#deepresearch # [[Karl Ove Knausgaard]]’s Rationale for Embracing Mundane Detail in His Novels ## Introduction [[Karl Ove Knausgaard]]’s six-volume autobiographical novel *My Struggle* is notorious for its exhaustive inclusion of everyday, **mundane detail** – from making coffee and changing diapers to long shopping trips and cleaning house. Far from mere filler, these prosaic details are central to Knausgaard’s literary project. In numerous interviews and essays, Knausgaard has reflected on *why* he writes this way, often describing a conscious philosophy behind his exhaustive realism. He has explained that he embarked on *My Struggle* partly “in an effort to empty himself of the details of his [[everyday life]]”. Rather than writing a tightly plotted or symbol-laden narrative, Knausgaard set out to **capture life “as it is,”** including its banalities, as a means of achieving authenticity and creative freedom. This report compiles Knausgaard’s own statements about his approach – from conversations and essays – and examines his reasoning for saturating his novels with quotidian detail. [[Specific examples]] and anecdotes he provides (such as writing **100 pages where “nothing happens”**) will illustrate how he conceives of the mundane as vital literary material. The discussion is organized by key themes in Knausgaard’s reasoning, all supported by his own words. ## Breaking Conventional Form to Capture Reality One of Knausgaard’s fundamental motivations is **to portray life realistically, even at the expense of traditional literary form**. He argues that conventional novels and polished narratives often *distort* reality by imposing form, metaphor, or plot, whereas his goal was to **“write close to life”** itself. In an early interview, Knausgaard explicitly stated that *“if you want the writing to be as close to life as possible … you have to break the forms you’ve used”*. In other words, the tidy structures of fiction had to be subverted or discarded in order for his text to mirror the formless flow of real experience. This meant abandoning many hallmarks of traditional novels: *“The digressiveness of Sebald or Proust is transposed into direct, unmetaphorical language,”* as one commentator described *My Struggle*. Indeed, Knausgaard shunned literary embellishment – he avoided elegant metaphors or heavy symbolism in favour of plain, *“unmetaphorical”* descriptions of ordinary scenes. Knausgaard has even described an almost **anti-fiction ethos** guiding his work. In a 2015 *New Yorker* interview, he declared that *“the duty of literature is to fight fiction. It’s to find a way into the world as it is.”* This striking statement encapsulates his view that literature should not fabricate or romanticise life, but rather should reveal **“the world as it is”** – presumably including all the prosaic, tedious aspects of daily existence that fiction might normally trim away. Knausgaard’s rejection of artifice is also seen in his distrust of symbols and overt thematic devices. Elsewhere, he pointedly asked, *“What is a symbol? An event stripped of reality, a shell of meaning.”*. This rhetorical question (which he posed in an essay or interview) underscores his belief that turning events into symbols removes their concrete reality; it reduces lived moments to mere vessels for abstract meaning. Knausgaard preferred to **preserve the raw “event” itself** on the page – for example, describing in precise detail the act of cleaning a kitchen or the way sunlight falls on a cup – rather than converting it into a symbol or metaphor. By *“fighting fiction”* in this way, he maintained, literature could stay honest and maintain the *“clear and crisp”* texture of reality. In practical terms, this philosophy led Knausgaard to **forgo conventional plotting** in favour of meticulous chronicle. He famously does not **“take jump cuts”** in his narration. As he acknowledged in one interview, *“I’m unbelievably slow [at telling a story]… I can’t take leap cuts. I have to describe how people get from inside to outside, etc. I’ll write 100 pages and nothing has happened.”*. This humorous exaggeration (100 pages where “nothing” happens) illustrates Knausgaard’s commitment to **depicting every intermediate step** of life’s events. Rather than skipping straight to a dramatic moment, he will show all the mundane transitions – for instance, a character waking up, brewing coffee, putting on shoes, walking down the street – that conventional narratives might compress or omit. By refusing to elide these in-between moments, Knausgaard “breaks” the fast-paced form of the modern novel. [[The result]] is a kind of documentarian realism: life *“studied and appreciated”* in its full, uncensored ordinariness. Knausgaard has described *My Struggle* as an experiment positioned *“between life and literature”* – a project that deliberately **“close[d] down everything and [wrote] about the here and now”**. In doing so, he inverted his earlier approach of using fiction as escapism. *“With My Struggle I wanted to do the opposite [of escapist literature],”* he explains. *“I wanted to close down everything and write about the here and now… My Struggle was an experiment with the borders between life and literature.”