Summer Hardcover – August 21, 2018

On time, well-packaged, exactly as described.

Like the other 3 seasons in Knausgaard's 'quartet' of books written for his young daughter (not even born when he began writing this series!), this book contains his typical insights about life, one's experience of it, etc. By sharing so intimately about his own experiences, it somehow enriches our own lives, making us realize just how precious this life is, and to enjoy it as it comes. To be ever mindful of just how miraculous this gift is, in its very ordinariness. Highly recommend ALL of his works.

This book represents the natural progression and end to Knausgaard's season cycle. It is clear in this book he has mastered the craft of writing transcendant essays on the most mundane of things. Somehow finding a way to relate the nature of grass to poets and artists, along with countless other observations which could be made by no other writer.The illustrations by Anselm Kiefer make the book a beautiful object on its own.

I have been a follower and a fan of Karl Ove Knausgaard books since the very beginning of The Struggle which I loved specially Book 1. I was expecting the last one would be fantastic. To my surprise it seemed to me he had to finish this last book in a short deadline and had to do it no matter what. The best thing in the book is that helped me learn the art of attentive observation of nature and the most incredible objects I could imagine of.

He continues to paint beautiful images with his words.

Here in Western Massachusetts we are suffering through one of the hottest and most humid summers I can remember. This seems like a good time to read and review Summer, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s last entry in his Four Seasons series. I reviewed his Winter essays six months ago and recommended that book. I can say the same about Summer; in fact I like it a little more than the Winter entry in the series.First, a little information about our author is in order, I think. Karl was born in Oslo and raised in the south of Norway in Kristiansand. He is famous for his six volume series of autobiographical novels Min Kamp (My Struggle). In the Four Seasons books Karl writes essays on a wide variety of subjects that interest him and he shares with us his personal diary entries. In his diary he does not hide his shortcomings and idiosyncrasies as a person. I particularly enjoyed his visit to his family physician. It is fair to say that Karl Ove avoids doctors when at all possible. During his visit the doctor asked Karl to undress, which he did. I had to smile at this comment of Karl’s: “I would have felt so much better if I had a large, impressive dick. How much better everything would have been then.” This example is only one of the many insecurities Karl Ove shares with us in his book. A little later in his diary Karl thinks about the entry concerning his small penis and says: “By writing about it I reveal that not only do I think about it, I attach importance to it. That it is a part of my identity. This makes me a small human being.” I think many people reading this review won’t agree with Karl’s harsh criticism of himself.Summer is much more than diary entries. Karl ranges far and wide with his essays on nature and the natural world. He is a close and careful observer of much of what he sees in nature. He has a fascination with bats and devotes a couple of essays to them. He tells us that “every fourth mammal species is a bat species.” I didn’t know that. I did know that bats are special, but just how special Karl Ove points out to me in his essay. Occasionally, Karl makes observations about himself as his does with his “Tears” essay. I think most of us know the importance of keeping our eyes moist. When our eyes dry out, we are most uncomfortable. Karl Ove gives us a lesson on the biology of tears before he discusses the tears we shed when we are crying. He tells us: “In the north, where I grew up, not speaking about emotions and not displaying emotions has always been an ideal….” With both his Min Kamp and Four Seasons series of books, Karl breaks the nordic mold and shares his emotions with us.The paintings of the German painter Anselm Kiefer, illustrate Summer. Karl Ove takes us to Paris for a visit with Kiefer in his studio to select paintings for Summer. Karl sees in Kiefer’s art “the principle of transformation. That something is what it is as the result of a determination and that with a flick of the wrist it can become something else.” Karl Ove identifies with Kiefer’s work, but I must confess that the paintings included in Summer are not reprinted well enough for me to get a good sense of why Karl Ove might have selected them. For me, they add little to his essays and diary.What I said about Winter also holds true for this last entry in the series. Summer is not a book to be read cover to cover, but to be dipped into from time to time when the mood strikes us and we want to connect with a talented and thoughtful writer who wants to share some of his life experiences with us. Karl Ove Knausgaard is a fine writer who marches to the beat of a different drummer, and that is a good thing. He surprises us with his creativity and fanciful thinking; he is a writer with a poetic imagination and sensibility. I enjoyed both the style and content of his essays and diary entries and will dip into this book from time to time as I live through another hot and humid New England Summer.

