ANATOMY OF A RECURRING ERROR THAT BUGS ME.

The piece about Ben Lerner and the novel in the NYT this past weekend repeats a well-worn observation about Knausgaard — that MY STRUGGLE ends with the sentence “And I’m so happy that I’m no longer an author.”

BUT: This is not the last sentence of the English translation of MY STRUGGLE (nor, indeed, is it a sentence that appears in the novel at all).

Here is the actual last sentence of the approved English translation: “Afterwards we will catch the train to Malmö, where we will get in the car and drive back to our house, and the whole way I will revel in, truly revel in, the thought that I am no longer a writer.”

(You can see, I trust, how different those lines are. Similar, yes — but different!)

AND YET — this line appears frequently in writing about Knausgaard. It traces back to a 2013 interview he gave with Bookforum. The final volume of MY STRUGGLE hadn’t been translated into English yet, and that’s how Knausgaard himself glossed the final line. Reviewers found it too juicy not to use, and it soon appeared in the LRB (in a piece by … Ben Lerner!), in the TLS, and quickly all over the Internet.

But it’s not in the book!

Of course, this sort of thing happens all the time. But I think it’s interestingly symptomatic of the recurring failure of most people who write about Knausgaard’s work to describe it with basic accuracy. Seriously, go look at MY STRUGGLE vol 1, the real book. It bears shockingly little relationship to the imaginary book critics are always discussing.