Our Struggle is a podcast about the life and struggle of Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard
Avsnitt
Wagner By The Park (with special guest Greg Jackson )
It's a repulsively glorious fall day in Brooklyn. Seeking respite from his upstate rustication, Greg Jackson comes to the city to ask us, "Who are you guys?" In trying to answer him, we discuss Conrad, infantile ejaculation, polite literary readings, and nested storytelling. We take frequent breaks. Drew becomes rather maudlin. Lauren eats Port Salut and tries not to talk about auto-fiction. Greg gives us a reading of some of his greatest hits. His prose is metaphysically propulsive, humanely experimental. Do you like our blurb, Greg? We love you, bro.
About A Guy, With Some Guys (Featuring Willy Staley, Dean Kissick, and Sam Kriss)
We're so back, as they say, and we've recruited some struggle favorites to join us for a most unseemly return. We gather in Park Slope with 3 microphones, 4 dudes, and 1 Lauren. We talk about the text, for once. We talk about sojourns abroad and encounters with Kentuckian gastronomy. We perform close readings then forget our reading entirely. We sing at the end, too, which you'll hear if you make it all the way there.
P***Y For the Meter With Max Lawton
Drew finally lifts his editing embargo and the show recently described as "your boyfriend's favorite podcast" returns with a special guest-- the esteemed, humble, and oddly jacked translator Max Lawton. We talk about...what the hell did we talk about? Many arcane Russian writers we don't know about, non-binary bombs, a bizarre fascistic musical (also Russian), Philip Roth (I think), Stephen King, tuna melts. Tune in and remember with us.
White Chocolate Guys (ft. Sam Kriss)
In this episode with cult fave 6'4" writer SAM KRISS, all motifs are on the table - literally. Drew has been heroically managing dry January by replacing alcohol with weird food and on the Wednesday evening we gathered at the Park Slope Manse, he presented Sam and Lauren with the most deranged assortment of snacks imaginable. As we loudly munched our way through the spread (to the great delight of audiophile listeners, we're sure), the madness of the snacks began to infect us, resulting in folie a trois to remember.
cheat sheet:
2:00 - Drew itemizes our meal and Sam explains how it's possible to be British and Jewish at the same time.
46:00 - Sam delivers a startlingly lucid lecture on Kristeva's the sign and the symbol and explains how, hopefully, literature is headed back to the Middle Ages. This has to do with Knausgaard!
1:30:00 - We declare Sam to be the UK's new Blurber in Chief and Sam flawlessly impersonates American TikTok teens.
2:00:00 - Complete madness sets in at this point; not sure what we were talking about here.
Many thanks to Sam for joining us!
Listeners: Feedback about the audio quality is NOT welcome.
PLUGS:
No One’s Beautiful and We’re All Gonna Die W/Alex Dimitrov
Love is boring and breakups are banal. Flight attendants are gay and have extraordinarily high body counts. We’re calling for a New Sensualism! Have you read The Line of Beauty? Drew’s getting into astrology and martinis, Lauren’s still running the show. Alex Dimitrov is, in fact, a respected poet–published in The New Yorker, no less. He likes getting his haircut once a week, to feel in control. He likes keeping a diary, he likes the camaraderie of a handjob. Lauren’s been reading a lot about AIDS and Quebec. Drew’s been forcing people to take shots of Pepto Bismol. Dimitrov doesn’t like lunch, but he likes Hemingway. Lauren knows where to find the best steak tartare in New York. Drew still hasn’t found a father. Dimitrov is writing a novel but it’s not a queer novel. Karl Ove is falling in love. No one’s beautiful, we’re all going to die, and Our Struggle is back from an accidental hiatus. Eat this episode with cranberry sauce.
Well, There You Have It (ft. Andrew Martin)
We're back! Really! Having revived ourselves with grapefruit Spindrift and coffee following our lackluster 2nd anniversary show, we invited Andrew 'actually Armenian' Martin, author of the novel Early Work and the short story collection Cool for America, to join us at Lauren's Park Slope manse for a rollicking discussion of Book 2's famous face-slashing section! Andrew did not disappoint: with typical Armenian wit and candor, he helped us to pick apart the drunken series of events leading to Karl Ove's facial mutilation. Enjoy!
cheat sheet:
00:50 - Andrew gives us the DL on all the most important Armenian Americans; we start beef with Elif Batuman; the Queen is mourned, we ponder which British 80s singers are bereft, and which are overjoyed;
25:16 - Karl Ove sets eyes on Linda for the first time; it's the summer of 1999, Linda's wearing cool Matrix sunglasses (we're pretty sure) and we ponder what other y2k phenomena Karl Ove engaged with. Also: the 2022 film The Northman helps us to understand some peculiar actions reportedly undertaken by Karl Ove and Arve at the Biskops Arno seminar.
52:00 - Karl Ove tries to impress Linda by playing Wilco's Summerteeth and showing her a Roman cookbook, to no avail; this leads Lauren to prompt Drew and Andrew to share their picks on which album and cookbook they would choose to impress a woman in 2022.
1:19:06 - The rejection comes, somewhat robotically; Karl Ove takes a shard of glass to his face but it doesn't stop him from enjoying some pizza and catching a Garbage concert with Tonje the day after. Andrew and Drew reflect on acts of drunken destruction undertaken as young men.
Until next time!
Also....
Have brain damage? Consider donating to our patreon!
Vagaries and Vicissitudes: A 2nd Anniversary Call-in Special
As that haunting summer feeling takes hold, Lauren and Drew languidly reflect on another year of podcasting and readerly fellowship. Along the way they read some KOK and respond to calls from the usual band of dilettantes, devotees, and detractors. A goblin-schnozzed Czech puppet called Mickey makes a special appearance as well.
