Karl Ove Knausgaard Talking Books

planned ahead for the next two years. Now on BBC News, it's time

for Talking Books. Hallow and I am at Hay festival for

a special edition of Talking Books. Among one of the surprises of recent

years is the Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, who has been

compared to Marcel Brewster. He has written over 3000 pages and six

volumes on his life AT says this isn't a memoir but fiction. It is

called My Struggle, Min Kamp in Norwegian. It's full of the everyday

banalities of life. Existential crises and a series exposition on

Adolf Hitler, the nature of good and evil and death.

Welcome, let me start by asking you about the distinction between the

memoir and the novel. The first three in English at least are

marketed as a novel. Is it a novel or a memoir? For me it was a novel.

I use all of the tools as a novel and it's not an autobiography

because I'm not interested in representing my life, I'm not

interested in telling stories from my life. That's not the point of it.

This is much more using my life as war material and searching for

something in my life. I'm searching for the dot. Searching to understand

the times I am living and it is also an existential search. It didn't

start out as such a huge project, it started as something very small. Me

sitting alone in my room, trying to write a novel about my father and

failing and failing and failing. The frustration over writing a novel

about your father or even wanting to write a novel about your father came

from what impulse? Because you hadn't written about anything that

came even close to an autobiographical book in your first

two books. They were completely different. Just explain why writing

about your father was something he wanted to do. When I wrote my first

novel, it was going to in 1998, and it was almost ready for

publication. Then my father died. I realised I wrote this novel for him.

I didn't know when I wrote it but that is what it was. Then he died,

died of an alcoholic, it was a terrible place where he died. We

went down there and find that the house where he grew up that it kind

of looked like a place for junkies, totally miserable, everything. I

couldn't figure out why I couldn't identify with this. It was an enigma

for me. Why did he do with? I think you wanted to die, basically. How

come? And then I could identify with him. I had of related frustration. I

felt alienate it, I felt like a let another man's life. For the first

time in my life I could identify with him, realising he was a human

being, he was just like me. Is that when he became a father? Back

exactly. That was the starting point for the novel. `` exactly. Also,

this is the story of my life and everybody has one story in their

life and I really wanted to tell it. He has been dead for seven, eight

years and this is a time to do it. But I couldn't. I couldn't find a

way into it. Then I started to write about myself, secrets I had never

told anyone about betrayal, about doing things you shouldn't and I

said it to my editor that he said it was like a manic confession. I think

he was shocked but there was enormous energy in it and I think

that's because I... I try to please people, want to be kind, I want to

be good and I always wanted to please my father. That was one of

the key things in my life. And then I ripped all of that aside and was

doing something completely different. In the first book, the

first 20 `30 pages are absolute examination of death. It is possible

that the opening is the reason why, as were less what happens in the

rest of the three books, you've been compared to Marcel Brewster. Because

although you try and tell a story that has a Libyan narrative, you are

very discursive. `` Proust. You talk about your feelings about nature,

your member of painting and what it felt like to stand in front of a

Turner. All of these renovations suggest that this is not just a

memoir by this is an endeavour that is designed to help not just you

understand the world but for us as readers to understand ourselves. ``

all of these ruminations. I wonder if that was something he thought

might be the result? No, not at all. One of the things that is necessary

to write is that all of those self`criticism is or the notion of

somebody reading it, the notion of whether it is going to be imported

for someone, you have to get rid of that because then you are... That

you are doing something, not pretending, but... It's too

self`conscious? Back yes and you have to free yourself from that.

That's the problem with writing. With myself, writing is better now

and naive and all kinds of things. `` banal. If I had this notion of

this being imported to someone else, I would have tried to be clever. I

would try to write a proper novel, right? Is imported. You have to get

into a kind of... To be free. It wasn't writing as therapy? There was

no cathartic notion? No way. It was the opposite. The writing process

was about selflessness, if you read a very good book you disappear for

yourself. That feeling, it's a fire inside of you. You don't know why

because there's no thought involved, just feeling. And emotion. The

second I realised writing is like reading then I became a writer. I

was 27, 28 years old and I remember it very clearly. I wrote something

unexpected and it didn't come from my thoughts or anything. Where did

it come from? From experience of reading, watching films, all of the

cultural things that are inside a bus. That's not buy property. ``

inside of us. If you can free yourself from that, I will make

something, these things come pouring on the page. It's really strange

because it should be about me at in the end it isn't. `` art in the end.

