Nut cheese (struggle session 1.1)

Future recipient of the Kamala Harris Grant for Literary Podcasts
is back! In this episode we finally get into the belly of the
mackerel with a scene-by-scene breakdown of the first 15 or so
pages of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: A Death in the
Family. This is a new thing we're trying because we realized we
hadn't actually talked about MS yet. But please be assured the
interviews with people who have not read Knausgaard will
continue!


We've been getting a lot of nice listener feedback and would love
to keep hearing from you! Comments? Concerns? Guest suggestions?
Thoughts on which of the four open sandwiches of the apocalypse
you would choose? Especially if you're one of our 7 Israeli
listeners, please write in! You can email Lauren
(teixeira.lauren@gmail.com), DM us on Twitter, or respond to our
newsletter, which you should subscribe to if you haven't yet -
ourstruggle.substack.com. (Please no comments on the audio in
this episode, I forgot to wear headphones and make Drew as well
so that's why it sucks and I'm sorry)


cheat sheet:


0:00 - Drew and Lauren ponder Mein Kampf vs. Harry Potter and
their place in the canon of popular YA lit


9:14 - Finally we get to the famous first lines of book one! We
discuss how these first few pages are composed, jewel-like and
therefore strangely unlike the rest of this odd ramshackle annex
of a book.


20:16 - Beginning of an interesting discussion about childhood
details about how small observations made in childhood last
through the rest of your life. We talk about pieces of media seen
as children that made a huge impression on us as children (Lauren
- 1974 Murder on the Orient Express; Drew - Tubgirl)


37:15 - We draw out one of Knausgaard's semi-thesis statements,
about the inverse relationship between perspective and meaning.
How crucial is 'epistemological openness' to the Knausgaardian
project?


56:20 - An absolutely gruesome recap of a typical evening meal in
the Knausgaard household in the 1970s. This somehow leads into
one of our most rigorous intellectual discussions yet, regarding
exactly which foods do and do not constitute so-called
'heterosexual cuisine.'


Thank you for listening and sorry again about the audio!


MUSIC - GUIDED BY VOICES 'Game of Pricks'


EDITING - LAUREN, THE MAN OF THE SHOW