Sometimes a book arouses interest because of the title. The “Dunning-Kruger effect” by Swedish Andrés Stoopendaal has something about it that whets the appetite. Isn’t there something appealing about authors who clearly signal that they are concerned with thinking about the intellectual side of human life – who capture what we were talking about, and perhaps still talking about, at dinner with friends and in the comments section? We are in Sweden in 2018. A young man, somewhere in his thirties, lives a completely average life in the middle class. He has a perfectly good job at the Swedish Public Safety and Emergency Services Agency. But he is also the one who came in last, and who is therefore the first to move if there were to be cutbacks. A Man of Letters The dream is to become what the English call a man of letters, i.e. an author. He is together with Maria, a rather posh lady from Östermalm in Stockholm. But they live separately, they are in the establishment phase. No children, but a dog. He would prefer to be an author, but then of so-called postmodern narratives, because he agrees with the conservative literary critic Carl Rudbeck (he exists), who believes that time has sprung from narratives with a beginning, middle and end. In this literary tradition, it is perfectly fine, even more than fine, with flat characters. Thus, to criticize Stoopendaal for having created a flat female portrait of, for example, his girlfriend Maria, is to knock on open doors. Hateful towards Jordan Peterson It opens promisingly with a couple’s dinner, where the men in the company sit down and discuss the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and the book “12 rules for life”. This is a young man who needs and wants the tightening Jordan Peterson describes in his book, but he is also attracted by the norm breaking of the French author Michel Houellebecq. Something that causes him to fall out, drown the dog in beer and forget him in the laundry basket. He also dictates a scene with the French car – but it breaks down. Stoopendaal’s point is that it is not just a matter of replacing the French with the Scandinavian misanthropy. Low-hanging fruit If these two guys are the most attractive male role models for young Scandinavian middle-class men in 2018, is there cause for concern? Stoopendaal picks several low-hanging conversation fruits in a Sweden before the pandemic. The Metoo fuss about the so-called cultural profile in the “Swedish Academy”, does anyone remember it? Has the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital gone out of fashion and been replaced by “value signaling”? Overview of the identity policy debate flies through the air. Many of the thoughts have already been thought by others on the other side of the Atlantic, and those who have thought the thoughts are often psychologists. “Living up” The language in the book is characterized by this. There is talk of being “biased”, i.e. having prejudices, and about “living up”, i.e. moving up a level. After a while in this somewhat chaotic portrait of a human interior, things start to go a little haywire. What is missing? Is it hot? Is it development? Is there a really interesting main character? Even when I’m bored I’m interested, critic James Woods wrote about Karl Ove Knausgård. The Knausgård influence Interestingly enough, Stoopendaal first becomes poignant when he describes how, at the age of five, he posted incomprehensible letters in his neighbours’ mailboxes: Maybe there is more to this way of writing than Andrés Stoopendaal seems to think? In the “Dunning-Kruger effect” it starts out interesting, but I end up bored. news reviewer Photo: Cappelen Damm Title: “Dunning-Kruger effect” Author: Andrés Stoopendaal Genre: Novel Translated by: Johann Grip Publisher: Cappelen Damm Number of pages: 192 Date: 2023 Hi! I read and review literature in news. Please also read my review of “Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck, “Details” by Ia Genberg, or Franz Kafka’s “The Process” translated by Jon Fosse.
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“The Dunning-Kruger Effect” by Andrés Stoopendaal – Reviews and recommendations
