Karl Knausgaard - Some Rain Must Fall

After the reading someone in the audience put up his hand. This was a so-called literary salon, this was normal practice.

‘Now Knausgård may not be the world’s greatest reader,’ he said, ‘but I have to tell those of you who haven’t read this novel yet: it is really good.’

He had round spectacles and big old-style radical hair and wanted to help me. But the reading comment smarted because I had been hoping all my thoughts had been confined to my own head.

Afterwards he came up to me. He had an idea for a film and was wondering if I would write the manuscript for it. He explained what the idea was, producing lots of documents and pictures, I said it was extremely interesting and very topical while inwardly I consigned him to hell, never to show his face again.

I also did a reading at a Sunday event in Bergen, the town’s leading lights were gathered, the stage acts were a potpourri, among them was a revue artist who directed traffic off a ferry to music, people were screaming with laughter. There was one number with semi-naked women dancing with top hats and sticks. Then there was me. I had bought myself a nice new Hugo Boss suit. Tonje had told me categorically to say a few words before I began reading. I stepped onto the stage.

‘I’m going to read a text about death,’ I said.

Some people in the audience started giggling. They didn’t stop, not even when I was reading, and it spread. Death, ha ha ha. I could understand them, I was a self-important pretentious young writer who thought he knew something about the big issues in life.

I attended what was termed a book-bath in one of the Vestfold towns, with a crime writer who had also made his debut that year. I puffed myself up and spoke as if I were Dante to the twelve or thirteen people who had turned out. Afterwards the crime writer refused to exchange books with me.

What was the point of all this? Flying all over Norway to read for ten minutes to four people? Talking smugly about literature to twelve people? Saying stupid things in the newspapers and burning with shame the day after?

Had I been able to write then this might not have mattered. But I couldn’t, I wrote and deleted, wrote and deleted. At the weekend we often used to visit Tonje’s mother or brother, go to Café Opera, Garage or Kvarteret, unless we went to the cinema or rented videos. The social scene was different now from when we had been students. A lot of people had moved away, and those who remained worked or were not as flexible as they had been. They had started treating me differently now I was someone, and I hated this. The meaning of everything had disappeared, that was what had happened.

In March my novel won the Critics’ Prize. When they rang up and told me, I had just got myself entangled in a minor email nightmare, at first I had written something stupid, then I had tried to repair the damage, and then it had become even more stupid and impossible to repair, a third email was out of the question. This was all I could take in. Tonje told me to pull myself together, this was a big prize, imagine if I had been told this two years ago, and I agreed, but it didn’t help, what would he think when he received the second email?

I invited Yngve and Tonje to the award ceremony, they were sitting at a table at the back when I stepped up to receive the prize. The little storm of camera clicks that met me was fantastic. Geir Gulliksen said a few words, I was touched and didn’t know where to look. Afterwards we went to Theatercafé with the publishing house people, initially I was ill at ease and said next to nothing, but luckily I warmed to the occasion. At the Savoy I met Kjartan Fløgstad, he had been nominated for the prize, my first inclination was to apologise to him for winning. Instead I asked him if he remembered me interviewing him. No, he didn’t, he said with a smile, had I? He suggested we exchange books and then he rejoined his friends. By the time we got to Lorry I was well gone and when I spotted Ole Robert Sunde at a table I immediately went over and sat down. He was with a woman. They were also good and drunk. Suddenly she leaned over to me, took my face between her hands and gave me a lingering kiss. Ole Robert Sunde said nothing, just averted his eyes. I stood up horrified and returned to our table.

In May, at the literature festival in Lillehammer, where I was attending a seminar with other debut authors, I met Ole Robert Sunde again. He was sitting at a table in the festival hall on the final evening. On seeing me, he shouted in a loud voice, ‘There’s our Knausgård! He’s good-looking, but he can’t fucking write!’

My primary reaction was confusion. What was this? An insult and not a petty one. The tone may have been jocular, but this was obviously something he had on his mind. At any rate, he shouted out the same thing on several occasions that evening. And, the second time, as I passed a few metres from his table on my way to the toilet, he shouted, ‘Knausgård’s writing is so po-oor! But he is good-looking!’ I didn’t do anything then either. Quite the contrary, when he beckoned to me on my return, I went over to his table. There were two women standing beside him. ‘Here’s our Knausgård,’ he said. Then, to the women, ‘Isn’t he good-looking? Look.’ And he grabbed my hands. ‘Look at his hands! So big. And you know what that means, don’t you?’ The next moment he grabbed my crotch. I could feel his fingers on my dick and balls. ‘There’s something else which is big!’ He laughed. Even then I did nothing. Mumbled some comment or other, extricated myself and left. The incident was unpleasant while it lasted because he came so close to me in a purely physical sense — actually he is the first and still the only man to grope me — but it didn’t bother me, the only impact it had was surprise. I knew some people considered me good-looking so that wasn’t a revelation, and as for my writing being poor … well, that was possible, but it can’t have been that bad, after all the novel had been accepted by a publishing house and it had been published. The only new element, apart from the intimidation, was the underlying implication that there was an essential difference in the literature I produced and what Ole Robert Sunde wrote. At that time I no longer read his books, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t aware of his intellectual stature. My literary identity when Out of the World was published was high modernism, under the umbrella of which came such Norwegian writers as Ole Robert Sunde, Svein Jarvoll, Jon Fosse, Tor Ulven and early Jan Kjærstad. But in Lillehammer six months had passed, my book was selling well, I had given one fatuous interview to newspapers after another, said asinine things on the radio, been on TV, performed in libraries and bookshops, and slowly I was beginning to realise that the image I had of myself as a writer might not match the image others had. Stig Sæterbakken had, for example, called Tore Renberg and me Faldbakken & Faldbakken in a readers’ column in Dagbladet, Liv Lundberg had hissed with contempt at us when we went to Tromsø for a reading and afterwards we sat together at a party; everything we said during the night angered her and in the end she even went so far as to spit at us. And then there were Ole Robert Sunde’s shouted insults in Lillehammer, which of course everyone heard. That really took the wind out of my sails. I went to Kristiansand to write, it had worked once before, now I would try again. The same area, the same atmosphere, a continuation of the same novel. I managed one page, emailed it to Nora, who had read Out of the World before it was published and had been enthusiastic and who also had a collection of powerful poetry to her name, Slaktarmøte. She emailed me back and said that unfortunately she didn’t think it was so good, especially the image I had worked on for so long, of a water sprinkler that waved like a hand, which she considered particularly weak.