Colonel Mustard with the Gerbil (ft. Jon Lindsey)
Good news: it's our first in-person recording in half a year. Bad news (a la Teddy St. Aubyn): Audio interface ran out of battery so it cuts off sorry
Buy Jon's book: Body High
We'll get back to Karl Ove soon we promise.
Have brain damage? Consider donating to our Patreon: patreon.com/ourstruggle
Bildongsroman (ft. Gary Shteyngart)
We're back! We're talkin schlong! We're on Patreon, finally!
It's season 4....after taking a month and half off from the show to work on their tans, Lauren and Drew return, joined, this time, by the beloved novelist Gary Shteyngart, zooming in from his Rolex-stuffed country estate in the Hudson Valley. Knowing that many of our listeners are fans of Gary's work for its wit, humor and aching portrayals of soviet jewish anxiety (cosplaying a lit critic today lol), we decided to engage Gary exclusively on the subject of his penis. Gary, whose penis's travails began at the age of 7 when we underwent a botched circumcision inflicted by singing Hasids, was more than happy to discuss his New Yorker story about the trials and tribulations of his mangled member (his Bildongsroman, if you will). What followed was a congenial discussion of not only his fucked up penis but also his decadent forays into watches, ant larvae, and more; Phillip Roth's sex advice to a young starstruck Gary; and a truly overwhelming raft of dick jokes that all seemed to point in the same direction: a serious consideration of the limits of humor's liberating properties and the delicate process of transforming real ongoing pain into art (I told you I was cosplaying a lit critic today lol).
Thank you Gary! Hope to see you at the tinned fish restaurant soon.
To the rest of you - patreon.com/ourstruggle.
Reach out - teixeira.lauren@gmail.com; deohringer@gmail.com
Cafe Society (ft. Felix Biederman)
We're back! And joined by Felix Biederman, a promising young podcaster recently arrived in Los Angeles whom we condescended to let on the show. Although by no means a "bookhead" -- to appropriate his charming coinage -- Felix is a longtime fan of Karl Ove Knausgaard. The Norwegian author became a source of strength for Felix when he first encountered the Struggle books in 2017 amidst an increasingly cloying digital media landscape. With startling lucidity, Felix articulates how Knasugaard, with his undifferentiated and unselfserving stream of thoughts, served as a welcome anecdote to the insanely hypertargeted and overdetermined first person essay boom of the time (should she have pitched a piece about what it's like to be a quarter Portuguese woman in America? Lauren wonders). Then we get into the text: specifically pages 88-94 of book 2, which cover about five minutes of Knausgaard stalking around Stockholm with the stroller and having thoughts. We try to understand Knausgaard's aversion to being recognized as a "regular" as a coffee shop (and utter mortification at being presented with a free croissant) and Felix recounts his stint in cafe society (the LES Dunkin Donuts) as a young man. Also: we discover Knausgaard to have invented main character/NPC discourse, and consider the 2005 fashion trend of knee high black boots for women, which Knausgaard wishes "would last forever" (cruel hindsight: it didn't).
If you enjoyed this episode with Felix, make sure to check out his podcast, "Chapo Trap House"
As always we can be reached at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com; deohringer@gmail.com
LIVE SHOW IS THURS JUN 2 @ KGB BAR. Tickets are not available yet but will be soon. We'll send out an email blast!
Mugs are available at ourstruggle.store. Discount code MISTAKE valid for one week!
Oh and congratulations to our baby Joshua Cohen (novelist) on his Pulitzer win, which we like to think we are in some part if not all responsible for.
BONUS EP: The Northman (ft. Alec Niedenthal)
A lot of people when they realize that Drew is not on this episode are going to say I betrayed him but what you need to know is that we're actually POLY now and I can podcast with any man I choose. Also Drew was supposed to show up to this recording and didn't.
WE HAD A LOT OF FUN WITHOUT DREW! My good friend Alec Niedenthal and I went to see The Northman at Nitehawk (prospect park location), sampled a viking burger (which we review in this episode), and podded about the experience back at my place over gluten free beer and mixed olives (garlic stuffed and kalamata). Weirdly enough we had a number of surprise guests show up to my living room: literary critic Christian Lorentzen; Alec's friend Seth from his MFA, who's promoting his self-published book 'Communal Feelings Spaces'; and the Northman himself! It was a wild time!!
This episode contains what some losers would call spoilers. Don't listen if you can't handle the details of a story that didn't even happen in real life!
Thank you for listening and shout out to my homie Alec!
Until next time-
Rhythm Time (ft. James Griffiths)
Finally! It's Rhythm Time! To discuss one of the most notorious and worst written passages of Book 2, we invited back our homie James Griffiths, the Welsh warrior and three-time struggle King, who told us that these pages made him "want to get a vasectomy."
Also in this episode: A "lover's quarrel" between Lauren and Drew (saga to be cont.); we uncover the true meaning of Nico's 'These Days'; James and Drew get vulnerable about their hair loss journeys; Lauren reports on her experience of a real-life Rhythm Time in south Brooklyn.
James has a new book out which Lauren will definitely read if he sends her a copy! It's called "Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language" and takes up the subject of vanishing marginal languages (we love them folks!) and it's been getting great reviews!
As always, we can be reached at teixeira.lauren@gmail; deohringer@gmail.com
Live show is June 2 at KGB Bar in New York! Mark your calendars! (Tickets are not available yet but they will be, at some point)
Oh and stay tuned for our Patreon lol
Oh and I still have mugs please buy one? ourstruggle.store
Until next time!
