Karl Ove Knausgaard Concludes “My Struggle” | Hacker News Reader

Karl Ove Knausgaard Concludes “My Struggle”

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55 pointslermontov25 comments

Worth pointing out that Knausgaard concluded My Struggle 6 years ago. It's just that it's only recently been translated to English.

I read the first book in My Struggle and quite enjoyed it. In some ways, the author is a real curmudgeon but he's also very open and self-aware about it along with his anxieties and everything else, which was refreshing.

Also his memory is apparently extremely good and the book was rich in detail. My friend tells me book 2 is good and more focused on his kids. I'm sure I'll read it eventually.

> My Struggle

That's going to be a doozy to try to market in Germany

This book's title actually got changed to My Struggle or "Sterben" Germany. The other book you're thinking of is called My Fight or "Mein Kampf". In the original Norwegian though this book shares its title with that other book.

No, it got changed from My Struggle (the English translation of the original title) to "Sterben", which means "dying". The correct German translation of My Struggle would have been "Mein Kampf", and this is why they choose to change the title in German.

I somehow would have liked the actual translation better. Sure, it would have been strange that it would share the title with such an infamous book, and I think that the similarity was not intended by the author. But I don't really like the German titles (they have individual ones for every book, Sterben is just for the last one) and I just like the intellectual honesty of a literal translation.

[Edit] Correction: Sterben is the first volumne, not the last.

I'd have thought "Mein Streben" would be a suitable alternative. Weird choice with "Sterben", although I don't know anything about the book.

The similarity is obviously intented.

The "original" titles in Norwegian are "Min Kamp" and "Min Kamp: 1" respectively, since Knausgård planned it to be a hexalogy. (Or at least more than one book.)

I suppose it's a slightly controversial title in Norway, but I guess it's too much in Germany.

You're right, that seems correct. The Wikipedia [0] article also points in that direction.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Struggle_(Knausg%C3%A5rd_no...

More than slightly, in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.

> I just like the intellectual honesty of a literal translation.

If a literal translation has a completely different meaning or connotation in the target language, then it is not an "honest" translation, since you are implicitly (but knowingly) telling the reader in the target language something that isn't in the source language.

All the stuff I know always translated the AH one as "My Struggle". Never heard of "My Fight".

Still, that is just a dumb name for a book.

The sixth book actually contains hundreds of pages about Hitler.

The allusion was intentional.

> The title of the series, of both the English translation and the original Norwegian, is a translation of "Mein Kampf" and is thus a clear reference to Hitler. In an essay for the New Yorker's website, Evan Hughes explains how Knausgård, in interviews, "has argued that a frightening characteristic that connects Mein Kampf to the writings of Anders Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Utøya massacre, is that in the mind behind both texts there seems to be an 'I' and a 'we' but no 'you,' reflecting a dangerous blindness that allowed an otherwise impossible evil."[2] The sixth book of the series includes a meditation on the Breivik attacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Struggle_(Knausg%C3%A5rd_no...

By posting literally the most obvious point about a famous book as a snarky one-liner, this comment breaks the site guidelines. They ask: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

But can you stop going around acting like the police? I have seen you call people out for breaking the rules on many occasions. Please follow the rules yourself and stay on topic. I know my post is also wrong, but I feel you need to be called out on this.

'dang is an HN mod: one of his tasks is to call people out for breaking the rules.

(I'm an admin; sorry that wasn't clear.) It's true that those comments are annoying. They're even more annoying to write than they are to read. But we don't know a better way to semi-preserve the quality of the forum. I wish we did.

I have nothing against Knausgaard's work.

I think it would be better if they actually did name it "Mein Kampf" in Germany, as well as started naming their kids "Adolf" again, because all these dead Nazis currently exert far more control over German people's minds than they deserve.

Don't confuse with https://www.amazon.com/Man-Full-Tom-Wolfe/dp/0553381334 (which I recommend BTW)

We took that bit out of the title above.

One of my favorite books.

Who wrote this review? And who did they write it for. I thought language was supposed to convey information not obfuscate it.

In what way does this review obfuscate information? I found it lively, descriptive, and detailed with plenty of evidence from the text.

"An experimental autobiographical novel singularly immersed in its author’s psyche, in which all elegance is abandoned, tedious experiences are embraced, and the act of shitting is evoked, at one point, as “AAAAAAGGGHHH!!"

An experimental novel immersed in its author's psyche, in which elegance is abandoned and the act of shitting is evoked, at one point, as “AAAAAAGGGHHH!!"

I don't want to sit down and have to parse through a book review, I just want to read it.

This is a lossy compression: You've removed the distinction that the immersion in the author's psyche is distinct or remarkable, that the novel embraces tedious experience, and that it's autobiographical.

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