To talk to Karl Ove Knausgaard, I got up at 3:30 in the morning. I hadn’t really slept the night before. We were staying with friends in Brooklyn; Knausgaard was in London. But it wasn’t only the time difference. I had no childcare, so I needed to talk before the kids woke up. The night before, I’d slept on an air mattress in the sticky mid-August heat with my nine-year-old, who gets scared in new places and could only sleep while clutching my hand.
We were meant to Zoom at 4:30 AM, but I was nervous. It was 9:30 AM in London. I boiled water for the French press. Karl Ove drinks coffee, I thought. Lots of people drink coffee, but I’d spent both last summer and this one thinking almost constantly about what Karl Ove Knausgaard thinks and likes and does. He seems to have a real appreciation for “Coke and crisps,” and he drank a Coke while we talked on Zoom. He also sucked on an e-cigarette (I know from his writing that he's tried off and on to quit smoking). It felt absurd to ask about these things, so I did not.
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