Conception (ft. Andrew Lipstein)
Welcome back! This is a classic struggle, in which we were joined by our new friend, yet another Jewish writer named Andrew. You can buy his (Andrew Lipstein's) novel LAST RESORT out now. It's getting good reviews.
Lauren's half awake notes:
0:00 – marc maron-style appeal to buy mug
3:30 - geriatric pregnancy, half of face paralyzed, run into a pole
15:47 – knausgaard primal experience. Hitler section.
23:30 - Knaus feels childrearing not meaningful, longing to be somewhere else
34:47 – drew’s love life and Andrew meeting his wife . "knausgaard seems like a broken person" drew wants to know how to make baby
47:36 – first child
59:15 – is there meaning enough in the golden doodle
1:14:00 – martin amis writing for park slope food coop gazette?
1:36:00 - which male writer is going to stab his wife
MUGS:
CONTACT:
teixeira.lauren@gmail.com; deohringer@gmail.com
Love Qua Love (ft. Oded Even Or and Krithika Varagur)
In which we discuss Mating (Norman Rush's luminous 1991 novel), and mating.
Happy Valentine's Day
Clown Hour
Alright folks - we finally got equipment for IRL recording but the catch is, we did too much IRL hanging out this weekend so by the time we figured out the equipment we were out of things to say. I mean there's some good stuff in here but shouldn't be any kind of priority unless you're some kind of freak who's desperate to hear the EXQUISITE TIMBRE of our voices (Mason's on this too and he has the best vox of all). Just....focus on the sound, don't listen to what we're actually saying, it's very uncouth and gratuitous (thank god Mr. Goldstein passed before he hear such loose talk!)
we'll be back soon with some better content we promise
also our "send in the clowns" demo (very rough) is at the end
Fanny and Alexander and Karl Ove (Xmas special)
THIS HOLIDAY SEASON, HELP US WORSHIP MAMMON! Link to store
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In this end of the year Christmas special, our two Hebraic hosts convene to discuss the Yuletide-set Part One of Ingmar Bergman's 1983 masterpiece, Fanny and Alexander. What resonances does this warm, nostalgic account of a Swedish boy's fantasy life have with our Jesus in the sea seeing Norwegian? How does the line between fantasy and reality, onstage and offstage blur for this theatrical bohemian family? What, in fact, were the Ekdahls feasting on at Christmas dinner? All of these questions and more are pondered in what the pulsating orb wearing horn rimmed glasses of record the New Yorker has recently designated our "highly digressive and meandering" style. The second half of this show, much like the latter half of Bergman's epic, is sure to perplex, bewilder and alienate: we abandon our nominal topic altogether and mutter for about an hour about mammals vs. birds, our holiday cooking plans, and Drew's upcoming track "I've Lost a Lot of Girls To Christmas" (featured at the end of this episode). Enjoy, and see you in 2022!
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If you have questions, comments or concerns, or if you are an audio dweeb in nyc who can help us, please reach out: teixeira.lauren@gmail.com; deohringer@gmail.
We are also looking for a UK distributor (possibly a bookstore??) that can help us get mugs to UK struggleheads, as the cost of shipping individual mugs to the UK is prohibitively expensive. Get in touch!
Free Associating at the Dog Park (ft. Kyle Chayka)
He was late; he always is.
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Kyle C. doesn't seem too put off my his riff about misogyny in the kitchen, at least.
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My Struggle, minimalist or maximalist? Is all autofiction minimalist? Is it funny to call her "Rachel Cuck"?
A lot of questions, not so many answers.
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Vanja puts on her golden shoes and goes to Stella's birthday party. Vanja shows off her shoes to the room of children. No one notices. They're busy riding the train to Moscow.
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Small bark in the dog park. I mean small talk. Is My Struggle really just Karl Ove making small talk with himself? Is learning to small talk just part of growing up?
There's a small golden doodle in the park.
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Never let her sit on a park bench, Drew says.
Beyond the Discourse of the Wind (ft. Mason)
A rainy Sunday night in ---. Two broadcasters, a man and a woman recently arrived from Central Park, convene in the cramped kitchen of the man's lodging with Malbec and Port Salut. There is much to speak of - the Kinks, a mangled papaya dog, an invective against tweets by Wallace Shawn (Swan?) - but as their trivial chatter progresses, a mystery emerges (as it ought in all literature): who is the third figure in the kitchen? The man and the woman keep making reference to a Byronic figure they call Mason, a brooding spectre whom they claim supplies them steadily with tea, glasses, bound volumes. This 'Mason,' who may or may not resemble D.H. Lawrence, who may or may not exist, lies at the heart of the story. The extent to which he will reveal himself (or be revealed by our protagonists) is the most thrilling part of the narrative, an adventure of epic sprawl playing out entirely within the confines of a tiny New York kitchen.
