Lee Klein

The Effervescent Bohemian Edgy Bonhomie of Bohumil Hrabal: Brief Impressions of Seven Novels

In October 2008, I read the following sentence by James Wood in a New Yorker article about Saramago and long sentences: “Some of the more significant writing of the past thirty years has taken delight in the long, lawless sentence—think of Thomas Bernhard, Bohumil Hrabal, W. G. Sebald, Roberto Bolaño . . .”

I remember thinking who the hell’s this Hrabal?! I’d never read him, had never even heard of him, and immediately acquired and read Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age and Too Loud a Solitude. And then about two years later I read in the New York Times an article (One Sentence Says It All by Ed Park) that centered long-sentence discussion on Hrabal, while mentioning Joyce, Beckett, Faulkner, Enard, and so many others.

Ever since, Hrabal is synonymous in my mind with the long lawless sentence, but I also consider him the patron saint of the fundamentally good-natured yet often unexpectedly edgy writer.

“To hrabal” also seems like it could be a verb, meaning “to revel in charmed rambling associative rants that reveal or at least suggest some atrocities/horrors.” Or “a hrabal” could be used as a noun: a rant of the charming rambling garrulous variety likely marked by some PTSD post-20th century horrorshow: e.g., “Once his interminable hrabal concluded, the female survivors lined up to feed him sweetmeats.”

I don’t usually include so many author pics but there’s something appealing about his photos (love that striped shirt). And I don’t know too much about Hrabal other than the impression I have of him through his writing and the pictures. He seems like a poet embedded among the people, a perceptive drinker of pilsener, an artist not at all rarefied who refined a style marked by rolling flowing exuberant prose that accretes over time to create a sort of fizzing inebriation that, despite the buzz and tickle of carbonation, reveals itself infused with an ingredient less tonic than toxin. Anyway, I’ve listed seven novels in loose order of recommendation below (click the covers to google the books if interested). I’d love to unlock completist status one day, but it seems like I still have about seven to go. Something to shoot for.

I Served the King of England (Paul Wilson, translator)

The seventh Hrabal book I’ve read and I’ll go ahead and call it my favorite. The prose seems like it’s always existed, like it’s just been sitting there waiting for me to activate it with my eyes. It all proceeds so wonderfully, perfectly, consistently surprising and smooth, maybe slipping a little toward the end, could’ve been forty pages shorter and I wouldn’t have minded, but otherwise the straightforward temporal progression of the narrator’s life, his maturation through eras leading up to WWII and Nazi occupation and Communism, there’s a sort of holy foolishness to him that works for Hrabal, innocent youth learning the ways of the world, jibes with other novels with garrulous old good-natured narrators, all of it sort of cartoonish (seems like another obvious inspiration for Wes Anderson’s “Grand Budapest Hotel,” not just Zweig) and fun, exaggerated, the huge salesman with his scales and salami, laying out bills on the floor and then opening the window so they whoosh around and then gather in a corner, the descriptions activating all or at least multiple senses, the tailor with balloon body doubles floating along the ceiling, the garlands of holly and flowers he lays on the stomachs of the sex workers he visits, the general joy so much of it evokes in a reader, rooting for the little fellow even if he isn’t always making the best decisions or even behaves in questionably moral ways, for example profiteering on those stamps. But the perspective is so embedded in the little guy we can’t help but see it how he sees it, a minor player awarded a medal for serving the Emperor of Ethiopia, as though that experience or the experience related to the title is a life-justifying achievement. There’s something beautiful, serious and silly ,about the refrain of the title or his own similar related one. Loved the Steinbeck cameo too.

All My Cats (Paul Wilson, translator)

A perfectly sized, paced, focused short book. About herding cats, sure, but his experience with cats suggests dynamics of love, creativity, karma, aging, fragility, nature, the history of atrocities in Europe and elsewhere. I love Hrabal’s serious good humor, his general spirit, affectionate, playful, cruel, violent, despondent, tranquil, perceptive, insightful, an artist but not an aesthete — spends time in woods and pubs. Some of the cat stuff, particularly the cats that poo on the rugs, hit too close to home. Best if you come to this without reading any reviews (other than this one) and just expect a carefree book about owning a lot of cats. Not recommended for fragile animal lovers. A beautiful dust jacket and hard cover from New Directions. Not sure why I haven’t read everything he’s written yet.

