Our Struggle returns, and this time with highly prestigious guest Christian Lorentzen! In addition to being our new token Gen X friend, Christian is a famous literary critic whose work appears regularly in Harper's, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and other high falutin venues. He has not only reviewed book 6 of My Struggle for TLS but SMOKED CIGARETTES WITH THE MAN HIMSELF during an interview for New York magazine. 

In this episode we discuss one of the most memorable passages of My Struggle book 1, the beer on the hill saga. If you would like to read along this passage starts at roughly page 62 in kindle and page 56 in analog.

cheat sheet:

1:00 - Christian recounts his meeting with KOK and confirms that the man is indeed six and a half feet tall. Also: some NYC literary world color including horny Jeffrey Eugenides

13:22 - We start discussing the amazingly mundane hero's journey that takes up about 20% of this book, of teen Karl Ove smuggling beer to a new year's eve party. How does this section fit into the paradigm Christian outlines for us about the transition in contemporary literature, over the past few decades, from romanticism with a leg in fantasy to romanticism of the banal? Also, some meta-critical discussion of how Knausgaard became an international literary sensation, in light of Christian's infamous 2019 meta critical essay in Harper's

45:30 - Touching off from Knausgaard's description of the "hostile" rooms in the family home, we get into an interesting discussion of what might be called Knausgaardian essentialism - his technique of trying to make something of nothing by probing the essences of both people as well as inanimate objects as mundane as gravel. 

1:08:00 - We discuss the parquet factory as a motif in this book and get nostalgic about light industry.

Thank you for listening! And if you would like more of Christian, you can find him on twitter @xlorentzen. He has a piece about Phillip Roth upcoming in the new Bookforum and you can find his piece about literature in the Trump era for Harper's here.

As always, would love to hear from listeners - you can DM us on Twitter @OurStrugglePod or reach us at [email protected] or [email protected] 

intro: Guided by Voices - Game of Pricks

outro: Guided by Voices- Game of Pricks covered by Andrew Ohringer