Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘What happened then?’ Linda asked.

Christina shrugged.

‘No money came in. The success had no base. Or not where it should have been. So I went bankrupt.’

‘But at least you went with a bang,’ Geir said.

‘Yes,’ Christina agreed.

‘The last collection was the nail in the coffin,’ Geir said. ‘Christina had hired a giant marquee and had it erected in Gärdet. The tent was a copy of the Sydney Opera House. The models were supposed to arrive on horseback across the open field. She had got them from the Royal Life Guards and the mounted police. Everything was on a grand scale and costly. She hadn’t cut any corners. Huge punchbowls of burning ice, you know, drifting smoke, and everyone was there. All the TV channels, all the major newspapers. It looked like the set of a blockbuster movie.

‘And then it began to rain. And I mean rain . It pelted down, it was insane.’

Christina laughed and put her hand to her mouth.

‘You should have seen the models!’ Geir went on. ‘The men’s hair plastered to their skulls. All their clothes drenched and bedraggled. It was a total fiasco. But there was something stylish about it too. Not everyone can fail in such a glorious manner.’

Everyone laughed.

‘That was why she was designing slippers when you first came to our place,’ Geir said, looking at me.

‘They weren’t slippers,’ Christina said.

‘Well, whatever,’ Geir said. ‘One of their old models of a shoe suddenly became a sales hit because Christina wore them at a fashion show in London. She earned nothing. So the design was a small consolation. That was all that was left of the dream.’

‘I haven’t been at the top exactly,’ Linda said. ‘But the little success I’ve had follows exactly the same curve.’

‘Straight down?’ Anders asked.

‘Straight down, yes. I made my literary debut, and that was of course a fantastic event in itself, not that it was sensational for others in any way, but it was big, and wonderful for me, and then I was awarded a Japanese prize, of all things. I’ve always loved Japan. I was supposed to go there to receive it. I’d bought a Japanese phrasebook and so on. Then I fell ill. I was incapable of coping with anything, and certainly not a trip to Japan… I’d written another series of poems and at first it was accepted. I went out to celebrate after they told me, but then the acceptance was withdrawn. I went to another publisher’s with it and exactly the same happened there. At first the editor rang and said it was fantastic and they would publish it. It was so embarrassing, I told everyone about it… then he rang to say they wouldn’t be publishing it after all. And that was that.’

‘That’s just so sad,’ Anders said.

‘Oh, it didn’t matter,’ Linda said. ‘Now I’m pleased it wasn’t published. It’s not a big deal.’

‘What about you then, Geir?’ Helena asked.

‘Do you mean, am I a beautiful loser as well?’

‘Yes.’

‘We-ell, I suppose I could say that. I was an academic wonderboy.’

‘Even though you say so yourself?’ I said.

‘No one else will. And I was . But I wrote a thesis in Norwegian based on fieldwork in Sweden. That was not a clever move. It meant that no Swedish publisher was interested, nor were any Norwegian ones. Nor did it help that I wrote about boxers, without looking for social explanations or excuses for what they did, I mean, that they were poor or underprivileged or criminals or some such thing. On the contrary, I thought that their culture was relevant and appropriate, much more relevant and appropriate than the feminised middle-class academic culture. That was not a clever move either. It was still turned down by several Norwegian and Swedish publishers. I got it published in the end by paying for it myself. No one read it. The marketing, do you know what it was? I spoke to a woman at a publishing house one day and she told me that she read my book every morning and afternoon on the Nesodden-to-Oslo ferry and she thought that someone was bound to see the cover and become curious!’

He laughed.

‘And now I’ve stopped teaching, I don’t write any academic articles any more, I don’t take part in seminars, I sit all on my own writing a book it will take me five years to finish and which I presume no one will want.’

‘You should have had a word with me,’ Anders said. ‘I could have got you on TV at any rate. Where you could have spoken about your book.’

‘And how would you have managed that?’ Helena enquired. ‘An offer you can’t refuse?’

‘Not even you would’ve had good enough contacts for that,’ Geir said. ‘But thanks for the thought.’

‘So that’s just you left,’ Anders said, looking at me.

‘Karl Ove?’ Geir said. ‘He sheds his tears in a limousine. I’ve said that ever since he came to Stockholm.’

‘I don’t agree,’ I said. ‘It’ll soon be five years since I made my debut. Journalists still ring now and then, that’s true. But what do they ask about? Hey, Knausgaard, I’m writing an article here about authors with writers’ block. And I was wondering if I could have a chat with you. Or even worse: Listen up, we’re doing a feature on writers who’ve done only one book. There are quite a few, you know. And you, well, you’ve written just one book. I was wondering if you had any time to chat to me about that. How it feels. Yeah, you know. Are you writing now? Has the flow dried up a bit?’

‘Hear what I said?’ Geir said. ‘He sheds his tears in a limousine.’

‘But I’ve got nothing! I’ve been writing for four years and there’s nothing! Nothing!’

‘ All my friends are failures,’ Geir said. ‘Not like the usual mainstream failures, though, these are really beyond the pale. One of them, when he puts dating ads on the Net, he says he loves forests and fields and grilling sausages over an open fire and so on simply because he can’t afford to take someone to a restaurant or a café. He hasn’t got a button to his name. Absolutely nada . One of my colleagues at university became obsessed with a prostitute, he spent all his money on her, more than 200,000 kroner, he even paid for her to have her breasts enlarged so that they were the way he liked them. Another friend has started up a vineyard. In Uppsala! A third has been writing a doctoral thesis for fourteen years. He’ll never finish because there’s always a new theory, or a new book appears he hasn’t read and he has to include. He never stops writing. He’s of normal intelligence, but he’s stuck in a dead-end street. And then there was a friend in Arendal who impregnated a thirteen-year-old.’

He looked at me and laughed.

‘Relax, it wasn’t Karl Ove. Not as far as I know anyway. Then there’s my friend, the painter,’ Geir went on. ‘He’s gifted, a talent, but all he paints is Viking longboats and swords and he has gone so far to the right that there’s no way back for him now, and certainly no way in. I mean to say, Viking boats are no admission ticket to a life in the arts.’

‘Don’t drag me into this collection,’ Anders said.

‘No, no one present belongs there,’ Geir said. ‘Not yet at any rate. I have a feeling we are all on the slide. We’re sitting on a wreck. Well, the situation’s fine now, the sky’s black and full of stars and the water’s warm, but we have started to slip.’

‘That was very poetic,’ Linda said. ‘But it’s not how I feel.’

She was sitting with both hands over her belly. I met her gaze. I’m happy, it said. I smiled to her.

My God. In two weeks we would have a baby here.

I was going to be a father.

The table had gone quiet. Everyone had finished. They were reclining in their chairs, Anders with a glass of wine in his hands. I took the bottle, got up and refilled glasses.