*. This experimental impulse further explains why he retained so many mundane details: they were the fabric of “life” itself, which he was determined to merge with literature. ## Embracing the Ordinary and the Everyday Hand-in-hand with Knausgaard’s formal rebellion is his **embrace of ordinary life as worthy subject matter**. He deliberately centres the *quotidian*: the daily rituals, minor frustrations, and unremarkable scenes that constitute most of human existence. Knausgaard has repeatedly stressed that **“life isn’t sacred… It is ordinary and boring”**, and that recognising this was “incredibly important” for him as a writer. In a conversation with Tyler Cowen, he reflected on how his approach changed after he became a father with a busy home life: writing lost its aura of preciousness and *“became something ordinary, and that was eventually where I wanted to go – into the ordinary and mundane, even, and try to connect to what was going on in life.”*. This captures one of his core beliefs: **the mundane is not beneath literature, but *the very point* of it**, since “that’s where life is.” Knausgaard argues that everyday reality – even in its **“boring”** or banal aspects – carries a truth and universality that highly plotted or romanticised tales might miss. By staying with *“the ordinariness of daily existence”*, he can explore genuine human experiences with an honesty that grander narratives might dilute. Knausgaard has described literature as a rare space of **total freedom**, where he can include *anything* that life presents. *“It’s a space where I can be free in every sense, where I can say whatever, go wherever I want to,”* he says of writing. Embracing that freedom means **not filtering out the commonplace**. In practice, *My Struggle* is filled with scenes of child care, household chores, grocery shopping, smoking cigarettes – the whole litany of the everyday. Rather than seeing these details as trivial, Knausgaard treats them with seriousness and curiosity. *“I wanted to see if it was possible to write about the here and now”* without embellishment, he explains. He notes that previously he had used fiction to “get away” from reality, but now he sought to **“do the opposite”** and immerse himself in the present moment. This immersion often yields unexpectedly resonant moments. For example, Knausgaard recounts a childhood memory – hesitating to tell his father that the milk for his cereal had gone sour – which in his book becomes a quietly dramatic scene of fear and miscommunication. Such moments illustrate how *the accumulation of detail can reveal deeper truths*: the **“nearly unfathomable gulf between father and son”** is conveyed *“by squeezing lemon on a lobster”* or a bowl of bad milk, trivial actions imbued with unspoken tension. Knausgaard’s focus on minutiae *“makes even the slowest pages… into a hymn”* about moral or emotional struggles. In his view, **the mundane carries meaning** precisely because it is real and shared – an idea supported by the many readers who found their own lives reflected in his exhaustive narrative. Notably, Knausgaard also saw writing the mundane as a form of personal honesty. He has mentioned that in certain cultural contexts, openly discussing the less-pleasant facets of [[everyday life]] is frowned upon – for instance, admitting that childcare can be tedious. *“In Sweden, you’re not supposed to say anything negative about being a parent… it was boring, but I had to do it… My writing was a response to that,”* Knausgaard told one interviewer. Here, he suggests that **by writing frankly about mundane frustrations**, he was reclaiming a truth that polite society suppresses. This further explains why *My Struggle* spares no domestic detail: whether it is the joy of a sunny morning drive with his daughter or the boredom of rocking a stroller, Knausgaard includes it all, believing that **authentic self-expression requires covering the lowly along with the lofty**. ## “Lowering the Threshold”: Overcoming Self-Censorship Through Detail A crucial aspect of Knausgaard’s reasoning is rooted in his **[[creative process]] and psychological state** when writing *My Struggle*. By his own account, he turned to the exhaustive autobiographical style *after a long period of writer’s block and self-censorship*. Knausgaard has revealed that after publishing two earlier novels, he spent **five years unable to write** anything substantial. He felt *“incredibly self-critical”* and found himself constantly restarting stories without making progress. To break this paralysis, he devised a radical change in method. As he describes it, *“With My Struggle, I learned to lower the threshold; to accept whatever comes; to continue and not to throw away anything; and to do it every day.”