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Roman
Editor:
October
Release year:
2020
«A party to follow your leaps of thought.»
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What kind of freak is the main character, “Morgenstjernen”, in Karl Ove Knausgård’s new novel? It keeps the possibilities open: is it a supernova, a star that explodes and glows brightly before dying? Is Jesus, or on the contrary Lucifer, the devil, as the Bible preaches? It depends on the eyes that see.
Knausgård is back with his first great novel after the play “My Fight” (2009-2011), the seasonal books and various collections of essays and art books. “The Morning Star” counts 666 pages, the number of the beast, according to the revelation of Juan, that is to say, a warning of the end of the world. It is a collective novel; During a couple of scorching days in August, several different characters experience a large, unknown star lighting up the landscape around them. It is a sign, and they interpret it very differently, depending on which eyes they see.
Crabs and crows
Inexplicable natural phenomena break into the trivial daily activities of the nine I-people who populate the novel. Literature teacher Arne is on vacation on a Sørlandsøy when he suddenly sees that the forest floor is covered in crabs. The priest Kathrine buries a man whom he met at the airport the day before and whom he meets again at the supermarket the same day. A man talks to young cashier Iselin at Burger King and claims to be the Lord. See 36 rats running down the street and a burning house that no one else sees. Nurse Solveig sees a pitch black field with field crows after a harrowing night in the operating room where a dead heart donor wakes up again.
Several of them see animal-like figures with human bodies, ox heads, yellow eyes, and hair on their backs. Creepy sounds, bird cries, headless cats, dauinger, and the devil’s grandmother make their entry into a novel that is basically characterized by detailed, almost cinematic everyday realism in the traditional Knausgård style. Here Bowie is played in the car on the way to the psychiatrist and Eurythmics on the way home from the night shift. Here kids play badminton and eat juice, and here a stray cultural journalist attempts an intimidating interview with a revolver with a visual artist who paints white clouds. But dark forces emerge under the dazzling starlight.
Review: Knausgård’s first novel after “Min Kamp” is dazzling and banal
Essay on death
Every now and then you have to pinch your arm and ask what the hell Knausgård has been up to. Burlesque horror novel, magical realism, or script for a Netflix supernatural series? But the intentions become clearer when the character Egil appears. The novel ends with a separate sequence, “On Death and the Dead”, an essay by Egil Stray.
The novel’s essay, Knausgård’s Special Distance, collects the ideas and places them in a cultural-historical perspective. Here, it must be admitted that it is not the author himself who speaks, but the most thoughtful character in the novel who is obviously as read and oriented as his author. But the ideas presented here have much in common with Knausgård’s 2004 novel, “A Time for Everything,” in which critical questions were asked about the worldview we abide by today in the West. The collision between science and religion, between the human and the divine, is also the subject of Egil’s essay.
Egil Stray is the son of a shipowner who has fallen far from the trunk. He is in his 50s, a former documentary filmmaker, a supposed daydream who lives as a hermit in a cabin in Sørlandet. He is a key caretaker and drinking brother of summer guest Arne. The two are very different and have a hidden contempt for each other. Arne has read a book on death and enthusiastically refers to a description of the realm of the dead “like Fredrikstad in the 1920s.” Whereas Egil, who has read Nietzsche and considers him one of the greatest thinkers since ancient times, has come to the conclusion that “Nietzsche’s thoughts only changed thoughts”, where “the thoughts of Jesus change the world” . Egil has discovered Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” and has been converted. The man who previously called the church “a spirit walker” received a sign from God, a black raven that screamed three times.
Alternative consciousness
The thoughts and reflections of the different characters around the luminous celestial phenomenon reflect the different relationships of people with the rational versus the irrational. Some have a seemingly rational explanation for the fact that the terrace is covered in ladybugs: “They are looking for food or a place to be in autumn.” Others are open to alternative forms of consciousness: “A tree cannot think. But trees can. The ecosystem as a unit can ».
The novel is characterized by biblical allusions, as opposed to the blind confidence of the science of our time. Our limitations are formulated in the following way: “We don’t know what we see, we see what we know.”
Karl Ove Knausgård masterfully connects the magical, mysterious, and supernatural in the novel with a critical idea that nature has a message; He “speaks” to us. It is a diabolical party to follow in their footsteps.
