Parquet Elegy (ft. Christian Lorentzen)

Our Struggle returns, and this time with highly prestigious guest
Christian Lorentzen! In addition to being our new token Gen X
friend, Christian is a famous literary critic whose work appears
regularly in Harper's, the London Review of Books, the Times
Literary Supplement and other high falutin venues. He has not
only reviewed book 6 of My Struggle for TLS but SMOKED CIGARETTES
WITH THE MAN HIMSELF during an interview for New York
magazine. 


In this episode we discuss one of the most memorable passages of
My Struggle book 1, the beer on the hill saga. If you would like
to read along this passage starts at roughly page 62 in kindle
and page 56 in analog.


cheat sheet:


1:00 - Christian recounts his meeting with KOK and confirms that
the man is indeed six and a half feet tall. Also: some NYC
literary world color including horny Jeffrey Eugenides


13:22 - We start discussing the amazingly mundane hero's journey
that takes up about 20% of this book, of teen Karl Ove smuggling
beer to a new year's eve party. How does this section fit into
the paradigm Christian outlines for us about the transition in
contemporary literature, over the past few decades, from
romanticism with a leg in fantasy to romanticism of the banal?
Also, some meta-critical discussion of how Knausgaard became an
international literary sensation, in light of Christian's
infamous 2019 meta critical essay in Harper's


45:30 - Touching off from Knausgaard's description of the
"hostile" rooms in the family home, we get into an interesting
discussion of what might be called Knausgaardian essentialism -
his technique of trying to make something of nothing by probing
the essences of both people as well as inanimate objects as
mundane as gravel. 


1:08:00 - We discuss the parquet factory as a motif in this book
and get nostalgic about light industry.


Thank you for listening! And if you would like more of Christian,
you can find him on twitter @xlorentzen. He has a piece about
Phillip Roth upcoming in the new Bookforum and you can find his
piece about literature in the Trump era for Harper's here.


As always, would love to hear from listeners - you can DM us on
Twitter @OurStrugglePod or reach us at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com
or deohringer@gmail.com 


intro: Guided by Voices - Game of Pricks


outro: Guided by Voices- Game of Pricks covered by Andrew
Ohringer