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When Karl Ove Knausgård wrote the first great novel after “Min kamp” (2009-2011), he didn’t skimp on anything. The phrase “more is more” rarely fits better than here.
Although an experienced reader of Knausgård nods in recognition of many things, “Morgenstjernen” still asks for something new.
And new is good, even if it is not good news:
The discomfort that a doctor has during the detailed four-day project, especially in “My fight”, has become somewhat thicker and more prominent this time. We are not talking about internal turmoil and potential chaos in the family, or not only that.
Now, it is nature that is out of the question. Climate crisis, yes, but it is as if the crisis also had an element of crude and primitive evil. The forces of chaos are on the move.
A sign, maybe
The new star that appears suddenly and unexpectedly in the sky, becomes a kind of catalyst for action. Is there any sign? If so: From whom, about what? And how do people have to adjust their senses to interpret the sign?
Overall, there are so many potential signals here that I’m beginning to wonder if it might be a coincidence that the novel is 666 pages long. This is Dyret’s speech in “The Revelation of Johannes,” a book from which the novel “Morgenstjernen” draws no small apocalyptic inspiration. Random? Perhaps.
The difference between a ladybug and a thousand
But let me approach the novel from a more tangible angle: the action takes place at the end of a normal Norwegian summer vacation. The unusual heat certainly creates some discomfort among the eight or nine people who are given the floor in each of its chapters.
These people, who seem to stay in Sørlandet or Bergen, prefer to have peripheral gangs with each other, but still have their herd around them: husbands, wives, children, boyfriends, parents, yes, and a Satanist gang. So we are talking about a collective novel with quite a few characters. A slight cut in the character gallery would not have made the novel worse.
The characters are still in their own way helping build up during the riots that mutter in the text. It’s the heat, it’s the star, there are too many ladybugs in a town, or crabs, and all over the place large, unknown birds are hovering.
So far so good. But little by little it turns out, so much so that it becomes demanding to ensure that what is happening fits into a rational understanding of how the world is constructed.
What should one do then? Accept that common sense disappeared when you died in the middle of a hot Norwegian summer day?
BACK: Karl Ove Knausgård is back with his first novel after “My 1-6 Match”.
Photo: Thomas Wågström / Forlaget Oktober
Climate crisis through the human doctor
This is where both people and readers can lead.
The gates of the realm of the dead are no stronger than it is possible to swing back and forth. Death turns out not to be irreversible after all, as Western science has established it to be.
Creatures that until now have only existed in nightmares, mythologies and computer games roam the forest alive. And then there are all the animals that behave in new ways.
When the timeline becomes curled so that future events have already happened, it’s time for more people to think about basic questions. Helge searches science and theories that everything, even the smallest atom, is governed by will and habit, while Egil enters theology and philosophy in search of the true human physician. An exploration of who we are becomes essential to understand what is happening.
Knausgård normally approaches the climate crisis by studying humans.
Here he clearly differs from other climate crisis writers, such as Maja Lunde, who emphasizes the dissemination of knowledge about the climate crisis itself through her novels.
Poetry and truth
Where the novel goes beyond the human, it does not go to climatic events, but to thoughts and theories of very different denominations, and the most amazing of all: to the forest where there are beings that are mixtures of animals and humans, and that many see . independently of each other.
Here we are well beyond what one would expect to find in a realistic novel.
This is true on a different level than weekdays and ladybugs, so to speak. If evil really manifests itself as immense, we are in minds from which most of us are distant. Maybe they should show how difficult it is to take over the monstrous?
Egil is a record of what exists outside of others. It is also he who gets the honor of interpreting the title: “Morning Star”. In the Bible, find that this is one of the names of Jesus in the “Revelation of John”, and a name of Lucifer in Isaiah. Thus, the content contained both divine and diabolical aspects. That is true in the novel, but Isaiah has hardly thought in those terms.
The novel itself is not positioned on correct or incorrect interpretations of all that is swirling the characters of thought material with very different names. Thus, the author creates a wide space of interpretation for the reader.
An unexpected but necessary story
“Morgenstjernen” is a monstrous novel, which uninhibitedly mixes such a happy separation from other parts of the world.
It’s a novel that one doesn’t exactly expect, but that in a strange way still seems necessary.
There must be something wrong with the alloy. Thought stuff is firmly ingrained in the lives that different people live: with birthdays, diaper changes, sick parents, stresses at work, difficult teens, drinking addiction, hidden vices, hurt feelings, and dishwashers to be put in. In day to day.
He’s deeply human and can be poignant, infamous, and comical at best.
The living characters of these lives mean that both the climate crisis and human medical crises emerge with great force, even though the novel scores low on the facts about the climate crisis. On the other hand, there is plenty of room for further reflection here.
There are many reasons to welcome the author to fiction.