The Gentle Barbarian (Paul Wilson, translator)

Loved most of this idealized eulogy for Vladimir Boudnik, an artist friend presented as almost superhuman, Christ-like, totally mad, able to coax art from anything, particularly cracks and smudges on walls. Really came to life a few times early on, when Vladimir throws his wedding ring out the window of a moving train, when they smear beer all over themselves, anointing themselves barons of the beerhall, or toward the end when the author and Vladimir take two rides down a rushing flooded river. It’s sort of like the Czech ’50s version of Kerouac with Cassady and Ginsberg, although as the translator’s afterword notes, Hrabal aerates the water of life to achieve effervescence, which after a while naturally goes a little flat but for most of this Hrabal’s signature vibe was very much apparent. Tremendous translation (and afterword that puts the politics of the time in perspective). A paperback edition I looked forward to holding and running my eyes across its clean clear design. With All My Cats, liking these recent Hrabal publications.

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (Michael Henry Heim, translator)

Good-natured, a little randy, very much free-associative, a waltz of clauses strung together, periodless, though the idea that it’s one sentence is a farce, unless “one sentence” is defined as tons of natural end-of-thought stopping/transition spots (deep breaths) marked by commas instead of periods, which, as in Saramago’s stuff, particularly Blindness, effectively keeps eyes on pages, propels readers ahead, this sense of ceaselessly continuing created by a comma instead of a full stop, you see, I enjoyed this as much as the other Hrabal I’ve read — Too Loud a Solitude — expressing this enjoyment audibly with a few snorts and quiet little cackle-type noises, nothing too boisterous, while walking and reading this one, especially not while wearing khakis, I wouldn’t have wanted to wet myself, the stain would be obvious, but if a number one while walking and reading and wearing khakis were unavoidable thanks to mirth, I would carry on heroically, walking and reading with this stain upon the sweet spot where my legs meet, smiling to young ladies all the while, confident, albeit surely semi-deranged in a harmless way, which is how this book proceeds, that is, with a good-natured narrator who likes the ladies, who the ladies like in return, who conceives of himself heroically despite nothing occurring that’s too dramatic, who leavens his levity with a storytelling instinct honed over a lifetime that knows to slip in brutalities, especially shamed folks hanging themselves with towels, mothers hacking away at their hanged daughters, the sort of things that people apparently liked to hear before they outsourced storytelling to radio and TV and Tarantino, this book is the sort of thing that reminds me a little of my grandpa once hydrocephalic dementia kicked in, the innocent confabulatory flow, fact and fiction intermixed, every instance of a lifetime in play, with emphasis added to stress enjoyment despite imminent end, the final full stop Hrabal’s “sentence”-length novella purposefully fails to include, perhaps as a bit of palavering rebellion against the contrivance of ends in general, or the idea that death is an end at all

Too Loud a Solitude (Michael Henry Heim, translator)

This is a five-star book (98 semi-dense pages – so, a novella?) that I read in too many sittings thanks to the World Series (2026 note: Phillies over Devil Rays, 2008) and recovering from rampaging down Broad Street. Definitely needs to be re-read on an airplane — in fact, it’s the perfect airplane book?! The prose is playful, something to read slowly and savor: “. . . When I read, I don’t really read: I pop a beautiful sentence in my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through veins to the root of each blood vessel.” Reminded me of Nabokov’s “Pnin” crossed with “A Confederacy of Dunces” infused with David Markson’s high-art/philosophical quotation style. Funny throughout without a real outloud laugh: “If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself.” And this one points to intellectual endurance in the face of oppression and the consolations and sorrows of philosophy — expressed via another learned loveable loser of literature . . . but mainly, if that perfect sort of mittleuropean prose style turns you on, where every sentence runneth over with intelligence, humor, and emotion, this one’s worth a read. Plus, everyone loves a great short book.

Harlequin’s Millions (Stacey Knect, translator)

Burns with a quiet laugh and points up and out from itself — two qualities another Hrabal narrator claimed were required for lit that’s worth its salt. Big snowstorm en route and the salt’s all sold out across the area. Perhaps not so coincidentally I started to slip about midway through this — I admired the playfully gothic retirement castle and the chapters that began cogently before devolving into blessed confabulatory nostalgia for the golden years, with the title being a song that serves as recurring musical motif. A worthwhile read and at times the prose achieves real profluence (forward flow). This translation, by the way, read very smoothly, fluidly, and Archipelago’s unique horizontal format is always a pleasure.

