anthropological constant but rather a thoroughly modern phenomenon with a vintage as recent as the industrial revolution. Trauma is something we experience when our "technological bubble" bursts, as in a railway crash, or a pandemic in the first world. How might this argument help explain why Lauren feels so fucking traumatized by her phone (but not the time she was attacked on the subway) and Drew anxiety spirals whenever a girl doesn't text him back? And what has liberal humanism to do with all of this? 43:00 - Lauren and Drew seek feebly to defend Karl Ove against Will's penetrating intellect and girthy (ENORMOUS) vocabulary. "There's something monstrous about him, the lack of poetry," Will intones, and L&D struggle to disagree. Does the popularity of Knausgaard reflect the triumph, in the social media age, of Content over Style? Will makes a compelling case. 1:12:43 - We get in to some interesting points about narrativity and the self raised in Will's essay about memoir and autofiction (published here in the Guardian, although the uncut version he sent us, and which we quote from is a bit different FYI). Will, after Strawson, dismisses the contemporary shibboleth that the "self is a perpetually rewritten story," and yet his Harper's essay seems to rest on the premise that trauma is what results from narrative collapse. In response to this critique Will makes an interesting distinction between narrative and "strong narrative," the latter of which sees telling one's story as a sort of moral duty... Thank you so much to Will for coming on the show! --- HOUSEKEEPING STRUGGLE MUGS WENT INTO PRODUCTION LAST WEEK! If you want us to send you one as soon as they're ready, considering ordering one (or two) at our store here. I kept the price at 20 dollars because it turned out my production costs were lower than i thought and I felt bad that shipping is so much. UK listeners: Hang tight! It seems we have found a bookstore across the pond to distribute for us. Watch this space... As always you can get in touch with us: teixeira.lauren@gmail.com; deohringer@gmail.com Until next time -- --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod/support

It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in Sørlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar, the journalist Jostein is out on the town, and his wife Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence. Over these days in August, the characters the novel follows will each understand what is happening differently, and all face new struggles in their own lives. The Morning Star, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, is a novel about what we do not understand, about great drama seen through the limited lens of little lives. But first and foremost, it is a novel about what happens when the dark forces in the world are set free. Knausgaard is joined in this Live Crowdcast episode by Brandon Taylor. The episode was recorded on September 28, 2021.  _______________________________________________   Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski. Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang. Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

Karl Ove Knausgaard's series of autobiographical novels published in English as My Struggle propelled him to international fame, near universal acclaim and not a little controversy. His latest book The Morning Star (Penguin Press) is both a radical departure from that series, and a return to fiction as we traditionally know it. A group of holidaymakers in southern Norway witness the sudden and mysterious appearance of a new star, with consequences far beyond what they, or anybody else, could have predicted. Knausgaard is in conversation with journalist Jake Kerridge. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

WE'RE BACK! After a long illness, Drew returns to the zoom stage and helps Lauren to heartily welcome certified Knausgaard expert Professor Claus Andersen to the pod for an extremely, almost disconcertingly, on-topic episode. itemization: 0:00 - molasses cookies; Boston trauma; struggle mug plug (preorder yours today! link to store) 31:40 - we welcome Claus; gnomes; Lauren's dumb q's about scandi colonial history; Sweden's covid response 53:33 - why is norway such a literary powerhouse; Knausgaard family history; Knausgaard publication history; Knausgaard finances 1:28:40 - Geir Angell Øygarden homosocial relationship; portrayal of Linda; 'V' structure of Book 2 1:40:40 - form/formlessness of My Struggle 1:59:00 - more dumb q's about scandi stereotypes 2:14:20 - why knausgaard late to fapping Thank you so much to Claus for sharing his knowledge with us and gamely answering our dumbest questions! We look forward to having him back on soon. Wishing you a happy this holiday season ~ our struggle team --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod/support

Lauren Teixeira. @lrntex https://www.laurenteixeira.com Our Struggle Podcast @OurStrugglePod https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod Gateway Book Tintin - Herge Usagi Yojimbo- Stan Sakai Currently Reading /Recently enjoyed /Looking forward tp Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge Play Fire - Vladimir Nabokov Vox - Nicholson Baker Red Harvest Dashiel Hammet Tintin and the Secret of Literature - Tom McCarthy Morning Star - Knausgaard Anthony Powell - Dance to the Music of Time Top 10 The Quiet American - Grahame Green Mating - Norman Rush Pride and Predjuice - Jane Austen North and South. - Elizabeth Gasell Jayne Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Karla Trilogy by John le Carré · Book 1 · Shelve Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy · Book 2 · Shelve The Honourable Schoolboy · Book 3 · Shelve Smiley's People From Heaven Lake - Vikram Seth Tintin - Prisoners of the sun Herge' Our Struggle Volume 1 - Knausgaard

Lee discusses Tom Ford cologne, the new Franzen and Knausgaard novels, why pharmacists are the epidemiologists of medicine, growing up on Ritalin, homelessness in NYC, Philip Roth novels, and the idiotic new Sopranos movie. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theleeshow/support

Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard is best known for the autobiographical series “My Struggle.” The six volumes total more than 3,000 pages. And the books manage to be both epic and intimate. In them, Knausgaard meticulously catalogs the minor details of his daily life, like cleaning his father's house and checking out books at the library.  He also tackles fundamental questions about existence -- laying bare his personal relationships and anxieties about family, career, and purpose. The stories move slowly and calmly and their effect on the reader can be almost hypnotic. On September 23, 2021, Karl Ove Knausgaard spoke to Judson True about his newest book, a novel called The Morning Star.

After a run of guests who are total sweethearts in addition to being huge fans of the show & Knausgaard, Lauren and Drew, longing for some friction, welcome the notorious sex writer & Knausgaard skeptic Delicious Tacos to the pod. Turns out the pseudonymous de Sade actually bears a lot of similarities to Knaus (albeit much hornier) - but can L&D convince DT that KOK is actually pretty OK? cheat sheet: 0:00 - Drew expatiates on the Jewish summer camp ritual of "Minty Balls" 9:20 - DT shows up and and we transition quite seamlessly from Minty Balls to Prostate Nodule. Prayers up for DT. 27:43 - Lauren tries to situate DT within the Every Man/Underground Man spectrum (or is it a dichotomy? who gives a shit) and we somehow end up talking about Evangelion and Sally Rooney 40:57 - Lauren critiques DT's (disturbingly?) ripped physique and Drew tries to liken DT's relentless winnowing of his own form to the relentless reduction and editing that powers his prose as evident in his tightly-structured novel FINALLY, SOME GOOD NEWS 1:18:42 - Lauren makes the mistake of inviting DT to join us for the first ever OUR STRUGGLE PERSONALS SECTION. Thank you to Delicious Tacos! We had a great time & we sincerely hope the diagnosis is benign. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ourstrugglepod/support

Autumn, a collection of essays  by Karl Ove Knausgaard, is Jay's pick on this episode. Will the book become Phil's gateway drug to other Knausgaard collections or do Autumn's leaves blow away in the wind of criticism? (That sounded better in my head)And how does Phil manage to bring baseball into the conversation...yet again?If you enjoy listening to the podcast and have some ideas for books that you'd like us to recommend for each other,  leave us feedback on Facebook or at dogearedandcracked.caWe are also on Twitter now...@dogeared_pod

Surely one of our most Knausgaardian episodes yet - we spent four hours last Sunday afternoon - a rainy, unseasonably cold day in the mid-Atlantic - chatting with brilliant art critic and prolific croissant eater Dean Kissick. Manhattan traffic hummed outside of Dean's window, we took a yogurt break followed by a coffee break, there was a brief drama involving an overheated MacBook computer, and we of course witnessed Dean don and doff his Argyle sweater no less than three times (although we did not catch a glimpse of his supposed abs). This was the last episode recorded before we became boldface names in Vanity Fair so treasure it - we fully plan to go whole-hog on vacuous literary world prestige mongering in coming episodes! TECHNICAL NOTE: You will notice a whirring sound around one hour ten but it gets fixed after a few minutes (Dean cools off his computer) so if you're one of those audio freaks who always complains about sound quality just push through, or alternatively, get a life cheat sheet: 0:00 - A namecheck of the Dominique Ansel bakery (sponsor of the pod) somehow leads into a discussion of LinkedIn stalking and how LinkedIn is in fact the most Knausgaardian of the social networks. 19:15 - Dean, a hardcore strugglehead, recounts his initiation into the word of Knausgaard and explains how the books changed his life. We try to figure out what Knausgaard means by "form" (all literature "must submit to form"? but why does MS not seem to submit to anything) and meanwhile uncover a barnyard motif in this passage involving sheep, sheepdogs, ducks and more. Also: some inside baseball on the secret affinity between alt-lit and raw milk. 1:09:00 - We begin talking about what is probably the most important idea in the My Struggle series (or at least the first two books), a concept Knausgaard most often refers to as "longing" but is often associated or synonymous with "inexhaustibility," "boundlessness," "the unmentionable." What is the Longing? What does it have to do with death, with art, with basement jackoff parlors (of the sort so vividly detailed in this passage)? 1:24:00 - Touching off from Knausgaard's famous passage about the Constable sketch of the clouds, Dean brilliantly articulates Knausgaard's particular taste in art and explains why he thinks Knausgaard is one of the best art critics today. What does Knausgaard have that art criticism in general has lost? And what does his predilection for "naive" objective realist landscapes have to do with his own writing project? 2:06:00 - Dean takes us through what we believe to be the culmination of the passage, Knausgaard's meditation on discovery and exploration. The whole world has been "experienced" through representations, making it seem smaller, and thus enclosed, unenchanted, incestuous. How has the endless flood of images stunted art and literature? Is there anything left outside of the algorithm? Dean has some optimistic answers! 2:25:00 - We plan our upcoming live struggle session in Koreatown and Dean gives a glowing review of our upcoming t-shirts Thank you for listening!! As always you can reach out to us (but please be more deferential now that we're Vanity Fair stars) at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com or deohringer@gmail.com.  We love hearing from listeners! OUTRO - BINGO DOG SONG BY FLICKBOX NURSERY RHYMES  

