(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
In his recently published book on autofiction and reality literature, Danish literary scholar Poul Behrendt polices against theories of "author's death", which he believes have "reduced the humanities to a branch of the Faculty of Social Sciences". Against these theories he puts above all Karl Ove Knausgård, who "by virtue of a new basic discourse in the first person" stands in a "special position in contemporary literature" (p. 10 in the book).
Knausgård's new grip is basically astonishingly simple: The technique is well known from third-person narratives and goes by the name of "free indirect thought-giving". In direct reproduction, you can say, "Everything is good," he thinks. In indirect rendering: He thinks everything is good. And finally, in free indirect discourse: "Everything is good." In the last example, the narrator may be buzzing through the third person, but we do not know for sure who is thinking, the third person or the narrator. The phrase may be "at one and the same time a disguised first-person and a character-independent third-person discourse," as Behrendt puts it (p. 438). Knausgård's brilliant gripe is that he does the same in first person. Behrendt emphasizes «Karl Ove Knausgård's very special contribution to one of the noblest rooms of narrative theory: that the Min kamp Time and time again, the reader is mistaken for the pronoun 'I'. As if referring to the author at the time of writing and not primarily to the 'character' horizon at the moment of action '(p. 195).
This storytelling technique according to Behrendt, the ideology criticism is outdated. He therefore fondly attacks the signed ideology-critical pamphlet on Knausgård from 2010. Tjønneland is accused of comparing Knausgård and Hitler and to mix Knausgård and the character he tells about.
I Knausgård code – published when only four volumes had been published – I rebuffed those who had drawn too strong parallels between Knausgård and Hitler: "It is true that Knausgård in My match 1 dreams of 'crushing everyone'. Surely most people have wanted it at some point in their lives at some point in their lives. But the fusion of aesthetics and politics, which is characteristic of fascism and Nazism, is not found at Knausgård. ”
I did not explicitly distinguish between the author Knausgård and the "character" Knausgård, that's right. The quote about the "author" who is going to crush everyone refers to what the 19-year-old Knausgård thought – when his brother thought Knausgård wrote was too bad. The 19-year-old Knausgård reacted with rage. In this situation, Knausgård appears as an author, but not as the author of My fight. The criticism that I confuse narrator-me and told-me is therefore unjustified. This is Beirringt's only "coating" to claim that Tjøneland, like Roland Barthes, suffers from "hearing loss" because we "identify a novelist's thoughts with the writer's thoughts" (p.46)
Try to say Mein Kampf without thinking of Hitler!
Behrendt himself defines the Hitler section My fight 6 from his interpretation: The title does not refer to Hitler, but to "the recurring portrayal of the first two books of the author's struggle to maintain daily life with wife and three children" (p. 38). He ignores that the work may have intentions relatively independent of the author's consciousness. Try saying Mein Kampf without thinking of Hitler! The word catches regardless of intention. Behrendt completely ignores that Knausgård has at least subconsciously had a clue what he did when using this title.
The title Knausgård code, on the other hand, mustn't according to Behrendt refer to The Da Vinci Code. "Like the title Knausgård code advertises, there is in fact no difference at Knausgård and Dan Brown ”(p. 31). I didn't mention Dan Brown in the pamphlet, but here the title still announces a clear connection to another work. One of many examples of Lex Behrendt: What he allows himself is not allowed by others.
Behrendt is now banning theory and requiring an in-depth reading. Knausgård is to be understood using his own approximate concepts, hence the title From the shadows of what we know: "To write is to draw what is out of the shadows of what we know. That's what writing is all about. Not what happens there, not the kind of action that takes place there, but there, in itself. There, that's the place and goals of writing. But how to get there? "
Behrendt repeats this form a number of times (pp. 107, 109, 125, 130, 159, 177, 184, 195, 202, 245). He is also fond of Knausgård's fascination after the set up Ghosts: "It was only there, against the essentials, against the innermost core of human existence, that I should move" (p. 182). But Behrendt would not have been Behrendt if he had not also broken his own principle of understanding Knausgård based on his own concepts. Lex Behrendt is consistent in its inconsistency: When it suits him, Behrendt refers to the sociologist Erving Goffman (pp. 113, 138) – who is popular at the SV faculty he wanted to leave.
