Karl Ove Knausgård: preference

Transcript context

…Your first book in English but, I think, your second book overall: A Time for Everything. Why did you write a whole book about angels? I really don’t know. I’ve always been interested in the physicality of man, matter, the brain itself, the physicality of the brain, the way we are animals, the way we eat, and the way we take the world in, and the primitiveness of us. And then, you know, the heaven above, all the things we dream of. When I read the Bible, something that occurred to me was the physicality of the angels. That’s such a wonderful image. And I thought, “Okay, they were eating in the Bible, they are walking with God in the Bible.” I thought, “What if I read the Bible from that perspective? What happened to the angels? Where are they?” Because they saw angels before. We don’t see them. Then I thought, “Okay, maybe they have been tempted to be in the physical world too much, and then kind of been almost centrifuged into the world and been part of the world and can’t escape, and they’re still here around us.” That was the thought. And in a way, it’s a metaphor for what happened with religion, why we’re not . . . many of us don’t believe anymore. Why there’s no heaven above us except commercials and TV programs and stuff. What happened? What happened with religion? What happened with God? What happened with heavens? You know? How come we are all down here now, and what’s that about? That was not why I wrote it, but that was the outcome of the writing. And why the fascination with the Cain and Abel story? Right? It’s family struggle, and it’s rivalry.…

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