woolf woolf reads

[woolf woolf]

I assume by English-centric, you mean English speaking, as only 8 of those 20 are English (still quite a high proportion, I agree, but not extremely so, surely?).

Yes, the book largely talked to English speaking individuals, indeed mostly British nationality. It was a book published by a British bookstore for the British market, so I suspect that was almost inevitable. With over a million different books currently in print in Britain alone, and 184000 published each year in England, I suspect there's enough to be going on with!

 

It shouldn't be inevitable, people should recognise the good things from outside their box. All of those authors write in the english language. The Swedish Academy considers authors from around the globe to choose whom to award the Nobel Prize in Literature.

[willoyd]

It shouldn't be inevitable, people should recognise the good things from outside their box. All of those authors write in the english language. The Swedish Academy considers authors from around the globe to choose whom to award the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Maybe it shouldn't be, but I believe it is. People do, after all, tend to read in their own language.

 

The Swedish academy may well choose authors from around the globe, but that doesn't seem to guarantee by any means that they have mastered the art of predicting classic writers. I wonder how many of those early choices, English speaking or otherwise, are still read in any volume.

Edited November 16, 2015 by willoyd

[woolf woolf]

I finished reading My Struggle: A Death in the Family, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, a few days ago. It's an autofiction novel, which means a fictionalized autobiography; it's the first book of a series encompassing six works in total. In this particular book, the author writes about his personal life from his childhood days until some years into adulthood. Common themes are the distant relationship with his parents, and some events and dilemmas through teenage years into adult life. I won't enter into specifics about the content, because I think it's disrespectful towards certain people and it isn't my place to comment on their private life. The protagonist/author flies through a scenic yet ordinary life in a fashionable manner, but he doesn't shy from remembering small unfashionable tidbits from others. I don't know if he received permission from these people to publish these personal stories, but I know his books caused an uproar and the press searched for the people mentioned in them. I also think he didn't disguise most of the names mentioned, so they can be recognised not only by those who lived in the same circle of acquaintances as the author, but also by people they meet nowadays. Another issue with the book is that its genre, the fictionalized autobiography, gives the author freedom to change certain parts of the story as he wishes, so he has a sort of artistic licence to write whatever he wants without denoting it as fact or fiction. As to the book itself, it's competent in some parts, but mostly boring and overtly descriptive; it also has some self-reflective content that I liked when I read a bit in the bookshop, but in overall it isn't that interesting.

Edited January 4, 2016 by woolf woolf