Between the slings and arrows born and the writer’s already well established tendency toward fruitful self-absorption, it is not surprising that Knausgaard spends too much time playing defense in In the Land of the Cyclops.

... may prove to be less salacious but no less provocative. Or, at least, no less thought-provoking.

Knausgaard’s critical writing does return obsessively to the question of artistic limits.

These occasional writings reveal a more academic Knausgaard. But, as in the fiction, his intense focus, formidable command of reference and tendency to see the interconnectedness of things make for highly stimulating, almost overwhelming reading.

In the Land of the Cyclops finds him in, at best, a holding pattern. These are minor essays, earnest and sawdust-filled.

In the Land of the Cyclops heightens the suspicion that Knausgaard fulfilled his authorial project with the completion of his six-part autofictional epic in 2011.

The need to be complex — and perhaps also to be seen to be complex — outweighs the need to make a point at times, and this can make some pieces hard going, but Knausgaard is an interesting thinker even when self-indulgent. At its best the writing is clear, elegant, dense and engrossing, but it is the less grandiose, less self-consciously expansive pieces that are the most satisfying and memorable.

For me, reading Knausgaard always feels Proustian (a voluminous, self-referential writer to whom he has often been compared, and who he writes about here) — if Proust had been 16 in southern Norway in the mid-80s.

In this dense and thought-provoking essay collection, Knausgaard (My Struggle) once again displays his knack for raising profound questions about art and what it means to be human.

In this wide-ranging, sometimes labored collection, Knausgaard argues that art is at its most effective when it destabilizes our understanding of the world.