The Room by Jonas Karlsson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Everyday Solipsism

Long ago I was told a purportedly Hungarian folk-aphorism by a dimly remembered acquaintance: If one person calls you a horse, ignore them; if two people call you a horse, look in the mirror; if three people call you a horse, you’re a horse.

One way to interpret The Room is as a confirmation of that titbit of popular wisdom. To some extent, at least, we are or become what we are thought of by others. On the other hand the book could be a cautionary tale suggesting the precise opposite, that for better or worse we live in a world of our own making, including the making of our own personality, regardless of the opinion of others.

I think it is this ambiguity, or rather range of possibility, that makes The Room an exceptional piece of art. It twists and turns with little visible effort, provoking all sorts of insights from social attitudes toward mental handicaps, to an appreciation of autism as extreme perceptual realism, to the philosophical fragility of the concept of reality. Karlsson has packed more literary punch in his short novel than I can recall in any book many times its length.

My preferred take on The Room is as a critique of the casual, everyday, unnoticed attitude that we probably all adopt as a default strategy for dealing with the stresses of life. This attitude is one of solipsism, the belief or presumption that other people are not as fully present, as conscious, as intentional as we are. As a philosophy, solipsism is very difficult to refute. As a behavioral response, it is equally difficult to cope with practically.

Among other things solipsism stops all real discussion. Communication becomes a matter of insistent command and resentful obedience rather than negotiation. The world becomes an implacable enemy for the solipsistic mind which is isolated in a sea of irrational resistance.

Solipsism shows up not merely when others inhibit our own intentions but when they act in ways we don’t understand or find odd. We literally cannot imagine the purpose of such behaviour and therefore disparage, avoid, and suppress it as abnormal. It makes no sense to inquire about the purpose of others because they are, implicitly, either ill-conceived or simply absent.

Karlsson’s protagonist, Bjorn, is obviously ‘on the spectrum’; but he’s not crazy, at least not to begin with. He is annoying and odd. Nevertheless he is not solipsistic. He constantly considers what might be going on in the minds of his colleagues, who all treat him as a mental defective with little capacity for thought much less productive action. Bjorn might get his colleagues’ motives wrong but they act as if Bjorn doesn’t have any motives at all.

In fact Bjorn is a canny operator. He cleverly demonstrates just how talented he is. He knows the reason he is talented is precisely the thing that his colleagues find most distressing about him, his ability to retreat entirely inside his head in order to think, to contemplate, without interruption. Unlike him, they do not have the imagination required to understand his mental workings. Until, that is, he demonstrates its value.

Karlsson’s subsequent twist - in fact two - on this tale of a flawed but perceptive mind in society is brilliant - so brilliant it both confirms and denies the Hungarian aphorism. Human beings are indeed strange but intriguing creatures. And Karlsson has got their measure, or at least enough of it to create something classic.

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