Karl Ove Knausgaard webchat – your questions answered on self-loathing, love and Jürgen Klopp

I wish I could answer more questions! The one on favourite albums for example... Remain in Light, Talking Heads. Thanks, lots of questions were really good and interesting.

Both those writers are important to me. Sebald, his books The Rings of Saturn is very important to me, the way he leaves the present and goes into memory, the past, without leaving the place, it evokes what is in that place all the time. Bernhard, I absolutely love, he is one of the darkest and funniest writers. My favourite book of his is Extinction, a must read for everybody.

These exist in separate universes: the 0-0 draws is a general thing about football but it doesn't apply to Liverpool, as I'm a Liverpool fan. I think Klopp is a great saviour.

I'm very divided. I love that the novel committee opens up for other kinds of literature - lyrics and so on. I think that's brilliant. But knowing that Dylan is the same generation as Pynchon, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, makes it very difficult for me to accept it. I think one of those three should have had it, really. But if they get it next year, it will be fine.

A very good question. The place is the most important thing in my writing - it always started with the place. Even when I'm writing about objects, it's important. My favourite quotation, from a Finnish writer for a change, by Pentti Saarikoski, he said "I'm not writing about the world and its places, I'm writing about the places and its worlds" – or something similar. And when I studied literature, my topic was literature and the place, and the local, the place where you are, has always been the most important thing in the writing. There's an interesting question by Bruno Latour who asks where the local goes out to be global - it's two different levels of existence. And I try to establish a place, a here and a now. What I like in literature is this, but before I could articulate that, I just felt it.

I read Kundera, and Knut Hamsen at the same time. Kundera is a classic postmodernist writer, he moves his character about; Hamsen is all about presence, no reflection, and I knew that was my preference. For me, all the reflections in my prose, is kind of a failure - it's the lack of ability to express it through flesh and blood and place. That's what I really want to do. That's what evokes the fantasy, and the writing itself - seeing a place.

It's interesting in regard to what we were taught in the beginning of the 90s at university, when it was all about language, and we looked at realistic novels and the notion of the language being transparent - if you read Flaubert you can see the town - it was seen as completely naive. It was about language and science, and this was a postmodernist time. I loved that, I dived into it - I love the feeling that my teacher was a quantum mechanic, and it had that feeling to reading the letters in that way. But then I went back to childhood reading experiences, all about visualisation, and feelings. And that's what I'm doing. And yes, it's naive too.

That's a good question. For me personally, it's such a big part of my personality, that my father did that all the time. In the end, it was like something was broken. Because as a child, the most important thing is to be accepted and loved, and if you're criticised you know something is wrong with you - it could be a dangerous thing, because it has to do with your self-esteem, and whether you like yourself, which I don't. Then you get children yourself, and you see it's so easy to do that. It's easy to see them as children - it's very easy to transfer the same feeling to them, and not understand the consequences. It's a constant thing in my life - trying to understand how they're feeling. You could make a joke about them, but it could crush them. Their feelings are much more connected to the world than mine are as an adult - I've learned to deal with things, and they haven't yet.

I don't like myself, no - that must be somehow rooted in my childhood experiences. I'm not blaming anyone, but yes, it comes from there I think. If I get drunk, I like myself, so I try to steer away from that.

How do I measure them? I'm currently writing a film manuscript of my first novel. I never re-read them, but I had to read this one. The first one's first 190 pages are excellent, and the last 510 pages are written by a writer in love with himself and his own writing. And the strange thing is a colleague of mine told me that when the book was published, that the first bit was good and then it was terrible... when it was published in English, I could have taken out the bad parts, but I like the fact that it is what it is, and it reflects something. The second novel I've never re-read, I don't have the courage to do that.

My own favourite novels are classical novels in a way. I would love to do that, of course. But for me, I can't write novels. Thomas Mann said a novelist is a person who can't really write novels, and the novel is in that struggle. I think James Joyce could write perfect short stories, but his first novel, it's struggling with the form - and it's a celebration of that.

I would like to write one, still. An example would be Never Let Me Go - a traditional novel in a way, but it has to be unique in some way or another.

I can't answer on behalf of the Norwegian people, but I certainly did. And it wasn't because of any evolutionary adaptation. It's a cultural thing, I guess. For me at least. I hardly could speak to anyone, but when I drank, I could. It was a great way of liberating my own restricted soul. But I don't know if that's the case with the other people there - we all had fun at least.

But aren't the British into binge drinking too? It's nothing to do with Norwegian culture!

No. I basically have no ideas. I have just published four books in Norway, short texts, and that's an old project I tried to do - I had the idea but I couldn't write them before, back in 99, and all of a sudden I could write them out. They're about things, and objects, and phenomena. It's kind of a mixture of prose poems, essays, oral paintings.

It's funny you mention XTC, I was really into them for many years. One of the great bands of their era.

I wish I knew you in the same way!