I surrender. When I first picked up Min Kamp (yes people, this novel does indeed have a chillingly familiar name, but we Norwegians are all used to it by now and find other aspects of the work much more interesting, tantalising, exciting, annoying, etc. etc.) it was out of a sense of obligation, mostly. I was (and still am) convinced that as a postgraduate student of literature at the time this work comes out it would be simply inexcusable for me not to read it. I’m usually not much of an obligation reader but this I felt so strongly that I only needed just over a month from receiving your book for Christmas before I picked it up and sat down to read. Well, to be perfectly honest I did flip through a few pages during the Christmas holidays – but oh, playing outside in the massive amounts of snow that kept falling was such an alluring thought! …I’m sure you can guess which won in the end.
But I did finally tire of the snow and the cold, and did at last pick up your book again and start to really read it. At first I was not convinced. I was made a sceptic by all the media attention, all the unwaveringly positive criticism and the fact that everyone seemed to me to have fallen for all your tricks. I was determined not to be impressed, but at the same time I was quite curious about what I’d find inside your Pandora’s box of a novel. After all, how many months has it been since a newspaper came out in which there was no mention of either 1) the indisputable greatness of your work, 2) whether or not/ in which degree the novel is autobiographical, or 3) (and this is definitely the most common lately) someone or other mentioned in your book who feels persecuted/harrassed/wants to refute the ‘charges’ laid against them by the Karl Ove of Min Kamp.
I must say I’m not a little nonplussed at how Min Kamp has been received. Or, wait, let me rephrase that: I’m not so much nonplussed as curious. How is it that so many readers – and the absolute majority of critics – don’t seem to even consider the fact that the truth of the matter is that the truth is really completely immaterial (and let’s not forget, subjective!)? Of course, I realise what is happening here; people are swallowing all your tricks whole. But the sense of mythopoeism going on, that this is all part of a ploy, a spider’s web in which you try – and succeed - to capture your audiences, is not likely to leave me any time soon.
To me, more or less all that matters is the fact that a work of literature evokes emotion in me. I have to feel something, be it sympathy, empathy, sadness, mirth; as long as there is an emotional connection I will enjoy the work and regard it as ‘good’. When I’m reading a work of fiction and feel that recognition, that sense that this could be written about me, despite the fact that I am so completely different from the person being portrayed… that will never cease to enthral me.
So why have I surrendered, why am I waving my white flag high in the air with no shame, completely unabashed?
To paraphrase Geir in Min Kamp 2: ‘You can write twenty pages about one visit to the loo and have your readers’ eyes water.’
