Literary Gimmicks

Abstract

Previous research on the role of America in Sven Delblanc’s Åsnebrygga (1969) and Lars Gustafsson’s Tennisspelarna (1977) has focused on what these novels say about America, rather than what the American setting does in the novels. In this article, I use Sianne Ngai’s theory of the gimmick to argue that Delblanc’s and Gustafsson’s novels—both autofictional narratives about Swedish writer-academics visiting US universities—allegorically revolve around the problem of value. They are filled with “overhyped” American products: catchy commercial jingles, overrated pharmacy drugs, and futuristic supercomputers. Crucially, these gimmicks trigger an uncertainty about economic and aesthetic value that extends to the protagonists—whose very bodies take on gimmicky forms—and the novels themselves. Borrowing Ngai’s terminology, I argue that Åsnebrygga “undersells” itself as “working too little, ” whereas Tennisspelarna “oversells” itself, prompting the reader to question whether it is “working too hard.” Ultimately, at stake in these works is not a particular image or view of America but the value of the narrator-protagonists’ national, regional, and continental identities on the world market.