Karl Ove Knausgaard – The School of Night
Timestamps are as accurate as they can be but may be slightly off. We encourage you to listen to the full context.
Podcast Summary
Karl Ove Knausgård, the acclaimed Norwegian author of the provocative "My Struggle" series, joins novelist Eliza Clark to discuss his latest novel "The School of Night" - a dark exploration of artistic ambition set in 1980s London. The conversation delves into Knausgård's creative process, his fascination with morally complex characters, and the inspiration behind his latest protagonist, Christian Hadeland - a callous, empathy-lacking photographer willing to do anything for artistic fame. (31:10)
- The discussion explores themes of artistic ambition, moral corruption, and the Faustian bargains we make for creative success, with particular focus on how empathy-deficient personalities can paradoxically lead to both artistic freedom and tragic consequences.
Speakers
Karl Ove Knausgård
Karl Ove Knausgård is widely heralded as one of the most provocative Norwegian writers since Ibsen and described by the New York Times as simply "one of the finest writers alive." His five-part autobiographical novel sequence "My Struggle" catapulted him into the stratosphere of literary celebrity and cemented his place as an outspoken giant of contemporary literature. A long-time London resident, his latest work "The School of Night" marks his first novel set in the British capital.
Eliza Clark
Eliza Clark is the author of "Boy Parts," a critically acclaimed novel. She serves as the interviewer for this conversation, bringing her own experience as a novelist who has explored similar themes of problematic artists and photography in her work.
Key Takeaways
Embrace the Freedom of Morally Complex Characters
Knausgård discovered that writing a character without empathy creates unprecedented narrative freedom. As he explains, "if you don't care about other people, you can do what you want. You know? So that's the that's he's free, I discovered. He's free because he he's had no empathy." (03:03) This revelation opened up entirely new creative possibilities, allowing him to explore spaces typically forbidden in both literature and life. The key insight is that by channeling our own suppressed, unsocialized thoughts and impulses into fictional characters, writers can access authentic emotional truths while maintaining psychological safety through the buffer of fiction.
Accept Everything That Comes in Your Writing Process
After struggling for years with perfectionism that led to discarded manuscripts, Knausgård developed a revolutionary approach: "Accept whatever comes and relate to what what's there. Don't throw it away. Don't go another way, but just just do that. Because if you do that, then something eventually will come out of it." (43:16) This method emerged from his experience writing "My Struggle," where he simply wrote "how it was" rather than trying to create literature. The practice requires trusting the process even when individual passages seem inadequate, understanding that meaning and quality emerge through sustained engagement rather than immediate perfection.
Establish Consistent Creative Rituals
Knausgård maintains a rigid writing schedule of five hours a day, five days a week, with a goal of three pages daily. More importantly, he uses music as a gateway into each book's emotional world: "I play the same music to each novel, different music to different novel... I just take on my headphones and put on the music, and then the atmosphere and everything that has been there for months just comes back instantly." (44:52) This creates what he calls a "safe space" where he can consistently access the mental state needed for each specific work, demonstrating how external anchors can reliably trigger internal creative states.
Use Writing as Escape from Self-Consciousness
The highest moments in writing occur during states of complete selflessness, as Knausgård learned from Ian McEwan's observation about "those moments of selflessness. You completely disappear for yourself and just you don't know you're there." (46:42) This transcendent state, achievable both in writing and reading, represents literature's fundamental purpose - providing escape from our own limitations and perspectives. Writers can cultivate this by avoiding overly constructed or analytical approaches that maintain self-awareness, instead allowing themselves to become fully absorbed in the fictional world they're creating.
Understand That Artistic Breakthrough Remains Mysterious
Even successful artists cannot fully explain the moment when their work transitions from mediocre to exceptional. Knausgård recounts observing a friend who "all of a sudden, without any explanation, he he wrote something incredibly good... I asked him what happened. I I don't know. He don't know." (09:35) This mystery extends to the gap between an artist as a person and the quality of their art, suggesting that creative excellence involves forces beyond conscious control. Rather than being discouraged by this uncertainty, aspiring artists should focus on consistent practice and remain open to unexpected moments of breakthrough.
Statistics & Facts
- Knausgård maintains a strict writing schedule of exactly three pages per day, five days a week, for five hours daily, which results in producing one novel per year. (43:34)
- Norway hadn't qualified for the World Cup in 28 years when they finally made it, which Knausgård notes is exactly half his age, meaning if they qualify again at the same interval, he'll be in his eighties. (63:41)
- The first photograph ever taken was captured in 1838 by Daguerre, showing a Paris street at 8:00 AM with a ten-minute exposure time that erased all human movement except one mysterious tall, dark figure. (48:56)