-J. Wood
Live from Family Brooklyn (ft. Willy Staley)
Le Quotidian Pain (ft. Dasha Nekrasova)
She showed up smoking marlboro lights and talking about a ribbon store nearby. This was on west 38 street, where I’d rented, for 250 dollars, a studio for the recording sesh. My voice was ragged, frayed, like late period Dylan, on account of a cold I acquired in Greenpoint, at a play, and three classes a day on the Metamorphosis: I encouraged my students to notice patterns, the transformations within transformations, the repetition of the word deliverance--they drew dung-beetle dicks on the whiteboard, and, lost myself in the mutiny, I told them Gregor Samsa’s sister was Greta Thunberg. Lauren and I had been waiting for her on a bench by a clothing store, which induced Lauren to tell me about Reformation, she called it slutty Anne Boleyn, but before the bench we’d gone to CVS to buy lauren an android charger and a big bag of ricolas for my ruined larynx. Oh and before the CVS we’d gotten coffee and croissants and salad from the Quotidian Pain. There were drilling, burrowing sounds coming from somewhere adjacent to quotidian pain, and so I couldn’t talk at all, couldn’t even try to talk over them, so I tried to read about Karl Ove, I mean read his book, the coat sliding off a hanger, his dad’s fingerprints, dead, on a teapot, and she said she’d done the reading, our guest---Dasha--she said she was a speed reader; but, after I’d sent her the PDF and the page numbers--labeled DASHA START HERE on page 417, in my stunted hieroglyphic--and after I’d reminded her of where to meet, at Gotham Studios on w 38st, she’d said that today’s section--the final part of book 1--was a “a bit of a bore.” But then she was in the thrum of glamor, premieres and screenings and writers rooms, and so perhaps she couldn’t attend to the subtleties or whatever of the text, which was fine with me, since it was coup just to get her here, just to watch her walk up to us on west 38 st and to listen to her tell us about ribbons and the nearest brasserie, what was the difference anyway between a bistro and a brasserie, and I knew the episode would be a tedious success when, once we got recording, on the 10th floor, she launched into her day: rotten bananas, red smoothies, Equinox. There was perhaps even a kind of sleepy glamour to her mundanity, and her itemization (such as it was) almost redeemed my sandblasted tonsils and the wallet I’d lost, for a spell, at Metrograph, which I would tell her about, later, at Match 86, after a cucumber martini; redeemed Lauren’s spasming shoulder and migraines, too. Dasha redeemed most of literature herself-- “all books are basically good,” she said. Then we took a cab in the rain to the bisto or was it a brasserie and we ate pate and tartare and escargot, doused in parsley sauce, and outside, after, we smoked American Spirit Yellows. I can hardly speak, there’s nothing more to say, though, I think.
Intimate Drizzle (ft. Emmie Francis and Luke Brown)
I have to go to Dayton Ohio in a second to visit my Aunt Bunny but long story short it was the afternoon of the Brooklyn Tote Bag Fest, Drew took shelter in the den of the Wizard of Remsen Street fka Christian Lorentzen and he podded from there while the Cousins beamed in from across the POnd. (I was back in the finished basement of the Old House.) Some more food motifs emerged: the steak tartare at Odeon and pasta puttanesca, namely. Emmie, a publishing big wig in London, wanted to know about Drew's balls. We talked about Luke's novel Theft, a kind of 19th century Brexit novel which Lauren read and to which she gives two thumbs up (alhtough why you would care about her book reviews is beyond me). Lauren tried with increasing desperation to impress the Brits with her knowledge of English esoterica. We talk about Karl Ove's desire to be as cool as English band guys. Then Luke gives us the DL on the different numbers of BBC Radios and Christian (reclining in bed for most of this) pops in to give a reading of his essay about BBC Radio. We are all enamored of the Shipping Forecast.
plugs: Lauren was on Silver Screen video and talked about Stellan Skarsgard and Winnie the Pooh, perhaps of interest to struggle listeners?
email us: teixeira.lauren@gmail.com; deohringer@gmail.com
see you on the other side
1ST ANNIVERSARY CALL-IN SHOW (PT. 2)
Drew is shirtless and eating 5% Fage. Lauren walks us through her coffee making process. We respond to a series of increasingly deranged missives and talk Marguerite Duras, Pirates of the Caribbean, Little Rascals, situationism, Morrissey in Sweden, spinach, fapping to Wallace Shawn. We promise to not do this again for another year.
1ST ANNIVERSARY CALL-IN SHOW (PT. 1)
Well we were GOING to do this all in one go but then Drew supposedly got recognized at local watering hole Clandestino by a listener who took him to the underworld (brooklyn) and I guess something unspeakable ensued because Drew showed up an hour late to our recording session and looked and sounded like absolute death. It actually made for some pretty good content though, Drew was delirious and rambling and spent the first half hour recapping his journey to Clandestino in Knausgaardian levels of excruciating detail including everything he ate and drank.
We finally get to listener call-ins at 33:20 if you want to skip ahead (although if you do we'll be offended). We both do fit checks and provide our fall fashion forecast; answer a question about live shows; hear of an Amis sighting; are scolded by someone apparently calling in from the bottom of an abandoned coal mine in the northern England; and listen to a dispatch from friend of the pod Dean Kissick, calling in from sunny Italy!
We will get to the rest of your call-ins next week! This was very fun and we can't wait to respond to more listener missives. See you on the other side!
OUTRO: "Talking Karl Ove Blues," written and performed by listener Bob from the North Country
contact: @OurStrugglePod on twitter; teixeira dot lauren at gmail; deohringer at gmail
Free On The Inside (ft. Donald Morrison)
We're back! After their triumphant NYC debut, Lauren is back in DC, Drew's moved into Morningside Heights with his Jane Goodall-fancying roommate, and they're ready to chat Grandma's shit death house with their pal Donny Morrissey, an investigative journalist and fan of the show who was first K-pilled some years ago during a stint in county jail for heroin possession. This is a classic struggle session, with equal parts textual analysis and Martin anus riffing. You're going to want to shoot this one into your veins, listener!
NOTE FOR THE AUDIO FREAKS: There was a weird rustling sound on Donny's end to begin with but it's resolved by 38:40 so skip ahead to there if you really can't stand it (although you will miss a lot of good riffing).
