Sheepdog Brain (ft. Dean Kissick)

Our Struggle

Surely one of our most Knausgaardian episodes yet - we spent four hours last Sunday afternoon - a rainy, unseasonably cold day in the mid-Atlantic - chatting with brilliant art critic and prolific croissant eater Dean Kissick. Manhattan traffic hummed outside of Dean's window, we took a yogurt break followed by a coffee break, there was a brief drama involving an overheated MacBook computer, and we of course witnessed Dean don and doff his Argyle sweater no less than three times (although we did not catch a glimpse of his supposed abs). This was the last episode recorded before we became boldface names in Vanity Fair so treasure it - we fully plan to go whole-hog on vacuous literary world prestige mongering in coming episodes!

TECHNICAL NOTE: You will notice a whirring sound around one hour ten but it gets fixed after a few minutes (Dean cools off his computer) so if you're one of those audio freaks who always complains about sound quality just push through, or alternatively, get a life

cheat sheet:

0:00 - A namecheck of the Dominique Ansel bakery (sponsor of the pod) somehow leads into a discussion of LinkedIn stalking and how LinkedIn is in fact the most Knausgaardian of the social networks.

19:15 - Dean, a hardcore strugglehead, recounts his initiation into the word of Knausgaard and explains how the books changed his life. We try to figure out what Knausgaard means by "form" (all literature "must submit to form"? but why does MS not seem to submit to anything) and meanwhile uncover a barnyard motif in this passage involving sheep, sheepdogs, ducks and more. Also: some inside baseball on the secret affinity between alt-lit and raw milk.

1:09:00 - We begin talking about what is probably the most important idea in the My Struggle series (or at least the first two books), a concept Knausgaard most often refers to as "longing" but is often associated or synonymous with "inexhaustibility," "boundlessness," "the unmentionable." What is the Longing? What does it have to do with death, with art, with basement jackoff parlors (of the sort so vividly detailed in this passage)?

1:24:00 - Touching off from Knausgaard's famous passage about the Constable sketch of the clouds, Dean brilliantly articulates Knausgaard's particular taste in art and explains why he thinks Knausgaard is one of the best art critics today. What does Knausgaard have that art criticism in general has lost? And what does his predilection for "naive" objective realist landscapes have to do with his own writing project?

2:06:00 - Dean takes us through what we believe to be the culmination of the passage, Knausgaard's meditation on discovery and exploration. The whole world has been "experienced" through representations, making it seem smaller, and thus enclosed, unenchanted, incestuous. How has the endless flood of images stunted art and literature? Is there anything left outside of the algorithm? Dean has some optimistic answers!

2:25:00 - We plan our upcoming live struggle session in Koreatown and Dean gives a glowing review of our upcoming t-shirts

Thank you for listening!! As always you can reach out to us (but please be more deferential now that we're Vanity Fair stars) at [e-mail] or [e-mail]. We love hearing from listeners!

OUTRO - BINGO DOG SONG BY FLICKBOX NURSERY RHYMES