*. This manifesto-like statement, which Knausgaard has repeated in interviews, encapsulates how embracing mundane detail was part of a **deliberate strategy to silence his inner critic** and regain his writing flow. By *“lowering the threshold”*, he means he dramatically lowered his standards for what was worth writing down – nothing was too trivial, too messy, or too personal to include. He resolved to **“accept whatever comes”** into his mind and onto the page, **without judgment or delay**. Crucially, he vowed **“not to throw away anything”**, no matter how **banal or imperfect**. And he committed to writing continuously (“to continue… and do it every day”), ensuring momentum and accumulation of material. In effect, Knausgaard overcame his creative block by adopting a *maximally inclusive and unfiltered* writing process. He himself has enumerated these principles as the keys to *My Struggle*’s creation: - **Lower the creative threshold:** Stop worrying about producing “high literature” and allow **even trivial or raw material** onto the page. - **Accept whatever comes:** Write down thoughts, memories, and observations as they emerge, **without judgment or delay**. - **Do not discard or censor:** Refrain from cutting out passages that seem boring or embarrassing; **include everything**, even **“banalities or things that are inadequate”**. - **Write daily and continuously:** Maintain a steady discipline of writing every day, so that details accumulate into a larger narrative. Knausgaard emphasises that [[this approach]] was *born out of necessity*. *“I had five years of not being able to write… With *My Struggle*, I figured out how to bring down the limit… to proceed and not discard anything,”* he explains in reflection. He also speaks of the **risk and honesty** involved: *“You have to be able to do something where you risk yourself completely… [[The prospect]] of failing must be real… You can’t pretend.”*. By including every mundane detail and personal admission, Knausgaard indeed *risked failure* – the books could easily have been dismissed as boring or self-indulgent. But this risk was essential to him: it created a sense that the project was “for real” and not contrived. Furthermore, writing in this all-inclusive way imparted a certain **flow or momentum** to his prose. Knausgaard wrote *My Struggle* at great speed, without looking back to revise out inconsistencies. *“Those books had to be written very quickly… with a flow, where you’re not afraid of mistakes, not afraid of banalities,”* he notes, stressing the importance of **not fearing “banal” content** during the drafting process. By **refusing to be “afraid of… banalities or things that are inadequate,”** Knausgaard kept his writing fluid and alive, rather than freezing up with perfectionism. This resulted in the “extreme thoroughness” of detail that one interviewer observed – a **“purging” of every ordinary thought onto the page**. In Knausgaard’s view, this thoroughness was not a flaw but the whole point: only by pouring out the unfiltered details of his life could he achieve the truthful self-examination he sought. He has admitted that *My Struggle* was *“completely without dignity”* – exposing even the embarrassing and trivial parts of himself – but that lack of dignity was necessary for genuine writing. ## Conclusion: The Meaning Behind the Mundane Through his own explanations, [[Karl Ove Knausgaard]] makes clear that the extensive mundane detail in his novels is a **conscious artistic choice**, grounded in a desire for authenticity, freedom, and honesty. Far from including trivialities accidentally or carelessly, Knausgaard set out to **elevate the quotidian** by recording it meticulously. He believes that by describing life’s ordinary moments in full – without the usual filters of fiction – literature can reconnect us to reality and to ourselves. As he puts it, *“writing should be connected to [your life]”*, even if that life involves changing diapers or taking out the trash. In *My Struggle*, Knausgaard **“accepts everything that happens”** and deems it worthy of narrative, thereby crafting an intimate portrait of existence that resonates with readers precisely because of its mundanity. [[This approach]] was also personally cathartic for him: by *lowering his creative threshold* and refusing to omit any detail, he defeated his self-consciousness and discovered a new voice. As a result, what might have been “boring” in another writer’s hands becomes, in Knausgaard’s work, an absorbing exploration of being human. His own justifications – from fighting the falseness of fiction to *“trying to be good”* through close attention to [[daily life]] – highlight a coherent vision of the novel not as escapism, but as **“a portrait of an artist”** striving to capture reality. Knausgaard’s legacy thus rests on this audacious premise: that **in the smallest details of the mundane, literature can find its most profound truths**. ## Sources All quotations are from [[Karl Ove Knausgaard]]’s interviews and essays or commentary directly referencing his statements, as cited below. - Knausgaard, Karl Ove. *Interview with Jesse Barron*. *The Paris Review*, 2013. - Knausgaard, Karl Ove. *Interview with Rachel Cooke*. *[[The Guardian]]*, 2023. - Knausgaard, Karl Ove. *Interview with Kyle Buckley*. *Hazlitt*, 2014. - Knausgaard, Karl Ove. *Conversation with Tyler Cowen*. Mercatus Center transcript, 2019. - Knausgaard, Karl Ove. *In Conversation with Will Heyward*. Archipelago Books, 2014. - Knausgaard, Karl Ove. *Interview with Jared Levy*. *Interview Magazine*, 2015. - Moi, Toril. “Describing *My Struggle*.” *The Point Magazine*, 2017. - Rothman, Joshua. *Interview with Knausgaard*. *The New Yorker*, 2015.