0:00 - Lauren and Drew convene early to catch up and plug Our Struggle's 1ST ANNIVERSARY CALL IN SHOW, the deadline for which is August 21 (GOOGLE VOICE NUMBER: 443-584-6486). We've been getting a lot of delightful missives from listeners and would love to get more. So call in! Especially if you can help Lauren interpret her MRI report, a dramatic reading of which she gives at 8:15.
14:00 - Our boy Donny beams in from his Marc Maron-style LA garage and we quickly stumble upon an excerpt from Christopher Hitchens' memoir about being horny for Margaret Thatcher and definitely not horny at all for his good chum Martin Anus. After pondering how Martin A would fare on Twitter, Donny tells us about his K-pill experience in the clink (interestingly he couldn't Pynchonpill himself, even locked up for 23 hours a day) and Drew whips out the James Wood blurb on prison literature. Does the cleaning grandma's alcoholic shit death house section of Book 1 have a certain prison lit quality, in which every minor detail takes on great world building significance?
1:20:39 - Lauren, Drew and Donny sat sail upon a sea of cleaning products, or is it a ocean of meaningless? At any rate we try to draw out what we feel is one of the most important paradigms in Book 1, about the erosion of meaning over time. We read from some of the most iconic passages in the book, about childhood, construction cranes, crabs. A lot of roasting of Yngve in this passage for everything from his outfits to his sleepwalking to his lutefisk eating -- the latter of which inspires us to interrogate our own relationships to fish.
2:10:10 - After what is surely an unhealthy amount of on-topic discussion, our three close readers lapse back into digression and chat neck pain, the notorious JC episode, Donny's hot take re: jail vs. prison. We spend at least a quarter of an hour discussing height percentiles with the help of tall.life, ultimately arriving at the conclusion that Lauren is taller than Drew.
Thank you for listening! As always, write in to us at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com or deohringer@gmail.com. And please do call in! You have three days left!!!
Vanguard of the Supplicants (ft. Torrey Peters)
We were a little perplexed when Torrey Peters came groveling before us to come on the show. She’d written a best-selling novel with big topical themes--and other odd things like scenes, characters, plot. Why did she want to talk to two people who’ve devoted their own discourse to a seemingly shapeless, semi-essayistic inventory of one Norwegian’s life?
Torrey quickly provided her Scandinavian lit bona fides--which is to say she gave us detailed accounts of her homosocial and romantic adventures with various laconic Nords. We hear about dreary ferry rides, a house of forlorn beauty she would never get to see, Per Peterson’s candlelit dinner routine. These details allowed Lauren to make the first-ever comparison between My Struggle and Brideshead Revisited....
We tried to learn a little bit about the uses and operations of so-called conventional writing. Were we wrong to call easily translatable prose bland and insipid? (Actually, it was our pickly-prickly guest J Cohen who advanced that argument, and Torrey has some grounded, considered rebuttals for him here.)
Still, we wondered, what had Torrey learned from the Knausgaardian messiness? She showed us how his odd lack of emotional differentiation helped her render scenes of dissociation in Detransition, Baby. And why did she beg to come on our show after all? Torrey told us that her Knausgaardianism has estranged her from her own community--trans writers, it turns out, don’t really want to talk about My Struggle. Which is strange, since, as Torrey reveals, the series is a naively rigorous documentation of the male code; its essaysistic form allows us to see the anxiety and barely-concealed messiness of male performance. “There’s so much gender there,” Torrey says (ie, dudes want to perform verbal guitar solos on Hitlerian themes).
We also asked her to give the official trans community statement on tinned fish and the hot girls who consume it.
NOTE FROM LAUREN: BUY OUR T-SHIRT! CERTAIN SIZES HAVE ALREADY SOLD OUT. ourstruggle.store
PS. GET IN TOUCH! teixeira.lauren@gmail.com; deohringer@gmail.com; and as always the Our Struggle hotline 443-584-6486 - call-in show records in August!
Longing, Death, Form (Season 1 Sparknotes: Themes and Motifs)
In the wake of their newfangled fame, Lauren and Drew look back at the themes and characters of Season 1 and attend to correspondence from fans and detractors.
Sample of Drew’s “intricate notes”:
-Cold open w/Drew’s senioritis suicide note
-game of pricks
--season 1 finale montage badinage
--things we can’t talk about; a final solution for goldendoodles; reddit pedants; lit critic lothario
--We respond to a subterranean missive from an anti- fan with extremist prose style
--Unmentionable word leads into discussion re non-rhotic safe space of dunkin donuts
--Lauren bans disquisitions then proceeds to deliver a disquisition on Shakespearean pedophile code Little Rascals (1994)
--Drew: Shakespearean endings make me feel eerie
--Closing: Lauren hopes for laced lidocaine, Buzzcocks “why can’t I touch it”
CALL THE OUR STRUGGLE HOTLINE: 443-584-6486
SEND OBSCURELY INCENSED MISSIVES: teixeira.lauren@gmail.com; deohringer@gmail.com
SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE (SEASON TWO)
Sheepdog Brain (ft. Dean Kissick)
Surely one of our most Knausgaardian episodes yet - we spent four hours last Sunday afternoon - a rainy, unseasonably cold day in the mid-Atlantic - chatting with brilliant art critic and prolific croissant eater Dean Kissick. Manhattan traffic hummed outside of Dean's window, we took a yogurt break followed by a coffee break, there was a brief drama involving an overheated MacBook computer, and we of course witnessed Dean don and doff his Argyle sweater no less than three times (although we did not catch a glimpse of his supposed abs). This was the last episode recorded before we became boldface names in Vanity Fair so treasure it - we fully plan to go whole-hog on vacuous literary world prestige mongering in coming episodes!