Closely Watched Trains (Edith Pargeter, Translator)

Reads like early Hrabal — the same characteristic charming and unpredictable perceptions and turns but with more of a diffuse narration, not situated in a spiel as in Too Loud a Solitude and Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age. Also, this is a young man’s tale, the disorientation of war and the wilted lily when the new recruit’s called to action by the ladies. Things are more focused toward the end, humorous regarding the lily gilding, pretty much riveting in its final pages, but generally felt like a combination of the translation (sometimes felt off) and the author’s early “deliberate confusion” teamed up to undermine my enthusiasm for this. I believe I watched the movie version at one point but don’t really remember it.

I otherwise own The Death of Mr. Baltisberger and will get to it soon and update this once I do. Still need to read Mr Kafka, Cutting It Short, The Little Town Where Time Stood Still, In-House Weddings, and a few others.

To support the publishers who have supported my writing, please acquire a copy of Like It Matters, Chaotic Good, Neutral Evil ))), and/or JRZDVLZ (all from Sagging Meniscus). Or my translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador (from New Directions). Or Thanks + Sorry + Good Luck: Rejection Letters From the Eyeshot Outbox (from Barrelhouse). Or The Shimmering Go-Between from me (Atticus, the publisher, is kaput).

Arendal by Karl Ove Knausgaard: Deep Cut for a Cold Dark Night

The fifth installment of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Morning Star series is an introspective “deep cut” that trades the thriller-like suspense of The School of Night for a haunting, probing exploration of the heart in conflict with itself. Set in the mid-1970s, Arendal is a prequel to The Wolves of Eternity, following Syvert’s father as he navigates a landscape defined by literal and metaphorical darkness. While it may not be a “hit single,” this slower, denser atmospheric meditation on whether to remain devoted to family or to follow the heart is destined to be appreciated by devoted readers.

The opening line of the Acknowledgments says even novels about lonely men in nearly empty cities are needed, maybe even especially needed, and it will be interesting to see if readers agree after this installment comes out in English (UK publication seems like it’s currently scheduled for November 5, 2026; US pub date doesn’t seem listed yet). It’s the fifth book in The Morning Star series, and like the fourth, The School of Night, it can be read on its own but would be deepened of course if read in the context of the others, especially the second volume, The Wolves of Eternity, which features Syvert, the son of this one’s narrator (also named Syvert), and Asja, the Russian lover of Arendal’s narrator (Asja’s daughter features in Wolves). Like The School of Night, this is a “backstory book,” set in the past and with a single narrator, another line along the periphery of a possible pentacle-like star structure (see my review of The Third Realm for elaboration and textual reference/support related to what I believe may be the overall structure of the series).

Generally, although I don’t expect this installment to generate the same interest and excitement as The School of Night, it definitely adds a welcome, more internal texture to the series. It’s essentially a love story, a story of longing, a subtly wrenching story of the heart in conflict with itself (per Faulkner), but at the same time it doesn’t feel sappy at all, probably because it’s so icy, so dark (literally, it feels like it all takes place at night or otherwise during the day blinded by snow so bright it may as well be darkness), and for the most part solitary, even when among people. It mostly takes place on an iced-over island, and it feels that way.

It’s a cold novel, with a lot going on beneath it out of sight, a novel that extends the series another ten years back in time from the mid-’80s of Wolves and The School of Night, an intriguing addition but not one that I expect most readers will really jump up and down about. If The School of Night was the series’s radio hit, this one is a deep cut, destined for appreciation by KOK heads, those really into the series and the author.

It’s a slower, more internal “cold winter’s night” novel about love, longing, loss, indecision, mystery, not knowing, nosing one’s way slowly but surely toward something, not quite ever sure. At times toward the end it seems like a novel about alcoholism, as though KOK is envisioning his father, putting himself in his father’s shoes, method-acting his way into his history, and similarly, there’s something that feels like an oblique representation of the author’s own experience with leaving his second wife Linda and taking up with another woman in another country. The author’s biography, more than with other writers, generally warps the light of interpretation for obvious reasons. That is, writing in first person, it’s difficult not to feel KOK right there behind his narrator’s mask in this one.

