Karl Ove Knausgaard washes his pretty mucky emotional linen in public so you don't have to wash yours. That's a bit unfair to Karl Ove Knausgaard because he also has some great epiphanies as well - sometimes the shining white linen is flying out on the lines in bright sun and breeze.
Someone, in a film somewhere, I can't remember which - maybe it will come back to me at the end of the post, is going on and on about Ingmar Bergman and what a depressive and depressing Norwegian film maker he was, and what a depressive and what a depressing country Norway is,in a pompous, irritating way, until, finally one of the other characters cracks, lays into said Bergman judge, and leaves the scene with a great last line, half shouting half hissing it - "And Bergman was a Swede not a Norwegian". Kar Ove has a lot to say about Norway vs Sweden, especially on how correct the Swedes are, how they do things just right, and how intellectuals are intellectuals, proles are proles,but bus men are bus men only temporarily while they finish their Phd. So where is all this going? Nowhere fast as they say. I'm just delighting in Karl Ove pouring his soul and his gripes down on the page, going from one to the other without so much as a blink. It is a fantastic portrayal of masculinity in all its shades.
Our society has ever come to terms with the fact that some men don't like boxing, DIY or football, some women like DIY (my wife for one), and like doing it. So while being very proud of the fact that my wife has designed and made a huge built in wardrobe in our loft bedroom from scratch, I'm also slightly diminished in some way. I've never been good at that stuff - always bodge and cram things together, as my wife never fails to point out. Now she goes out to work, with a burgeoning new career, while I stay at home and cook, write, grow, shop, play online poker and Settlers of Catan. It has given her hugely increased confidence, and accentuated a certain natural tendency to bossiness that occasionally comes out in uncomfortable ways for me . On Thursday night at a dance class, as we were leaving the room, she says to me in front of one of the dance instructors "Don't leave your glass there - clear it up", and I do a sort of double take to indicate to the dance instructor that I'm not accustomed to being told what to do by my wife, before picking up the three plastic glasses stacked on the window sill, the top one of which is mine, and chucking them in the bin. Perhaps I am a little over sensitive - no that's a lie, there is no perhaps about it, because outside I ask her not to tell me to do things (in that tone of voice ha! yes there is a certain tone, not too over the top or obvious, just a little imperious) in front of people. She acts mature and puzzled, but fuck it, I had to say it for my own self respect. Obviously she was right about the glass - I should have just put it in the bin in the corner right away- but I didn't like it pointed out like that.
Not that I am complaining, but I realise that I liked being the one who came home with a large income, who ran stuff, who was a boss, who was used to being in command of things (or at least that illusion of command that comes from being near the top of the pile). But I can't say that I'm unhappy now- I might miss the money and the status, but I don't miss the politicking.
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