It's our sophomore slump! In the second episode of Our Struggle, we welcome guest Brendan O'Kane, a renown sinologist and literary translator who has not only not read Knausgaard but adamantly refuses to. Can we convince him that early modern Chinese literature and My Struggle have more in common than he'd think?

0:00 - More fish talk. Drew had a canned fish phase; we predict another salmon-heavy diplomatic standoff between China and Norway.

21:24 - After spending way too much time looking for the part in My Struggle where Knausgaard describes prematurely ejaculating, we let Brendan talk about The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅), a famous 16th century work of pornography. We then discuss the strangely common phenomenon of busting to death in early modern Chinese literature. (We actually do find a way to connect this back to Knausgaard)

37:49 - Drew ponders the dense materialism of Knausgaard and how he manages to preserve the "thinginess" or heftiness of objects - letting them come across as objects with material properties rather than lazy mimetic stand-ins. A discussion touching on IKEA furniture and sumptuary regulations in the Ming dynasty follows.

1:11:49 - Finally we discuss genre fiction and propose that literary fiction has actually just become its own genre with its own tropes. Maybe it's better to just write Amish teen vampire romance novels. 

MUSIC - GUIDED BY VOICES "GAME OF PRICKS" 

EDITING BY LAUREN, THE MAN OF THE SHOW