Talking Around Things or Talking Through Them? Minimalist Explorations of a Working-Class life in Helle Helle’s Rødby-Puttgarden

In the 1980s, the literary style of minimalism was a much-discussed and often frowned-upon topic of literary criticism. Many scholars worried that the spartan and externally oriented perspective of minimalist literature failed to address anything profound. At the epicentre of this debate was the short fiction of American authors such as Bobbie Ann Mason and Raymond Carver, whose works forged a strong link between the minimalist style and depictions of contemporary working-class life. Today, their amalgamation of minimalist aesthetics and working-class themes sees its continuation in contemporary Scandinavian literature, accompanied by a rich and significantly broadened scholarship on the movement. In particular, since the 1990s, Denmark has seen several prolific minimalist writers, many of them women. This article considers minimalist explorations of a working-class life in Helle Helle’s 2005 novel Rødby-Puttgarden. Adding to the diverse readings of Scandinavian minimalism of the recent decade, it argues that the working-class protagonist in Helle’s novel, Jane, constructs a 'thing language' that conflates exterior material surroundings and inner emotional experience. In so doing, the article draws on ordinary language philosophy, with an emphasis on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell.