Further thoughts on Proust v Knausgaard

Further and maybe final thoughts for the moment on Proust v Knausgaard: One additional way in which they differ substantially concerns the very nature of what they're writing and what they hope to accomplish through their writing. Proust puts it very directly right in the title of his work: Search for Lost Time. As everyone knows, he lived the first half of his life as a silent observer and chronicler - nobody suspected the perspicacity of his observations, his skill, or his determination; they wrote him off as a dandy and dilettante - and then he essentially retired from life and write in order to capture and hold the experiences, thoughts, and sensations of his life as recollected. All writers before and since draw to one degree or another on memory; and many writers, I believe, write not so much to capture memory (or "lost time") as to purge it: personally, I have felt that once I write about my experiences, strangely, I can no longer recall those experiences with accuracy. The writing has in some way replaced the experience. Knausgaard is not retired from life and examining what it is to recapture experience; he is still "in" his life, in a sense. He, too, announces his objective in his title: he writes of his struggle, but the "struggle" is not to write. He struggle is twofold: one, to be like everyone else, to just be a normal guy, accepted by all, whereas he feels like an outsider; but at the same time, two, his struggle is to express his unique identity and experiences through his writing: so he wants to be both unique and "like everyone else," an impossibility, in a way, but maybe not so - as his writing can enable both possibilities. Proust is the outsider looking on his life like a scientist or philosopher; Knausgaard is the insider, laying his life bare, seeking acceptance, both literary and personal.