Compared with The School of Night, which was propelled by suspense, almost like a thriller at times, this one has no real engine other than wondering when/if his death will occur (from Wolves, we know his car was found in the water near Arendal), at least at first, before it becomes more about his decision to stay with Evelyn and the boys or leave them for Asja. Other intriguing semi-murky mysteries are in play but almost like their purpose is to externalize the narrator’s sense of confusion — they don’t seem like red herrings really or anything actually solvable. There’s also the narrator’s uncanny extreme sense of deja vu, and at one point a memory of a dream from his youth, I believe, involving the same eerie sound that appeared in the first volume, something like krikkriklatta (I’ll have to page through the ebook to find it).

It’s set in the mid-’70s, mostly in a small coastal town in the middle of winter, after Syvert is forced to spend some time there after his car breaks down outside of town. He spent summers there as a child and his mother still lives there. He runs into an old friend, Bodil, who informs him that their childhood friend Lars recently died of cancer. They have a few drinks, argue a little, say goodnight, Syvert returns to his hotel, reads letters from Asja, gets antsy and walks around town, hits a few bars, sees a weird young guy with long dark hair in a long black coat with a guitar case, a mysterious guy reminiscent of the figure of the devil in first photograph discussed in The School of Night. A Norwegian oil tanker has also gone missing. But mostly Syvert is conflicted, longing for Asja but also feels like his place is with his family, with his wife Evelyn and his two young sons.

I read this slowly over several months so the chronology in the previous paragraph and what follows may not be exactly accurate, but generally, from what I remember, that night staying over in Arendal he drives around, visits his parents briefly, then drives out on the thick ice, ultimately making his way to a church where there’s a middle-of-the-night service for those in grief, who have recently lost loved ones. At this point, more than halfway, maybe two thirds through, it feels like the climax of the novel — this eerie, evocative, extraordinary image of driving drunk in the middle of the night out over the iced-over fjord or whatever to this church, encountering this semi-implausible yet engaging session where the mysterious guitarist appears and Syvert takes in a sermon-like talk about the omnipresence of souls all around.

Thematically, all this fits with the overall series, which KOK could’ve called Life and Death, echoing War and Peace, the series itself ultimately most likely outnumbering Tolstoy’s epic in terms of page count several times over. The next day Syvert learns that his car needs a new engine and it won’t be ready for a while. He gets a sweet loaner (BMW) and heads home, where he reintegrates into the domestic situation, his forehead bruised from a fall in one of the bars he’d visited in Arendal, his plucky young son Syvert off playing indoor soccer or out with some friends, his younger son Joar seeing strange men in the house. There’s a dinner party with a couple, old friends, who come over and Syvert gets housed on vodka he hides in the basement, blasts Wagner on the hi-fi, says a lot he shouldn’t say, including that he longs for true love, something along those lines, and then he returns to Arendal to retrieve his repaired car, and visits Bodil, his old friend, talks with her, drinks some bad coffee, checks out their farm animals, nearly hooks up with her, reveals his situation with Asja, receives advice from Bodil that he only has one life to live and he should follow his heart. He returns to Arendal, vacillates a ton, and then calls Asja in Russia. The end.

That’s the general gist of the novel, more or less what happens, I’m sure I’m missing a few things of course since I started reading this on the last day of August and finished on the first of February, managing a percentage in the Norwegian ebook per sitting, at least that was the goal, about five pages at a time, until the final 20% or so when I committed to it, reading a few percentages every day.

It’s not nearly as long as The School of Night but it’s denser, at least before it opens up somewhat with easy dialogue-replete scenes, and although shorter than the others it feels slower and more internal. It hovered along at what seemed like a lower gear for the author through the first half but became more interesting, with the surprising, magnificent image of driving drunk out on the ice in the middle of the night, and then the scene at the church providing serious thematic support relevant to the series overall, which I’ll immediately continue — downloaded the next installment, Jeg var lenge død. I intend to read it at a committed pace, as my primary book, not intermixed with several others as I did with this one and The School of Night, so I can finish in early spring instead of in late summer or fall, and then read someone other than Knausgaard (maybe even read something in English).

Note: the image at the top of the screen is a painting by Mamma Andersson, whose work is on the cover of the Norwegian edition of Arendal.

Fulfill all your Knausgaard needs with the following posts:

Knausgaard’s The School of Night: This May Be the Place

The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard: Revelation of the Structure and Decategorization in the Age of the Holy Spirit

The Wolves of Eternity: Prequel to an Infinite Arc

New Novels From Knausgaard (The Morning Star) and Franzen (Crossroads): Subtitle Subject to Change Regarding Middle-Aged Male Writers Every Middle-Aged Male Reader Reads

The Seasons Quartet by Karl Ove Knausgaard

The Complete My Struggle Series by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Our Holiday Shopping Guide to the Lesser Knausgaard: The Essays, the Soccer One, the Short Lecture, the Munch One . . . Which Is Right for You?