Even if it didn't wanted to be, it inadvertently becomes about the

readers as well. Yes, and I didn't know that. I was so amazed when that

happened, that people relate to it, cause I honestly thought that even

my friends wouldn't be interested in this book. And then people started

to connect to it, started to identify with it and contacted me.

And all kinds of people. A woman who is 90 Age who wrote me letter. ``

who is 90 and Britney. They do talk about literature, that's not their

agenda. I'm not their agenda. They want to talk about their lives. You

contend that this is a novel. The protagonist in all of the books is

Carl. The people aren't disguised. Your wife, your second wife, window,

is in the book. Your first wife who you betray is in the book. Your

father is in the book. Your mother and father are in the book. Your

grandmother is in the book. All of these people are named. If it's not

a memoir, what is your responsibility to these people? What

went through your head in terms of the ethics of the project, the

endeavour, as against the feelings of the people who for the most

part, presumably, loved you and love them? `` you love them? When I

started to write it I didn't think of the consequences and I didn't

think of this really as being published. I have a kind of autistic

part of me that makes it possible to do this without thinking of the

consequences. So, I wrote the first novel. But I am decent and I

realised they have to read it, the people over at about, sites `` I

sent the manuscript to everybody and I got the reactions back and all

hell broke loose. I understood what I have been doing, I realised it,

and it was extremely difficult. It was like hell. It was a moral

dilemma. I couldn't find a solution. What I'm basically saying to those

people is that my book is more important than your life. And you

can't say that. That's to say. But it was a choice you make. Place you

said, I'm a good person. `` twice. So, setting back against the choice

you did make, even if you didn't set out to have the book published, the

decision in the end to have it published was presumably yours

alone? How do you explain the tension between those things? It was

a struggle. There was a crisis. I was discussing with my friends and

my editor. In the end, the solution for me was to turn it around. The

cost of controversy was about my father, revealing his story. ``

because the controversy. I turned it around and thought, who can say that

I can't write about my father? Who owns the story to my father? When I

thought of that, I thought, OK, he is my father and I have a right to

tell this story. And I have a good relationship with almost everybody

in the book, except basically from my father's family. And I totally

understand why they don't want anything to do with me.

I don't think it is a spoiler, in the first book, it is not entirely

clear why the relationship with your father is difficult. He is clearly

distant and a hard taskmaster. It is not entirely clear how he treated

you that might make you feel very unhappy in your relationship with

him. The second half of the first book is how it is translated in

English. It is called My Struggle, but it is called a Death in the

Family. It is a more exposing track on how it is to be a son, because

you discovered how your father lived for the last ten years of his life.

He became an alcoholic, living with his mother, and the house you went

to clean after his death was full of urine soaked sofas, excrement, piles

of rotting clothes, bottles of alcohol everywhere. And your

grandmother, also, was complicit in this. The rawness of this story and

your description of it, I can understand exactly why your

father's brother would not be happy with it. But this idea of owning a

story I think is a really interesting one for a writer, a

novelist. Why is it so important for you to feel that this is yours and

nobody else is to tell `` nobody else's to tell? Because you give

other perspectives, as well. Everybody can tell whatever they

like, but they can't say no to my story. They can't say, you are in no

position to write this. What they did was saying not only you

shouldn't tell this, but this isn't true, it didn't happen this way. I

started to wonder if it really happened, or did I exaggerate it,

did I make it more dramatic for the purpose of the book? Maybe I did, I

thought. I called my brother, and he said, I'm not sure. We were both

shocked when he was there. It was a terrible moment for me, because I

have said that this book is the truth, that is what it is about, it

is about my life. I certainly used the story of my father to become

more interesting myself, before I wrote the book. It is something I

did and felt very bad about afterwards. I am interested in my

father, and this happen to him. Then, I found a letter from one of

the medical teams who was there, and I De Marchi said he just sat down

and started to read a book at the house, and I remembered I was there.