TECHNICAL NOTE: You will notice a whirring sound around one hour ten but it gets fixed after a few minutes (Dean cools off his computer) so if you're one of those audio freaks who always complains about sound quality just push through, or alternatively, get a life
cheat sheet:
0:00 - A namecheck of the Dominique Ansel bakery (sponsor of the pod) somehow leads into a discussion of LinkedIn stalking and how LinkedIn is in fact the most Knausgaardian of the social networks.
19:15 - Dean, a hardcore strugglehead, recounts his initiation into the word of Knausgaard and explains how the books changed his life. We try to figure out what Knausgaard means by "form" (all literature "must submit to form"? but why does MS not seem to submit to anything) and meanwhile uncover a barnyard motif in this passage involving sheep, sheepdogs, ducks and more. Also: some inside baseball on the secret affinity between alt-lit and raw milk.
1:09:00 - We begin talking about what is probably the most important idea in the My Struggle series (or at least the first two books), a concept Knausgaard most often refers to as "longing" but is often associated or synonymous with "inexhaustibility," "boundlessness," "the unmentionable." What is the Longing? What does it have to do with death, with art, with basement jackoff parlors (of the sort so vividly detailed in this passage)?
1:24:00 - Touching off from Knausgaard's famous passage about the Constable sketch of the clouds, Dean brilliantly articulates Knausgaard's particular taste in art and explains why he thinks Knausgaard is one of the best art critics today. What does Knausgaard have that art criticism in general has lost? And what does his predilection for "naive" objective realist landscapes have to do with his own writing project?
2:06:00 - Dean takes us through what we believe to be the culmination of the passage, Knausgaard's meditation on discovery and exploration. The whole world has been "experienced" through representations, making it seem smaller, and thus enclosed, unenchanted, incestuous. How has the endless flood of images stunted art and literature? Is there anything left outside of the algorithm? Dean has some optimistic answers!
2:25:00 - We plan our upcoming live struggle session in Koreatown and Dean gives a glowing review of our upcoming t-shirts
Thank you for listening!! As always you can reach out to us (but please be more deferential now that we're Vanity Fair stars) at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com or deohringer@gmail.com. We love hearing from listeners!
OUTRO - BINGO DOG SONG BY FLICKBOX NURSERY RHYMES
Minutt for Minutt
WE ARE BACK! After a dire situation earlier this month, Our Struggle returns, as lo-fi and perfunctory as ever! It's just us boys again this ep but be assured we have some VERY prestigious and intellectual guests on the horizon, so if you're one of those dweebs who listens to our show for so-called "literary criticism" and "thoughtful discussion of the work of Karl Ove Knausgaard" just hold on a little longer.
MAJOR shout out to "The financial times of Norway" DAGENS NAERINGSLIV AKA DN which recently published a write-up of Our Struggle that really captured the essence of our podcast. We love our new Norwegian listeners and hope to be flown out to your beautiful country someday for a North Sea oil wealth-funded panel.
HOUSEKEEPING: I forgot to mention this on the pod but we are collecting voicemails at our google voice number for our eventual (1st anniversary?) call-in show: 443-584-6486
cheat sheet:
0:00 - Lauren and Drew velkommen our new Norwegian listeners and discuss their newfound Norwegian notoriety.
8:20 - A digression about Elvis Costello turns into a full-blown music segment in which we listen to Costello, Belle & Sebastian and Jonathan Richman and reflect on the richness of the Scottish indie pop tradition.
19:08 - We struggle through the first five or so pages of part two of book one. Karl Ove is writing in his studio in Stockholm and sees Jesus in the parquet, takes a cigarette break and observes the morning rush; does he feel a part of the city or detached from it?
57:00 - Lauren and Drew lose their minds imagining Karl Ove engaging with nostalgia bait memes
1:08:40 - Huge thank you to 6'4" Norwegian alpha male friend of the pod Robert Rust for linguistic coaching!
Thank you for listening! As always, feel free to write in with your thoughts, questions and Norwegian memes to Lauren (teixeira.lauren@gmail.com) and/or Drew (deohringer@gmail.com). We love hearing from you!
Seersucker Semiotics (Trauma Processing Special)
After a run of well-received episodes with prestigious guests and a Bookforum mention we are ready for our slow decline! It's just us boys on this pod, testing out our new mics and recording software, beginning to drift imperceptibly away from our lo-fi roots & thus our scruffy charm and ultimately, our integrity. But for now we're talking about trauma! As listeners who follow us on so-called Twitter probably know, Lauren was attacked on the Metro by a mentally ill man a couple weeks ago and wrote a very famous 4000 word essay about it in the style of Knausgaard, kind of. ALSO: We finally return to the Book and finish Part One, a miracle praise Adonai.
HOUSEKEEPING: We have a google voice number now for you to leave messages for our eventual call-in episode. It is 443-584-6486
cheat sheet:
0:00 - Lauren is eating a gluten free snickerdoodle; Drew reflects on his appreciation of the Steppe and its peoples.
9:30 - The trauma unpacking begins; Lauren ever so briefly lets down her defenses, reveals a crack in her facade or a chink in her armor, or is it a soft underbelly? At any rate vulnerability is definitely momentarily glimpsed. Drew interviews Lauren about her anti-trauma-essay and Lauren uses the phrase "brain colonized by X" about 8,000,000 times.