After a run of well-received episodes with prestigious guests and a Bookforum mention we are ready for our slow decline! It's just us boys on this pod, testing out our new mics and recording software, beginning to drift imperceptibly away from our lo-fi roots & thus our scruffy charm and ultimately, our integrity. But for now we're talking about trauma! As listeners who follow us on so-called Twitter probably know, Lauren was attacked on the Metro by a mentally ill man a couple weeks ago and wrote a very famous 4000 word essay about  it in the style of Knausgaard, kind of. ALSO: We finally return to the Book and finish Part One, a miracle praise Adonai. HOUSEKEEPING: We have a google voice number now for you to leave messages for our eventual call-in episode.  It is 443-584-6486 cheat sheet: 0:00 - Lauren is eating a gluten free snickerdoodle; Drew reflects on his appreciation of the Steppe and its peoples. 9:30 - The trauma unpacking begins; Lauren ever so briefly lets down her defenses, reveals a crack in her facade or a chink in her armor, or is it a soft underbelly? At any rate vulnerability is definitely momentarily glimpsed. Drew interviews Lauren about her anti-trauma-essay and Lauren uses the phrase "brain colonized by X" about 8,000,000 times. 40:00 - Drew reflects on his recent trauma of being initiated into the "dripping wound" that is Twitter. We try to probe what exactly makes Twitter so alienating and upsetting - why is it not a utopian collaborative literary exercise? Something to do maybe with commodification or narcissism, two intimately linked phenomena of course.... 57:00 - We have our first struggle session in a long time (bless me Father for I have sinned); Karl Ove takes Hanne to the DSA meeting; springtime arrives but not in an annoying way; Karl Ove attends his father's weird divorced Midsommar-like party/ritual and Part One ends. What a ride! Thanks so much for listening! As always feel free to reach out with your questions, comments, and expressions of concern/solidarity at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com or deohringer@gmail.com. And do stay tuned for a special guest next week...... OUTRO: The Stranglers- Golden Brown

Critic Leo Robson is our erudite and eloquent guide as we lose ourselves in the estuaries and marshes of Henry James’s sinuous “blue river of truth.” We begin in the archives of Leo’s G-chat and Whatsapp messages, where he first heard--and ignored--whispers of KOK’s boundless literary project. His indifference breaks down, however, after he and friend of the pod Christian Lorentzen take a desultory post-stag-party walk through Barcelona. A lugubrious Leo, sick of John Berger’s Marxist reading of Picasso, opens his Blackberry to find that James Wood has written an essay on Perr Petersen, which makes him think of that other Norwegian, the one with the endless maybe-novel underway, which leads him back to Lauren and Drew, who discover their friendship is coterminous with My Struggle’s publication history: they met, devoted listeners will know, over a drunken discussion about The Queen is Dead in summer 2010, just after Volume 1 had appeared on American Shores. Where are they now,  in their actual reading of My Struggle itself? Leo asks. “I don’t fucking know,” says Lauren.  Leo’s self-described “big data” survey of Knausgaardiana elicits comparisons between chronological expansions and contractions in My Struggle and Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood”--are these examples of “big data” narratives? Richard Brody will soon be coming on the pod soon to anatomize Linklater’s use of time.   Leo suggests that Harold Brodkey and Adam Mars-Jones might be seen as Knausgaard’s precursors in the aesthetic tradition of what Wood lyrically deemed “autopsied minutiae” and “psycho-pointillism” (Lauren jeers at the latter term).  Drew takes this opportunity to proclaim Brodkey his “hero.” Drew and Leo discuss a near-mythical public conversation between James Wood and Brodkey, held in London in 1991. Link: https://sounds.bl.uk/Arts-literature-and-performance/ICA-talks/024M-C0095X0801XX-0100V0 We then embark on a disorderly Odyssey into Knausgaard’s reception in the anglosphere--and, somehow, into the history of realism and its discontents. For Schylla and Charybdis, we have David Shields and V.S. Pritchett (or something like that). Along the way, Sheila Heti, Ben Lerner and Frederick Jameson help us pick apart the itemized thinginess ("choisisme") of Knausgaard’s project: are things differentiated? Are things merely commodified, or, in their very banality, redeemed? Robbe-Grillet and his New Novelists provide an obsessively textural counterpoint to Knausgaard’s seemingly blank litanies of objects and products.  Geoff Dyer takes a break from writing a blurb for Lauren’s eponymous Easter roast chicken to serve as another formal model for My Struggle and its reverberations. Like Brodkey and Mars-Jones, in his work, “nothing happens in a really a big way.” Here Drew invokes sensuous sun worshipper John Updike who, via a review of The Adventures of a Photographer in Los Platas by Adolfo Bioy Cesares, provides us with these weirdly apt sentences: “The novel arrests our attention and wins our respect by the things it disdains to do: it does not overdramatize or moralize, it denies events a deeper meaning. A clean if desolate flatness results” Does KoK fit into David Shields’ anti-novelistic canon of Reality Hunger? Lauren and Leo get into some narratological weeds: is Karl Ove an ironized character, or a source of Shields-approved wisdom writing?  Things are rambling along nicely until Drew “artlessly opens a can of worms.” Defending the so-called novelistic tradition against Shields’ claims of lifeless conventionality and formal tidiness, he brandishes a long quotation from V.S. Pritchett’s essay on Dead Souls (first collected in In My Good Books, 1942) :  “The modern novel has reached such a pitch of competence and shapeliness that we are shocked at the disorderliness of the masterpieces. In the modern novel we are looking at a neatly barbered suburban garden; in the standard works how often do we have the impression of bowling through the magnificent gateway of a demesne only to find the house and gardens are unfinished or patched up anyhow, as if the owner had tired of his money in the first few weeks and after that had passed his life in a daydream of projects for ever put off. We feel the force of a great power which is never entirely spent, but which cannot be bothered to fulfill itself. In short, we are up against the carelessness, the lethargy, the enormous bad taste of genius, its slovenly and majestic conceit that anything will do”  Pritchett inspires Leo  to give us an intricate tour of the history of tensions between form and chaos in the novel: the wet and the dry, the tidy and baggy. “We’ve conspired to mention every writer in the Western canon,” Leo says. “There’s the mess and the chaos--but there’s also the art.”     

