“If there was one thing I had been looking forward to, and had intended to base my article on, it was the sound of adventure that American place names evoked. Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania. All my life I had kept encountering them, and when I saw them in writing, vast spaces opened up within me. The names were romantic, exotic, distant, yet so close, strange, but still familiar. This is what I had wanted to write about, what this almost mythological landscape was like in reality. It was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Now there was nothing left of any of that…”

 

Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of the My Struggle series, has written a long and wonderfully honest essay about his recent travels in North America. Part One of MY SAGA was published online at The New York Times Magazine website February 25, and in print in the Magazine on Sunday, March 1. Part Two of MY SAGA was published online March 11, and in print on Sunday, March 15. 

 

Photo: Karl Ove Knausgaard outside a bar in Superior, Wis. Credit: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum, for The New York Times.