Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books? From KCROLVORBLE question, sir, but where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

I am privileged to be talking to Carl Ova Knausgard about the third volume of his ongoing, in translation,

novel called My Struggle.

And last week we began to talk about some of the books of childhood

that are so interesting and exciting.

And we had brought up Little House on the Prairie, which is a novel

about survival in many senses. And survival, although it may make for an exciting narrative,

survival is a gritty day-to-day thing.

You don't survive finally.

Now I'm surviving.

Every day is a struggle for survival. And that's very true of this novel, too.

The childhood in my struggle is like the childhood in Little House on the Prairie, in that it keeps going on.

Eventless, yes, but feels like life and death at the same time.

Yeah. And it's no way out there. That's kind of the frightening thing about writing about the childhood was that.

And I remember when I was there in my childhood, I wanted to be an adult.

...