Reading Knausgaard. His essays, 'In The Land of the Cyclops'. Again and again when I read him, this about him: the meditative prose. Drawing in, and then plenty of departure points for thoughts to take off. A sort of soothing rhythm of the writing. The sentences keep flowing one after the another, not in a rush, but slowly, quietly. Like his collection, Winter and Autumn. I am yet to read the other two (Spring, Summer). I couldn't take up part three of 'My Struggle'. It felt too close to life, and generally my reading time is also a little bit of reflective time, if it pushes in or plates up the same day-to -day again with all its practical concerns or the surface noise, somehow I get caught up in it and do not find the reflective doors or channels. Just a matter of mood. Sometimes when I am feeling more upbeat, secure, generally on top of world, perhaps I can attempt it. Anyhow, the point was that the essays seem to be at a slight distance. The essay gives a structure, a particular subject which becomes the board from where and to which the discussion keeps coming in and looping out. And all the pleasures of the Knausgaard sentences are there.
As some writings are like verb, a state, a space of its own, where you not only see what the writer says, but somehow it is so opening, or inviting to open up yourself that you spend a lot of time on the same pages, reading, thinking, imagining. Because there are so many tangents that shoot out of these pages. And one has to, has to trace a few. Those are the delights of any reading, and here, there seem to be heaps. It takes longer to read, but then the time reading those pages is so rich.
I began to read these essays in sequence, but somehow the painting essays didn't hold me so I skipped ahead to ones which have more of a reader in them. And I can read almost anywhere and the prose opens up warmly to hold you. The ones on Northern Lights, the one on Submission, the one called 'Idiots of the Cosmos'... it is not even about the subject but more about the tangents. That what he thinks about the moon, the universe and how perhaps life appears to those living in long days and long nights, that somewhere I too have felt something similar, is one little thing, but that there are things like this spread throughout the book. And each of these is a treasure. One needs to pause and consider it. Contemplate it. See it well from the almost multiple angles it opens...light bouncing off willy nilly from so many angles and surfaces.
So, keen to keep reading it. And perhaps revisit. Prose like this, which is a state, a verb, less like a book, more an invitation to a show. Or an event everytime one reads those sentences. Delighted.
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I wrote this a few days ago. Then I got off Knausgaard and haven't found my way back in. Somehow, it is like this with his writing. Quite surrounded by it, and then on consideration, or as it seeps deeper, perhaps what stays is little - that is the thing with writing that is verb. I don't know, somehow when there is too much of a person or a person's surface in their writing, the seeping in process is strange. There is tug, a push and pull between your likes and the person you encounter through this reading. And generally, in such a tug, the generous souls find their way deeper, or people who can do that dance with self and yet not a self - the personal yet the classical, I don't know how to put it. Those who can talk about the self and yet leave the self out of it. Here I have in mind DFW and his generosity. Somehow, as the writing makes it way to deeper levels, it needs to stand by itself, strong in its truth, its largesse, its uplifting or enriching or elevating capacities.
Perhaps that is why I enjoy Knausgaard while reading him, for all the doors and tangents it opens. But in terms of staying or lingering or the reaching deep, it is just different, it is a lot of surface. It is just the kind of writing, and little to do with the person. The writing which is a theater, a state, verb and then there is writing which can hold its own at all depths.