Angels & Demons at Play: A Time for Everything by Karl Ove Knausgaard

October Child by Linda Boström Knausgaard, translated by Saskia Vogel (scroll about a quarter of the way down the page)

Knausgaard’s The School of Night: This May Be the Place

The School of Night may be Knausgaard’s most accessible, suspenseful, and intriguing novel so far. Whether it’s his “best,” or maybe even a nearly “perfect” novel, despite being the fourth in The Morning Star series, it feels complete on its own, unlike any of his novels since A Time for Everything, and therefore it may be the place to start if you’re KOK curious.

Perfect Backstory Novel Within the Possible “Star Structure” of the Series

My review of The Third Realm presents the possible pentacle-like “star structure” of the series, with interior “meeting place” novels set more or less in the present, populated by a handful of first-person narrators (The Morning Star, The Third Realm, and most likely three others to come) and exterior “peripheral” backstory novels mostly set in the past (The Wolves of Eternity, The School of Night, Arendal, and most likely SEVEN others to come, if the author ultimately fulfills the totally ambitious structure he’s suggested).

The School of Night is really the first of the exterior/peripheral novels (along the sides of the star shape) after the revelation of the structure by “the star architect” in the third section of the third novel to successfully show how the structure works. I’m not sure Knausgaard understood what he was doing, structure-wise, when he wrote The Wolves of Eternity, which is comparatively messy and not really something that can stand alone, or if read out of context of the series it would confound more than satisfy? But The School of Night shows how these backstory novels in the series can operate with great latitude, free from the central story of the interior novels and the present-day supernatural intrigue yet charged by the possibility of a second sun suddenly appearing in the sky or of a character who dies possibly not quite actually dying at all or returning somehow.

A Devil’s Bargain Novel

The School of Night is a Faustian pact novel. The somewhat overblown, certainly misleading, and potentially AI-generated jacket/flap copy suggests a literal deal with the devil in the guise of a Danish artist named Hans who Kristian meets in a London bar, but Knausgaard is a better writer than that. Instead of offering a straightforward “cautionary tale” on “moral depravity,” he applies plentiful layers of ambiguity. By the end of the novel it’s clear that total fulfillment of Kristian’s artistic ambitions has involved a variety of deal with the devil but when exactly did that deal go down? Possibly when something happened with his sister and he really only thought about himself and his art? Or before that, when he decided to be true to his own nature, to put all his chips in on his artistic self? By the time he meets Hans and is introduced to the director of a staging of Faust, it’s already too late for him, isn’t it? Or maybe when he took the trash bag filled with photos from Hans’s old loft and left behind a special little gift of his own?

The book excels at ambiguity of this sort, very much in large part because it’s also so clear sentence to sentence, page to page. And this ambiguity extends to what some readers call “likability,” the question of whether or not one should root for Kristian as he pursues ends via questionable means, or even more so the fundamental scene of the novel after he generously bestows upon an old decrepit homeless man two cigarettes and a light.

The School of Night also presents and in part rhymes with possible dynamics between Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe (the author of Doctor Faustus), who was part of a group of atheists known as The School of Night — why the translation is titled as such instead of “The Night School” as expected.

Künstlerroman

If Wolves was in part about a man whose life is committed to death (ie, a mortician) learning to pay attention to life, The School of Night is narrated by a noticer, a young man with eyes wide-open to art and music and physical beauty. But Kristian, the 20-year-old Norwegian narrator studying photography at an art school in London in the mid-’80s, isn’t an innocent despite inexperience. He senses his capabilities and believes in his potential despite not yet having produced much of merit. And wanting to create something great — or at least interesting, unexpected, beguiling, radiating whatever qualities he sees in what he deems admirable art — drives him in part to essentially cut off contact with his family and even take on a different surname after, while home for Christmas, he overhears his father demean him during a fraught time for the family.

(Christmas Knausgaard is flat-out wonderfully fun reading FWIW, and as far as I can remember not something yet to appear in one of his novels, complete with an outing in the snow on a sleigh to find and cut down a Christmas tree. But it’s not all joyous juletid thanks to Kristian’s søster.)

