Lunch, rain, Knausgaard

Just back from having lunch with a friend at the Centre Pompidou, where there was a long line of people waiting to enter when the Centre opened, at 11. Nina and I had planned to meet at Brancusi's Atelier on the parvis, but it wasn't open either, and when I arrived Nina was standing outside under an umbrella, and we went to the Cafe Beaubourg up by the Niki de St Phalle/Tinguely fountain.

Knausgaard: it's very good, I think. (Deliberately) not beautiful writing (the way Sebald is consciously beautiful writing) but gripping in its unfolding, the story of his "struggle" to find meaning in existence, developed alternatively in passages of narrative and passages of essayistic discourse, all on a forthrightly personal level. I don't want to rush through it, want to take time to understand why it seems important as a book.