Dancing in the Dark
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Vintage
Reading Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle books, the pioneering autofiction series in which the Norwegian writer unstintingly reveals the intimate and intricate details of his life, has been an exhilarating experience. Zadie Smith likened his books to crack and I’ve found them similarly addictive.
So what is it that makes them unique? A few critics sniff in disdain because the writing is not self-consciously ‘literary.’ But for those of us who appreciate beautifully constructed sentences and the odd unusual word but would rather opt for lucidity and accessibility as long as the story is thrilling, the argument is void. Knausgaard didn’t set out to write poetic sentences or break the conventional structure of fiction. No, his plan was to embark on a series that didn’t flinch from talking about the subjects most memoirists avoid. There is no censorship here, we are privy to the author’s basest impulses and lusts, we read about his emotions, his bad behaviour, his fears and desires and what drives him.
Other writers have written about their bad boy exploits, but there has always previously been an element of boastfulness or braggadocio. Knausgaard, by contrast, doesn’t dwell on his successes but his failures. I’ve never seen another writer be so open about an intimate sexual problem as he is here, for example.
His other trademark is describing mundane routines. This is as effective when he walks through the many chores associated with looking after tiny children - also covered powerfully by Rachel Cusk and Sarah Manguso - as it is when we take every step of a night out with him, from sitting in silence in a room where he only knows a minority of the occupants to the stage where he has polished off a bottle of vodka and conversation and flirtation are free-flowing. Any reader with an iota of shyness will recognise the seductive tongue-loosening effects of alcohol but also the dreaded onset of loss of control, where one may do things one regrets (in my youth, usually throwing up. In Knausgaard’s, often snogging women in whom he has no real interest.)
Dancing In the Dark is book 4 of the series of 6, and covers Knausgaard’s last years in senior school - gymnas in Norway - and his year after school in which he takes on a job as teacher in a school set in a remote village in Norway, Hafjord.
From previous books, the reader is familiar with Knausgaard’s family dynamics. He is close to his brother who is four years older than him, and to his mother, who teaches nursing at a psychiatric hospital. But since early childhood, he has been wary of his schoolteacher father, who is civil one minute and erupts the next, savagely beating Knausgaard’s brother or locking Knausgaard in a dark enclosed space for hours, for minor infringements.