Here is the opening sentence of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s meditation on beds.:
With its four legs and its flat, soft surface, the bed gently accommodates one of our most basic needs: it is good to lie down in bed, and it is good to sleep in them through the night.
Well, you learn something every day.
Actually you do, if you are very young, or at least you are meant to. For this is one of Knausgaard’s letters to his unborn daughter, and he’s written one book for each season, 20 letters per month, for her to be able to see the world, or for Knausgaard to see it again, anew. It is a mission freighted with honourable intent.
He writes on subjects that are dear to an infant’s heart: beds (as we have seen), but also daguerreotypes, Flaubert, thermos flasks, August Sander (you may well ask.
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