We did it folks. We somehow got a Pulitzer Prize winner to go on the pod. And can I just say? Not only is my close personal friend Ben (as I call him, because of how tight we are) a Pulitzer Prize winner, he is also a PERFECT 10 (google image search him). If you don't feel like googling him let me briefly list his credentials: he wrote the DEFINITIVE biography of my soul sister (and possible friend/lover of my grandfather?? we'll get into that one next time) Clarice Lispector and translated many of her works from Portuguese into English, spurring a resurgence of interest in Lispector in the English speaking world. He also recently published the DEFINITIVE biography of Susan Sontag for which - and I would like to emphasize this again - he was awarded none other than the Pulitzer Prize. Heard of it??  Drew and I spent two hours chatting with Ben, who was calling in from his home in the French countryside (!!), and let me say it was one of our funnest recording sessions yet. I think you will like this one, listener! cheat sheet: 0:00 - Opening remarks: Drew is moving to New York City (lol); Ben was initially confused about Drew's gender; Lauren opens up about her passion for Adidas 29:20 - Ben outlines his theory of hot people in literature. How important is being hot when it comes to writing (and more importantly, getting published)? Can you tell if a hot person wrote a certain text in a blind test? How did being extremely hot benefit Lispector and Sontag? Also: Lauren and Ben bond over their shared appreciation of Knausgaard's hotness (this is the closest we get to discussing My Struggle in this episode sorry not sorry). 1:03:03 - We have a very interesting discussion about literary translation using Ben's experience translating Lispector and also one page of Lauren's grandfather's novel "Antonio" as examples. We tackle some thorny questions at the heart of translation/translation studies, most of which boil down to: is translation an art or a craft? Ben comes down on the latter side and pushes back against "tenure-track mystifications" of the work of the translation, which argues is actually pretty straightforward*. Also: some spicy takes on Sapir-Whorf. 1:37:10 - Ben encourages Drew to implement a rigorous traditional canon for his high school English class. What follows is an arch-reactionary discussion of the Canon and how good it is. Also Ben says he would cast me as the Wife of Bathe in The Canterbury Tales and I don't know whether to be offended or not because I can't remember anything that happened in there. Thank you for listening! Ben is pretty easy to find on Google and on Instagram (where he's a Beowulf influencer) but I also highly recommend his substack which I am obsessed with. It is the only substack I actually read every issue of. Impossibly erudite but also funny and accessible.  As always you can reach out to me (teixeira.lauren@gmail.com) or Drew (deohringer@gmail.com) with your questions comments and concerns. Happy to hear from you! *Here is the Iris Murdoch quote from The Sovereignty of the Good Over Other Concepts that I botched: If I am learning, for instance, Russian, I am confronted by an authoritative structure which commands my respect. The task is difficult and the goal is distant and perhaps never entirely attainable. My work is a progressive revelation of something which exists independently of me. Attention is rewarded by knowledge of reality. Love of Russian leads me away from myself towards something alien to me, something which my consciousness cannot take over, swallow up, deny or make unreal. The honesty and humility required of the student -- not to pretend to know what one does not know--is the preparation for the honesty and humility of the scholar who does not even feel tempted to suppress the fact which damns his theory.

IT'S THE RETURN OF THE WELSH WARRIOR! The Duke of Cardiff himself, prestigious CNN journalist James Griffiths is back on the pod and folks?? We got a little off topic!! But who gives a shit, you don't pay for this (yet) and what is a Knausgaard podcast without copious digression (the imitative fallacy can fuck right off)!!  Due what I am self diagnosing as fatigue from the J&J vaccine I am too tired to write a full fledged recap but some things we covered in this were: Drew's guide to seduction by email; being Eskimo brothers with Jonathan Safran Foer; Elif Batuman and ill-fated campus romances; the disappointing lack of defecation scenes in My Struggle; Morrissey's solo career; and of course Robert Caro's LBJ biography which James has been reading recently and in which he has found some interesting Knausgaard parallels. OUTRO: First of the Gang to Die - Morrissey (cover by Andrew Ohringer)  

If you have listened to even one episode of this show you know that we are obsessed with Karl Ove's meals, from the open sandwiches and rissoles of his youth to the smug quinoa salads he avoids as an adult in Stockholm. Well guess what? We somehow got prestigious food writer (and KOK superfan) Alicia Kennedy to agree to come on the pod to talk spreads in My Struggle. This was truly one of our funnest episodes yet - enjoy! cheat sheet: 14:40 - We tackle one of the most perplexing paradoxes of My Struggle: Karl Ove repeatedly professing indifference to food ("I couldn't give a rat's ass about food") while at the same time giving us lengthy, detailed accounts of his meals, such as the gourmet lobster dinner (Jamie Oliver's recipe) he cooks for the New Year's Eve dinner party in Book 2. And how do his kitchen exploits track with his feelings about his respective ex-wives? 25:30 - In the beginning of book 2, Karl Ove famously lays into the Swedes for believing they can "eat their way into being a better person" with quinoa and bean salads. Alicia, who advocates for veganism and vegetarianism in her writing, tells us her thoughts on these tirades (spoiler: she is pro-Knausgaard). Also: some self-hating Millennial bashing. Why can't Millennials just make normal meals?? Why does everything have to be an elaborate Instagram-worthy concoction or a viral TikTok pasta?? 50:00 - We talk about a passage in which Karl Ove professes nostalgia for whale steaks and lung mash and the complicated matter of balancing nostalgia against ethics in our own eating lives. Alicia also talks about how she prefers Karl Ove's food writing over that of professional food writers, as he writes about food in a way that's matter of fact and mundane rather than fetishistic. Thank you to Alicia for joining us! You can find her excellent newsletter here. Also: the Jonathan Nunn piece she recommended. As always feel free to write in to me at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com or Drew at deohringer@gmail.com. What are some great moments of food writing in literature? I couldn't think of any on the pod bc my brain has been at 60% lately although of course as soon as we ended the call I thought of Murakami and pasta....

Our Struggle returns, and this time with highly prestigious guest Christian Lorentzen! In addition to being our new token Gen X friend, Christian is a famous literary critic whose work appears regularly in Harper's, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and other high falutin venues. He has not only reviewed book 6 of My Struggle for TLS but SMOKED CIGARETTES WITH THE MAN HIMSELF during an interview for New York magazine. In this episode we discuss one of the most memorable passages of My Struggle book 1, the beer on the hill saga. If you would like to read along this passage starts at roughly page 62 in kindle and page 56 in analog.cheat sheet:1:00 - Christian recounts his meeting with KOK and confirms that the man is indeed six and a half feet tall. Also: some NYC literary world color including horny Jeffrey Eugenides13:22 - We start discussing the amazingly mundane hero's journey that takes up about 20% of this book, of teen Karl Ove smuggling beer to a new year's eve party. How does this section fit into the paradigm Christian outlines for us about the transition in contemporary literature, over the past few decades, from romanticism with a leg in fantasy to romanticism of the banal? Also, some meta-critical discussion of how Knausgaard became an international literary sensation, in light of Christian's infamous 2019 meta critical essay in Harper's45:30 - Touching off from Knausgaard's description of the "hostile" rooms in the family home, we get into an interesting discussion of what might be called Knausgaardian essentialism - his technique of trying to make something of nothing by probing the essences of both people as well as inanimate objects as mundane as gravel. 1:08:00 - We discuss the parquet factory as a motif in this book and get nostalgic about light industry.Thank you for listening! And if you would like more of Christian, you can find him on twitter @xlorentzen. He has a piece about Phillip Roth upcoming in the new Bookforum and you can find his piece about literature in the Trump era for Harper's here.As always, would love to hear from listeners - you can DM us on Twitter @OurStrugglePod or reach us at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com or deohringer@gmail.com intro: Guided by Voices - Game of Pricksoutro: Guided by Voices- Game of Pricks covered by Andrew Ohringer   

After a nearly two month hiatus, Our Struggle returns! Lauren and Drew are back and spicier than ever, delivering for you our timely review of KOK's new essay collection "In the Land of the Cyclops" (which to be clear neither of us have read) before getting on with struggle session 1.2 covering Karl Ove's My Struggle book 1 reflections on his diaper-laden domestic life in the aforementioned land of the cyclops (Sweden).cheat sheet:0:00 - Drew connects with a guy on Instagram8:00 - We review KOK's new essay collection based off of one excerpt of an NYT review that a listener sent to me. We also read some correspondence from a Norwegian listener about an anti-Knausgaard pamphlet entitled "The Knausgaard Code." Thank you so much for writing in, would love to keep hearing from listeners!34:00 - Terri Gross drops in to interview Drew about his new novel, "The Gay Quebecois"41:20 - Finally getting into the meat of the struggle session, we discuss KOK's attitude toward his children and his bold admission that they "do not provide enough meaning to fill a whole life." How does fatherhood and domestic life figure into the My Struggle project? Does Knausgaard really wish he could go back to the paradigm of the 19th-20th century male genius, free to pursue his artistic passions and unburdened by family responsibility? Also, we draw some very accurate and legitimate parallels between KOK and Louis C.K. and propose a CBS thursday night-style sitcom adaptation of My Struggle.                                                                                   

In the Land of the Cyclops is Karl Ove Knausgaard's first collection of essays to be published in English. In these wide-ranging pieces, Knausgaard reflects openly on Ingmar Bergman's notebooks, Anselm Kiefer, the Northern Lights, Madame Bovary, Rembrandt, and the role of an editor with penetrating intelligence. Accompanied by color reproductions throughout, these essays illuminate Cindy Sherman's shadowlands, the sublime mystery of Sally Mann's vision, and the serious play of Francesca Woodman. These essays capture Knausgaard's remarkable ability to mediate between the personal and the universal, between life and art. Each piece glimmers with Knausgaard's candor and his longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world.

