Pete Buttigieg is extremely smart. He knows that more than anyone — he even boasts that he is fluent in seven languages. One of these is Norwegian, which he taught himself at Harvard in the early 2000s in order to read more of the works of Erlend Loe — an author he fell in love with after reading the English translation of his 1996 novel Naïve. Super.

As a Norwegian, I couldn’t help but laugh when I first heard this. First, because Loe is a funny, entertaining, but not very remarkable writer: it’s rather odd to go through the process of learning a whole language just to read him. That said, if you do want to learn Norwegian, Naïve. Super isn’t the worst place to start — it is extremely simple in both form and content.

But there’s something even funnier about this literary passion. In recent years, Loe’s works have moved from something that might understandably appeal to Pete, to an outright attack on him and his base. And maybe Buttigieg’s fascination for Naïve. Super and Erlend Loe in the early 2000s tells us something interesting. For while Pete, who dropped out of the presidential race just yesterday, is still caught up in the naive liberalism and optimism that surrounded the “end of history,” the world around him has moved on.