norwegian travel

03/05/15 08:43

In his story about traveling through North America, Karl Ove Knausgaard spends a great deal of time talking about his arrival without a valid driver's license, his panicked attempt to obtain one, and his embarrassed confession of this oversight to his editors at the New York Times Magazine. It struck me as the sort of thing you can get away with if you're a famous novelist but would get any freelance travel writer fired.

At one point in the piece Knausgaard discusses two books he admires about cross-country journeys: Lolita and On the Road. He does not mention that Vladimir Nabokov never learned how to drive and that Jack Kerouac drove so poorly that he was rarely given the opportunity. I'm not sure if this omission was due to Norwegian modesty - it would have made the three writers equals of a sort, at least in terms of a handicap - or simply a lack of knowledge.

I read the entire piece eagerly, even - especially - the personal revelations. A travel writer, I am always fascinated to hear what experiences other writers have in their pursuit of travel stories. (And this one had a kind of can't-look-away-from-the-train-wreck quality.) What differentiated Knausgaard's writing from Nabokov's and Kerouac's - and Henry Miller's and Jan Morris' and Jonathan Raban's - was the fact that, except in places, it was not masterful or revelatory enough to make me want to read it again.

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7 comments

Comment from: reese vaughn [Visitor]
reese vaughn

I like that you pointed out another irony in Knausgaard’s travel writing – that his models were non-drivers and bad drivers. The first Knausgaard piece made me laugh. Here’s a travel writer writing about his own bowel movements, but unwilling to talk about God. The second section read as rushed, and reminded me why I haven’t read his books. My brother is a big fan of his, though. Thanks for commenting.

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