May 1, 2024
Swedish author Stoopendaal's ruminative, cerebral, darkly humorous novel follows one man's search for his intellectual soul. The social theory of the title concerns "a cognitive bias that means someone who's incompetent is also incapable of understanding their own incompetence." Would that refer to the narrator? His pontifications about controversial psychologist Jordan B. Peterson before having read the man's work hint that neither his nor Peterson's views need be taken seriously. Readers need not be fascinated by lightning rods like Peterson or Michel Houellebecq to follow the never-named narrator's emotional, spiritual, and mental health journey during the increasingly hot Swedish spring and summer of 2018--reminiscent of Stephen Dedalus', although Joyce is too old-modern to be mentioned here--but it wouldn't hurt. The tale of that journey is interrupted by the insertion of a story, written by the narrator, in which Houellebecq appears as a fictionalized version of the narrator. (How closely the narrator represents Stoopendaal remains a question among many layers of meta to unpack here.) While a professed fan of "transgressive postmodern prose" like Houellebecq's, the narrator lives as a "normie" in Gothenburg with a respectable civil service job and a girlfriend studying to be a librarian. Their Pomeranian, Molly--labeled by the narrator his "baby surrogate"--is the book's most endearing character, perhaps because she's a watcher, not a talker. The novel's big dramatic moment, with comic undertones, occurs when the narrator wakes up hungover after a night of philosophic discourse and briefly can't find Molly, whom his girlfriend has left temporarily in his care. Molly turns up safe in the laundry hamper, but the narrator's horrified remorse over his irresponsibility causes him to stop drinking and consider the Bible. Otherwise, there's not much plot. The narrator describes his dreams, his drinking, his slightly confused sex life, and a lot of conversations. Expect to be bombarded by both high- and lowbrow cultural references, including footnotes. An often funny, occasionally tedious satire steeped in the "transgressive postmodern prose" it purports to spoof.
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May 16, 2024
In Swedish author Stoopendaal's almost eventless comic novel, an unnamed narrator works part-time for the government, is convinced he should write a novel, and drinks a lot with a friend with internet-troll-like views. Moreover, he treats his girlfriend (and her Pomeranian) questionably and seems to never really achieve much. He is convinced that he has something to say--the novel's title cites a cognitive bias that causes one to overestimate particular abilities--and often offers his hot takes on numerous culture-war topics. His one attempt at writing is a gloriously bad form of Michel Houellebecq fan fiction, the dissection of which with his amoral drinking partner, Johannes, are both cringe-inducing and riotously funny. His lack of social graces leads to a number of comic moments. Set during a single, unusually warm summer in Sweden, Stoopendaal's antihero tale is reminiscent of Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Television (1997) and Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station (2011), though it is much less sympathetic. Darkly, deeply funny and acclaimed abroad, this biting satire portrays a meandering class of millennial men living a seemingly consequence- and purpose-free existence.
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