40:00 - Drew reflects on his recent trauma of being initiated into the "dripping wound" that is Twitter. We try to probe what exactly makes Twitter so alienating and upsetting - why is it not a utopian collaborative literary exercise? Something to do maybe with commodification or narcissism, two intimately linked phenomena of course....
57:00 - We have our first struggle session in a long time (bless me Father for I have sinned); Karl Ove takes Hanne to the DSA meeting; springtime arrives but not in an annoying way; Karl Ove attends his father's weird divorced Midsommar-like party/ritual and Part One ends. What a ride!
Thanks so much for listening! As always feel free to reach out with your questions, comments, and expressions of concern/solidarity at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com or deohringer@gmail.com. And do stay tuned for a special guest next week......
OUTRO: The Stranglers- Golden Brown
Johnson's Johnson (ft. James Griffiths)
IT'S THE RETURN OF THE WELSH WARRIOR! The Duke of Cardiff himself, prestigious CNN journalist James Griffiths is back on the pod and folks?? We got a little off topic!! But who gives a shit, you don't pay for this (yet) and what is a Knausgaard podcast without copious digression (the imitative fallacy can fuck right off)!!
Due what I am self diagnosing as fatigue from the J&J vaccine I am too tired to write a full fledged recap but some things we covered in this were: Drew's guide to seduction by email; being Eskimo brothers with Jonathan Safran Foer; Elif Batuman and ill-fated campus romances; the disappointing lack of defecation scenes in My Struggle; Morrissey's solo career; and of course Robert Caro's LBJ biography which James has been reading recently and in which he has found some interesting Knausgaard parallels.
OUTRO: First of the Gang to Die - Morrissey (cover by Andrew Ohringer)
On Whale Steaks and Quinoa (ft. Alicia Kennedy)
If you have listened to even one episode of this show you know that we are obsessed with Karl Ove's meals, from the open sandwiches and rissoles of his youth to the smug quinoa salads he avoids as an adult in Stockholm. Well guess what? We somehow got prestigious food writer (and KOK superfan) Alicia Kennedy to agree to come on the pod to talk spreads in My Struggle. This was truly one of our funnest episodes yet - enjoy!
cheat sheet:
14:40 - We tackle one of the most perplexing paradoxes of My Struggle: Karl Ove repeatedly professing indifference to food ("I couldn't give a rat's ass about food") while at the same time giving us lengthy, detailed accounts of his meals, such as the gourmet lobster dinner (Jamie Oliver's recipe) he cooks for the New Year's Eve dinner party in Book 2. And how do his kitchen exploits track with his feelings about his respective ex-wives?
25:30 - In the beginning of book 2, Karl Ove famously lays into the Swedes for believing they can "eat their way into being a better person" with quinoa and bean salads. Alicia, who advocates for veganism and vegetarianism in her writing, tells us her thoughts on these tirades (spoiler: she is pro-Knausgaard). Also: some self-hating Millennial bashing. Why can't Millennials just make normal meals?? Why does everything have to be an elaborate Instagram-worthy concoction or a viral TikTok pasta??
50:00 - We talk about a passage in which Karl Ove professes nostalgia for whale steaks and lung mash and the complicated matter of balancing nostalgia against ethics in our own eating lives. Alicia also talks about how she prefers Karl Ove's food writing over that of professional food writers, as he writes about food in a way that's matter of fact and mundane rather than fetishistic.
Thank you to Alicia for joining us! You can find her excellent newsletter here. Also: the Jonathan Nunn piece she recommended.
As always feel free to write in to me at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com or Drew at deohringer@gmail.com. What are some great moments of food writing in literature? I couldn't think of any on the pod bc my brain has been at 60% lately although of course as soon as we ended the call I thought of Murakami and pasta....
Game of Pricks (struggle)
Drew's cover of our theme song, Guided by Voices' "Game of Pricks", recorded from his desolate boarding school cloister in Pennsburg
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
In The Land Of The PSYOPs
After a nearly two month hiatus, Our Struggle returns! Lauren and Drew are back and spicier than ever, delivering for you our timely review of KOK's new essay collection "In the Land of the Cyclops" (which to be clear neither of us have read) before getting on with struggle session 1.2 covering Karl Ove's My Struggle book 1 reflections on his diaper-laden domestic life in the aforementioned land of the cyclops (Sweden).
cheat sheet:
0:00 - Drew connects with a guy on Instagram
8:00 - We review KOK's new essay collection based off of one excerpt of an NYT review that a listener sent to me. We also read some correspondence from a Norwegian listener about an anti-Knausgaard pamphlet entitled "The Knausgaard Code." Thank you so much for writing in, would love to keep hearing from listeners!
34:00 - Terri Gross drops in to interview Drew about his new novel, "The Gay Quebecois"
41:20 - Finally getting into the meat of the struggle session, we discuss KOK's attitude toward his children and his bold admission that they "do not provide enough meaning to fill a whole life." How does fatherhood and domestic life figure into the My Struggle project? Does Knausgaard really wish he could go back to the paradigm of the 19th-20th century male genius, free to pursue his artistic passions and unburdened by family responsibility? Also, we draw some very accurate and legitimate parallels between KOK and Louis C.K. and propose a CBS thursday night-style sitcom adaptation of My Struggle.
Taking the K-pill ft. James Griffiths
Happy Thanksgiving (and to our Romanian listeners: happy thursday!)
Last week we welcomed our friend, Hong Kong-based CNN correspondent James Griffiths, to the pod for what may be our smartest episode yet. Apparently the scintillating genius of our show is what spurred James to finally crack open My Struggle: A Death in the Family, so we interviewed him about his journey down the K-hole. Did the book live up to his expectations? And how did it stack up next to KOK's famous nyt magazine piece "My Saga," which James has also read?
