Creation Technology: Writing as Philosophical Problem in Lars Gustafsson’s Novels 1962-1986

Abstract A surprising number of Lars Gustafsson’s postwar novels revolve around the question of how their narratives came about. Writing is considered a problem and described as a tortuous process. Inspiration is cast as an exception. Indeed, when it comes, more than writing flows; it sweeps away the habitual ordering of the world: time ceases to pass linearly and technical devices start acting autonomously. In one case nature even begins speaking intelligibly. In this article I put such explorations of the source and ramifications of creative writing in conversation with the predominant intellectual positions in postwar Sweden, suggesting that, in his novels, Gustafsson questioned the widely shared presupposition that techno-scientific progress advanced the cause of secularisation. These novels ask whether we can be so sure that such progress leads to a rational mastery of the spiritual and physical environment. By evoking the affordances of technology, they, I argue, wonder if it does not rather mediate, and thereby resuscitate, lost mysteries.