Behrendt perceives the memory of something past as fiction. Knausgård does not describe what happened, but how he did experienced what happened. One reads amazed that «the whole principle behind his prose since the first book of My fight had been, not to write about things as they in fact is or was (for what came the matter?) but solely as he Oplev them, inadvertently, ie out of the shadows from what he possibly knew or could have been told ”(p. 432).
The astonishment does not lessen when Behrendt claims that the writing process has nothing to do with memory: "The first five books of My fight are – with the author's own latest concept of this – all written Inadvertently. That is, not tied to written sources or to memory. But sprung from the retrospective 'submission' at the moment '(p. 196). Behrendt does not explain how memory differs from retrospective submission. Here he stretches the concept of fiction too far and dissolves the reader's realityorientering.
Of course not the 19 year old Knausgård identical with the man at 41. But Behrendt still claims that Knausgård repeats his own actions in a compulsive way. This implies a partial correspondence between narrator-i and told-i. Knausgård arrives at Ingvild i My fight 5: "When Ingvild soon after turns out to be taken over by his big brother, he is just as indestructible a rage. Shortly afterwards, he was also expected to be a pure failure among the far older pupils of the Norwegian writer's school. The trail was added to a surprising repetition force in Knausgård's life, which, twelve years later, exploded right in the minds of all course participants ».
Behrendt claims that the writing process has nothing to do with memory
do.
Behindt's diagnosis is a recurrence, which is also an important concept in Freud's psychoanalysis. But unlike in the book Bissen and Dullen (1984), where Behrendt himself had psychoanalysis as the most important theoretical supplementary base, he has now waved goodbye to Freud. Instead, he accuses Tjønneland of "monumental misunderstandings and psychoanalytic short circuits" (p. 238).
When repetition is themed, the distinction between the ego as a character and the ego that tells out of the horizon disappears. Behrendt now emphasizes the repetition of patterns of action in Knausgård's self-presentation – and Bergman's set of Ghosts becomes central (p. 335). Here I am in line with Behrendt. Or maybe it's the other way around that Behrendt joins my interpretation of 2010? In several places I wrote that Knausgård repeats patterns of action. A chapter is called "Gangsters or Liberation?". This does not mention Behrendt, despite referring to Tjønneland a few dozen times as a terrifying example of "the critic's ignorance" (p. 238). Lex Behrendt again.
Knausgård's popularity nor can it be explained solely through the narrative position Behrendt describes. It clearly creates some of the presence that is praised by Toril Moi and others. The details at Knausgård are important, the trivial becomes important. But this is also due to the on-the-toe attitude Knausgård learned as a child when he had to be on guard against his father. The reader is kept in suspense – through a kind of "Hitchcock-ultra-light" effect. In that book Behrendt calls My Fight 7 – namely spring (2016) – the narrative is not characterized by the coincidence between the narrator-self and the told-self in the way that Behrendt thinks is unique to Knausgård. And awareness of the details also has one reason: The child welfare services are looking for Knausgård, so he has to take care of every detail to make a good impression.
Involuntary sperm withdrawal, pedophilia or blackout, and bicycle theft are not part of the plot.
Unlike other interpreters, Behrendt has found a plot and structure in My fight. He draws a figure he gives as a lime to illustrate the relationship. The desire that Christians believe they drink from Jesus' blood becomes the key! Roland Barthes' discovery around 1970 that the structure consisted of the structure did not make an impression on Behrendt.
Behrendt fetishes certain selected text sites, but fails to comment on much of the work. Therefore, the plot structure he constructs does not become credible. Involuntary sperm withdrawal, pedophilia or blackout, and bicycle theft are not part of the plot. Nor does the essay on Hitler, of course. Behrendt's plot is centered around the meeting with Linda at the author's course in My match 2, and that Knausgård saw Bergman's setup Ghosts. Religious and love are at the center of Behrendt's plot structure. The interpretation therefore gets a messy, onerous character. In this combination of structuralism and religiousness, Behrendt's avant-garde conceptual apparatus suddenly turns into conservative regression. Again, he is inconsistent.
Behrendt prints from a double contract where he consistently breaks the laws he tries to impose on others. He creates double bonds and these act as rulers. One must almost admire how effortlessly and unscrupulous Behrendt practices his own double standards.