In the Land of the Cyclops is Karl Ove Knausgaard's first collection of essays to be published in English. In these wide-ranging pieces, Knausgaard reflects openly on Ingmar Bergman's notebooks, Anselm Kiefer, the Northern Lights, Madame Bovary, Rembrandt, and the role of an editor with penetrating intelligence. Accompanied by color reproductions throughout, these essays illuminate Cindy Sherman's shadowlands, the sublime mystery of Sally Mann's vision, and the serious play of Francesca Woodman. These essays capture Knausgaard's remarkable ability to mediate between the personal and the universal, between life and art. Each piece glimmers with Knausgaard's candor and his longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world.

Notes: Boston Globe: 1. Maybe we need sages and monks to make our tough decisions 2. Rev. Liz Walker persuades Black people to take the vaccine 3. John Le Carre, obit, author of spy books Wall Street Journal 4. Painful changes we had to make at work during 2020 5. Book: Gray Matter: 71/2 lessons about the brain - Lisa Feldman Barrett 6. Dr. Jill Biden 7. C-Suite Strategies section 8. CEO Spotlight section New York Times 9. Students kidnapped in Nigeria (gratitude for what we have when you think about how difficult things are for others) 10. Book: My Struggle - autobiography by Karl von Knausgaard, fashion icon 11. Taylor Swift's new album, Evermore 12. Queen's Gambit causing more females to play chess 13. Color words Visit www.allthehatswewear.com

Happy Thanksgiving (and to our Romanian listeners: happy thursday!)Last week we welcomed our friend, Hong Kong-based CNN correspondent James Griffiths, to the pod for what may be our smartest episode yet. Apparently the scintillating genius of our show is what spurred James to finally crack open My Struggle: A Death in the Family, so we interviewed him about his journey down the K-hole. Did the book live up to his expectations? And how did it stack up next to KOK's famous nyt magazine piece "My Saga," which James has also read?Drew was halfway into a bottom-shelf bottle of Zinfandel called "The Federalist" (really) during this one so be warned the discussion strays often and egregiously from KOK. From what I remember some of the things we talked about were: French Canada; coups (both d'etat and other varieties); geriatric ballsacs; an encounter Drew had with Fareed Zakaria; European-style racism; Chinese phyllo-semitism; and potential sponsors of the pod (if you're the company that makes numbing dick wipes please reach out).Thank you so much to James for bearing with us. I very much recommend checking out his book, "The Great Firewall of China," which would absolutely be top of my list of I was capable of reading books other than Knausgaard. He also has another book coming out next year, "Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language" which he promises me will explain why Welsh people don't use normal vowels.As always, feel free to reach out to me at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com. Would love to hear more from listeners about their journey taking the K-pill and possibly read excerpts of those testimonials on the pod!Finally, if you are an older man who would like to share a picture of your wizened nutsack with Drew, you can find him at deohringer@gmail.com

Future recipient of the Kamala Harris Grant for Literary Podcasts is back! In this episode we finally get into the belly of the mackerel with a scene-by-scene breakdown of the first 15 or so pages of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: A Death in the Family. This is a new thing we're trying because we realized we hadn't actually talked about MS yet. But please be assured the interviews with people who have not read Knausgaard will continue!We've been getting a lot of nice listener feedback and would love to keep hearing from you! Comments? Concerns? Guest suggestions? Thoughts on which of the four open sandwiches of the apocalypse you would choose? Especially if you're one of our 7 Israeli listeners, please write in! You can email Lauren (teixeira.lauren@gmail.com), DM us on Twitter, or respond to our newsletter, which you should subscribe to if you haven't yet - ourstruggle.substack.com. (Please no comments on the audio in this episode, I forgot to wear headphones and make Drew as well so that's why it sucks and I'm sorry)cheat sheet:0:00 - Drew and Lauren ponder Mein Kampf vs. Harry Potter and their place in the canon of popular YA lit9:14 - Finally we get to the famous first lines of book one! We discuss how these first few pages are composed, jewel-like and therefore strangely unlike the rest of this odd ramshackle annex of a book.20:16 - Beginning of an interesting discussion about childhood details about how small observations made in childhood last through the rest of your life. We talk about pieces of media seen as children that made a huge impression on us as children (Lauren - 1974 Murder on the Orient Express; Drew - Tubgirl)37:15 - We draw out one of Knausgaard's semi-thesis statements, about the inverse relationship between perspective and meaning. How crucial is 'epistemological openness' to the Knausgaardian project?56:20 - An absolutely gruesome recap of a typical evening meal in the Knausgaard household in the 1970s. This somehow leads into one of our most rigorous intellectual discussions yet, regarding exactly which foods do and do not constitute so-called 'heterosexual cuisine.'Thank you for listening and sorry again about the audio!MUSIC - GUIDED BY VOICES 'Game of Pricks'EDITING - LAUREN, THE MAN OF THE SHOW

The struggle continues in the third episode of OS as we attempt to bridge the America/Canada cultural divide in a conversation as wide-ranging as the breadth of the interior between Vancouver and St. Johns! Our guest is our new friend John Cullen, a Canadian, comedian and co-host of the Blocked Party podcast, which is by some metrics actually a more famous podcast than Our Struggle. John has done his homework for this episode and raises the salient question: Is Karl Ove Knausgaard actually just a tedious asshole? We talk about that for a while but also get into some cool discussions about Newfy culture, employee discounts at sporting goods stores, and soliciting Knausgaard on Cameo. Thank you to John for guesting and no thank you to Drew as usual! The article discussed is "My Saga," a travelogue KOK wrote for the New York Times magazine in 2015. Lauren messed up and lost the last part of the recording where John plugs his new album. For those interested, the name of his album is LONG STORIES FOR NO REASON and you can find it on iTunes and Spotify. You can also follow John on Twitter @cullenthecomic. Do it!!

It's our sophomore slump! In the second episode of Our Struggle, we welcome guest Brendan O'Kane, a renown sinologist and literary translator who has not only not read Knausgaard but adamantly refuses to. Can we convince him that early modern Chinese literature and My Struggle have more in common than he'd think?0:00 - More fish talk. Drew had a canned fish phase; we predict another salmon-heavy diplomatic standoff between China and Norway.21:24 - After spending way too much time looking for the part in My Struggle where Knausgaard describes prematurely ejaculating, we let Brendan talk about The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅), a famous 16th century work of pornography. We then discuss the strangely common phenomenon of busting to death in early modern Chinese literature. (We actually do find a way to connect this back to Knausgaard)37:49 - Drew ponders the dense materialism of Knausgaard and how he manages to preserve the "thinginess" or heftiness of objects - letting them come across as objects with material properties rather than lazy mimetic stand-ins. A discussion touching on IKEA furniture and sumptuary regulations in the Ming dynasty follows.1:11:49 - Finally we discuss genre fiction and propose that literary fiction has actually just become its own genre with its own tropes. Maybe it's better to just write Amish teen vampire romance novels.  MUSIC - GUIDED BY VOICES "GAME OF PRICKS"  EDITING BY LAUREN, THE MAN OF THE SHOW

In 2009, a novel was released in Norway with a fairly simple premise; the author would simply write about himself, his life and his attempts to write. The autobiographical novel would be the first in a 6-volume series that would eventually total over 3,500 pages written in just 3 short years. The frenzied pace at which it was produced would only be matched by the frenzied pace at which it was consumed, with each volume hitting the bestseller list, and it would all eventually be translated into over 30 languages. The author was Karl Ove Knausgaard, and the novel was called ​My Struggle​. With the dust finally settling in the wake of the enormous controversy the book stirred up, many people are starting to move in to analyze the work with a more critical lens, trying to examine what the work actually achieves, what it's place might be in the larger canon of literature, and elements of it we should be skeptical of. One of those critical examiners is Kim Adrian in her book ​Dear Knausgaard: Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle (Fiction Advocate, 2020)​, a collection of short letters written to the man himself where she wrestles with his work. While Adrian is herself a fan of Knausgaard, she is not uncritical of him, and even finds herself frustrated at various moments with his views on writing, literature, politics, gender and identity, but this dynamic gives the book an interesting back-and-forth as it helps her wrestle with these topics. Kim Adrian is a visiting lecturer in English at Brown University, and is the author of the memoir The 27th Letter of the Alphabet and ​Sock​. She has had both fiction and nonfiction appear in a number of outlets, including ​Tin House,​ ​The Gettysburg Review​, and ​The Seneca Review​. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