Drew was halfway into a bottom-shelf bottle of Zinfandel called "The Federalist" (really) during this one so be warned the discussion strays often and egregiously from KOK. From what I remember some of the things we talked about were: French Canada; coups (both d'etat and other varieties); geriatric ballsacs; an encounter Drew had with Fareed Zakaria; European-style racism; Chinese phyllo-semitism; and potential sponsors of the pod (if you're the company that makes numbing dick wipes please reach out).
Thank you so much to James for bearing with us. I very much recommend checking out his book, "The Great Firewall of China," which would absolutely be top of my list of I was capable of reading books other than Knausgaard. He also has another book coming out next year, "Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language" which he promises me will explain why Welsh people don't use normal vowels.
As always, feel free to reach out to me at teixeira.lauren@gmail.com. Would love to hear more from listeners about their journey taking the K-pill and possibly read excerpts of those testimonials on the pod!
Finally, if you are an older man who would like to share a picture of your wizened nutsack with Drew, you can find him at deohringer@gmail.com
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
Come From Away ft. John Cullen
The struggle continues in the third episode of OS as we attempt to bridge the America/Canada cultural divide in a conversation as wide-ranging as the breadth of the interior between Vancouver and St. Johns! Our guest is our new friend John Cullen, a Canadian, comedian and co-host of the Blocked Party podcast, which is by some metrics actually a more famous podcast than Our Struggle. John has done his homework for this episode and raises the salient question: Is Karl Ove Knausgaard actually just a tedious asshole? We talk about that for a while but also get into some cool discussions about Newfy culture, employee discounts at sporting goods stores, and soliciting Knausgaard on Cameo. Thank you to John for guesting and no thank you to Drew as usual!
The article discussed is "My Saga," a travelogue KOK wrote for the New York Times magazine in 2015.
Lauren messed up and lost the last part of the recording where John plugs his new album. For those interested, the name of his album is LONG STORIES FOR NO REASON and you can find it on iTunes and Spotify. You can also follow John on Twitter @cullenthecomic. Do it!!
Salmon Diplomacy ft. Brendan O'Kane
It's our sophomore slump! In the second episode of Our Struggle, we welcome guest Brendan O'Kane, a renown sinologist and literary translator who has not only not read Knausgaard but adamantly refuses to. Can we convince him that early modern Chinese literature and My Struggle have more in common than he'd think?
0:00 - More fish talk. Drew had a canned fish phase; we predict another salmon-heavy diplomatic standoff between China and Norway.
21:24 - After spending way too much time looking for the part in My Struggle where Knausgaard describes prematurely ejaculating, we let Brendan talk about The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅), a famous 16th century work of pornography. We then discuss the strangely common phenomenon of busting to death in early modern Chinese literature. (We actually do find a way to connect this back to Knausgaard)
37:49 - Drew ponders the dense materialism of Knausgaard and how he manages to preserve the "thinginess" or heftiness of objects - letting them come across as objects with material properties rather than lazy mimetic stand-ins. A discussion touching on IKEA furniture and sumptuary regulations in the Ming dynasty follows.
1:11:49 - Finally we discuss genre fiction and propose that literary fiction has actually just become its own genre with its own tropes. Maybe it's better to just write Amish teen vampire romance novels.
MUSIC - GUIDED BY VOICES "GAME OF PRICKS"
EDITING BY LAUREN, THE MAN OF THE SHOW
Our Struggle To Start A Podcast ft. Robert Rust (a Real Norwegian)
NOTE TO LISTENERS: DREW'S AUDIO GETS BETTER IN THE SECOND HALF I PROMISE
Call this episode the opposite of Norwegian cuisine because boy is it SPICY! In the pilot episode of Our Struggle we put the following institutions on blast: quinoa, Sweden, the New Yorker, and august literary critic James Wood (for being a beautiful genius :) ). This is a jam-packed episode that is sure to make you laugh AND make you contemplate your mortality. - so will James Wood give it a positive review? (Please come on the pod Professor Wood.)
Please feel free to reach out with your thoughts on the show. You can email us at knauscastpod at gmail or tweet at us/DM us on Twitter at OurStrugglePod. We also have an obligatory newsletter: subscribe to it at ourstruggle.substack.com.
cheat sheet:
2:28 - Lauren and Drew introduce themselves and talk about their reasons for starting the pod. Do we, in this moment, need Karl Ove Knausgaard more than ever? Our answer is yes, if only because of the fate currently befalling the overly hydrated quinoa eating Swedes.
10:57 - Our friend Robert Rust, a real Norwegian, calls into the show to teach us how to say the great man's name in the AUTHENTIC style of the fjord peoples. My pronunciation is perfect and Drew's sucks
22:32 - We get pretty deep into Norwegian cuisine. If you're like Karl Ove and fish makes you nauseous - maybe skip this section!
36:10 - Finally we start building out a theoretical framework for KOK with the help of close personal friend of the show James Wood. We discuss Wood's 2012 NEW yORKER essay on Karl Ove. Why is death so crucial to storytelling? Are contemporary novelists willfully avoiding the ultimate fact (their own demise) in their writing? Why do Lauren and Drew keep connecting quinoa with mortality?
INTRO MUSIC: Guided by Voices - Game of Pricks
Production by Lauren Teixeira, the Man of the show
TRAILER - OUR STRUGGLE TO PRONOUNCE "KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD"
IN this preview our friend Rob (a real Norwegian) teaches us how to say the great man's name in the AUTHENTIC style of the fjord peoples
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