"[A]ll the thoughts we produce are organized like clothes in a wardrobe, with trousers on one shelf, sweaters on another."
— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)
Work Title
Date
2018
Metaphor
"[A]ll the thoughts we produce are organized like clothes in a wardrobe, with trousers on one shelf, sweaters on another."
Metaphor in Context
In a collection of 60-odd pieces, not every one can be a home run, but too many of these essays anticipate a point of arrival that never comes. "Cold" begins to discuss the physics of entropy, but it barely restates the general principle, meanders a bit, then stops before it discovers anything unfamiliar. Twenty more pages would have allowed "The Nose," a clinical consideration of the facial feature's essential qualities, to proceed to a worthier climax. More concerning are the essays that indulge in lax thinking, which is hard to hide in a 750-word piece. In "Hollow Spaces," "all the thoughts we produce are organized like clothes in a wardrobe, with trousers on one shelf, sweaters on another." That isn't the way memories are laid down in the brain; it's faux science deployed in support of a convenient metaphor. Elsewhere, "the Milky Way might be the comma in a sentence in a newspaper that hasn't been picked up yet." This familiar idea doesn't elevate itself above its familiar context. I could blame the translator for deadening the prose, but I think the larger problem is that three pages just isn't enough space to hold a complete Knausgaardian thought.
Provenance
Reading Sarah Manguso, "Knausgaard’s Seasonal Book Series Continues With a Wintry Mix," New York Times (January 18, 2018). <Link to NYTimes.com>
Citation
Karl Ove Knausgaard, Winter (Penguin Press, 2018).
Date of Entry
01/23/2018