In 2009, a novel was released in Norway with a fairly simple premise; the author would simply write about himself, his life and his attempts to write. The autobiographical novel would be the first in a 6-volume series that would eventually total over 3,500 pages written in just 3 short years. The frenzied pace at which it was produced would only be matched by the frenzied pace at which it was consumed, with each volume hitting the bestseller list, and it would all eventually be translated into over 30 languages. The author was Karl Ove Knausgaard, and the novel was called ​My Struggle​. With the dust finally settling in the wake of the enormous controversy the book stirred up, many people are starting to move in to analyze the work with a more critical lens, trying to examine what the work actually achieves, what it’s place might be in the larger canon of literature, and elements of it we should be skeptical of. One of those critical examiners is Kim Adrian in her book ​Dear Knausgaard: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Fiction Advocate, 2020)​, a collection of short letters written to the man himself where she wrestles with his work. While Adrian is herself a fan of Knausgaard, she is not uncritical of him, and even finds herself frustrated at various moments with his views on writing, literature, politics, gender and identity, but this dynamic gives the book an interesting back-and-forth as it helps her wrestle with these topics. Kim Adrian is a visiting lecturer in English at Brown University, and is the author of the memoir The 27th Letter of the Alphabet and ​Sock​. She has had both fiction and nonfiction appear in a number of outlets, including ​Tin House,​ ​The Gettysburg Review​, and ​The Seneca Review​. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2009, a novel was released in Norway with a fairly simple premise; the author would simply write about himself, his life and his attempts to write. The autobiographical novel would be the first in a 6-volume series that would eventually total over 3,500 pages written in just 3 short years. The frenzied pace at which it was produced would only be matched by the frenzied pace at which it was consumed, with each volume hitting the bestseller list, and it would all eventually be translated into over 30 languages. The author was Karl Ove Knausgaard, and the novel was called ​My Struggle​. With the dust finally settling in the wake of the enormous controversy the book stirred up, many people are starting to move in to analyze the work with a more critical lens, trying to examine what the work actually achieves, what it’s place might be in the larger canon of literature, and elements of it we should be skeptical of. One of those critical examiners is Kim Adrian in her book ​Dear Knausgaard: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Fiction Advocate, 2020)​, a collection of short letters written to the man himself where she wrestles with his work. While Adrian is herself a fan of Knausgaard, she is not uncritical of him, and even finds herself frustrated at various moments with his views on writing, literature, politics, gender and identity, but this dynamic gives the book an interesting back-and-forth as it helps her wrestle with these topics. Kim Adrian is a visiting lecturer in English at Brown University, and is the author of the memoir The 27th Letter of the Alphabet and ​Sock​. She has had both fiction and nonfiction appear in a number of outlets, including ​Tin House,​ ​The Gettysburg Review​, and ​The Seneca Review​. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2009, a novel was released in Norway with a fairly simple premise; the author would simply write about himself, his life and his attempts to write. The autobiographical novel would be the first in a 6-volume series that would eventually total over 3,500 pages written in just 3 short years. The frenzied pace at which it was produced would only be matched by the frenzied pace at which it was consumed, with each volume hitting the bestseller list, and it would all eventually be translated into over 30 languages. The author was Karl Ove Knausgaard, and the novel was called ​My Struggle​. With the dust finally settling in the wake of the enormous controversy the book stirred up, many people are starting to move in to analyze the work with a more critical lens, trying to examine what the work actually achieves, what it’s place might be in the larger canon of literature, and elements of it we should be skeptical of. One of those critical examiners is Kim Adrian in her book ​Dear Knausgaard: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Fiction Advocate, 2020)​, a collection of short letters written to the man himself where she wrestles with his work. While Adrian is herself a fan of Knausgaard, she is not uncritical of him, and even finds herself frustrated at various moments with his views on writing, literature, politics, gender and identity, but this dynamic gives the book an interesting back-and-forth as it helps her wrestle with these topics. Kim Adrian is a visiting lecturer in English at Brown University, and is the author of the memoir The 27th Letter of the Alphabet and ​Sock​. She has had both fiction and nonfiction appear in a number of outlets, including ​Tin House,​ ​The Gettysburg Review​, and ​The Seneca Review​. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2009, a novel was released in Norway with a fairly simple premise; the author would simply write about himself, his life and his attempts to write. The autobiographical novel would be the first in a 6-volume series that would eventually total over 3,500 pages written in just 3 short years. The frenzied pace at which it was produced would only be matched by the frenzied pace at which it was consumed, with each volume hitting the bestseller list, and it would all eventually be translated into over 30 languages. The author was Karl Ove Knausgaard, and the novel was called ​My Struggle​. With the dust finally settling in the wake of the enormous controversy the book stirred up, many people are starting to move in to analyze the work with a more critical lens, trying to examine what the work actually achieves, what it’s place might be in the larger canon of literature, and elements of it we should be skeptical of. One of those critical examiners is Kim Adrian in her book ​Dear Knausgaard: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Fiction Advocate, 2020)​, a collection of short letters written to the man himself where she wrestles with his work. While Adrian is herself a fan of Knausgaard, she is not uncritical of him, and even finds herself frustrated at various moments with his views on writing, literature, politics, gender and identity, but this dynamic gives the book an interesting back-and-forth as it helps her wrestle with these topics. Kim Adrian is a visiting lecturer in English at Brown University, and is the author of the memoir The 27th Letter of the Alphabet and ​Sock​. She has had both fiction and nonfiction appear in a number of outlets, including ​Tin House,​ ​The Gettysburg Review​, and ​The Seneca Review​. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I den tredje og sidste podcast om sommerlitteratur, snakker Marianne Träff og Thomas Tiedje om livet i den skandinaviske vildmark, om Knausgaard, opvækst, livskriser og filosofisk krisehjælp

6PM - Hanna Scott: Inslee announces guidelines that could allow 10 more counties to reopen under coronavirus recovery plan // Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True? // The Voice of God. (And Knausgaard, Whitman, Machiavelli … ) // New York Politician’s Coronavirus Briefing Takes NSFW Turn: ‘I’m Going To Blush’ // Coronavirus football: FC Seoul apologises for 'sex dolls' in stands

Since the publication of the first volume of his massive novel Mein Kampf (or My Struggle) in 2009, Karl Ove Knausgaard (1968- ) has become a household name in his native Norway - and a loved and hated literary figure around the world. Thanks to that six-volume book, plus another four-volume work titled after the four seasons, Knausgaard has drawn comparisons ranging from Marcel Proust to a blogger on steroids. For some, he is the avatar of a new kind of writing, or a new kind of novel, a pioneer who has advanced the novel into territory perfectly suited for the twenty-first century. For others, he is a hack, a charlatan, a navel-gazing fraud who barely deserves the title of novelist, let alone the acclaim or esteem that many have accorded him.  What do we make of Karl Ove Knausgaard? Why should we give his books our time? What’s the best way to read him? And can we strip away the sturm und drang surrounding his books and see them with any kind of clarity? In this episode, Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporter Club, joins Jacke to help sort through one of the most polarizing figures in contemporary world literature. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once again we return to the space-age future--the year 1992 and the exploits of the crew of the Earth Space Force rocket Vanguard . Towed into space by their sister ship, the Knausgaard , Captain Major and his band of intrepid space explorers face a new threat: SPACE PLAGUE! But saboteurs tainted the rocket's supply of anti-space vaccine quite a few episodes ago, so there's no way out! Tune in for spills and chills as Lt. Lindley of the Knausgaard and Ex-Ensign Nemesis of the Vanguard are cast adrift on the "garbage planet" (really just a moon) of Deimos, Mars' less-scary satellite. What they uncover--and what Commander Iris Train and Ensign Zinn discover in the Vanguard 's cargo bay--will shake the Earth Space Force down to its very space socks!

In So Much Longing in So Little Space, Karl Ove Knausgaard explores the life and work of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Setting out to understand the enduring power of Munch’s painting, Knausgaard reflects on the essence of creativity, on choosing to be an artist, experiencing the world through art and its influence on his own writing. As co-curator of a major new exhibition of Munch's work in Oslo in 2017, Knausgaard visits the landscapes that inspired him, and speaks with contemporary artists, including Vanessa Baird and Anselm Kiefer. Bringing together art history, biography and memoir, and drawing on ideas of truth, originality and memory, So Much Longing in So Little Space is a personal examination of the legacy of one of the world’s most iconic painters, and a meditation on art itself. Knausgaard was in conversation with writer and journalist Charlotte Higgins. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On whether we can salvage anything from postmodernism. Have we left postmodernity - and if so, can can we be properly dialectical about it: see it as progress and catastrophe all at once? Is there a moment of truth to postmodernism amidst all the falsity? We discuss the left intelligentsia's abandonment of materialism; phoney cultural populism; the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe; Knausgaard's six volume 'Min Kamp'; and the end of cultural rebellion. Readings: The Apprentice in Theory: Fan, Student, Star, Catherine Liu & Devan Bailey on Avital Ronell, LA Review of Books Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Frederic Jameson, NLR  Itemised, review of Knausgaard by Jameson, LRB The Myth of Pruitt-Igoe, documentary If you like what we do, please support us. Go to Patreon.com/BungaCast

