‘Dancing in the Dark’ by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Review)

Another year, another slice of self-absorbed Norwegian musings… Yes, May has rolled around again, so it’s time for the latest installment of embarrassing recollections from everyone’s favourite grumpy Scandinavian, Karl Ove Knausgaard.  This time around, puberty has struck with a vengeance, and Knausi is only too eager to discuss his teenage talents and shortcomings.  Let’s put the needle back on the record – time for part four of his ‘struggles’…

*****
Dancing in the Dark (translated, as always, by Don Bartlett) sees the eighteen-year-old Knausgaard heading north, where he is to work for a year as a teacher in a remote community.  Unwilling to head off to university, or find proper work, he sees the time as an opportunity to work on his writing in an environment with fewer distractions.  However, the reality is that, even in far-flung Hålfjord, there’s football to be played, alcohol to be drunk and (oh yes) girls to be pursued.

Just when we’re starting to settle into life in the north, though, the writer abruptly drags us back down south.  Rewinding two years, we see the writer as a surly teenager, about to head off the rails in a big way.  With his parents’ divorce finalised, Karl Ove decides that it’s time to have some fun away from the stern eye of his father, drinking whenever and wherever he can in the hope that the alcohol will make his life more enjoyable.  There’s also the small matter of his central goal for his final teen years – to finally rid himself of his unwanted virginity…

This is the fourth installment of Knausgaard’s story, and it’s every bit as self-centred and self-absorbed as the others.  Those who have never tried his work before will wonder what’s going on – welcome to Karl Ove’s world…  The book reads like a teenage boy’s diary at times, but old hands will see it for what it is, a man’s attempt to mine the past in order to better understand his present.

The latest adventure has a new angle, his attempts to come to terms with small-town life.  You see, Hålfjord is a place where everybody knows your name (and your dad’s and your girlfriend’s):

“They had grown up and gone to school together, they worked together, they partied together.  They saw one another virtually every day and had done so virtually all their lives.  They knew one another’s parents and grandparents, many of them were first or second cousins.”
p.119 (Harvill Secker, 2015)

Knausi is a new attraction, and this is his chance to make an impression.  Having left his old life behind, he can use the opportunity to remould himself and show a different side to his character.  Then again…

He certainly does his best to persuade the local girls that he’s someone they should get to know, though.  Dancing in the Dark is, at times, a tale of pursuit and conquest, the musings of a confused, horny teenager, obsessed with popping his cherry:

“Could I?  Could I?  If, against all the odds, I succeeded in manoeuvring myself into a suitable situation and was in a room alone with a naked girl, would I be able to make love to her?  Would I be able to go through with it?” (p.83)

With a little (or a lot) of alcohol in his system, he’s actually quite successful in getting to know the girls; if only he could get over his mental and physical concerns.  I won’t go into them in detail here, but never fear – Karl Ove will give you a detailed account should you choose to read the book.

While most teenagers can be forgiven for lusting after the opposite sex, one issue here is Knausgaard’s (undeserved) status as a teacher.  He’s an eighteen-year-old teaching teenagers in an area of the country where the age of consent is flexible, and much of the story focuses on his struggles to stay detached and professional in the face of young beauty (in a town where most women between the ages of eighteen and forty have left for greener pastures). On reading this, I couldn’t help but think back to my own experiences as a language assistant in France when I was twenty-one.  Believe me when I say that pedagogical professionalism is not something you’re born with…

Setting the fairer sex aside for a moment, Dancing in the Dark looks at some more serious issues too.  Karl Ove’s father has left the family, but he still overshadows the son’s life.  As the father begins to drink seriously, so too does the son (an inherited trait) – these men sink a *lot* of alcohol in this book.  The father is slowly beginning to destroy himself, and while Karl Ove is still fairly young (and seemingly indestructible), those who have read the earlier books can see the early signs of the more damaging behaviour described in A Man in Love.

Whatever your take on Knausi, there’s a lot to like in this book.  It’s a pleasant look back at the mid-eighties, with plenty of references to football, television and (especially) music.  The writer is incredibly self-mocking, always happy to make himself the butt of any joke, baring his most pathetic flaws for the world to see.  It’s hard to believe that anything is held back – this is all painfully embarrassing.  Much of the story appears to be written in the style of a teenager, one who truly believes that his writing is great, even if he can barely understand the books he reads.  In truth, his writing (like the teenager himself) is awkward and clumsy, even childish at times.  We can see the man between the lines, though, with occasional glimpses of the adult writer guiding the story.

Despite all this, Dancing in the Dark has its issues too – in fact, for me, this is the weakest of the series so far.  The tone is well done, but it doesn’t actually make for a great read (I found that the more childish, innocent tone of Boyhood Island worked better than the sullen teen voice used here).  Another problem I had with the book was the way the action switched back two years, taking us from his new home back to his house in Kristiansand.  I can see why he did it – he sets up the situation in Hålfjord, then gives an explanation of how the younger Knausgaard got to that point.  The trouble is that it disrupts an interesting story, and when we go back, events never really reach the same heights

The worst problem, though, is the casual, persistent sexism which pervades the book.  This is what Knausgaard does (and full marks for refusing to hide his immaturity), but it doesn’t alter the fact that this is a book where women are mere sexual objects, objectified at every turn, a story with an obsession with breasts which would make even Murakami blush.  I’ve talked about the gender issue in my previous reviews, wondering whether female readers would appreciate Knausi’s tales as much as men – I really wonder if women will even want to finish this one.  What I can say is that if they do make it to the end, the final scene may well make them wonder why they bothered…

The general consensus from overseas is that the middle parts of My Struggle are the weakest links, and I definitely found this one the least convincing of the books by far.  However, I did enjoy parts of it, and it’s clear why he wrote this as he did, showing himself as an overconfident, yet confused, teen.  Having come this far, I’m not about to abandon the series now (especially as I’ve heard that the final volume is a good one), but I do hope that Part Five is a little more like the first two.  Another 500 pages of drinking, sex and immature bravado may have me reaching for the bottle myself…