My Struggle, Book Two: A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Real life, ad nauseam

About fifteen years ago, Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard made a big splash in the literary world with his six-volume work My Struggle (Min kamp). Is it an autobiography or a series of novels? Only Knausgaard and his family know for sure, but it’s written as ostensibly an autobiography, so I will consider it as such. My Struggle has received much critical acclaim, but when I read Book One, I wasn’t terribly enamored with it. These volumes, however, often come up as inexpensive Kindle daily deals, so I impulsively bought Book Two and eventually felt compelled to read it.

Book Two, first published in 2009, does not pick up where Book One left off. Book One was mostly about Knausgaard’s teenage years in Norway. In his mid-twenties, he married a woman named Tonje, but we don’t really learn much about her. That period of his life isn’t covered in either of these first couple volumes. As Book Two opens, Knausgaard and Tonje have separated, and he makes a spur-of-the-moment relocation to Stockholm. In Sweden he reconnects with a prior acquaintance, Linda, and they fall in love. Despite the fact that she’s bristling with red flags, Knausgaard quickly decides to make babies with her. From that point on, the book is mostly, “Heaven knows I’m miserable now.”

Book Two is much like Book One in that Knausgaard spends many pages describing scenes from his life in minute detail. The first tenth of Book Two is occupied by a lengthy depiction of a children’s birthday party that Knausgaard and Linda attend with their two kids. This extended vignette is a skillful piece of realistic prose, but so what? I’ve already been to this party dozens of times with my own children. Hundreds of years from now, some historian studying the social customs of 21st-century Nordic parents could use this book as a reference, but to me, spending so much time reliving the author’s experience felt pointless. Knausgaard’s writing is at its best when he delivers brief essay passages with his philosophical thoughts on life, death, love, and marriage, but unfortunately such interludes are only a few pages out of each hundred otherwise devoted to the mundane details of everyday life. Much of the book is spent discussing Knausgaard himself and analyzing his character, which he obviously finds fascinating. Such is the subject of a very long evening Knausgaard spends in conversation with a friend over a few beers that amounts to an egomaniacal My Dinner with Andre.

Most of the narrative takes place in Sweden, but Knausgaard doesn’t really like Sweden. Based on his descriptions and comments, Norway seems a lot like the Wisconsin I grew up in—very alcoholic and a little rednecky, but charmingly unpretentious and laid-back. Knausgaard’s take on Sweden, on the other hand, is very pretentious, uptight, and cumbersomely woke. I feel like I have a lot in common with Knausgaard: none of his good qualities, like his creative passion for writing; just the bad ones, like his misanthropy, low self-esteem, degrees of cynicism, nihilism, and narcissism, and a longing for solitude. It’s his ability to write with authentic psychological realism that allows me to identify with him, but am I supposed to take some kind of pleasure or satisfaction from that? While reading this book, I didn’t. Book Two is an exploration of, or perhaps more accurately a wallowing in, everything that sucks about marriage and parenthood. Even worse, it just comes across like Knausgaard is blaming everything on his wife (I don’t know if Knausgaard and Linda were ever legally married, but they’re at least common-law spouses). This volume reads like it was written as a deposition to support his claim in a custody battle, except Knausgaard doesn’t want custody; he just wants to be left alone.

I thought My Struggle was worth a second look, but Book Two was even more frustrating and disappointing than Book One. Knausgaard is very good at the descriptive diary stuff, but after about a thousand pages, I feel like I wasted a lot of time on one guy’s obsession with his own not-so-extraordinary life. I don’t know if Knausgaard ever got the freedom from his wife and kids that he so desperately craves in Book Two, but from now on, I for one will leave him alone.

A Drama in Muslin by George Moore

Realistic critique of the Victorian marriage market

The Irish author George Moore (1852–1933) was an open admirer of the writings of French novelist Emile Zola. Influenced by Zola’s school of Naturalism, Moore argued for more realism in Irish and British literature, and he practiced what he preached. His novel A Drama in Muslin was published in 1886. In later editions, Moore changed the title to simply Muslin. A type of cotton fabric, muslin is meant to symbolize the white dresses traditionally worn by young women at balls and parties as they “come out” into society. When actually describing women’s garments in the novel, however, Moore more frequently references silk and satin.

The Bartons are a well-to-do family of Galway. Mr. Barton is an absent-minded painter preoccupied by his own little artistic dream world, presumably living off of inherited wealth. His wife, Mrs. Barton, as they say, wears the pants in the family. The Bartons have two daughters. The eldest, Alice, is a very intelligent young woman, somewhat plain in appearance, who exhibits characteristics of what we today might call a feminist or at least an independent woman. Her younger sister Olive is a beautiful young girly-girl who embraces the traditional doll-like Victorian gender role of the feminine sex. Like all aristocratic young women of their time, the two young ladies’ primary goal in life is to find a suitable husband. Fortunately or not, Ireland had an established and regimented system for accomplishing this. For part of each winter, the girls and their mothers would relocate to Dublin where they would take part in a series of dances, dinners, and parties in which the prospective would associate with eligible prospective grooms. This was known as the “castle season” because some lucky ladies would be invited to balls at Dublin Castle. When the Barton women venture to Dublin for their coming out, the beautiful Olive is hailed as the belle of the season, with a possible royal title in her married future, while Alice is less enthusiastic about the whole process.

Meanwhile, back home in Galway, the Bartons and their set of land-owning aristocrats are having trouble with the Land League. The tenant farmers of Ireland have essentially unionized in an attempt to combat exorbitant rents charged by abusive landlords. Much mention is made of Griffith’s Valuation. This was a survey of land appraisal values in Ireland, in this case serving a purpose similar to today’s Blue Book of automotive values. The tenants demand to pay only the rent appropriate to Griffith’s Valuation, while of course the landlords want more. This class struggle has become violent, leading to murders and destruction of property.

While the inclusion of this social issue is in keeping with the naturalist ethos, the material on the Land League is really just background context in this novel. The main issue under consideration here is the commodification of young women in the marriage market. Moore’s coverage of the social maneuverings involved includes a fair amount of satirical humor. Mrs. Barton is depicted as a calculated schemer trying to pimp her daughters out to the highest bidder. There are, however, more serious aspects to Moore’s consideration of women’s roles. One of the young women is an atheist, another is a lesbian, and another undergoes an unwed pregnancy. While Emile Zola’s novels were more overtly scandalous, Moore does push the envelope of Victorian literature into a realm of realism that was no doubt controversial for its time. Unlike most of his British contemporaries, Moore writes women well. Alice is a commendably well-drawn and intelligent modern woman, but even Olive and her more traditionally feminine cronies come across as quite realistic in this novel. With A Drama in Muslin, Moore manages to deliver a story in which drama and suspense are generated by the question of who will marry whom, while also calling into question and satirizing the restrictively sexist emphasis that Irish society placed upon that very question.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

Latin American Balzac

Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014), winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, is probably the biggest name in Latin American literature. Intellectuals might argue for Jorge Luis Borges, and general readers might cite Isabel Allende, but people in both camps have probably read a García Márquez novel. His 1961 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude is his best-known work, but Love in the Time of Cholera, published in 1985, is a close second. Both books have sold tens of millions of copies and have been translated into at least 30 languages.

Love in the Time of Cholera is set in an unnamed Colombian town on the coast of the Caribbean Sea. The story takes place from about the 1880s to the 1930s. Dr. Juvenal Urbino, an aged physician, is one of the town’s most distinguished citizens. He and his beautiful wife, Fermina Daza, lead a wealthy and cultured life. A cholera epidemic has recently raged through the region, killing thousands, and still lingers on in some villages. As a medical man, Dr. Urbino is ever on the watch for this deadly disease, but his own untimely demise comes about as the result of an unfortunate accident. At his funeral, an eminent crowd of mourners gathers in the Urbino mansion to offer their convalescences to his wife. One attendee, however, uses this inappropriate moment to declare his undying love to the widow Urbino before her husband’s body is even in the ground.

This lovestruck man, by the name of Florentino Ariza, did not just pop up out of the blue, however. It turns out that he and Fermina Daza have a history that goes back almost a half century. The story then flashes back to their first meeting in their teen years and follows their relationship through the intervening decades. Dr. Urbino obviously has an important part to play in that story as well, and the three form one of the most memorable and moving love triangles in all of literature.

I had mixed feelings towards One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I was immediately captivated by Love in the Time of Cholera. In One Hundred Years, the story revolves around this confusingly byzantine family tree that the reader has to decipher. Love in the Time of Cholera, on the other hand, focuses on three, maybe four people. García Márquez describes these characters in intimate and intricate detail that brings them vividly to life. Along the way, you get some glimpses of life in Colombia during this period in history. The Latin American atmosphere is palpable, but this is still a universal story of love and longing. García Márquez’s prose (judging by the English translation) is rich and artful. Every sentence is full of meaning, and few words are wasted. It’s really a joy to read. The one reservation I have about this novel is some pervy sexual content. One character’s relationship with a much-younger girl would not fly in today’s cancel culture.

Love in the Time of Cholera doesn’t seem to be set in the same fictional universe as One Hundred Years of Solitude. García Márquez is noted as a writer in the style of “magic realism,” but this book is decidedly less magic in character than One Hundred Years. No supernatural events occur in Love in the Time of Cholera, and I prefer it that way. The story is at times quirky and fanciful, and the characters lead exaggerated, larger-than-life lives, but everything that occurs is within the realm of reality. If this novel is considered magic realism, then Balzac invented magic realism, because this is basically a Balzac novel set in Colombia. I wish García Márquez had been as prolific as Balzac because I would gladly read many more novels like this.

In Indian Mexico by Frederick Starr

Pushy American studies the Natives

I’ve traveled around Mexico quite a bit and developed an avid interest in that country’s history, art, and natural beauty. I don’t get down there much anymore, but I do frequently read books on Mexico. Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot of Mexican literature available in English translation, not old books by dead guys anyway. There are, however, plenty of old travel narratives by Europeans and Americans who visited that country, beginning with the early reports of Spanish colonists and continuing up through the Mexican Revolution. In Indian Mexico, by Frederick Starr, is one such travel memoir. Starr was an anthropologist and ethnologist with the American Museum of Natural History. He made five or six trips to Mexico between 1896 and 1901 to gather data on the Indigenous inhabitants of the country. He published his findings in several scientific volumes aimed at an audience of scholars. In Indian Mexico, published in 1908, is the so-called popular narrative of his travels aimed at the general reading public.

The goal of Starr’s expeditions was to take measurements, photographs, and plaster casts of Natives of the “pure blood Indians” in different parts of the country in order to compile an ethnographic physiological profile of the various tribes or nations in Mexico. He travelled all over the country with a small team that included an interpreter, a photographer, a plaster worker, and usually one or two Indian laborers as assistants. Starr’s studies brought him to many small and remote villages, although all of the Indians were familiar with Whites and assimilated into the Spanish colonial culture to varying degrees. In hindsight, the ethnographic techniques of Starr’s party seem rather amateurish, but their documentation was well-intentioned and at least served as a forerunner for later, more extensive research. Many pictures taken by Starr’s photographer are included in the book. The quality of printed photographs wasn’t so great in 1908, so it’s hard to make out much detail, but you get a basic feel for the scenery, the dress of the native inhabitants, and their religious festivals.

In a typical chapter, Starr and his crew arrive in a predominantly Indian town. His first comment is that everyone is drunk. Armed with letters of introduction from provincial governors and other “jefes,” Starr expects the locals to treat him like a visiting dignitary, and he becomes petulant when they don’t. He then sets about measuring and photographing the inhabitants. If anyone decides they don’t want to be measured, Starr threatens to tattle to the governor and have them imprisoned. Eventually, Starr always gets his way, as he smugly relates. Almost every chapter has one of these chest-thumping episodes. Starr clearly wants the reader to think he’s a cool tough guy, but it just comes across as pathetic. Aren’t these people’s lives hard enough without him ordering them around like some Great White Lord? The whole book is a self-aggrandizing manual on how to coerce poor Indians into doing what you want.

Starr does, on the other hand, provide decent descriptions of the scenery he encountered in his travels. He explains the different handicrafts, folk arts, and agricultural productions of each Indian group he visits, and also describes in detail the typical garments worn in each village. The first half of the book is mostly the gripes of a bitchy traveler, as mentioned above, but the second half of the book is an improvement and provides more information on local customs and culture. This isn’t one of the best Mexican travel narratives I’ve read, but I still did experience some vicarious wanderlust from Starr’s tour through old pre-Revolution Mexico. For alternatives, I would suggest Alexander von Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (1811), the brief Travels to Oaxaca by Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville (1812), and The Ancient Cities of the New World by Désiré Charnay (1887).

One thing about Starr that I admire is that he edited and published an anthology of 19th-century Mexican literature entitled Readings from Modern Mexican Authors (1904). English-language readers get hardly any opportunities to learn about Mexico’s pre-Revolution writers, and Starr’s anthology may be the best and perhaps the only on-ramp to that subject. 

The Inner House by Walter Besant

A love letter to class inequality

The English author Walter Besant (1836–1901), though generally not known as a pioneer in the science fiction genre, did publish two novels set in dystopian futures. The Inner House, published in 1888, is one; the other being The Revolt of Man (1882). The Inner House opens with a German scientist calling a press conference in London. He announces that he has discovered a process to stop aging. This means immortality for mankind, at least as far as natural causes are concerned. Those undergoing this process will be frozen at their present age and able to survive for centuries, excepting any fatal accidents.

Flash forward to hundreds of years later. Most of the same characters are still alive. Society (the whole Earth or just England? it’s unclear) is now ruled by a socialist regime governed by an authoritarian intellectual elite, the Holy College. All individualism has been stamped out, all problems have been solved, and a tremendous apathy has settled over mankind. Humans have little interest in doing anything except eating, working, and sleeping. The past has been forgotten, until one young woman starts researching the 19th century. This sparks a small rebellion of disgruntled citizens who want what the past had to offer: individuality, capitalism, and love.

Besant’s intention with The Inner House seems to be a heavy-handed critique of socialism. In that regard, it reads like a precursor to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, but without the sense of humor. It’s never convincingly explained how the discovery of immortality would lead to such a bizarre and extreme system of socialism, nor does the apathy and inactivity of the citizens ever seem logical. If they have so much time on their hands, and so little work to do, why wouldn’t they spend that time learning and amusing themselves, or striving for achievements in the arts and sciences? Instead, Besant depicts a very unintentionally cartoony caricature of a socialist society.

These rebels who idolize the past—what do they miss the most? For the women, it’s fancy clothes and shiny jewels. And hey, remember when men used to go off to war and kill each other? That was really cool! The men, of course, miss beautiful women in fancy clothes. What both genders long for more than anything, however, is the beloved British system of inequality. What I hate most about English literature is its relentless reinforcement of an oppressive class system in which one person is born with better “blood” than another. No nation buys into the trickle-down effect of the divine right of kings more than England. Wealthy people are born good and noble. Poor people are born evil. Hard work and education won't save you. Born a servant, always a servant. All Victorian literature endorses this genetic feudalism to some extent, but few authors or novels are as blatant about it as Besant and The Inner House. All of the rebels who so idolize the past are former “gentlefolk” who would no doubt prefer the way things used to be. One of the rebels defiantly scolds the Holy College with “You have made us all equal who were born unequal,” as if that were such a bad thing. (It’s not the “unequal” to which I object, but rather the “born.”) The villain of the novel is a former servant born in poverty, so naturally wicked. The hero is a former gentleman, so naturally virtuous.

Maybe The Inner House was the first novel to show a dystopian future in which individuality was prohibited. Since then, however, there’s been plenty more, and all of them better: Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921), Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Ayn Rand’s Anthem (1938), and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), to name but a few. Therefore, there’s no reason to read The Inner House. I read it so you don’t have to.