Reality is always stranger than fiction, goes the popular saying. But when reality becomes increasingly strange, ridiculous and unbelievable, will fiction move along? Should we accept what was previously unreasonable and unbelievable as something that is simply part of the new reality? Herman Koch’s new novel (1953) raises these questions, The superfluous.
The opening scene: four people, two couples, are sitting around a dinner table. They discuss an unsavory incident, something that could get them into trouble, but for which they don’t want to pay.
Serious? Here we go again? Or is this a parody? Because this scene, which is so familiar in Herman Koch’s oeuvre, this time presents itself as a kind of amateur theater. The mood at the table is “depressed,” Koch writes. Clumsy attempts at rapprochement are made with hands and arms, one wife is already “crying quietly”, the other woman’s eyes are “moist”. People speak cautiously. That it was “primarily self-defense,” says Herbert, that “what we did,” as Martin calls it ostentatiously circumspect. “We did what we had to do. We had no choice,” said Herbert, clearly the most heartless of the bunch. “But,” says Alicia, “did it really have to be this way?” And then the melodrama goes into full swing: “’They were children, Herbert!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘Children!’”
There have been deaths. During their (neat) walking holiday in England, in the (so leisurely) Cotswolds, the couples (with the rock-solid names Herbert and Yvonne, and Martin and Alicia) ended up in a skirmish with localswith fatal consequences. Oh dear. But the dining foursome decide that these “sniffed” characters got their comeuppance. As a famous biologist, Herbert knows: “You should never turn your back on a dog that is charging at you. That is simply biology. Anyone who flees becomes the prey.” In short, he acted to prevent worse. After the incident, they resumed their walk.
But what now? “Alicia said sobbing that she wanted to go home,” Koch writes. That is not possible, according to Herbert: canceled hotel bookings would actually make them suspicious. They have to move on.
The biggest asshole
Where avoiding debt comes in The dinner was still a challenging question with a confrontationally immoral answer, this is mainly a logistical issue: how do we cover up the traces that lead to us? That’s laughably stupid. It turns out that a button on a jacket has broken off, probably at the scene of the accident (“‘Oh, heavens,’ said Alicia”), so the two men return the next day. But then a wild dog suddenly shows up, attacks the frightened Martin (“the weakest specimen of the herd,” says biologist Herbert) and bites him on the arm (“‘God damn it!’ said Martin. ‘That damn dog has bitten half my arm!'”). But of course they can’t go to a doctor with that wound… – and it continues like this in a bland manner.
In between we get to know Herbert, perhaps the biggest bastard in Koch’s oeuvre, and that is saying something. Koch excels at sneaky bastards, not-quite-alpha males who keep getting away with their rotten tricks. Not thanks to their stupidity, but thanks to their cunning, their elusive cleverness. Somehow they command admiration.
That’s how it seems The superfluous to start. In Koch’s usual asides, we hear Herbert grumble about the “lame” that is the boyfriend of his adult daughter Marianne (also Alicia and Martin’s son), and fantasize about how he can ensure that Marianne exchanges him for his younger brother. A shitty area? Well, that’s just the way it goes, says Herbert. In fact, he always looked at her friends “as he looked at the pigeons on the balcony that were building a nest there – sooner or later, but in any case before eggs arrived, he would remove the nest with a broom and put it in the garbage bag.”
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A telling comparison. Herbert sees man as an animal, a rough wild animal. His image of humanity is based on the ‘right of the strongest’ that applies in nature, at least in that part of nature that suits Herbert, where things are combative and competitive. Eat or be eaten. It is quite unbelievable that Herbert has thus become a world-leading biologist, but the premise is interesting in principle: Herbert is one of those Koch bastards with an update to the time of the manosphere. After all, it is populated by types who rely on this kind of questionable, one-sided biology. In that worldview, morality is for losers; difficult questions, the strongest overcome them. Because he can.
Where The dinner was shocking because after a long period of deliberation and deliberation, responsibility and guilt were still dealt with in an immoral manner, that is the aim The superfluous intent on shocking by taking immorality to the extreme. I won’t spoil the ending, but the novel has twists that demand the utmost of your ability to cope. I wondered several times: is this serious? Is this really happening? Is it really that stupidly simple? Shouldn’t this step reasonably have consequences? Or is this once again meant cynically?
Morality in Trumpian times
Questions about credibility are complicated questions, now that all kinds of things are happening in the world that we didn’t think possible, whether it’s crazy-but-real import tariffs, a near-invasion of Greenland or a paramilitary American anti-immigrant police. Is The superfluous then perhaps a sensible and valuable book after all, because the novel shows how morality is sidelined in Trumpian times? Because this is a novelization of the disgusting, unreasonable right of the strongest? Because it shows with unbelievable plot twists and childish, stupid language that you can get far if you are childish and stupid, because the world is also childish and stupid?
The farcical twists, such as the denouement in Koch’s previous novel airfield (2024) was still fatally lame, now there is a reason. Where the spectacular derailment of The Royal House (2022) still felt like a nice joke, it now seems meant seriously. In any case, this novel seems to have no ironic emergency exit.
Perhaps Koch wants to warn by showing this view of humanity, which is so inescapably cynical? It does The superfluous or with a series of implausibilities and nonsense that is equally inescapably cynical and that annoys the hell out of you. The heartless protagonist does not have to be a problem for a novel; the way his story is told is. And that’s on The superfluous really Trumpian. Namely: it is an absolutely ridiculous story, which makes no effort to be reasonable, but which we must nevertheless accept as true.
You can do that too not doing. You can reject that and resist: we don’t want the world to work that way. We refuse to go along with this and give in to cynicism, to that idea of a stupid world, with ridiculous stories. We continue to think reasonably and demand that everyone does so.
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