John Phipps

The worst idea ever for a podcast – and it’s great: Our Struggle reviewed

Plus: I've fallen for The Archers

Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard. Image: Orjan F. Ellingvag / Corbis / Getty Images 
issue 26 June 2021

Our hosts are Lauren and Drew and they want to talk about Karl Ove Knausgaard. Or rather, they want to talk around Knausgaard. Or to talk through Knausgaard, towards the sense of what the Knausgaard phenomenon means. Or, it sometimes seems, they want to talk about everything but Knausgaard — cigarettes, Constance Garnett, the history of literary criticism, to what extent hotness is a function of tallness, Clarice Lispector, media hype, backlash, cancel culture, sneakers, Gen X, how Geoff Dyer got where he did — until the only territory left uncovered by the conversation is Knausgaard himself, described only through...

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