Coffee With Halldor Laxness
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Halldór Kiljan Laxness is Iceland's most popular writer; he was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. I had the pleasure of meeting Halldór in his house in Mosfellsveit in 1987. His wife Auður greeted me downstairs, and showed me up to a study on the second floor. I settled in, and coffee was served.
I told Laxness that I aspired to be a writer. He surprised me by stating that he hated writing. Sure, he was good at it. But it was incredibly difficult and frustrating, and people had such bizzare reactions to his work.
He also complained about royalty checks for 13 cents from tiny publishers he had never heard of in far away cities, and detailed how his works had been translated and published without his permission, or with permission, but with little or no compensation. "Write if you must," he said. But he kindly offered no encouragement.
Laxness was most animated when he reminisced about the time he spent in the US with Upton Sinclair (author of The Jungle). He told how the Sinclair home was an incredibly stimulating hot-bed of literary and social activity, where people were rushing out the back door to avoid the stream of people coming in through the front door, where another Monday meant another set of articles or pamphlets to be released.
Laxness also spoke of how one of his books was in-line to be part of a Book of the Month Club in the U.S., which would have meant significant sales and revenues. But the book was withdrawn for what Laxness described as "occult" pressure. I pressed him; surely he did not mean that some satanists or psychics took action to sabotage him. He patiently explained the English language to me, pointing out that occult meant 'hidden from sight' and was related to words like occular, or of the eye. The occult forces that sabotaged him were not mystical, they were related to the Cold War. Laxness had a youthful fliration with socialism, and a persistent tendency of trusting no one and poking fun at people of all political persuasions. This led to a subtle black-listing of his work in many countries outside of Iceland; while not banned out-right, his books were commercially inhibited.
Many of the works of Laxness are available at Amazon.com. My two favorite books are The Atom Station and Christianity Under The Glacier (sometimes called simply Under The Glacier).
The Atom Station is a tale of post WWII Iceland, when the US occupation to protect against the Nazis was extended to protect against the Soviets. Iceland, it was said, was an unsinkable aircraft carrier, the perfect place to station anti-submarine warfare units and nuclear weapons to help win the cold war. This period was initially very rough for the Icelandic nation, and a period of malaise and rioting broke occurred. Laxness tells the story from the perspective of a country woman who moves to Reykjavík and becomes a maid in the household of a leading politician.
The Atom Station was made into a film (in Icelandic, some prints have English subtitles). I had a chance to view the Atom Station on the weekend of the Reagan-Gorbachov summit in Reykjavík. Aside from the political buzz, that weekend had some of the most incredible weather I had seen in Iceland: at one point, I was able to see five different rainbows at the same time. I do not believe that it is possible to buy a VHS or DVD copy of the film for personal use, unfortunately.
Christianity Under Glacier, by contrast, deals with the spirituality of every day life. The Bishop sends an envoy to investigate rumors of strange activities in a rural parish, and finds a pastor more concerned with fixing small mechanical problems for people than with saving their souls. Talk of reviving a person from the deal swirls through the community, but no one has any real details regarding the who, how or when. This book is light and light-hearted, but deals with deeper issues on what it means to be human and what spirituality is.