Darlinghurst Gaol sits east of the Sydney CBD, a penal complex built of sandstone, hand hewn by convicts. The imposing walls that surround the facility were built between 1822 and 1824, before funding ran out and the site was left empty for 12 years. Work recommenced in 1836 and by 1841 it was accepting prisoners, though the site would not actually be completed till 1885. It was christened Starvinghurst Gaol by Australian writer and poet, Henry Lawson, who was gaoled there for drunkenness and not paying child support. Six rectangular cellblocks arranged radially around a tall circular chapel.

And now it’s home to the National Art School.

What was once the women’s wing of the gaol, is now known as the Cell Block Theatre, and hired out for functions, weddings, launch parties and the like. My friend Tim and I are there in our rain dampened hoodies, for the inauspiciously named Intel Game Chamber. “An evening of gaming, food and fun”. Make no mistake, I have no interest in promoting Intel products. Rather, I’m here because Tim had a spare ticket and made mention of free food. And that is sufficient incentive most days.

The cells that once filled the Cell Block Theatre, have all been removed, leaving behind a long hall. Loth as I am to admit it, Intel’s team has succeeded in creating a real sense of atmosphere: marrying old and new. The room is ringed by blue, upward facing lights, playing off the surface of the ten metre high sandstone walls. Dappling them in light and shadow, black and blue. Up above, a projected Intel logo wanders the arch of the ceiling, like some living screensaver. It’s a striking venue, and it lends more dignity than the event probably warrants.

Dance music pumps through speakers throughout the night. It’s always dance music at these events. As if companies don’t trust their guests to have fun without an insistent pulsing bass. Never let the act or energy drop. When we arrive, we are given a set of food and drink tokens and a show-bag. Inside is a hat and a shirt emblazoned with Intel’s passion for gaming, reading in no uncertain terms “Never. Stop. Gaming.” I guess I can wear them ironically.

“Are you okay,” Tim asks, at one point.

And I am. Just a little tired, that’s all. Let me explain.

Between 2009 and 2011, Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård published a series of six autobiographical novels, entitled Min Kamp in Norwegian, or My Struggle as they are known in their English translations. The series spans some 3600 pages of prose (i.e. longer than the Harry Potterology), and details, quite literally, the “banalities and humiliations of his life”. How does a series so long, with subject matter so seemingly bland, become a literary phenomenon, translated into 22 languages? The English translation of the fifth volume was only released in April this year, but in Norway, the series has apparently sold around half a million copies, roughly one for every nine Norwegian adults. How could so many people find this compelling?

It’s the sort of question that drives you to your local library, where you notice that it only possesses two of Knausgård’s volumes, neither of which are Volume 1: A Death in the Family, causing you to select Volume 5: Some Rain must Fall, partly because of your punk-rock, devil-may-care attitude, and partly because it encompasses the author’s time studying at the Writer’s Academy in Bergen, but mainly because of the former. Having impressed everyone with your gall, you set out to read a few pages to try and understand how such a voluminous endeavour could possibly be compelling. Suddenly its early morning and you’ve read hundreds of pages, and the wind outside is throttling a tree, and your core body temperature has dropped as it is wont to do. And though the reasons are not entirely clear, it is irrefutable that Knausgård’s work is unreasonably compelling.

I’m sure this sort of thing happens to everyone. So you will hopefully understand and forgive my tiredness.

The Intel event is basically a collection of hardware showcases each with playable games, and it is primarily focused on extolling the virtues of Intel’s new i7 processors. A number of the games are running on new i7 NUCs (Next Unit of Computing), mini computers that Intel is promoting to the gaming market. It isn’t immediately clear who the NUCs are designed to appeal to. They are compact and certainly impressive for their size, but also rather expensive and not overwhelmingly capable in the graphics department. Still they perform well enough at running Intel’s very deliberately chosen games. We play against each other in Rocket League, a simple, but surprisingly fun soccer style game, in which the players drive vehicles. We play against others in Counter Strike Go, a first person shooter demanding rapid twitch based responses and some familiarity. We lose spectacularly.

All the other demonstrations run on much more powerful desktop rigs with expensive i7 processors and high-end graphics cards. These rigs feature intricate lighting and water cooling systems, they run graphically intensive games on multiple monitors. They run the HTC Vive Virtual Reality headset, which requires a large open area, two “Lighthouse” base stations to track movement, a cumbersome headset, headphones and two handheld controllers. The whole thing sounds ridiculously impractical, and it is. But it’s also startlingly immersive.

All of these setups run impressive price tags as well.

