Karl Ove Knausgaard on Near-Death Experiences, Raising Kids, Puberty, Brain Surgery, and Turtles

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A crime reporter and a business writer try to figure out how the government can charge a bank a sixteen-billion-dollar fine for wrongdoing yet fail to prosecute any individual at that bank for a crime. Plus, a long walk with Karl Ove Knausgaard. Knausgaard’s monumental autobiographical novel in six volumes, “My Struggle,” describes the events of his life in immense detail over thousands of pages—a most unlikely literary hit. His new project is only a bit less ambitious. It’s a four-part series named after the seasons, one book per season, which he wrote for his daughter while awaiting her birth. Each book consists of dozens of short essays, reflections on the most common things, tangible and intangible. The first book in the series, “Autumn,” was just published in the U.S. When Karl Ove Knausgaard was in New York recently, he met up with The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman, and they covered all the basics: near-death experiences, raising kids, puberty, brain surgery, and turtles.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's David Remnick. Before we start the show today, I want to extend an invitation.
0:05.5	This weekend, October 6 through 8th, we're presenting the New Yorker Festival. It's an extraordinary
0:10.2	weekend where the artists, authors, thinkers, and personalities shaping the world, take the stage
0:16.3	with the New Yorkers writers for an exchange of ideas and insights that make news.
0:21.4	People like Dr. Atul Gawanda, the author of On Mortality, the singer Carly Ray Jepson, the poets Paul Muldoon and Kevin Young, designer Dries van Notten, the cover artist Barry Blit who does all our political covers, TV hit creator Ryan Murphy, the chef Anthony Bourdain, the civil rights activist Reverend William Barber, and a group of political heavyweights talking about the rise of Donald Trump on a panel called It Happened Here. It's sort of like the New Yorker Radio Hour, only times 100. Take a look at the lineup and buy tickets now at New Yorker.com slash festival.
0:58.0	There are plenty of tickets available, and you can download the New Yorker Festival app.
1:02.6	Hope to see you there.
1:04.3	Okay, now here's the show.
1:06.6	This is a real trade to find The One World Observatory
1:11.6	The Strait of the Block for West Boulevard
1:13.6	and make that right.
1:15.6	I basically just think it would be interesting
1:17.6	to look at the emergence of a criminal economy.
1:20.6	And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles
1:23.6	of her out there, this really subversive, strange thing,
1:26.6	in rap especially, and see what
1:29.0	their lives are like on both sides of the border. From one world trade center in Manhattan,
1:35.2	this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
1:41.2	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
1:49.3	Staff writer Sheila Kohl-Hotkar writes frequently about Wall Street and finance.
1:54.9	Her colleague Patrick Radin-Keefe also writes about business, but more often he covers shady business, drug trafficking and the like. Patrick reviewed a book called, we're going to have
1:59.5	to bleep this for the radio,
	...

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