Another dip in Knausgaard's universe. Previously I only read his excursion on Munch and the present booklet could be read as a corollary to the former. Because the question why Munch painted, and why he did as he did, is basically the same as the one that is on the table here: why does one write? Here as there we are intrigued and revitalised by the reading, but unsure what exactly has been said. Very present is the soothing voice of an intelligent and affable man, a perfect stranger, but vulnerable enough to confide in his reader. We feel oddly buoyed by that attention. That man tells us he wanted to be a writer for the longest time, but couldn't. He put tons of words on paper but couldn't bring himself to really write. It was a writerly pose he struck. Only after he gave up, launched himself in a late academic career and read through the whole of Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' (in Norwegian translation), something happened. He was able to create a space between himself and his language, a fissure in which he was able to lose himself and in which narratives started to find their natural shape and texture. That's the 'inadvertent' of the title: genuine writing requires that you are able to cut loose from extrinsic motivations, from role models and designs. Relinquish control. Let the story find its own logic and pacing. Transcribe the first fifteen lines of a conversation overheard in the library and see where that takes you. One has to be able to really live in another world, just as we readers suspend judgment and inhabit foreign territory when we yield to a story told by someone else. Given this writing ethos, it is understandable why Knausgaard books read as they do. The author feels his way into the story, meanders between the descriptive and the ruminative, discharges deep, quasi-philosophical thoughts in the process, and leaves these reflections unmoored. There is no reasoning that strings together these sometimes evocative thoughts. The end comes but it's somewhat arbitrary, not a finely calibrated modulation into a final resolving chord.