Tim, a professional pilot, tries his hand at the F-16 Fighting Falcon simulator. This setup, provided by IT supplier MSY, is a $10k affair with a custom chair and console designed to match the interior of the aircraft itself. It surrounds its pilot with touch-screens and button pads, projecting the cockpit view onto a giant curved screen. The demo software, however, does not have facility to land. So every flight ends in a fiery explosion.

For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops. Sooner or later, one day, this pounding action will cease of its own accord, and the blood will begin to run towards the body’s lowest point, where it will collect in a small pool, visible from outside as a dark, soft patch on ever whitening skin, as the temperature sinks, the limbs stiffen and the intestines drain.
Karl Ove Knausgård My Struggle Volume 1 (Death in the Family)

So begins the first volume of Knausgård’s My Struggle, with an incredibly detailed description of death. This stretches for pages, beginning as an account of the physical process but moving on to the psychological and sociological implications of death. It’s beautiful and essayistic, as some portions of My Struggle are, and it is wholly, and intentionally, unrepresentative of the whole. The bulk of Knausgård’s work is written in fairly simple and eminently readable prose that outlays the “pockets of drama in the lives of my closest family” in excruciating detail.

Knausgård on Knausgård isn’t a sympathetic portrait, and he often comes across as a fairly dislikable individual. But inherent in the intimacy of his novels, is a general empathy you can’t help but feel. His writing is overly indulgent at times, and unnecessarily crude at others, but all the way through it feels honest. Of course memory is fallible and though the work is classed as fiction it incorporates the real lives of others, sometimes to their chagrin. It is very a one sided reflection of a life, self absorbed by its very nature. Knausgaard’s prose can be elegant, but only when he chooses, which is quite rarely. And yet I read.

As the night wears on at the Intel Game Chamber, we make our way through the refreshment coupons. Each of us consumes a wood fire pizza, two sliders with fries and a couple of beers. We eat outside, seated at tables sheltered by the overhang of the National Art School’s cafe. The rain swells as we eat, blanketing the ground and quickly identifying a lack of suitable drainage. By the time we are halfway through, the legs of our stools are partially submerged and a nearby rubber floor-mat has been carried by the slow tide. Eventually the storm subsides, returning to a casual drizzle. The path drains and we are able to make our way back to the Cell Block Theatre.

Yngve filled his deep dish with stew, positioned the ladle on my side of the pot, I helped myself. Steam rose from the dish, I took a crispbread and bit off a piece, poured water into a glass, raised a spoonful of stew to my mouth, blew on it.
Karl Ove Knausgård My Struggle Volume 1 (Death in the Family)

Why do I need to know this? That’s a question that could be asked of many of Knausgård’s passages. Then again it could be asked of the entirety of My Struggle. And it would be valid. Knausgård can often be maddeningly specific, focusing on minutiae and on banal activities. But that facilitates something very interesting.

There is a dramatic principle known as Chekov’s gun, which purports that every memorable element of a work of fiction should be both relevant and unique. Everything else should be removed.

Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.
Anton Chekov

Simply put: if there is a gun, it must go off. Knausgård’s work runs completely antithetical to the principle of Chekov’s gun. All moments, no matter how significant or insignificant, are afforded similar levels of detail. And this creates an interesting sensation, because it obfuscates the importance of everything. Indeed if and when the figurative gun goes off, it has been there all along, and it has had no expectations placed on it. That is to say, it can still be incredibly surprising and emotionally affecting. The effect of this is furthered by one other interesting aspect to the form of Knausgård’s novels: there are no chapters. The books are divided into large cohesive sections known as Parts, but there is no subdivision into manageable portions. Barring dialogue, he is not always so liberal with his paragraphs as I am, and the whole novel just seems to go … on. The entire form is fluid and continuous, just like life. And so I read.

Later in the evening Tim wins a guessing competition. The prize includes both the jar of 447 candies (blue, of course), and a new Intel i7 processor. He spends the rest of the night with a Cheshire grin on his face, understandably spirited about our decision to weather the weather. The evening is bookended by periods where the Intel employees outnumber the attendees. They in their black hoodies, edged with electroluminescent wire (EL wire) and adorned with an Intel badge. All of it glowing. All of it blue. I spend part of the night wondering where the power source is hidden, and whether the system is rechargeable. Ultimately I conclude that given the number of promotional events Intel must run, the hoodies would surely have the facility to recharge. But I do wish I’d asked.

After it’s over I catch the train back, and walk from the station to my apartment. By now it has stopped raining, but the damp clings to the air, and I, forever susceptible to the cold, pull my coat in a little tighter. I take a hot shower and begin to write. Eventually the words become a struggle and I can no longer write, nor read. I brush my teeth, shut the door, turn out the light. And sleep to dream.