The School of Night is a Künstlerroman showing the development and maturation of a stjernefotograf (a “star photographer” instead of a star architect as in The Third Realm). Just as he associatively orders his records, one area of exploration intuitively leads to another. A focus on structure (the intricate architecture of trees, beams and girders of building’s under construction) leads to the darkly comical process by which he creates his breakthrough image. All of which is interesting and good, thematic jetsam that flows downstream with ease and at pace thanks to a few instances of super-satisfying extended suspense, the first major narrative propulsion benefiting from literary precedence, echoing Raskolnikov, and then the rocket boost propelling the final third or so of the novel comes with contemporary relevance related to so-called cancel culture, echoing the 2022 movie Tár. These larger sections of suspense in turn are driven by smaller, simpler, yet sufficiently suspenseful sections relevant to anyone: will Kristian and his normie downstairs neighbor hook up, and will something bad happen toward the end to the boy?

Whenever a young child is potentially endangered, at least since I became a father twelve years ago, I’ve had massive trouble for example watching movies when an unattended infant wanders too close to the surf at the beach. I issue all-caps accusations of EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION. But Knausgaard, the father of innumerable children at this point (the acknowledgments at the end list a Brady Bunchian number of names) handles all this perfectly well, knowing how lightly he needs to introduce the endangerment among Kristian’s progression through the day with his child. I won’t reveal too much about all this, just that it’s emotionally stirring, absolutely lucid, engaging, page-turning, satisfying reading that seems totally “earned,” as they say in creative writing classes.

Abschiedsbriefroman?

The School of Night is also a suicide-note novel, something that only clarified for me once I re-read the opening pages (which I had first read eight months earlier) after the book’s perfectly satisfying ending, inevitable in its way since it suggests Marlowe’s death as well. But — spoiler — of course Kristian doesn’t dramatize his own death, it’s left open, and knowing what we know of the series overall, it’s very possible that death is not the end. (Apparently, per something I just read on Reddit, Kristian appears as a corpse in The Morning Star and The Third Realm but I didn’t catch this connection.)

A frame device introduces the suicide note motif, set in a cabin on the water in Norway, a setting that briefly appears three times, but the novel mostly takes place in London and Kristian’s family home in Norway in the mid-1980s, and Manhattan and London again in approximately 2010? The latter section in New York I loved, if just for Knausgaard/Kristian’s descriptions of the city. The bit on the screenshot below surprised and “resonated” — I laughed aloud and posted the image as an IG story seen by maybe two dozen friends, although I do like Lou Reed, The Talking Heads, and Television (and I’m learning to like Patti Smith, listening to Just Kids now and really enjoyin’ it). (Note: the autotranslation thing on Kindle often detected and translated from Danish, which is very similar to Norwegian.)

In Sum

Overall, I’d say there’s something about this one that feels almost perfect in its conception, structure, and execution, including loose ends that open spaces of possibility (for example the friend from Norway who visits or the guy who seemed to be following Kristian around London), almost like storyline nubbins that could be picked up and developed in future volumes or remain as they are, red herrings to enhance the sense that the novel’s reality, despite the supernatural superstructure, pledges allegiance in its details to the natural looseness of life.

I Reserve the Right to be Wrong About the Star Structure However

I just learned of the existence of Jeg Var Lenge Død — I Was Long Dead — scheduled to publish in October 2025 in Norway — seems like it’s about Syvert’s brother, Joar, and takes place in the present era when the star appears. Per my pet theory pentacle structure paradigm, it’s an “interior” novel, I suppose, although since it apparently has a single narrator it’s not a “meeting-place novel,” so maybe the “interior” novels are primarily marked by a contemporary time frame more than the number of narrators? Or maybe Jeg Var Lenge Død intentionally blends the interior- and exterior-type distinction since it apparently involves exploration of the afterworld, that is, a place where distinctions such as past and present, living and dead, are transcended?

Betelgeuse Supernova?

I wonder if Knausgaard got the idea for The Morning Star series from articles on the likelihood of Betelgeuse, one of the shoulders of the constellation Orion, apparently going supernova fairly soon (within 10K years). If this happens during our lives, Knausgaard will seem prophetic for sure. As with DeLillo’s Mao II, something about novel writing sometimes glimpses the future. The first volume of the series was published in 2020, right around the time Betelgeuse started dimming, possibly in advance of an explosion. Anyway, something to think about and the likely culprit if you suddenly see what looks like another sun in the sky.

