This is the story--more or less--of a poor Icelander in seventeenth-century Iceland who stole a piece of cord and found himself unintentionally caught up in the fate of a whole nation and a great literature. It is a book of wondrous deadpan black humor, fantastic descriptive set-pieces, and oddly appealing, yet unmistakably grotesque, characters.
However, you are not going to like this book unless you can bring yourself to appreciate an approach to prose different from the modern English. I've seen Tolkien take enough ill-informed shellacking in fandom for his style that I feel I have to say this here. It's not a problem with the translation. Laxness writes in a style heavily influenced by the Icelandic saga (as Tolkien did, only less so), in which the dialogue is epigrammatic and terse, the action abrupt, and character motivations almost never explicitly offered. Why the sagas aren't generally taught to English-speakers is beyond me (I managed to get through a high-quality liberal-arts education without more than a dim consciousness that they even existed); they are actually closer in form to the modern novel than any contemporary works from other European nations, but they aren't familiar to us, and if you haven't worked on decoding them, you're likely to find Laxness alien. Even if you have, he's puzzling to the point of vexation at times.
And yet the rewards are there, too, if you're willing to accept the challenges.
An old man with a dog walks over through the lava rocks and steps out on the path before the travelers.
"And who might you be?"
The fat one answers: "I am His Majesty's emissary and hangman."
"You don't say," the old man mumbled hoarsely, in a voice that seemed to come from a great distance. "All the same, it's the Creator who rules."
"I have a letter to prove it," said the king's emissary...
The old man didn't want to risk coming any closer to the travelers, so he sat down on the remains of the wall encircling the courthouse and looked at them. He was not different from any other old man: he had a gray beard, red eyes, a chimney-cap, and gnarled legs, and he clenched his blue hands around his walking stick and leaned forward upon it tremblingly. His dog came over inside the wall and sniffed at the men without barking, as dogs do when concealing their savagery.
"No one had letters in the old days," murmured the old man softly.
Swarthy, the pale man's guide, exclaimed: "Right you are, pal! Gunnar of Hlidarendi had no letters."
"And who are you?" asked the old man.
"Oh, this is a cord-thief from Akranes..."
The black-haired man spoke up and sneered, baring his gleaming white teeth: "That's the king's hangman from Bessastadir. All the dogs piss on him."
It took me most of a term to read this book; it's exceptionally concentrated in tone, and I often wanted a break, even from the dark humor. However, I have the feeling I'll be reading it again soon.
Posted by Sarah T. at May 23, 2004 06:40 PM | TrackBackThis looks like my kind of book. I'll look for a copy -- is it fairly recent?
Posted by: Der Shpiekel at May 23, 2004 08:51 PM