In the Land of the Cyclops
by Karl Ove Knausgaard
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Pub Date 5 Jan 2021 | Archive Date 5 Jan 2021
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Description
“This, which we perhaps could call inexhaustible precision, is the goal of all art, and its essential legitimacy.” —Jessica Ferri, The Los Angeles Times
In his first essay collection to be published in English, the New York Times bestselling author of the My Struggle series Karl Ove Knausgaard explores art, philosophy, and literature with piercing candor and remarkable erudition.
Paired with full color-images, his essays render the shadowlands of Cindy Sherman’s photography, illuminate the depth of Stephen Gill’s eye, and tussle with the inner mechanics of Ingmar Bergman’s workbooks. In one essay he describes the figure of Francesca Woodman, arms coiled in birch bark and reaching up toward the sky—a tree. In another, he unearths Sally Mann’s photographs of decomposing corpses, so much so that branches and limbs, hair and grass, begin to harmonize.
Each essay bristles with Knausgaard’s searing honesty and longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world.
Advance Praise
"Knausgaard argues that art is at its most effective when it destabilizes our understanding of the world...The moody, provocative black-and-white photos of Francesca Woodman reveal the “constraints of our culture and what they do to our identity” while Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission succeeds because it suggests how easily disillusioned people might accept political upheaval, asking “What does it mean to be a human being without faith?”...The throughline is the author’s keen, almost anxious urge to understand the artistic mind." — Kirkus Reviews
More Praise for Knausgaard's work:
• Intense and vital...Knausgaard is utterly honest, unafraid to voice universal anxieties...Superb, lingering, celestial passages...[with] what Walter Benjamin called the "epic side of truth, wisdom."-James Wood, The New Yorker
• As Jeffrey Eugenides so marvelingly put it, [Knausgaard] broke the sound barrier of the autobiographical novel...There's something primitive and hungry in that experience-and for me, sometimes, something spiritual, close to the exprience of grace. - Charles Finch, Slate
• What's notable is Karl Ove's ability, rare these days, to be fully present in and mindful of his own existence...as if the writing and the living are happening simultaneously...it immerses you totally. You live his life with him. - Zadie Smith, New York Review of Books
• ...so aesthetically forceful as to be revolutionary - Jesse Barron, The Paris Review
• My Struggle is a revolutionary novel that is highly approachable, even thrilling to read. The book feels like a masterpiece-one of those genuinely surprising works that alters the tradition it inherited. - Meghan O'Rourke, Bookforum
• The book kept me up until two almost every morning for a week...Real and singleminded in his storytelling." - Lorin Stein, The Paris Review
• Questions about precisely what fiction is and how it relates to reality and the extend to which traditional narrative can be a delivery vehicle for saying something true about life...lie at the intellectual and aesthetic heart of Knausgaard's huge undertaking. - Daniel Mendelsohn, The New York Times
• Knausgaard succeeds in producing prose that is "alive"...Such transgressive blurring of the borders between the public and private, sayable and unsayable, can be both life-affirming and riveting. - The Economist
• For all its complexity, My Struggle achieves something pretty simple,the thing that enduring fiction has always done: it creates a world that absorbs you utterly...[Book Six] is alive. - Theo Tait, Sunday Times
• Who'd have thought that the first monumental literary production of the 21st century...would seem, on a line-by-line basis, so modest and so raw? The books in the My Struggle series fly high by flying low, by scanning the intricate topography of everyday life. - Dwight Garner, The New York Times
• This deserves to be called perhaps the most significant literary enterprise of our times. - Rachel Cusk, The Guardian
• How wonderful to read an experimental novel that fires every nerve ending while summoning in the reader the sheer sense of how amazing it is to be alive, on this planet and no other. - Jeffrey Eugenides, The New York Times Book Review
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781939810748 |
| PRICE | US$28.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 350 |
Featured Reviews
8stitches9lives �, Reviewer
In the Land of the Cyclops is a collection of texts about the significance of literature and art, about the place of destiny in modern human life, about being earthbound, but carrying an infinity in it. Knausgaard writes about literature, painting, photography, about the creation of art and the conditions for creating, with the underlying desire to see behind the categories that shape our view of ourselves and the world. He writes about Anselm Kiefer, Anna Bjerger, Jon Fosse, about Michel Houellebecq and Laurie Anderson, among many others.
Literature is unfinished as life, meaningless as life, diverse as life, directionless as life, and can sometimes, even as life, condense into enormous clusters of meaning and world presence. This is a captivating and beguiling anthology with art as its central theme but that ruminates on profound questions surrounding the concept of art and sets foot into the metaphysical by exploring what it means to be human. It's a thought-provoking set of essays that try to understand the nature of reality and truth. Long-time fans of Knausgaard’s work will find much to love within these pages. Highly recommended.
Gina H, Reviewer
Thank you to NetGalley and Archipelago for this advanced reader's copy of In the Land of the Cyclops by Karl Ove Knausgaard.
First, this is a book of essays which are all about Arts & Photography to various extents. Some are written about specific artists and some are about art and artists in general. Second, this is not a breezy, easy read. Anyone who has read anything by Knausgaard knows not to expect that from his work. It's important for anyone picking up this book to understand the author's style as well as have some knowledge of the content to fully appreciate In the Land of the Cyclops. I'll admit that some of the artists featured were new to me but as a fan of the way that Knausgaard writes I appreciated his ability to draw me in to subjects that had previously I had had no knowledge of.
I thoroughly enjoyed In the Land of the Cyclops, even making note of some particularly meaningful (to me) parts to refer back to. I'm not going to go on and on, if you like Knausgaard, you'll like In the Land of the Cyclops. If you've never read Knausgaard, this shouldn't be your first foray into his works. I'll leave you with my favorite quote from the book, "My life is surface, depth my yearning". If that quote hits you as hard as it hit me, let's be friends and wait patiently for the next masterpiece by Karl Ove Knausgaard together.
Lee M, Reviewer
Discursive, always-interesting pieces on an impressively eclectic set of subjects. The title essay and the Houellebecq consideration were for me the strongest examples. I've read criticism elsewhere that the essays are too 'wide-ranging' and 'meandering' but that, to me, is their strength. Recommended.
Iľja R, Media/Journalist
Karl Ove Knausgaard has unworldly powers of concentration. There is also something deeply personal and direct in his dive into the arcane and esoteric beauties of world culture. With essays ranging from probing takes on Ingmar Bergman and the Northern Lights, he provides convncing proof that art and the everyday are of the same lineage.
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