It's a legitimate writing class exercise to ask new writers to write about the ordinary -- to elevate, inspire, observe, to counter the downward pull of the overexposed and unprepossessing. Considering how much of the world fits that category (hence the label InsideTheOrdinary), most of the similes are too readily available and the easy analogies frozen into monochrome.One is sympathetic when reading that when Karl Ove Knausgaard was working on a passage about slugs, he was distracted by reading a few book reviews of his earlier work -- including one calling his earlier Spring a "poetic mummy blog."  This thread-breaking is not dissimilar to the challenges facing readers. The rough outline of the project is both similar and different from the diarist / blogger frame. There is the occasional timestamping (which is rarely salient), as well as self-exhortation to reveal and to tease out insight from surroundings, utterances, facts.  Because this overt self-discipline is essential to writers, this is an oft-repeated theme for "thinking aloud." It can also become routine.But then, at times, come the enlightened passages, even when revisiting this very topic: the dictum that "literature should be personal but not private," the "paradox that the writer has to compromise his or her personal truth, that is to create an 'I' with which he or she doesn't fully identify, in order to express something that may be true for others."Just how much and what type of focus should be applied to his sort of intellect is where opinions may vary. A chapter on wasps becomes a treatise on anthropomorphism, written in a single, long paragraph. In one sense, how could it be otherwise? In autumn, the wasps all die save the queen, who goes into hibernation "like the sole survivor of a great catastrophe." Slugs, dogs, mosquitoes, ladybirds, mackerel, butterflies, plums, salt and ice cream come in for similar -- but different, chapter-level treatment. There are also more abstract chapter titles, "Tears" and "Repetition," for instance, but the theme of human life seen against the broader phylogenetic canvas often recurs, as with this commentary on banana flies:"To a banana fly, life is like a duty watch. When its watch is over, someone else takes its place. What the banana flies are watching over is what once brought them across from the other side, that shadow of life which the possess and which lives on in others when they themselves are swallowed up in vinegar and return to being motes of dust."The theme of mortality and evanescence recurs often, but it's not the whole of Summer.  A chapter is devoted to an ill-fated bicycle ride with a son, a dialog with a daughter about a Justin Bieber song is interpreted, and when thinking about Sting's music, that it had become "a force of defense," and allowed him to "shut myself up within my emotions, shut myself up within the light, and if music was a key, then I had used it to lock the door, not to open it.  A shield of elation, that is as good a description as any of the manic state."In part, the entertainment within Summer is the juxtaposition of the ordinary, sometimes prosaically mapped, with erudition and patience. The erudition will deter some, and fascinate others who will be put off by the recitations of ordinary. Be prepared to encounter Swedenborg, Charlie Chaplin, Homer, Charles the Twelfth, Ovid.Still, while he writes that "one of the tasks of literature [is] to remind us of our insignificance and make us understand that our own way of producing meaning is merely one of the many possible in the world, along with that of the forest, the plains, the mountains . . . " -- there is a melancholy, fearful tone which is never fully submerged. Summer, like the season it marks, is as much about the heat of dissipation and as it is of lawn sprinklers and cherry trees that push back with a stubborn, if not irresistible delight.Summer is less about writing than about attention. As Knausgaard says to one of his children,"In about six hours you will wake up, cheerful and contented, ready for a new day in which nothing of what awaits you will surprise you."

Lost interest.

I love this author's work and Summer is no exception. Certain chapters have stuck with me like glue. The bike trip between father and son in particular, but there are others.

Another beautiful book by Knausgaard with unique insights on the everyday and an interesting segue between historical and contemporary fiction.

This man is a genius. I adore him already bought for other people and rave about him.

One of the best books I have ever read.