I did not finish this book, it was just impossible to stay focused during the beginning of the pandemic. Having said that I do intend to go back and dip into the various essays as I really like Knausgaard's writing.

I’ll admit that I haven’t had a lot of luck connecting with the work of Karl Ove Knausgård; I have found something offputting and exhausting in following his "fictional" explorations into the difference between the real and “the real”. Even so, I acknowledge that he’s a major contemporary voice, and having found this opportunity to read his opinions free from the artifice of novel-making, I settled in with an open mind. Most of the essays in In the Land of the Cyclops are about art and artists and their creative processes, with a particular focus on imagery that might make the viewer/reader uncomfortable or confused. And although I hadn’t known anything about the circumstances that led to Knausgård writing the title essay, it seems after the fact that this collection represents the philosophy of an artistic ideologue; someone devoted to smashing through all boundaries that culture or society might think to impose on artistic endeavors.

This collection treats a diverse array of subjects, but for the most part, the thirty-three essays concentrate on defining and exploring “art”. When it comes to writing, Knausgård often cites the tension between themes of the horizontal (relativistic) and the vertical (the absolute); the liminal space between human interiority and externality; and the basic impossibility of using words (a cultural construct) to describe the world as it actually is. When it comes to the visual arts, Knausgård makes the case that where a painting or photograph can evoke something preverbal, they are in that moment capturing something truthful and real. To this end, Knausgård writes about (among other topics): The feminist modern photography of both Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman (I wish the ARC included the photos promised in the finished book but everything Knausgård mentions is Googlable); the literary career of fellow Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun; there are book reviews of Michel Houellebecq's Submission and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (“the perfect novel”, “the best novel that has ever been written”); Knausgård often invokes the films (and notebooks) of Ingmar Bergman; and frequently references Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, and Homer’s Odyssey (where else can you find a cyclops and pigmen both?) The tone is consistently scholarly, the topics fundamentally esoteric, and this collection demanded of me careful reading to make meaning.