Det hänger i luften: aerial architecture, and suspended identities in the short stories of Jonas Karlsson

In Jonas Karlsson’s work the configuration of external or internal,
imaginary, concrete or metaphorical spaces is central. The depiction
of unstable, aeriform architectures is the primary focus of the short novel
Utgången (2012). In this text, the theatre suspended in mid-air serves
as a metaphor for the state of suspension experienced by the
protagonist and mirrors the opaque identity of the first-person narrator’s
dim self. Unstable subjectivities recur throughout the author’s short
novels and epitomises the frequently comedic homo karlssonianus.
Elsewhere, characterisations of space are equally significant, as seen
in the diptych Min kompis på Gondolen, where the building’s suspension
reflects the elusiveness of the self and its ethereal identity, and in the
short novel Rummet, where the interior of a public office changes its
coordinates and physical dimensions. This article investigates spaces
in Jonas Karlsson’s literary production within the methodological
framework of Geocriticism and in the attempt to highlight connections
between the suspended architecture of a location and an elusive
subjectivity. What is gained is a novel interpretation of place
as thirdspace, hanging afloat the chaosmos, here intended as “the
interlocking relationship or space of rhythm and chaos”.