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buddhafish 's review for:
Dancing in the Dark
by Karl Ove Knausgård
36th book of 2024.
4.5. We move on with Knausgaard, over halfway now. This was far better than the underwhelming volume 3 about his childhood. He is now (mostly) 18 years old, working as a teacher in Northern Norway and believes he is slightly in love with one of his 13-year-old students. He is also desperately trying to get laid. As ever, the most evocative parts of the book involve his father and the growing alcoholism (thanks to Knausgaard's structural choices, we've already seen it kill his father in vol. 1), the distant but clearly strong relationship with his brother (as a brother, some of the ruminations on brotherhood speak to me) and slowly but surely, he is beginning to realise he wants to be a writer and if he never makes it, he sees no alternative but to kill himself.
Knausgaard, like Hemingway, makes writing seem easy; it feels as if the words have just fallen out of him and arranged themselves as they are. I have no doubt that these novels are incredibly refined and drafted. Of course they are. His shifting from the colloquial to the philosophical is heightened in this volume. I must say the final line was so unromantic, I was shocked, almost laughed. The next volume recounts his time at writing school and he has already said one of the teachers is some "obscure Vestland writer": Jon Fosse. That hasn't aged well.
More than before, I sensed Knausgaard's own fear of death in this volume. In some ways I think all novels are about the fear of time passing/death. I wonder if that will continue to deepen as I read the final two volumes. It feels strange to be closing in so quickly on the end.
4.5. We move on with Knausgaard, over halfway now. This was far better than the underwhelming volume 3 about his childhood. He is now (mostly) 18 years old, working as a teacher in Northern Norway and believes he is slightly in love with one of his 13-year-old students. He is also desperately trying to get laid. As ever, the most evocative parts of the book involve his father and the growing alcoholism (thanks to Knausgaard's structural choices, we've already seen it kill his father in vol. 1), the distant but clearly strong relationship with his brother (as a brother, some of the ruminations on brotherhood speak to me) and slowly but surely, he is beginning to realise he wants to be a writer and if he never makes it, he sees no alternative but to kill himself.
Knausgaard, like Hemingway, makes writing seem easy; it feels as if the words have just fallen out of him and arranged themselves as they are. I have no doubt that these novels are incredibly refined and drafted. Of course they are. His shifting from the colloquial to the philosophical is heightened in this volume. I must say the final line was so unromantic, I was shocked, almost laughed. The next volume recounts his time at writing school and he has already said one of the teachers is some "obscure Vestland writer": Jon Fosse. That hasn't aged well.
More than before, I sensed Knausgaard's own fear of death in this volume. In some ways I think all novels are about the fear of time passing/death. I wonder if that will continue to deepen as I read the final two volumes. It feels strange to be closing in so quickly on the end.
A sense of jubilation filled me, for the silence was as vast as an ocean, while there was also something painful about it, as there is in all joy. The silence high up in the mountains, surrounded on all sides by beauty, allowed me to see myself or become aware of myself, not in relation to my psyche or my morality, this had nothing to do with personal qualities, this was all about being here, this body which was ascending, I was here now, I was experiencing this and then I would die.