Knausgau's Literary Suicide: Typing or Writing? | Read Mein Kampf 1: Father's Funeral

" Min Kamp " is a six-volume autobiographical novel by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård. The Utopia introduced and published the first "Mein Kamp" in early 2016. 1: Father's Funeral". Regarding the reading craze caused by this book abroad, Utopia has already given relevant introductions, as follows:

Between 2009 and 2011, Knausgaard published a six-volume autobiographical novel, Min Kamp, which won Norway's highest literary award, the Prague Literary Prize. In Norway, one in ten people has read Mein Kampf. Well-known writers Lydia Davis, Zadie Smith, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Letham, etc. also expressed their addiction to reading "Mein Kampf" and can't wait to read one book after another go down.

Recently, I learned that the second Chinese version of the series will be released next month, so I posted a brief review of the first part of "Addiction" that made me read that year, and recommended this rare literary masterpiece in recent years.

Literary Suicide in Knausgau: Typing or Writing? "text:

"It's not writing, it's just typing."

This is Capote's assessment of the work of Kerouac, who wrote "On the Road," the foundational work of Beat literature, in just three weeks.

Controversy over the literary achievements of "On the Road" has not ceased to this day: some people think that the book has "more cultural value than literary value", while others regard "On the Road" as a bible.

These controversies lead us to these questions: Is there a line between writing and typing? If so, where exactly are the boundaries?

After the new century, Norwegian writer Knausgaard came out with six volumes and more than 3,000 pages of Mein Kampf, which once again disturbed the nerves of book reviewers. Through unremarkable prose, Knausgaard presents a lifetime of real experiences, filled with intimate details of his daily life and upbringing. Like the sensational "On the Road" at the time, "Mein Kampf" aroused popularity and heated discussions after its publication, and was regarded as the most discussed literary work after "2666", and the first volume of the novel was also translated into Chinese. It was finally introduced to the Chinese world this year.

In terms of creative thinking, this novel is very similar to "On the Road" - like Kerouac, Knausgaard abandoned the traditional literary creation method and pursued a more direct and fast writing.

In his book, there are no plots in traditional novels, and no elaborate language. What is even more "odious" is that Knausgaard seems to be unable to distinguish the point of the matter, and takes pleasure in describing the dull and boring - Kay Ruark filters at least what he writes, and he presents his readers with a feast of imagery and slang, drunken and wandering fantasies; while Knausgaard is keen to give a full account of the trifles of life, such as The process of buying a can of Coke (Knausgao will decompose it into what the protagonist sees and thinks on the road, the protagonist enters the convenience store, the protagonist takes Coke, the protagonist pays, the cashier collects the money, the protagonist takes the money, the protagonist goes home what you see and think...). After reading the first volume, readers will find that the author is as passionate about brewing coffee as he is about his father's death, and at least two events occupy the same space.

So, is this no-holds-barred writing style unskilled typing or passionate writing?

The author himself admits that most of the passages in the book are not good writing, but "write very quickly and not edit". But through this substandard writing, Knausgaard has created his own literary experiment - "literary suicide". The so-called "literary suicide" refers to sacrificing one's life privacy and literary reputation, thereby ending one's literary career in an anti-literary way, or unilaterally condemning literature to death.

As a writer who used to be full of ideals but was frustrated everywhere, Knausgaard was tortured by life and himself. He wrote an epitaph for himself early on: A man sleeps here, he can endure everything, and finally he was squeezed to the ground. smash.

In Knausgaard's growth, his father played a very important role: from the face in the news, the gap of distrust between Knausgaard and his father had begun to appear, until he grew up; he He didn't even hide the thought of wanting his father to die, but he was emotionally broken several times after learning of his father's death. Knausgaard's love and hatred for his father was as contradictory as his attitude towards literature - he had difficulty obtaining literary success, and he was afraid of copying his father's failure. After his father's death, Knausgaard spared no effort to clean up the death scene, just like finishing this book, he used his absolute self (the whole book is about "me") to cleanse his memories, to welcome his father/literary funeral.

Rather than saying that Knausgaard is recording the journal of life, it is better to say that the journal of life forced Knausgaard to murder his own literary path.

The lack of emotion is another theme in the book: in the first part of the youth perspective, Knaus Noble retains great enthusiasm and curiosity about the world, he studies different brands of guitars, is full of admiration for literature and writers, and still discovers The beauty of life; but in the second part, Knausgaard showed his fatigue towards the outside world, forcing himself to observe nature and dig out his true "emotion".

For Knausgaard, the phenomenon of lack of emotion not only occurs in life, but also in literature and art - he has more than once described his distance from literature and implied his disgust and rejection of modern literature.

Recalling his early academy career, Knausgaard recounted how he entered the "more advanced world of literature" and admitted that he had not really absorbed the essence of modern literature, and that without them, his "intuition and emotion would have been lost." stronger". What is good art? For Knausgaard, it was neither Blanchot nor Monet, but perhaps some unknown Dutch landscape that evoked his emotions.

Just as everyone reads about death, but few touch it - in a world full of concepts and ideas, Knausgaard chose to be anti-literary, dissecting himself in the most unliterary way possible life, bid farewell to fiction with truth.

Although Mein Kampf focuses on death and boredom, the desire to live is overflowing behind it. At the end of the sixth volume of Mein Kampf, Knausgaard said farewell to literature "I am no longer a writer", but he also published new works after Mein Kampf.

His suicide performance failed to successfully sentence literature to death, but instead used literature to save himself.