Fra skyggerne af det vi ved: Kunst som virkelighedsproduktion by Poul Behrendt (review)

A few times in Fra skyggerne af det vi ved: Kunst som virkelighedsproduktion, Poul Behrendt gives evidence of his exceptional skills as a close reader of texts. It is evident, for instance, in his analysis of Linn Ullmann's De urolige (Gyldendal, 2015; The Unquiet) as an attempt for Ullmann to become the equal of her famous father, Ingmar Bergman. It is evident in his analysis of Kristina Stoltz's Som om (Rosinante, 2016; As If), in which Behrendt identifies a potential incestuous relationship between father and daughter in what he calls an "ingenmandsland mellem incest som faktum og incest som fantasi" (p. 261) [no man's land between incest as fact and incest as fantasy]. Finally, it is evident in his eminent analysis of the narratological composition of Book 2 of Karl Ove Knausgård's My Struggle (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), though most of what makes the analysis stand out has been published in a previous article. These instances, however, are few and far between. Instead of giving evidence of his talent as a close reader, Fra skyggerne af det vi ved too often becomes labyrinthine and impenetrable, as Behrendt at times seems more interested in the life of Knausgård than in his literature.

Fra skyggerne af det vi ved is a book that, in Behrendt's own words, "rører fiktionens grænse" (p. 11) [touches the borderline of fiction], taking its "afsæt i bølgen af selvbiografiske romaner, som inden for det seneste årti har bredt sig fra Skandinavien og Nordeuropa til resten af verden" (p. 9) [point of departure in the wave of autobiographical novels that within the past decade has spread from Scandinavia and Northern Europe to the rest of the world]. The book consists of thirty-eight chapters, divided into eight parts. In the first part, Behrendt takes on the notion of the death of the author as proposed by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault; in the second part, he starts his investigation of Karl Ove Knausgård's My Struggle and a change Knausgård made to Book 2 prior to publication. In Part 3, the discussion of this particular change continues, as Behrendt relates it to a larger theme of shame in My Struggle. In Part 4, he argues for the importance of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts in order to understand Knausgård's project, and in Part 5, he claims to have cracked "the genetic code" of the first five books of My Struggle, illustrated in the book as a chalice that supposedly reflects the structural composition of those five volumes. Part 6 is dedicated to four female authors in the autofictional tradition—the Norwegians Linn Ullmann and Vigdis Hjorth, the Dane Kristina Stoltz, and Delphine de Vigan, of France—whereas Behrendt in Parts 7 and 8 returns to Knausgård and, in a discussion about Spring from Knausgård's Seasons Quartet, which Behrendt refers to as My Struggle 7, investigates the divorce of Knausgård and Linda Boström Knausgård. With the majority of the book focused on My Struggle, Behrendt's book is the most comprehensive study of Knausgård's novel published to date. Because of this, I will focus my review on his reading of My Struggle.

Poul Behrendt is both an engaged and seductive reader of My Struggle. As a detective solving a crime, he makes every observation seem new and exciting, as when he notes about the beginning of Book 1: "Det er i almindelighed overset, at Min kamp straks lægger ud med den tilsyneladende videst rækkende omvendelse af alle inden for værkets rammer: forfatterens beslutning om aldrig mere at drikke" (p. 83) [It has generally been overlooked that My Struggle opens with the seemingly widest-ranging conversion of all within the framework of the novel: the author's decision never to drink again]. Rhetorically effective in capturing the attention of the reader, phrases like this one—and there are...