Autumn

Series: Seasons Quartet, Book 1

By: Karl Ove Knausgård / Narrated By: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins

Expert narration (Naturally!) and some lyrical writing but… no really: Is he being serious?!?

I know I know I know: It’s Karl Ove Knausgård for heaven’s sake, and he’s supposed to be The Ultimate deep thinker. And believe me when I tell you that this is a brilliantly written compilation of essays. They’re musings written for his unborn daughter on aspects of life, sometimes, MOSTLY, daily life that she will encounter when she’s out of the womb and is traversing the earth, far and wide, near and far.

It’s just that many of them, kaff kaff kaff, danged near all of them made me think of a Jerry Seinfeld skit with a: Ya ever notice… type of feel. We get an essay on chewing gum, and that one was probably my favorite as it was sooooo familiar to me with his admission that he keeps SEVeral wads of chewed up gum handy (Reminded me of being a youngster and driving my mom nuts by tacking a blob of Grape Bubble Yum on the lamp stand as: It still has flavor in it!). That one seemed the best rounded as it has a bit of memory in it, an experience he had of surreptitiously spitting out a big ol’ wad of gum into his hand then wondering how on earth he was going to be able to shake his host’s hand at the end of their meeting. And then it went on to how he HAS to chew gobs of the stuff to think, then it rounds out by saying how he neeeeeds to keep blobs of the stuff in his writing desk should he require it. The whole thing has a beginning, middle, and an end.

-Whereas-

Pretty much the rest are: A topic chucked at the listener, a paragraph or two that goes into great and lyrical depth, elevating stuff like paint and toilets to art, then wrapping up with a usually well-crafted last line.

But seriously: I found myself chuckling when he “elevates” vomit (And he compares the beauty of vomit on different kinds of flooring) to something that can be beloved, given how much the person who yakked means to you. -Plus- when he does sound accessible, I had myself totally disagreeing with him: Madame Bovary the BEST novel ever written?!? Good heavens! Okay okay, maybe his copy DID look lovely all splayed on the lawn he left it on for days, but what’s in it was awesome? Oh ick!

I know, I’m a hick and a hayseed. But I will NOT be shamed into saying stuff like: Oh look at how he makes the mundane high art; look at how beautiful a plastic bag in the water is—oh I’ve never seen how breathtakingly lovely it all is, and I’m looking at EVERYthing with new eyes! Thank you, Knausgård for sloughing the scales from my eyes! And mostly I just worried for the wasps he writes about, the badgers. Well, so I guess I was engaged for parts of this.

Now onto Edoardo Ballerini. Man, I think I just discovered it: I’ve developed a huuuuuge crush on the poor man (Sssshhh…! Do NOT tell him; let’s just keep going like it’s never happened!). His tones, his style? Inimitable! Most of my life I’ve heard the old: He could read the phone book, and it’d be art! Well, here, the man can read stuff about vomit on parquet floors, and it’s aaaaaalmost art! Autumn, in the hands of any other narrator, would’ve had me braying laughter. As it was, any deeper pondering I DID ACTually do? It was cuz o’ Ballerini giving weight and his smooth voice resonating with the listener.

So when all is said and done? I TOTally understand it. Knausgård leads a family he guided early on into deep thinking, into not taking anything for granted, into looking more deeply and adding meaning and purpose into the ho-hum of everyday existence. But still? I was hoping this would be about Autumn, the falling away of Summer, the harvesting to be done, the coming of the dead of winter…

Nope…

But if ya wanna hear about how AWEsome the barf of someone you love, all over your really nice jacket, as you sit on the bus is?

Look no further: Knausgård and Ballerini have it for ya right here!