The prize-winning author Karl Ove Knausgaard explores the life and work of a fellow Norwegian artist, Expressionist Edvard Munch. He tells Tom Sutcliffe that Munch’s work extends far beyond his iconic painting The Scream. Knausgaard brings together art history, biography and personal memoir to reflect on what it means to be an artist. Munch is known as a painter of the inner life and even his landscapes are infused with personal reflection. But at the turn of the twentieth century, while he was looking inward, art schools across Europe were forging new philosophies and were engaging with the wider world. In Germany the Bauhaus movement, founded by Walter Gropius, stood for experiment and creative freedom. Fiona MacCarthy’s new biography of Gropius re-evaluates his intellectual and emotional life. She depicts him at the heights of Bauhaus fame and through his post-war years in London to his architectural successes in America. Back in the UK, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was at the centre of a movement based at the Glasgow School of Art. Curator Alison Brown explains how that city became the birthplace of the only Art Nouveau ‘movement’ in the UK. The style and influence of Mackintosh and his disciples has since spread throughout the world. Both Bauhaus and Art Nouveau designs became commercially successful and mass produced. But the earlier Arts and Craft Movement of William Morris championed the principle of handmade production. In an extraordinary find, the social historian Tamsin Wimhurst, came across a terraced house in Cambridge owned by a working-class Victorian decorative artist who reproduced the work of Morris for his own pleasure at home. The David Parr House is opened to the public later this year. Producer: Katy Hickman

What if we treated our finite lives as a feature instead of a bug? How would we revalue our time and how could that shape our society? In his new book, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom (Pantheon Books), Professor Martin Hagglund explores how life becomes enriched when we discard the eternal in favor of seeing the lives we live together as the highest good. We talk about how the notion of an afterlife devalues the life we live, the ways our implicit experiences are rendered explicit by philosophy and literature, and how a rethinking of the value of our time can lead to a revaluing of labor and a critique of capital (no, really!). We get into my favorite topic -- anxiety! -- as well as the inextricability of existential and economic questions, the invisible labor that makes our lives possible/comfortable, the conceptions of time and memory captured by Proust and Knausgaard, the all-important difference between valuing socially necessary labor time and socially available free time, and how the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. embodies a lot of Martin's arguments about finitude and a better world. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Patrick O’Connor is Senior Lecturer at the School of Arts & Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, UK. Pat teaches philosophy at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, is the programme leader for the MA in Philosophy, and recently was voted in as the new acting-president of the British Society for Phenomenology (BSP). His paper ‘Knausgaard, Bodies and The Terrible Beauty of Brain Surgery’ is taken from the BSP’s workshop 'Embodied Subjects: Phenomenology, Literature, and the Health Humanities'. The workshop took place in Manchester, UK, during the summer of 2018, and gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners to discuss the significance of embodiment for the health humanities. More information about the workshop can be found at: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/embodied-subjects-workshop/   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/about/    

Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard discusses A Death in the Family, which is the first part of My Struggle, his series of memoirs which have a devoted following. Already a successful novelist in his native Norway, almost ten years ago Knausgaard embarked on a huge project: a first person narrative about his life. In A Death in the Family he writes with painful honesty about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and dangerously unpredictable father, and then his bewilderment and grief on his father's death. Becoming a father himself, he has to balance the demands of caring for a young family with his determination to write great literature. The series is an exploration of the author’s past from which emerges a universal story of the struggles, great and small, that we all face in our lives. Karl Ove Knausgaard writes with honesty about his upbringing, causing ructions in his family. He says he always knew that whatever he wrote, he would have to be able to look his family members in the eye. My Struggle finally ran to six volumes, and the last one The End, has just been published in the UK. The series became a literary sensation in his native Norway as well as around the world. Presented by James Naughtie and recorded with a group of invited readers. Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Karl Ove Knausgaard Producer : Dymphna Flynn November's Bookclub choice : The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley (2014)

Karl Ove Knausgaard and Emil & Joachim Trier discuss their new film THE OTHER MUNCH, which follows Knausgaard as he is invited to guest-curate an exhibition of paintings by Edvard Munch at Oslo’s Munch Museum. This podcast is brought to you by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Film Lives Here. www.filmlinc.org

Series: Biblio File in France Pierre Astier and Laure Pecher are co-founders of their own eponymous literary and film agency. Pierre represents mainly French-speaking authors and publishers. After working in the art world for ten years, he created the quarterly short stories magazine Le Serpent à Plumes in 1988. In 1993, together with Claude Tarrène, he set up a publishing house of the same name focusing on contemporary fiction. Laure represents both authors and publishers. After having studied Byzantine philology, she worked for five years at Le Serpent à Plumes as rights manager. In 2002, she started publishing classics with Les Classiques du Monde at Editions Zoé (Geneva). The three of us met in their garden in Le Perche, France where we talked about, among other things, the role of the literary agent, writers festivals and conferences, finding the best most passionate publishers, Archipelago Books and Ove Knausgaard, Elena Ferrante, African authors in France, paradise near Paris, commissioning books, writing workshops, espresso, differences between French and American agents, Eastern European markets, the invasion of American authors, lack of diversity, resistance by French publishers to agents, film rights, musical chairs, translation, author-agent relations, differences between pitching publishers and producers, Andrew Wylie's client list, Aslı Erdoğan, passion and luck, Patrice Nganang, and the most exciting part of the job.   

In front of a packed house at Brooklyn’s BookCourt, the celebrated Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard (My Struggle) spoke with ESOPUS editor Tod Lippy about “On the Value of LIterature,” his 5,000-word essay that appears in ESOPUS 23. Knausgaard also took questions from the audience about his writing process, and the evening ended with a book-signing.

His bestselling, award-winning book In Every Moment We Are Still Alive is just beautiful, already an Indie Next Pick for February. Based, on tragic events and loss in the writer's life, In Every Moment We Are Still Alive, is a powerful and engrossing novel. https://www.theguardian.com/bo oks/2017/jun/08/in-every-momen t-we-are-still-alive-by-tom- malmquist-review WE ARE STILL ALIVE By Tom Malmquist Translated by Henning Koch (A Man Called Ove) Indie Next List for February 2018 An “Indies Introduce” Selection Winner of Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter Culture Prize Shortlisted for the Nordic Council Literary Award The European bestseller published in the United States for the first time “It is bound to invite comparison to Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle… Perhaps more so than Knausgaard, Malmquist demonstrates that he can relay life in an intense, heightened state. The result is exhilarating.” –Financial Times “Beautiful… arresting… A deeply personal account… As more books are published, we increasingly seek out those writers who promise to give us something more than fiction. We want books made out of lives… The value of Malmquist’s book is precisely that it retains a trace of true human presence – carefully preserved by the author.”—The Guardian “By turns raw, unsettled, and touching, Malmquist’s book is an extended meditation on what it means to love and to mourn. A deeply emotional and affecting novel.” –Kirkus Reviews “A unique form… infused with deep urgency. A great stylist, Malmquist’s immersive prose perfectly limns the demands of living within the chiaroscuro of deep grief.” –Foreword Reviews, starred review “[A] heady debut novel… moving… (a) beautiful, raw meditation on earth-shattering personal loss.” –Publishers Weekly “Kafkaesque… remarkably credible.” –Booklist A prize-winning debut novel chosen as an Indie Next List selection as well as an Indies Introduce pick, Tom Malmquist’s IN EVERY MOMENT WE ARE STILL ALIVE (Melville House; January 30, 2018; Hardcover; $25.99) is a story of loss, love, and family based on true events from the author’s life. This autobiographical novel tells the true and gripping story of a man whose world come crashing down overnight: When Tom’s heavily pregnant partner is rushed to the hospital, doctors are able to save the baby, but are helpless to save her. And in one cruel, fleeting moment Tom gains a daughter but loses his soul mate. Written in starkly beautiful prose that conveys the momentum of a man desperate to pull through, Malmquist writes how he, drowning in the grief of loss, finds hope and resilience in the greatest gift of all: his prematurely born newborn daughter. Both tragic and redemptive, IN EVERY MOMENT WE ARE STILL ALIVE is an utterly human story: that of surviving a loved one. A study in the process of grief, Malmquist’s writing portrays the human suffering felt in day-to-day life, in remembering past memories, and in fantasizing about the future. Translated from Swedish by Henning Koch (A Man Called Ove), IN EVERY MOMENT WE ARE STILL ALIVE has been called “one of the most powerful books about grief every written,” by the judges of the Nordic Council Literary Award. A bestseller in Europe for many months, Melville House is proud to bring this powerful novel to the United States for the first time. The first novelist to every win Sweden’s prestigious Dagens Nyheter Culture Prize, Malmquist shares the story of the year that changed his life. Heartbreaking and inspiring, raw yet tender, this towering tour de force is a magnificent debut. About the author: Tom Malmquist is a poet and sportswriter. He has written two highly acclaimed poetry collections. IN EVERY MOMENT WE ARE STILL ALIVE is his first novel. He lives in Sweden.

