An Esthetic of the Meaningless: The Problem of Knausgaard’s Readability

Abstract

ABSTRACT The notorious length of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle is the result of an ever-increasing preoccupation with speed: as much time went into the first few pages as went into all of the final volume’s 1,248 pages. Not surprisingly, critics’ appraisals were inversely related to this speed, beginning with nearly unanimous praise and ending with nearly unanimous condemnation. But it is the final volume that reveals the kind of work the novel really is: Against an innate, nearly automatic inclination to produce “what people liked,” Knausgaard wanted to write how “he really [thought] things [were].” This desire is one Michael Fried would call “antitheatrical,” in that Knausgaard did not want the novel to be for the audience. Yet Knausgaard felt that form and the meaning form produces, which for Fried were the primary means of antitheatricality, might actually have been what people liked about My Struggle. Writing quickly, then, was a way of not giving the audience what they wanted – meaning – by making the text an object – by making it meaningless. My Struggle, despite appearances, is not the epitome of readability; it is a text that wants to mean nothing so that it might truly reject any appeal to the audience.