'No Way Out': Monologic Madness in László Krasznahorkai's War and War

Abstract: In the attempt to let it speak its own name, authors of fiction have since the turn of the 20th century developed increasingly nuanced representations of madness. Such complicated productions of literary madness, I suggest, can be understood in terms of a rich fusion of philosophical inquiry and narratology. Through a reading of László Krasznahorkai’s novel War and War, I highlight how madness is staged as a form of extreme alienation resulting from a process of anticommunicative monologic speech. Building from Paul Buchholz concept of verbal nihilism, I argue that the protagonist of Krasznahorkai’s novel is engaged in an unsustainable process of creative unmaking that leads to madness and his suicide. Further, as enabled by Krasznahorkai’s use of narrative ambiguity, my analysis will also shed light on some of the ways that literature can engage with the theoretical and philosophical traditions of the problem of madness. Though some critics would argue that the novel’s extratextual footprint is suggestive of an attempt at reaching out to a community of outsiders, my analysis argues that the text’s overall trajectory of creative unmaking points to their identity as ultimately empty signifiers.