This is the first line in an essay entitled Christmas Presents in Karl Ove Knausgaard's book called Winter, a compilation of the Norwegian writer's reflections on everything from Owls to Q-tips, a follow up to his book Autumn.
It also happens to be the night before Christmas eve as I write this post.
Winter and Autumn are the first two books in a quartet named for the seasons that Knausgaard wrote to introduce his yet-unborn child to the world she was about to experience. Autumn covers September, October and November. Each month begins with a Letter to an Unborn Daughter, followed by 20 essays.
Winter covers December, January and February. As in Autumn, the first two months in Winter begin with essays entitled Letters to an Unborn Daughter, but, according to the book's table of contents, February's essay is headed Letter to a Newborn Daughter.
I peaked ahead and saw that Knausgaard's daughter was born on January 28.
But for me, still reading the December essays, that blessed event is yet to come. Books are like that. They allow you to inhabit worlds out of time sequence, to imagine yourself in the future or in the past, to experience the pains and joys of others and learn from those experiences even though they are not happening to you. Books are lessons in humility. In order to enjoy a book, you have to be willing to be an onlooker into the life of perfect strangers -- often not even people who actually exist -- to inhabit their worlds and their minds for a while, to feel what they feel and empathize.
I began reading Autumn on the very day Knausgaard began that book -- August 28. I started reading Winter in December and tonight came upon the essay that marks today's very time frame: the night before the night before Christmas.
I'm wondering what other coincidences await me as I read through Knausgaard's entire quartet!
Earlier this month, Sheila Cowley, my editor at Arts Coast Journal, an online journal where I write a monthly column on the literary arts, asked me to contribute to a feature called Art That Makes You Feel Like Celebrating. I chose to write about Autumn, the first book of Knausgaard's quartet. Below is my reflection on that book.
Merry Night Before Christmas Eve!
In his book Autumn Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard offers up 60 essays on everyday objects and states of mind that we encounter every day – apples, wasps, plastic bags, the Sun, teeth, porpoises, frogs, piss (who knew piss could be so interesting?), blood, lightning, rubber boots, jellyfish, fingers, loneliness, oil tankers, tin cans, pain, telephones, vomit, flies, forgiveness, buttons, toilet bowls, silence… well, you get the idea. He wrote the essays for his unborn daughter, to introduce her to the world she was about to enter.
Autumn begins with Knausgaard’s letter to that daughter in utero. It is dated August 28. Amazingly, that was the very date I began to read the book. August 28 also is the birthdate of a childhood friend of mine who died on Earth Day five years ago. Like Knausgaard, he was Norwegian (on his mother’s side) and had been a writer of meticulous detail.
Mere coincidences? Or was the universe trying to tell me something? Whichever, Autumn captivated me. I found myself paying closer attention to everything in my own surroundings. What was I missing? The resolve of a white tern dive bombing into the Bay for his supper. The ebullience of my sisters’ laughter via Zoom. The flakiness of my morning croissant. I suddenly didn’t want to take anything for granted.
Knausgaard first gained international fame and notoriety with a massive work called My Struggle. A fictionalized autobiography which ran over 3,500 pages and was published in six volumes, the books created an uproar, not only because the Norwegian title, Min Kamp, echoes Hitler’s Mein Kampf, but because Knausgaard’s frank tell-all caused 14 members of his family to denounce him in an Olso newspaper.
Autumn is a smaller book, both in pages (240) and in intent. It is, however, linked to three other books called Winter, Spring and Summer.
This fall Autumn gave me reason to celebrate my restricted surroundings. The perfect pandemic read. Now I’m looking forward to reading the whole Quartet of Seasons, each in their corresponding times. Maybe once I get through Winter, Spring and Summer, the pandemic will be behind us.
One can only hope.
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