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tominlondon 's review for:
Dancing in the Dark
by Karl Ove Knausgård
Karl Ove Knausgård having reached the age of eighteen in this fourth volume of his life story, his homespun teenage philosophy expresses a rebellious frame of mind that pervades the whole book, his behaviour, and everything he was thinking at the time:
I had decided that ages ago that I would not continue my education after school, what we learned was just rubbish, basically what life was about was living, and living in the way you want, in other words, enjoying your life. Some enjoyed their lives best by working, others by not working. OK, I was aware that I would need money, which meant that I would also have to work, but not all the time and not on something that would deplete all my energy and eat into my soul, leaving me like one of the middle-aged halfwits who guarded their hedges and peered across at their neighbours to see if their status symbols were as a wonderful as their own.
So now that he has left school and is undecided about what to do (whilst he pursues his ambition to become a writer) he packs his books, his CDs, and typewriter and goes to teach for a year in the remote north of Norway, to a tiny village he calls Håjford (in reality Fjordgård). The book begins with his long journey, with many changes, to Håjford and his arrival there, at the end of everything, where the road ends and there is nothing beyond. The bus turns round and goes back, leaving him with his bag standing at the house where he will be lodging as a teacher.
In a quick walk round the village (with a population of hardly 200 people) that takes no more than ten minutes, he identifies the main features: a small fish processing factory, a mini-market, a church, and of course the school where he will be teaching. We are in the far north here, and there's nothing much going on. The young people have all left the village to work or study elsewhere, leaving only the fishermen, their families, and the younger children.
Karl Ove's engagement with these rough-hewn, sweary village kids with low expectations, in this remotest of settings, is the most fascinating part of the book. He settles down to a routine of writing, getting drunk, and resolving the various little dramas that develop with the children. His only adult friends are the other teachers, most of whom dislike him as a temporary interloper. Social life consists of drinking sessions with some of the locals, a few of the teachers, and some of the school kids.
During this period of isolation, Karl Ove (still a virgin) is also on the lookout for a sexual partner but there's nobody in the village to fit the bill. Nothing to do but fantasise about the girls at the school, some of whom consider him a "rock star"and hang around him when he's at home. During various drunken forays by car to the nearest larger town (still no more than a village) he tries to get involved with various women and discovers that he suffers from premature ejaculation; many such episodes are described in detail. This may not be to everyone's taste and I wonder what female readers may think of it.
Meanwhile he's writing, writing, writing, partly building on his earlier success as a reviewer of music CDs (featured in the previous volume) and partly trying to develop a style based on some of the writers he's interested in, many of them Norwegian, and on Hemingway (he shortens his sentences in a search for that same simplicity and directness).
After this fascinating first section of the book, there's a long, long excursus into a later part of his life where we're back in southern Norway again and we return to the problem of his domineering father, the breakup with his loving mother, who has problems of her own, and more or less continuous drinking; he loves being drunk and is only happy when he has achieved complete oblivion. This long middle section of the book becomes very repetitive as people come and go, one drinking session follows another, and the strangely peaceful interlude in Håjford is forgotten about.
But then at the end we find ourselves back in Håjford as Karl Ove prepares to finish his year of teaching and return to urban life in the cities of the South (Bergen, Kristiansand) where his long-term friends and family are. But this remotest of faraway places remains unforgettable in the reader's mind.
I had decided that ages ago that I would not continue my education after school, what we learned was just rubbish, basically what life was about was living, and living in the way you want, in other words, enjoying your life. Some enjoyed their lives best by working, others by not working. OK, I was aware that I would need money, which meant that I would also have to work, but not all the time and not on something that would deplete all my energy and eat into my soul, leaving me like one of the middle-aged halfwits who guarded their hedges and peered across at their neighbours to see if their status symbols were as a wonderful as their own.
So now that he has left school and is undecided about what to do (whilst he pursues his ambition to become a writer) he packs his books, his CDs, and typewriter and goes to teach for a year in the remote north of Norway, to a tiny village he calls Håjford (in reality Fjordgård). The book begins with his long journey, with many changes, to Håjford and his arrival there, at the end of everything, where the road ends and there is nothing beyond. The bus turns round and goes back, leaving him with his bag standing at the house where he will be lodging as a teacher.
In a quick walk round the village (with a population of hardly 200 people) that takes no more than ten minutes, he identifies the main features: a small fish processing factory, a mini-market, a church, and of course the school where he will be teaching. We are in the far north here, and there's nothing much going on. The young people have all left the village to work or study elsewhere, leaving only the fishermen, their families, and the younger children.
Karl Ove's engagement with these rough-hewn, sweary village kids with low expectations, in this remotest of settings, is the most fascinating part of the book. He settles down to a routine of writing, getting drunk, and resolving the various little dramas that develop with the children. His only adult friends are the other teachers, most of whom dislike him as a temporary interloper. Social life consists of drinking sessions with some of the locals, a few of the teachers, and some of the school kids.
During this period of isolation, Karl Ove (still a virgin) is also on the lookout for a sexual partner but there's nobody in the village to fit the bill. Nothing to do but fantasise about the girls at the school, some of whom consider him a "rock star"and hang around him when he's at home. During various drunken forays by car to the nearest larger town (still no more than a village) he tries to get involved with various women and discovers that he suffers from premature ejaculation; many such episodes are described in detail. This may not be to everyone's taste and I wonder what female readers may think of it.
Meanwhile he's writing, writing, writing, partly building on his earlier success as a reviewer of music CDs (featured in the previous volume) and partly trying to develop a style based on some of the writers he's interested in, many of them Norwegian, and on Hemingway (he shortens his sentences in a search for that same simplicity and directness).
After this fascinating first section of the book, there's a long, long excursus into a later part of his life where we're back in southern Norway again and we return to the problem of his domineering father, the breakup with his loving mother, who has problems of her own, and more or less continuous drinking; he loves being drunk and is only happy when he has achieved complete oblivion. This long middle section of the book becomes very repetitive as people come and go, one drinking session follows another, and the strangely peaceful interlude in Håjford is forgotten about.
But then at the end we find ourselves back in Håjford as Karl Ove prepares to finish his year of teaching and return to urban life in the cities of the South (Bergen, Kristiansand) where his long-term friends and family are. But this remotest of faraway places remains unforgettable in the reader's mind.