S. PHILLY — 1SP vets Nick, 27, and Zac, 27, on auto-fiction: what it is, who does it most compellingly, where it might be headed. Texts we consider are Walker Percy's 1961 philosophical novel The Moviegoer, Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, and Karl Ove Knausgaard's novels, from his My Struggle Series to his recent/forthcoming seasonal quartet. In music, we consider Sun Kil Moon's "Benji" (2014), Mount Erie's "A Crow Looked at Me" (2017), and Young Dolph's "Bulletproof" (2017). 1SP: https://twitter.com/1storypod On what I'm rdng rn: https://twitter.com/stconroe 1storyhaus.com

As part of the Bookends event series surrounding the 2017 Brooklyn Book Festival, bestselling Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard read and discussed his newest book Autumn with Brooklyn novelist Katie Kitamura at St. Joseph's College. Among the topics addressed: the similarities and differences between Knausgaard's new quartet of books and his My Struggle series, the primal shaping influence of family, the formal challenges of creating fiction without plot or character, the tension between the specificity of the material world (which Knausgaard conveys with an insistent poetics) and his sense of internal boundlessness.

It's September, the leaves are turning and Autumn has arrived, so in honour of this return to reality we bring you a show about the everyday, the mundane, the quotidian in literature. As usual, our theme is inspired by our guest, and this month we’ll be playing a recording of a live interview Carrie did with the celebrated Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard a couple weeks ago at Waterstones Tottenham Court Road. Knausgaard is best known for his epic My Struggle series, but he was in town to talk about his new book, appropriately called Autumn, the first in a quartet of titles based around the seasons. In Autumn, he describes the world around him – from chewing gum to toilet bowls to frogs – to his unborn daughter. So tune in for a celebration of the ordinary things in literature, and a discussion about how writers from George Eliot to Elizabeth Strout have made them compelling and extraordinary.

This week we continue our "summer of selfies" with a book we knew we'd have to read as soon as we conceived of the season's concept. Nearly everyone in the literary world seems to have an opinion about Knausgaard's six-book autobiographical series, whether they've read any of the books or not. While lots of critics (and other authors) have praised him as a genius, all that praise has led to an inevitable backlash, with plenty of people saying the books are over-long and tedious. So where will your Book Fight co-hosts come down? We'll also consider some of the gendered arguments made about the book: Does Knausgaard "write like a woman"? And would these books have been so highly praised if they'd been written BY a woman? Finally, we've got another installment of Millennial M0m3nt, this week about a fast-casual eatery that doesn't care if its Millennial customers ever come back. Thanks for listening! 

SOUTH PHILADELPHIA — Zac, 26, born in Denver, Colo., grew up in Houston, Texas, Sydney, Australia, and Hickory, N.C., and now fundraises at an art museum in Philadelphia. He first encountered the My Struggle series a few years back, upon finding Book One on the floor of his then-girlfriend’s apartment. I first encountered My Struggle on the recent-release shelf in a bookstore, drawn by how out of place Knausgaard’s self-portrait looked on the cover. I initially scoffed at it. It wasn’t until I heard a podcast with Knausgaard (with novelist Jeffery Eugenides, by the New York Public Library) that I was compelled to start reading. Karl Ove Knausgaard, 48, was born in Oslo, Norway, in 1968. He began writing the series, which is 3,600 pages long, in 2008, six years after the death of his father.

The StoryI always wanted music in my life, so I decided to buy myself a keyboard. I learned to play the piano as a child and could still read music. I found a keyboard for sale on Kijijji and when I met the seller, the conversation quickly devolved into me having to make up a fake son named James. This story was recorded live off the floor at Stories We Don’t Tell. Please note: I was sitting at the keyboard for the story. Some pauses and audience reactions were due to me about to play and then not playing.You can read the original story on my blog HERE.Paul’s PickKarl Ove Knausgaard wrote a six volume series of autobiographical novels. Full disclosure, I’ve only read the first three and starting on the fourth. I can’t really explain them, as there really is no story and there are many passages that are about the mundane. However, something very much alive lurks in the many pages of these books. I once heard Knausgaard describe these books as novels where he used himself as the main character. I used this same description when people asked about my own novel, The Walking Man. These are tough books, but stick with them, they can be at times profound and heartbreaking.

The boys are taking requests these days, especially good ones, like A.J. Wilson's question about the challenges and rewards of moving from short forms to book-length works. Kelly's all: blah, blah, blah, Knausgaard; blah, blah, blah, Walden. Dan's like: yadda, yadda, yadda, Alice Munro; yadda, yadda, yadda, Charles Portis. 

We talk to the acclaimed Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard about A Death in the Family, volume one of his remarkable series of memoirs My Struggle. Knausgaard writes with painful honesty about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and dangerously unpredictable father, and then his bewilderment and grief on his father's death. Becoming a father himself, he must balance the demands of caring for a young family with his determination to write great literature. A Death in the Family is an exploration of the author’s past from which emerges a universal story of the struggles, great and small, that we all face in our lives. (Photo: Karl Ove Knausgaard. Credit: Sam Barker)

Epigraph Episode nine has finally dropped! We speak with the lovely and talented Benjamin Rybeck, Marketing Director and Events Coordinator at Brazos Bookstore and author of The Sadness.   Introduction   [0:30] In Which Emma and Kim Have a Sponsor and Make Terrible Puns, Plus Ben Invents the Phrase “Page Turner” Currently drinking: screwdirvers with Stolichnaya, inspired by Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth This episode is actually brought to you by a sponsor! Books & Whatnot is an excellent and informative newsletter for booksellers; it’s quick to read and filled with tips! Brought to you by Beth Golay. Check out the newsletter archive here. Follow on Twitter at @booksandwhatnot. Ben is reading: Nick Flynn’s memoirs, Maggie Nelson, The Other Side by Lacy Johnson, and Madeline E. by Gabriel Blackwell Shout-out to cool indie publisher: Outpost 19! Emma is reading: … spreadsheets? No, but seriously, she finally started Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel—but also the apocalypse causes her some anxiety, so she might have put it down. Kim is reading: Uprooted by Naomi Novik, Shrill by Lindy West When Kim started reading Uprooted, Emma was like Kim recalls possibly the best customer interaction ever, in which a male teacher from an all-girls school requests recs for a primer on feminism; Shrill by Lindy West, We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozie Adiche, and Rad American Women A-Z by Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl (illus.) are among her recs. New & Forthcoming Books We’re Excited About Underground Airlines by Ben Winters (pubs July 5 2016) The Well-Stocked and Gilded Cage by Lawrence Lenhart (pubs Aug 2 2016) Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn (pubs July 19 2016) The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan (pubs July 19 2016) Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty by Ramona Ausubel The Crimson Skew by S.E. Grove (pubs July 12 2016) Collections: Birds Bones and Butterflies by Leah Sobsey (pubs July 12 2016) What do you do when a customer asks for a happy read?  Emma tries to make them into a romance reader and, if that fails, recommends Beauty Queens by Libba Bray. Kim recommends graphica (though Emma’s first three thoughts when she says graphica are Watchmen, Persepolis, and Fun Home—not the happiest of reads…) Chapter I   [21:21] In Which Ben Walks Into a Bookstore and Receives a Job, Coins the term “litizen,” and Says the Word Smartypants a Lot. Plus Emma Freaks Out About Events Coordinators/Drunk Booksellers’ Guests Not Reading Harry Potter Longfellow Books of Portland, Maine was Ben’s childhood bookstore. We discuss the joy of bookstores, record stores, and video stores—half-retail and half-cultural places where you go to meet friends and discover gems. Ben’s advice for getting a job at a bookstore? Walk into said bookstore with no intention of getting a job (it worked for him!) Learn more about Brazos Bookstore here. They do “down and dirty highbrow” bookselling. In Houston this summer? Here are a couple fun things going on: Houston Shakespeare Festival Summer of Kubrick Have you heard about this new Harry Potter book coming out? Kim imagines that it will be mostly about ennui of adulthood, and compares it to Ben’s book The Sadness.  Chapter II   [37:46] In Which Ben Pitches His Book Succinctly—It’s a Book About Film and Failure— and We Discuss Adulting “Booksellers as adults is a strange thing; you’re asking people to become adults and go out into the world where their primary relationship to anything in their lives has been sitting alone in a room…that’s not going to end well.” Chapter III   [44:34] In Which We Speculate Alice Munroe’s Drinking Habits, Declare Adult Connect-the-Dots as The Next Big Thing, And Bring Up the Fact That Ben Hasn’t Read Harry Potter Again Ben wants to drink with John Updike to see if he’s as insufferable a person as Ben finds him as a writer. Kim mocks his reasoning. His second choice is Alice Munroe (who may or may not listen to this podcast? We’re pretty sure she doesn’t. But we can dream.) Ben’s bookseller confession is he doesn’t keep up with trends—but it’s ok, Emma and Kim haven’t read Knausgaard or Ferrante either. Ben’s Station Eleven/Wild/Desert Island Books 2666 by Roberto Bolaño Collected Stories of Joy Williams How to Read a Film by James Monaco Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace ALL the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling Go-to Handsells Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson Faces in the Crowd, The Story of My Teeth, and Sidewalks by Valeria Luiselli Impossible Handsells Thrown by Kerry Howley (shout-out to the awesome small press,Sarabande Books) Don’t Suck, Don’t Die by Kristin Hersh  Chapter IV   [1:01:12] In Which We Talk About Where We Can Be Found On the Internets & Remind You of Our Awesome Sponsor (Books & Whatnot) Shout out to Kramer Books in Washington, DC Hey, remember Books & Whatnot? Ben subscribes, we subscribe, and you should subscribe too! Check out Ben on twitter at @BenjaminRybeck or give him a shout atben@brazosbookstore.com. Don’t forget to read his book, The Sadness, which has been compared to the new Harry Potter book (by Kim, on this episode). Did you know you can enjoy our wit and charm on Twitter? Follow us at @drunkbookseller. Kim also occasionally tweets from @finaleofseem. Emma can be found at @thebibliot and also on Book Riot, where she writes articles which are both nerdy and informative! If you know a bookseller who would love to spend a few hours drinking and chatting with us, have them shoot us an email at drunkbooksellers@gmail.com. Finally, if you like the show, you can rate/review us on iTunes & subscribe using your favorite podcatcher.

