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Existential Meditation on Morality: Janne Teller’S Nothing

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Existential Meditation on Morality: Janne Teller’S Nothing Stacy Graber Existential Meditation on Morality: Janne Teller’s Nothing Even if the system politely assigned me a guest-room in the attic so I could come along all the same, I’d still prefer to be a thinker who is like a bird on a twig. —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Notebooks, 1845/2001 he epigraph for this discussion on Janne Teller’s demic premium placed on logic as the ultimate path to (2010) Nothing, an artful and iconoclastic work understanding. Therefore, the bird on a twig might be Tof young adult fiction from Denmark, comes viewed as metaphoric of the retreat of the thinker to from the notebooks of the Danish philosopher Søren a place apart from institutionally sanctioned practices Kierkegaard. Intended as a critique of academia (Brit- and beliefs. This situation is mirrored in another story ish Broadcasting, 2013), the sentiment expressed is of a thinker who took to the trees, Janne Teller’s offensive and amusing. If we understand “the system” (2010) Batchelder Award-winning novel, Nothing. as code for academia (reflective of Kierkegaard’s In Teller’s stylistically austere, existential alle- contempt for the professoriate) (British Broadcast- gory, a middle school student named Pierre Anthon, ing, 2013; Kaufman, 1975), then Kierkegaard here who lives in the town of Tæring [“a verb meaning to implies that a bird on a branch is more seriously gradually consume, corrode, or eat through” (p. 229)], reflective than a professor at a university, or that a announces that “nothing matters . [s]o nothing is philosopher in a tree comes closer than an academic worth doing” (p. 1). Thereafter, he quits school and to the legitimate province of philosophy. To arrive at takes up residence in a plum tree. From his position Kierkegaard’s sense of the mission or responsibility of above the doings of Tæring society, Pierre Anthon philosophy, we must draw, again, from the author’s pelts his peers from the seventh-grade class with over- notebooks in which he writes: “What I really lack is ripe fruit and “truth bombs,” or deconstructive state- to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am ments that threaten the social and ontological sense to know, except in so far as a certain understanding of order and coherence that the kids have always must precede every action” (1835/2001, p. 15). accepted without question. From there, the seventh This remark suggests that, for Kierkegaard, the graders work to assemble an object lesson that will protocol for moral action is personal, reflective, and disabuse Anthon of his skepticism, but their plan perhaps necessarily undertaken at a remove, like degenerates into chaos. In the end—true to its exis- the philosopher/bird on a twig. At the same time, tential roots—Teller’s Nothing proposes no answers to as Kaufman has observed (Partially Examined Life, the questions it raises, nor does it offer an alternative 2011), the statement represents Kierkegaard’s critique belief system to replace the one the philosopher in the on the limits of reason or his objection to the aca- tree debunks. The reader is left only with a menac- 25 HE EVIEW T ALAN R Summer 2017 f25-35-ALAN-Sum17.indd 25 4/19/17 2:58 PM ing admonition from the narrator of the story, Agnes, a decontextualized catalogue of grotesqueries con- and must make personal sense of the moral message tained in the novel (e.g., a decapitated dog, the body conveyed by the text. of an exhumed infant, biological evidence obtained from a rape, and a dismembered finger), it is difficult Contextualing Nothing to imagine what value might be gained from such a seeming grindhouse of a book. Therefore, similar to Outside of the theoretical realm, it is rare to discover Wannamaker’s (2015) general claim that literature a book that grapples as aggressively with questions acts as a guide to theory (although different, in that of ontology, authenticity, and accountability, bear- Wannamaker demotes the importance of existential- ing out Kaufman’s (1975) ism), I will demonstrate how Nothing helps to clarify suggestion that “at least and extend the moral conversation in the philosophi- Counterintuitive to some part of what the cal literature and engages a new audience in dialogue existentialists attempt to with existentialism, a theory enduringly important for conventional systems of do is best done in art” (p. its emphasis on ethical critique and personal account- 49). At the same time, the morality, Teller’s book ability. very features that make If the term “existentialism,” as Kaufman (1975, p. Nothing such an effective ultimately proposes the 11) suggests, is complicated by differences between translation of existential its proponents, then there is another way to approach prescriptive value of thought and motifs make it a definitional sense of the word as it is reified