“As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain the correct distance to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed.  It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know what is happening we are forty, fifty, fifty…Meaning requires content, content requires time, time requires resistance. Knowledge is distance, knowledge is status and the enemy of meaning.”

~ Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book One (p.14-15)

---

Karl Ove Knausgård (born 6 December 1968) is a Norwegian author, most known for six autobiographical books, called Min Kamp. While Knausgård´s two first books were well-received, it was with the “Min Kamp”-books that Knausgård became a household name in Norway, due to the books large success, as well as the controversy they raised.  In 2009, Knausgård published My Struggle – First Book, the first volume of a total of six autobiographical novels, which were published in 2009, 2010, and 2011. The six books total well over 3500 pages.  The “Min Kamp”-books caused massive controversy when they were released, and whether Knausgård goes too far in exposing the private lives of his friends and family, including his ex-wife, has been much debated in Norway. The books have nevertheless received almost universally favourable reviews and were, even before the final book’s publication, one of the greatest publishing phenomena in Norway ever. (Source: Wiki)

James Wood at the The New Yorker titled his book review “Total Recall“: “There is something ceaselessly compelling about Knausgaard’s book: even when I was bored, I was interested.”  Wood nails it.  I’m 50 pages in and I find myself spellbound by his life story.

---

Credits: Quote Source: My Struggle: Book One @ amazon.com. Bio Source: Wiki. Image Source: dagsavisen