Where to start with Knausgaard at this point?

If you’re trying to figure out which of his many books to read first, do you start with six volumes of My Struggle? Four volumes of The Seasons Quartet? Two early standalone novels (only one available in English so far), an essay collection, a book on Munch, a book about soccer written with another writer, and a few others? Not to mention six volumes so far of the Morning Star series: The Morning Star, The Wolves of Eternity, The Third Realm, The School of Night, Arendal, and I Was Long Dead those last three unavailable at this point in English?

Seems weird to suggest starting with the fourth novel in a series, but if you’ve never read Knausgaard, this may be the place to start — or a recommended reentry point if you’ve only read My Struggle 1 and maybe 2. You don’t need to have read the first three in the series, although knowing the themes and expectations of the others would definitely thicken and extend (engorge?) your reading experience.

The Below Relates More to My Reading Experience (What I Call “Words Without Friends”) Than to the Book Itself

My reading experience was engorged by the eggplant of novelty. Unlike every other novel I’ve ever read (other than a short Tomas Espedal book earlier this year), I read the original Norwegian/Bokmål edition of Nattskolen in ebook format (consistently referring to the automatically generated English translation via Kindle to confirm my understanding after I read a third of a page). Also, unlike every novel I’ve ever read, I read Nattskolen over the course of eight months, from January to August 2025, at first trying to cover a single ebook page a day and then aiming to accomplish the reasonably achievable goal of a single ebook percentage per day (1% of ~584 pages was about six or seven pages).

Over the months of making my way through the ebook, my reading speed and comprehension improved as I looked up words multiple times until I finally knew what they meant without necessarily translating them. Uforvarende simply meant uforvarende, for example. Notably, I learned the word faen in this, which for some reason didn’t come up in the Duolingo course I completed, and which the translation feature sometimes refused to translate, at most offering “damn.” And generally after a while I didn’t feel like I was dealing with a “foreign” language. Toward the end I felt comfortable with the process of reading a language that a few years ago would have been daunting/impossible, and I just downloaded Arendal, the fifth volume in the series, to ensure that the progress I’ve made in the language doesn’t degrade. (And I just learned of the existence of I Was Long Dead.)

Over the past few years, achieving a degree of reading facility in Norwegian and French, and this year in Italian, I’ve come to realize that I enjoy settling or at least mapping in my mind a territory that at first seems disorientating and wild. In the modern era, I first noticed this about 10 years ago when I rediscovered electric guitar and started exploring the endless world of effect pedals (see Neutral Evil ))) ), and again six years ago when we moved from the South Philadelphia city grid to the wild winding hills 15 miles west of Philly (see Chaotic Good). Streets in the new area aren’t numbered, their undulations determined by topographical irregularities, creeks, ravines, really old trees. It felt like a maze at first, and I loved not quite knowing where I was, that feeling of being turned around. But now I drive without really even thinking about how to get where I’m going. I enjoyed that process of learning our new area, just as I enjoy encountering a page of incomprehensible text and over time making sense of it, if not totally settling it. To put it simply: I’ve realized fairly recently that I really like learning.

But sometimes I wonder why I intuitively decided to learn Norwegian when first presented the options on Duolingo? At first I intended to “do” German or French (my Spanish is already pretty good) but then seeing that they offered Norwegian, because I’d read so much Hamsun, Knausgaard, Solstad, Vesaas, Bjornboe, Espedal, et al, I tried Norwegian and figured it would be easier than German or French for a native English speaker. I definitely didn’t intentionally decide to learn Norwegian just to get a jump on reviewers who have to wait to receive Advanced Reading Copies of Knausgaard’s new novels in translation.

And I definitely look forward to reading the official English translation by Martin Aitken in part to revisit this world: mid-’80s art school in London soundtracked by post-punk on vinyl (I made a playlist of more or less everything Kristian mentions or puts on his turntable — loved seeing that he listened to The Fall and Neu), a Christmas break in scenic snowy Norway, relatively contemporary NYC, and back to London and then a cabin on the fjords in sunny nocturnal Norway.

I’ll surely update this page once I read the English translation in 2026 (will probably finish Arendal and read Jeg Var Lenge Død before returning to The School of Night).

Note: the image at the top of the screen is a painting by Mamma Andersson, whose work is on the cover of the Norwegian edition of Nattskolen and The School of Night.