Novelists worship him. Critics fall over themselves to explain his genius. His celebrity fans say his books are like drugs. ‘I just read 200 pages and I need the next volume like crack. It’s completely blown my mind,’ Zadie Smith tweeted. What they’re all raving about is Karl Ove Knausgaard’s bestselling series of six autobiographical novels, 'My Struggle'. The books recount in microscopic detail every aspect of Knausgaard’s own life: his bullying alcoholic father, his marriages, the raising of his children. As James Wood, the literary critic at the New Yorker, has said: ‘Many writers strive to give you the illusion of reality. Knausgaard seems to want to give his readers the reality of reality. And he achieves this. You read Knausgaard as if in real time.’ What is it that makes Knausgaard’s highly confessional books so addictive? What does it say about our voyeuristic urges that the minutiae of his life are so gripping? On October 29, Karl Ove Knausgaard came to the Intelligence Squared stage for an... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's Father's Day, and Ed is wondering when he'll go to the movies again. He and John discuss how the ninteen-seventies have influenced them, whether it is possible to like both Ferrante and Knausgaard, the similarities between a list of poems and a list of snacks, and the unhinged horribleness of the present-day Lucky Charms elf, who is no longer played by Cormac McCarthy.

On this week's episode of our podcast The Close-Up, we sat down with filmmaking brothers Josh and Benny Safdie. Their new film Heaven Knows What had its U.S. Premiere at the 52nd New York Film Festival last fall. Heaven Knows What is a gritty New York drama starring Arielle Holmes as Harley, a heroin addict in a chaotic relationship with the explosive Ilya, played by Caleb Landry Jones. Much of the film was shot just blocks from Lincoln Center and it is based on Holmes’s own experiences living as a junkie on the streets of New York. On the occasion of its theatrical release, Film Comment Digital Editor Violet Lucca spoke with the Safdie brothers about the film. The candid conversation ranged from their approach to the film's score, their relationship to the cast, and the challenges of shooting in New York. As a bonus, the episode also features an excerpt from our recent conversation with Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard (My Struggle), who joined us for our new series Print Screen, which invites authors to present films that have complimented and inspired their work. Knausgaard chose to present Lars von Trier's Dogme 95 classic The Idiots, and following the screening he joined our Director of Programming Dennis Lim to discuss what the film, and cinema in general, means to him and his work. This podcast is brought to you by The Film Society of Lincoln Center. Film Lives Here. www.filmlinc.com 00:00-01:16 – Intro 01:16-04:20 – Karl Ove Knausgaard 05:23-06:48 – Safdie Brothers (Intro) 06:48-47:40 – Safdie Brothers (Interview)

Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens discuss FOX's new TV show The Last Man on Earth, Knausgaard's travel writing, and the fuss about the dress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens discuss FOX's new TV show The Last Man on Earth, Knausgaard's travel writing, and the fuss about the dress.

In the Footsteps of Proust Norwegian literary sensation Karl Ove Knausgaard is gathering an ever-increasing band of avid followers of his epic and much-discussed six-volume novel cycle, My Struggle. ‘It’s completely blown my mind… I need the next volume like crack’ said Zadie Smith, while the Guardian described it as ‘the most significant literary enterprise of our times.’ Knausgaard joins us today to discuss his third volume, Boyhood Island.

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six autobiographical novels, published in Norway between 2009 and 2011 under the series title *Min Kamp* (‘My Struggle’) have excited controversy and critical acclaim in equal measure. Knausgaard’s unflinching and almost uncritical laying on of detail has led some critics to call him ‘the Norwegian Proust’. ‘There is something ceaselessly compelling about Knausgaard’s book’, wrote James Wood in the *New Yorker*. ‘Even when I was bored, I was interested.’ Karl Ove Knausgaard was joined by Andrew O'Hagan at Saint George's Church, Bloomsbury for a discussion of writing and the boundaries of autobiography. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week's podcast focuses on two main things: This article by Tim Parks about the sales of Knausgaard's books, and the sale of BookLamp to Apple for an obscene amount of money. 

Knausgaard's third volume focuses on childhood. He says what he knows of people he knows from books. He continues in this tradition of telling with the written word.

Reflecting on his autobiographical novels, Knausgaard says literature should be about life; in writing, he attempts to find meaning within the banality of the everyday.

In this week's podcast we talk about the forthcoming World Cup of Literature and about some of the summer books that we're both looking forward to reading. Almost all are translations; a few are authors you may have already heard of (Knausgaard); and others will be new to a lot of listeners. In our "Rants and Raves" section, Chad raves about a poem (?!--seriously, but it's a really depressing one), and Tom takes down a particular aspect of the Internet.    And don't forget that we have a dedicated podcast email address now, so send your own podcast-related rants, raves, and ideas to threepercentpodcast@gmail.com.   UPDATE   Michael Orthofer succinctly corrected all the bull I said about where the World Cup teams come from and how all that works. So, to clarify:   "First: League strength has NOTHING to do with this (would be perverse if it did, since many leagues are filled with foreign players . . . )   "Second: FIFA has six geographic confederations -- the European one is UEFA, North/Central America CONCACAF, etc. These are actually pretty closely corresponding to the continents themselves; most of the old Soviet states (and Israel) are in the European confederation, but otherwise its geographically logical -- the Gulf states in the Asian confederation, but the African Arabic speaking nations in the African section.   "Anyway, the number of places each confederation gets is divvied up after each World Cup. International success factors into this to a great extent -- but more success on the continental level than local (i.e. it doesn't matter which European teams make the WC quarterfinals, but the number that do). Europe gets so many places because European teams always do so well in international tournaments (and vs. teams from other confederations in friendlies (which are weighted much less)) -- helped also by the fact that it has so many nations (over 50 -- not that sheer numbers do Africa much good). South America is the one with the greatest World Cup places vs. # of teams discrepancy -- the confederation only has 10 teams! But South American teams (as a continental whole) do very, very well in international tournaments. The Wikipedia page on WC qualifying offers all the numbers and a good overview.   "People complain about Africa (50+ teams) being underrepresented, but lets face it, they've never done anything internationally at the adult level (Nigeria's under-21 is great, their overs, not so much). But the confederation that really gets too many places is CONCACAF -- two strong teams (Mexico, and in recent years the US (though I still have a hard time taking it seriously -- even non-qualifying Austria beat them last year)) and nothing else of note.   "Results (especially at the WC -- the only true international measure) really matter: if Africa or Asia put a team in the semis they'll demand (and get) another place for their confederation at the next WC.   "Hope all this doesn't just confuse you more -- but main point: league strength has nothing to do with international play (and strong continents (pretty much regardless of  number of teams in confederation) get more WC places)."

Picture taken by Axel Hesslenberg Start the Week is at the Charleston literary Festival with the novelists Tim Winton, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Nicola Barker and the poet and publisher Michael Schmidt. The death of the novel has been predicted since the early twentieth century but in a special programme recorded in front of an audience Tom Sutcliffe talks to three leading novelists from around the world about their latest works. They discuss their influences and their divergent styles, from Knausgaard's minute examination of his life to Tim Winton's tale of disillusionment and redemption, and Nicola Barker's humorous eccentrics. Michael Schmidt has written a biography of the novel, charting its ups and downs, its personalities and relationships and argues the form is in rude health. Producer: Katy Hickman.