Anyone who's gone this far - to book 6 - in Karl Ove Lnausgaard's My Struggle has wrestled w what he could possibly have been thinking in echoing Hitler in the title of this masterwork, and up to this point he's given us little to go by on this point. About 150 pp in to book 6 , however, we connect again w his best friend, a Swedish writer/journalist, Geier, KOK 's confidant and support as he wrestles w his uncle's threat to block publication of the very novel we're reading. KOK and G engage in some discussion about their work and we learn, first, that G was the one who provided the title and, second, that KOK is already pondering a next work focused on Africa and on the strange European idea of Africa as a version of paradise - where this comes from - primitivism, cynicism, or racism - I have no idea - and that KOK is considering naming this planned novel The Third Realm an uneasy reference to the third Reich. Is KOK just taunting us w these titles, does he have a shade of fascism in his thinking, or his he being satiric or ironic and trying to arouse the ire of his own readers? There is little or no indication to this point of kok's views on any aspect of politics of current events but the title(s) cast a shadow over the whole enterprise. Is he so alienated and embittered as to flirt w or even adopt fascism in response to current unease - the unsettling nature of the waves of immigration changing Scandinavia, the hurt and rejection he has suffered in his life? It's no secret to any KOK reader that this final volume does include a lengthy section on the life of AH - but why? Why such a departure from a work of near-confessional autobiography? Why such a detour and diversion? It seems like this section - which I have not yet reached - might betray the honesty and insight of the entire work - a life of painful insight from a brave author who has, maybe?, unfolded and revealed his deepest secrets and the daily minutia of his life and, in the end, reached all the wrong conclusions.
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