Life on the Edge of Death
On Karl Ove Knausgaard
Karl Ove Knausgaard is one of Norway’s leading contemporary writers. His six-volume My Struggle (unread by me) is considered a classic of (semi-fictionalized) autobiography. Autumn (2015; English, 2017) is a set of “letters to an unborn daughter,” written from September to November. “As I write this,” he begins, “you know nothing about anything, about what awaits you, the kind of world you will be born into.” These letters are designed to introduce the world to her, and her to the world. There are recurring themes – the body and its processes, flora and fauna, the textures and contours of everyday objects – but the choice and arrangement of topics are random: Apples, chewing gum, piss, war, labia, badgers, Van Gogh, tin cans, Flaubert, vomit, silence, drums.
For instance: After Knausgaard “maims” an apple tree, it comes back, “densely covered with leaves, and the tree is loaded with apples.” He draws a moral:
That’s the experience I’ve gained from working in the garden: there’s no reason to be cautious or anxious about anything, life is so robust, it seems to come cascading, blind and green, and at times it is frightening, because we too are alive, but we live in what amounts to a controlled environment, which make us fear whatever is blind, wild, chaotic . . . but most often also beautiful, in a deeper way than purely visual, for the soil smells of rot and darkness, teems with scuttling beetles and convulsing worms, the flower stalks are juicy, their petals brim with scents, and the air, cold and sharp, warm and humid, filled with sunrays or rain, lines against the sky, accustomed to the indoors, like a soothing compress of hereness.
Nordic fruits, he observes in an essay on “Apples,” are accessible, with thin skin easily penetrated by the teeth, while Southern fruits “are often covered with thick, inedible skins.” He has a natural preference for the hidden fruits. Peeling an orange is a ritual, “almost as if first one is in the temple colonnade and moving slowing towards the innermost room.” He bristles at the instant gratification offered by the apple or pear, but gradually comes to realize the world is not all secrecy: “Against secrecy stands openness, against work stands freedom,” over-against the pomegranate is the rosy, inviting apple, offering itself freely to the nearest taker.