Recently, my friend Mike sent me an Instagram Reel captioned "POV: your friend who's always reading an insane book" and it's a guy joking about reading Moby Dick at the beach and The Epic of Gilgamesh on a plane and War and Peace to his dog before bed.
I responded: Wait, am I that friend?
Reader, I am that friend.
But it's only with the perspective granted by a few months' time that I can now see clearly how reading six volumes of autofiction by an irascible Norwegian writer might be seen as insane to many other readers.
Yes, so back in June of this year, after an on-again-off-again two-year odyssey, I finally finished all six novels in Karl Ove Knausgaard's epic 3,000-plus-page My Struggle series.
Why? Why did I do that? Honestly, because I enjoyed the first one, and maybe against all odds, continued to enjoy them. (Maybe that's the most insane part.) I'm being purposefully self-deprecating here, but I'm not alone in my insanity: Enough high-level readers, from Zadie Smith to New Yorker critic James Wood have raved about these, as well.
When I started this series back in the summer of 2024, I just wanted to know the answer to a simple question: Why do these work? Why do readers like Zadie Smith and James Wood love them? When I got through the first three, I wrote about why I thought they'd been working so far and why I was enjoying them. Basically, despite being a truculent jerk, he's really relatable -- and his mundane, everyday struggles are rendered in such a way that you often go, "Yep, I know what that's like."
But was that relatability really enough to draw me through 3,000 pages? It was. But just barely. Book 6 is 1,200 pages and contains a nearly 500-page section that's a close read of a German poem, a long look at Hitler's biography, and a bunch of other literary theory that is, not going to lie, eye-crossingly dull. This last book in the series was like running a marathon, and suddenly the only hill on the entire course is at mile 25. But I made it.
Speaking of marathons, another reason I'm glad I read these is the same reason why people enjoying doing hard things: When you finish a hard thing, you get a sense of accomplishment. Readers read for a variety of reasons. Among them for me is that I like a project. And this was certainly that. When I finished these novels, in addition to mostly enjoying the reading experience, reading these felt like doing something productive with my reading time, like I'd set a goal and completed it. Does that sound insane? Maybe it sounds insane.
But relatability and accomplishment aside, there is much to be learned here is well -- another important reason to read. These novels are about a writer's life -- that is, how he sees the world and translates it from head to paper. In that sense, these books were inspiring and helpful to my own modest writerly aspirations.
Finally, one last reason I read: Dude is an absolute trainwreck. He makes terrible choices. He drinks a lot. He fights with everyone he loves. He constantly shoots himself in the foot (figuratively). And he's completely honest and forthright about everything bad he's done, knowing full well you're judging him harshly as you read. All that is incredibly entertaining.
Look, I know these books probably have limited appeal. I'm certainly not trying to talk you into reading them if they don't sound interesting to you. I'm just telling you why I read them: Because they brought me joy. I looked forward to reading the next one when I was between books. And I'm sad they're over. Hey, the people who are the most insane are often the happiest, too.
(Hey, have you heard about William T. Vollman's new thing? A Table for Fortune is a four-volume, 3,000 page box set publishing Oct. 6. Who's with me?! 😅)
