Karl Ove Knausgård and the rhythm of language

Throughout the six volumes of work that make up the autobiographical epic My Struggle, music is portrayed as the backdrop for teenage rebellion and identity expression. Whether trawling through his father’s record collection in the aftermath of his passing, or forming a band with the kids from his school and playing to a small crowd in a local shopping centre, music is the true rite of passage that dominates early narratives of the self.

After having written over a dozen novels and many literary works, Knausgård is openly celebrating that philosophy through a collaboration with Wilco’s drummer Glenn Kotche and visionary director Johan Renck, who worked on Bowie’s Blackstar. The result is an evening of formal experimentation and genre blending, the kind of which will excite both language and music lovers alike, and is being held at the Barbican this Wednesday (5 March).

BEST FIT: I read somewhere that before you were a writer, you at one point had a job selling cassettes. You also had early flirtations with the idea of being a musician, and being in a band, and at the very least made a mixtape or two. Would you say music was an obsession for you at an early stage of creative development?

KARL OVE KNAUSGÅRD: Very much so. Someone recently put together a bibliography of everything I’ve ever written and I noticed that from the age of 16 I started to write reviews of records and concerts for my local newspaper. There were so many that I couldn’t even remember writing them. But I started that because I was very, very interested in music, it was definitely an obsession.

Back then I also had a show on my local radio station just playing records for one hour a week. What I really wanted to do was be in a band but that was never really an option for me, so I started to write about music instead. It was my school of writing for a very long time.

Was it also some of the first material you were reading then?

Yeah, I read NME and Sounds and also the Norwegian music press every week. I came from a little place outside of everything basically, so it was my brother who was four years older that kept me fed with music. It was a way of creating some sort of identity that took you away from where you were.

What was that music scene like growing up in Norway in the 80s?

There were two good bands that I was listening to around that time. One was called ‘The Aller Værste!’, which translates to ‘The Worst’. They were kind of a ska-ish band with great lyrics – they actually played the John Peel stage once, which was a proud moment for us Norwegians. And then another band called ‘De Press’, who had a Polish immigrant at the front of a punkish/new wave trio. And it was only really those bands in Norway, so everything else I listened to was from the UK.

You were definitely attracted to a British sound then. And I might even go as far as to say a Mancunian sound (The Smiths, The Happy Mondays etc). What resonated with you about that kind of music specifically?

The very first record I bought was London Calling in 1980, I just loved it kind of instantly. And then it was The Police and The Specials and when I got a bit older a band called The Chameleons. I got Script of the Bridge when I was maybe twelve and I loved it so much, which I think had to do with the atmosphere and this otherworldly quality it has. So England at that point I think subconsciously represented everything that I didn’t have, and also everything I wanted. It was basically the world.

In the first book of the ‘My Struggle’ series there are many references to the music you grew up listening to. In one scene, you describe coming home one night and seeing some of your father’s records on display – I think it’s a mix of The Beatles, The Doors, Leonard Cohen, but also classic musical. There’s a sense in that passage that music is something you associate with atmosphere but also sentimentality. Do you see music as a kind of catalogue for experience, and specifically remembrance?

I think that’s probably the case with everyone, that you associate music with the intense period of time that it was played in. When I wrote ‘School of Night’ which takes places in London in 1985/6, I went back and played a lot of the music I used to listen to, and a lot of stuff came back. I use music when I’m writing; I’ve never written without music.

I was going to ask you if you do that.

For a long time, I basically played one record per novel and only that. For example, with the sixth book in My Struggle I listened to a collection of Iron & Wine B-sides for a year and now every time I play that record, the state of mind when I was writing comes back to me. I do that to create some sort of familiarity and intimacy, something safe in the writing situation; writing is very risky to me, I do things all the time I feel I shouldn’t and so the music is there to protect me. If I just sit down and play the music, then I’m almost in the novel and what the novel is trying to do. It’s become a tool.

Throughout My Struggle there’s a kind of teenage posturing associated with music, that very everything or nothing mentality – I think at one point you even say “music was the only thing that made sense”. Is being a music fanatic ever really something you grow out of?

Yeah! I think so. At one point it meant so much, but I never really thought about what it meant, it’s just the way things were. And now I have a different relationship to music, really. I play a lot of classical music, which I started to do in my 50s. That’s a different thing to pop and rock and indie. There’s so many worlds there that I want to get into. I’m sad I came to it so late.

There’s another charming scene from ‘A Death in the Family’ that stuck with me, as I’m sure it did many other emerging musicians. You describe playing a gig with your band in a shopping centre for 500 Krone and struggling to get any sound to come out of a guitar, and then being told by someone to shut up. Was this a moment where the illusion of glamour within the music industry was busted?

No! The glamour will always be there for me. It wasn’t meant to be, but yes, we did have a band and play together. I think actually it’s the most fun thing I’ve ever done, to be in the studio recording some demos. As an amateur fan just to be able to participate in that world a little bit, hearing everything instrument by instrument. That’s what I love. I’m on that level.

My Struggle was published over the course of six volumes, and in 2015 you released Seasons Quartet, with four parts to its whole. It strikes me that perhaps there’s something musical in this method of release, and I’m wondering if you ever connect bodies of literature to things like track listings and album releases, where continuity and development of theme are all particularly relevant?

There is a musical element to writing in itself. I tried to learn to play the guitar when I was a teenager, and got all the scales. But I could never play because I could never free myself from that structure. And then I had exactly the same experience with writing – I wrote like this writer and it wasn’t anything, and then I wrote like another writer and it wasn’t anything, it was just mechanical mechanical mechanical. And then something happened where I could write incredibly fast without thinking, which is related to music. When you see a great musician play there’s no thinking involve it's just a flow; you have to master the craft somehow and then it’s all about disappearing from yourself.

You’re now embarking on a project that has music at its very heart, a collaboration with Wilco’s drummer Glenn Kotche and director Johan Renck. Could you tell me a little bit about how this event came about? Were you aware of both of their works beforehand?

I was actually in LA. There was an award for Laurie Anderson happening and so there were a lot of music people in the room, and I sat with someone who asked what I was listening to. I said ‘Wilco’ and they said that they knew Glenn and could put us in touch, because he was reading my work at the time. Glenn then invited me to shows in Berlin and London, and that was amazing. Then about a year ago he asked if I wanted to do some work with him and of course I said yes.

We’ve done this project In New York and Minneapolis, and now it’s coming to London. Essentially, he plays one of his pieces, as an incredible percussionist, and then I come in and read, and he improvises alongside that. It’s different every night.

And then Johan is a friend of mine and we asked him to make some visuals. He’d been working on a project in Stockholm with the photographer Anders Petersen (who took the cover of Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs), making his photos move with AI. It’s very dark, and absolutely incredible, and I’m reading to those visuals.

I suppose because of Glenn’s involvement and how percussion heavy the music is, you’re asking an audience to think about the connectivity between language and rhythm?

Yeah, I think we create an emotional space and atmosphere in three very different ways that somehow comes together. Music is so so obviously social and happening between people, and reading is very, to me at least, internal. But it encapsulates the world. So having that visualised and made into sound is really incredible.

Finally, it would be great to know what you are listening to at the moment?

All kinds of stuff! I’ve been listening a lot to the Finish composer Sibelius and his piano works. I think when I got my Spotify Wrapped, I was in the top 0.001% or something, again because I listen in loops when I’m writing. But also this record by case/lang/veirs or Neko Case, K.D. Lang and Laura Veirs, which is kind of Americana. It’s really great.