"My Struggle"

I've come across another article on the Norwegian Proust, Karl Ove Knausgaard, the guy who one day decided to go wild writing about his life, diving deep into the minutiae of the mundane. He apparently just went freestyle, practically sailing on the stream of consciousness, but he was a prize-winning writer before he fell into this enterprise. So, you know, don't try this at home! The books are a smashing success. As Zadie Smith puts it, "A life filled with practically nothing, if you are fully present in and mindful of it, can be a beautiful struggle". Proust is actually another literary experience that I have not had, but I think Knausgaard might be more approachable, and I may have to open up a reading slot for him and at least give him a try.

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"The critical reading of the texts always resulted in parts being deleted. So that was what I did. My writing became more and more minimalist. In the end, I couldn't write at all. For seven or eight years, I hardly wrote. But then I had a revelation. What if I did the opposite? What if, when a sentence or a scene was bad, I expanded it, and poured in more and more? After I started to do that, I became free in my writing. Fuck quality, fuck perfection, fuck minimalism. My world isn't minimalist; my world isn't perfect, so why on earth should my writing be?"

-- Karl Ove Knausgaard

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Blah Sunday Afternoon

When I stepped out to take the trash out, I was thinking of letting the cats outside. It’s not cold, even though the sun never managed to break a ray of light through the cloud cover. The concern is that there is a 30% chance of rain throughout the night, but that is pretty low. However, it starts drizzling in the short time that I am out there, so I guess they will be staying in.

It was depressing to see that the neighbor dog is chained up again, and he is too far away for me to throw him the cheese. At least he isn’t freezing, and it is not pouring.

A very blah afternoon all the way around. I wasted most of it just tumbling, looking for pretty girls. I cannot resist, I guess, those sugary, spicy, nice things, even though I can never touch or taste those sweet morsels. Just so many cold, flat pictures, so much wasted sperm.

Zibaldone

Oh, cripes, another monster diary-type of book: "Zibaldone" (tr. Hodge-Podge) by Giacomo Leopardi, a 19th century Italian poet. I have already let another such work by a Giacomo go by the side, the memoirs of Casanova. But this one really does promise to hit the spot, teaching that the ultimate answer to life is suicide, even though Leopardi himself apparently did not die that way.

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“Our true nature ... allows, indeed requires, suicide.”

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“The fact is that today it seems absurd to call men back to nature, and the real and constant aim of the wisest and most profound philosophers is to distance us ever more from it, though at times they believe the opposite, confusing nature with reason. But even without that confusion, they believe that man will be happy when he lives entirely in accordance with pure reason. And then he will kill himself by his own hand.”

-- Giacomo Leopardi

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And there is also Knausgaard's "My Struggle" that we were looking at just this morning. So many books, so little time. I suppose the art is in your selectivity and prioritization. Your bank account matters, too. Leopardi's book is $50 discounted at Amazon. Well, in truth, I like being practically buried in more books than I know what to do with. It only hurts a bit knowing that I cannot read more than a fraction of these riches before my own hunger and pain are finally stilled, but I guess it will then cease to matter.