in the an especially edgy reading nothing, or a politics of literature. For instance, one might argue that Teller’s choice for a youthful audi- book demonstrates many of the classic themes com- ence due to its extreme (in)action as an assertion monly associated with existential thought, as identi- level of darkness and fied by Kaufman (1975), such as hyper-consciousness of personal integrity. violence. However, I in- of death and the irrationality of life (represented by tend to argue that, despite Pierre Anthon’s insistence on the futility of human the desolate and chaotic existence and endeavor); struggle with anxiety (re- universe portrayed in the novel (which couldn’t be flected in the children’s collective hysteria to disprove rendered any other way, as Teller is an inheritor of Anthon’s nihilistic thesis); adoption of a skeptical an unavoidably stark and unsettling philosophical and anti-institutional stance (represented in Anthon’s tradition with antecedents in Kierkegaard, Sartre, and deconstruction of socially authorized beliefs and prac- Camus), Teller creates a rich, intellectual conversa- tices); and persistent critique of a lack of authenticity tion on the status of meaning, morality, and authen- [reflected in the motif of seeming versus being and in ticity for 21st-century youth that raises the level of the aggressive challenges to “self-deception” Anthon significance of literature written for young adults and levels throughout the text (Kaufman, 1975, p. 42)]. catalyzes discussion on the ethics of authenticity and Counterintuitive to conventional systems of moral- personal responsibility. ity, Teller’s book ultimately proposes the prescriptive This deeper understanding, however, is difficult value of nothing, or a politics of (in)action as an asser- to access with (as yet) few scholarly essays dedicated tion of personal integrity. to discussion of the book (see Lareau, 2012; Ommund- sen, 2008; Wannamaker, 2015), coupled with the fact In Defense of Nothing that reviewers have painted a fairly fragmentary and Admittedly, the shock factor of Nothing is high in unflattering portrait of Nothing. For example, some terms of gore and subversive content, but the material critics dwell on the hideous procession of sacrifices is not gratuitous. The kids in the story live in a town offered to the moribund altar of meaning within the that, basically, translates as “Corrosion” (Aitken as book (Lewis, 2010; Publisher’s Weekly, 2010) as cited in Teller, 2010, p. 229), and it is obvious that a opposed to situating the action in a way that would deterioration of ethical values drives the allegory. This clarify the relationship of the content with existential is apparent not only in the grisly sacrifices gathered theory. In fact, after reading a review consisting of by the kids to affirm the existence of meaning, but in 26 HE EVIEW T ALAN R Summer 2017 f25-35-ALAN-Sum17.indd 26 4/19/17 2:58 PM Teller’s satire aimed at greed and pretense when the This attribute is echoed by Ommundsen (2008), who abject collection amassed by the kids is ultimately characterizes Scandinavian literature by its predisposi- declared a great work of art by an American cultural tion for “taboo breaking” and “extreme depictions” behemoth (implied to be the Museum of Modern Art (p. 38), and these qualities are reflected in Lareau’s in New York City) and sold for the remarkable sum of (2012) study of the “eroticization of children” in Noth- 3.5 million dollars. The riff on Andersen’s (1837/2016) ing (p. 236). “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in the final third of the Yet another thread of scholarly discussion useful book might be read through Baudrillard’s (1994) post- for contextualizing Nothing concerns work situated modern analysis of the seduction and transparency of at the intersection of literature produced for a youth- media images, but it is more appropriate to locate the ful audience and philoso- variety of social commentary evident in Nothing as phy. Scholarship utilizing older than that. In other words, the evaluation is more various philosophical This essay contributes to properly understood, in the tradition of existential frameworks for the in- the extant scholarship by critique, as an expression of “the contrast [between] terpretation of children’s inauthentic . and authentic life” (Kaufman, 1975, and young adult literature building the conversation p. 50). might be examined by Therefore, as with virtually everything that hap- audience age-group. For on this radical novel and pens in the secondary ELA classroom, framing would instance, notable stud- be key to contextualizing Teller’s novel in a way that ies of children’s litera- by exploring how the would justify its academic merit and situate its social ture interpreted through allegory acts as a vehicle critique as one relevant to the ongoing conversation distinct, philosophical ap- on ethics in contemporary culture. In terms of the proaches include Johans- of moral critique.
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