(See earlier posts on Book 1 and Book 2.)
In Book 3 we read about the author’s childhood on the island of Tromøy, in southern Norway. He lived there from the age of six until the age of 13. The book reads like a straightforward memoir and there is none of the time shifting between the recent past and the more distant past that we find in the first two volumes. Perhaps as a consequence, there is also none of the grown author’s anguish and intense self-reflection. Which isn’t to say that there is no anguish or self-reflection, just that they are the recreated emotions of the young Karl Ove, and not the more immediate emotions of the man writing the book.
It’s hard not to be aware of how great the discrepancy is between the minute and detailed account of day-to-day activities we find in this book and what any 40-year-old man can actually remember about any given day from his childhood. It’s a recreation and not a factual account—like a dinosaur skeleton recreated from various bits and pieces dug out of the ground. Ninety percent of it must be conjecture.
Childhood as actually lived is made up of wonder, fear, boredom, shame, and excitement. I don’t know what the percentages are for any given person, but for Karl Ove there was no lack of fear and shame. The main cause of Karl Ove’s fear was his father, and here we encounter what might be called the agenda for volume 3, if not for the entire series. If Knausgaard senior—he is the only character who is never referred to by name—was half the prick that his son makes him out to be then it is perhaps fitting that his cruelty is now exposed to the world. Here is Karl Ove “helping” his father cut some wood in the wintertime;
I paced backward and forward, backward and forward.
"Stop doing that," Dad said.
"OK, but I'm freezing cold!" I said.
He sent me an icy stare.
"Oh, you're fweezing, are you?" he said.
My eyes filled with tears again.
"Stop parroting me," I said.
"Oh, so I can't pawwot you now?"
"NO!" I yelled.
He stiffened. Dropped the ax and came toward me. Grabbed my ear and twisted it round.
"Are you talking back to me?" he said.
"No," I said, looking down at the ground.
He twisted harder.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you!"
I raised my head.
"Do not talk back to me! Have you got that?"
"Yes," I said.
He let go, turned, and put another log on the block. I was crying so much I could barely breathe. Dad ignored me and kept on chopping.
Later that evening, “Dad” is incensed when Karl Ove refuses to come down and watch the soccer match on TV and eat candy—a special family occasion. Dad forces him to come down and then:
He had bought a bag of glacier mints and a bag of English chocolate toffees. The toffees were my favorite, but the glacier mints were good as well. As usual, he had the bags next to him on the table. Now and then he threw one to me and Yngve [Karl Ove's older brother]. Today he did the same. But I wouldn't eat them; I left them untouched in front of me. In the end, he reacted.
"Eat your candy," he said.
"I don't feel like them," I said.
He stood up.
"Now you eat your candy," he said.
"No," I said, and started crying again. "I don't want to. I don't want to."
"Now you EAT them!" he said. He grabbed my arm and squeezed.
"I-don't-want-any … candy," I gasped.
He seized the back of my head and pressed it forward, almost down to the table.
"There they are," he said. "Can you see them? Eat them. Now."
"OK," I said, and he let go. Stood over me until I had unwrapped a chocolate-coated toffee and put it in my mouth.
It’s funny and sad at the same time. The father has looked forward to sharing a joyful experience with his son, perhaps to make up in part for his earlier cruelty. But the son’s childish insistence on denying his father that joyful experience leads to additional cruelty.
Knausgaard’s uncle and other relatives on this father’s side have not been silent about their indignation, not so much about this volume as about volume one, which depicts his father’s squalid and early death from alcoholism. (The alcoholism was not a factor during the time frame of volume three.) There may be some viable defense for the man. Maybe the son’s accounts are not entirely unbiased. But I had no trouble siding with the son, perhaps because of some similarities in our childhood circumstances.
Just about everything else in the book—Tromøy and its residents, Knausgaard’s childhood friends and their parents, and the rest of his family—is depicted with considerable warmth and in loving detail. As for himself, Knausgaard taps easily into his own childish self regard, but also shrewdly shows the vain, conceited boy his schoolmates knew. Young Karl Ove is repeatedly outraged that he is not more popular, considering that he gets the best grades in his class—well, in some subjects, anyway. In one episode, thirteen-year-old Karl Ove is favored by one of the prettiest girls on the island, a triumph he quickly squanders by springing on her his ambition to break the “longest kiss” record recently set by an acquaintance. Fifteen minutes of locked lips take their toll. Karl Ove gets the record, but loses the girl.
Anyway, three volumes down, three to go. I read somewhere that Knausgaard toned down his “take no prisoners” approach to autobiography after the public reaction to volumes one and two. Only in volume six, which is more than twice as long as any of the others, does he once again remove all the filters. I look forward to volume six, but if volume three is any indication, I will enjoy volumes four and five as well. Knausgaard also recently published an interesting article on the recent mass killing in Norway (and other mass killings by disaffected young men) in the New Yorker. You can find it here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/the-inexplicable.