`` she said she had just sat down and started to read the book. That

you hadn't exaggerated it? No, that it was worse. Then, you start to

think about recollection, memory, everything is frail and difficult to

pin down. That is what I am looking for, the complexity of things. I am

interested in the way I remember it more than the way it actually

happened. People have also written letters to me and said, it didn't

happen that way, you have to change it. But I won't change it, because

the whole idea is... You remember little mundane things, like one

situation where she was peeling potatoes, your mother. Or she really

peeling potatoes? This idea of the unreliable narrator, which is very

common in fiction, it comes to the fore. I wonder what you make of

being compared to Proust, because in one case it can be a huge accolade,

but also a huge burden. When I first heard it, it is a contradiction in

terms. A Norwegian Proust, that is impossible. For me, I am a great

admirer of Proust. I read his books when I was 25, and two years later I

managed to write my first novel. I kind of talk is literally language,

swallowed it, and then wrote a novel without knowing it. My first novel

is really in`depth into Proust. This one is sophisticated. Everything is

brilliant and well composed, and I think it is the best novel ever

written. I did kind of the opposite, I just write in a rush, I don't care

about details, it is only about the essence of getting someone else, and

everything is a storm of words. No revision? You don't go back? No, I

haven't. It is very unsophisticated. At the end of the

project I felt sorrow, because why didn't I slow down, try to make it

better, try to make a really good novel? Now it has blown, I can't do

it again. This is it. You sustained that ought of the rush of words and

wanting to tell the story of Marie period of 3600 pages. That is a long

time to sustain, this has to do is come out, rather than thinking as a

writer. Because you were a writer before that, you are a novelist. Why

resist the temptation to revise? It is a method. It is a method to get

somewhere you normally don't get to. Speed is the key for me. No

thinking. You can't think when you are writing, I can't think when I'm

writing. No concepts. The irony of this is that the third and fourth

book did very quickly, and I thought, I wasn't free at all,

because they use them. I used forms from... Existing forms. The

childhood memoir, and so on. It is impossible to break free of

everything, but that is the method, to write quickly. In the journey of

trying to be, not the best perhaps, but a good, decent person, you

expose a huge amount of humiliation for yourself. You open yourself to

incredible shame in a way that I think would surprise even the most

open person. Even anybody who would say, I don't mind what people think

about me, IMS, I am that, except me as a. `` I am this. `` accept me as

I am. My whole life is about what to the people think of me, and I am

very much manoeuvring around, because I have no self`confidence.

It is very important to me what other people think, and I had to get

rid of that in the book. It was very hard, but it was possible because I

wrote without somebody looking. I could do it, I was all by myself. In

the fourth book, which hasn't come in English yet, there is the most

embarrassing episode in my whole life. I never told anyone about it,

and it has to do with sexual shortcomings, which is the most

embarrassing thing, and I came to that point. OK, they have to deal

with this. And I did, I wrote it down, and called my friend, and read

it out loud to him. He was just laughing. And I put it in the book,

and now half a million Norwegians know of my sexual shortcomings, but

I can't think that thought, and I don't. For me, this is literature,

and it is connected to my study, and that is it. Let me bring it back to

you personally. You have four children, so you are a fully fledged

father, completely engaged in their lives. It is clear from the books

you have written that one of your struggles was to be a father and

present. I wonder what relationship you would want them to have the

books you have written. `` to the books you have written. From my own

life, from my own experience, I think I first started to understand

my parents when I was about 14. I think there could be protesting

against it, the angry against it, and that is a natural thing. It is

like I have been stealing something from them. I could see it as that,

and I am probably taking something away from them, but I hope the

perspective that I am giving something to them as well. I am an

old father, I will probably be dead by then. Almost all the time I am

thinking about that. We have run out of time, but I hope you will all

join me in thanking Karl Ove Knausgaard.