By Steve Marsh
This is an excerpted conversation with Karl Ove Knausgaard and Glenn Kotche for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, published in full at mspmag.com on October 24, 2025.
Ever since the Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard dropped his six-volume memoir My Struggle—Book 1 was translated into English in 2012—there hasn’t been a bigger global literary rock star. So when Liquid Music announced Historia, Knausgaard’s collab with Wilco’s drummer Glenn Kotche, Nov. 2 at Northrop, it (almost) made sense.
Turns out Kotche was the one who asked Knausgaard to dance—and yeah, he was slightly apprehensive about approaching the archdruid of literary realism, even though they’re friends.
“Yeah, it was a little like, Should I reach out?” Kotche said. “And then it’s like, What's the worst that can happen? He'll say no? It's not like someone's going to unfriend you because you asked them to collaborate.”
I kept that same energy when I asked Liquid Music’s Kate Nordstrum if she would ask Kotche and Knausgaard if they were available to jump on a Zoom and talk about their show. What’s the worst thing they could say—no? The three of us spoke about drumming, time, and muting your self-editor. Knausgaard vaped throughout our entire conversation.
Glenn, I was reading a thing that you were interviewed about, about the concept of a drummer's voice and the uniqueness of it. And I was thinking that drumming is often described as “keeping time.” And time is universal—not usually considered to be individualistic. So when do you think you developed your own drumming voice? I know you first destroyed a drum kit at the age of three.
Glenn: I don't know when that would have happened, but I think it's due to a collection of my experiences—just like any writer or visual artist or singer-songwriter. It's kind of like you have this collection of influences and somehow by imitating those things, you take little bits and pieces and eventually, you come up with your own voice.
Was there a tipping point though?
Glenn: It was when I graduated college, specifically. I had done so much marching percussion, I'd done so much classical percussion, and after I got out of college, I had no more outlets for all of that—it was just my drum set. So I thought, why waste those 10,000 hours I spent in the practice room, working on timpani and marimba and vibes and hand drumming and all that other stuff. I tried to incorporate it into the drum set. And when I started doing that, and thinking in terms of not just timekeeping, but also like an orchestral percussion—providing texture, color, other things to assist the music besides just the beat—that’s when I got my voice.
Ah.
Glenn: And that would probably be around the time when I joined Wilco, or just before that, when I had a strong feeling of, This is what I want to do.
You joined Wilco after their first three albums. You were working with Jeff Tweedy and Jim O’Rourke on a separate project, and then you joined. So were you in your 30s by then?
Glenn: I remember this, because I turned 30 on New Year's Eve. And I came in on January 2nd or 3rd to play percussion and vibes on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. And Jeff pulled me aside and asked me to join the band. So I had just turned 30, yeah.
Karl Ove, you’ve written about finding your writing voice when you committed to the hyper-realistic style and subject matter in My Struggle. But you are also a drummer. Did you ever find your voice as a drummer in the way you found it as a writer?
Karl Ove: I love music and it was an important part of my teenage years—it was all basically music and football. So I wanted to be in a band and I learned how to play the drums, but I wasn’t very good, so I started to write about music instead. So I wrote about records and it was easy—I wrote like six to 10 pages a day, no problem. It was just flowing. Then, when I was 19, I came to a course in creative writing at university. And I was shown the masterpieces of modernism, and basically they were laughing at me. I was 19, and they were 75. And then I couldn't write for 10 years. I really tried. Then when my first novel came, it was not quite my own voice. It was changing my voice into something else, writing about something else. And then something started to happen. I made a discovery—I realized that writing is like reading. And from then on, I could write. I wrote about many topics. And like reading, writing is like entering a space you haven't been in before. And you can surprise yourself, because literature is something objective—and if you pour yourself in there, something else comes back. But I can't even say I’m a drummer in this company. I was in the band because my brother is a musician—he's a guitarist—so I knew they wouldn't fire me.
We’re obviously reading your novels in translation, so we can’t truly be certain about your poetic tempo in the original Norwegian. But is there a time signature in your head while your write?
Karl Ove: Well, that's a good question, and I think it's incredibly relevant because what I'm not interested in when I'm writing is thinking or planning. It’s like an improvisation and it's only possible if you practice a lot. And it’s the same with an instrument—if you play, you can't think. You have to be in it, and that's the place to be. I think that's for all the arts really. If you start to think then you have blown it, in a way. I envy musicians because they're right in it. It's different with writing. It's a much more intellectual thing, because it's words and concepts and it's not so direct, but that's where I want to be. So I never think about rhythm, but I never edit either. So what you read is what I wrote.
[Continue reading at mspmag.com]
Karl Ove Knausgård and Glenn Kotche: Historia
Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 7:30 pm
The 92nd Street Y, New York
Produced by Liquid Music
Sun, Nov 2, 2025, 4 pm
Northrop, Minneapolis
Copresented by Liquid Music and Northrop
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