Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl » The Grapevine

Literature in the Land of the Inherently Cute

Eiríkur Örn — Fri, 06 May 2011 07:42:28 +0000

- the search for literary crisis

(Practically) all political writing engages in representation and a form of adjudication – i.e. “picking a side”. Classic social realist writing of capitalist societies not only represents the exploited classes, but furthermore represents them against their mortal enemy, the bourgeoise classes; nationalist literature not only represents a certain land and a certain people, but it represents the land and people as different (unique) from other lands and other peoples; feminist writing represents women against male domination (and/or “men”); postcolonial literature represents “natives” or “immigrants” vs. “colonials”, “locals” or “nationals”; pacifist writing represents those willing to “be friendly” against those who feel agression is the only viable course of action; postmodern capitalist literature represents “the individual” vs. the alienating, dystopic horrors of society (and ritually asks: do I deserve to be selfish?). And, at least theoretically, if not in practice, vice versa (i.e. Ayn Rand represents the “energetic” bourgeoise against the “lazy” classes who allow themselves to be exploited).

(Practically) all Icelandic writing represents Iceland, regardless of the author’s intentions. The mere size of the population (320 thousand) creates a situation where anything said aloud becomes first and foremost “Icelandic” and what is actually said takes second place to that fact, which in and of itself is peculiar enough to demand most of your attention – because statistically speaking only around 0,0046% of all words spoken (or written) in the world are spoken (or written) in Icelandic. An Icelandic opinion is thus a rarity like Bigfoot or The Abominable Snowman—so rare in fact that most people who’ve come into contact with it aren’t entirely sure if they did at all, and think that perhaps what they saw was just a really big cow or a really small Danish person. When best-selling crime novelist Arnaldur Indriðason is sold to German readers, the book cover will generally sport a picture of an old Icelandic farm and perhaps a horse, despite the fact that his books are about the criminal horrors of big city living (in as much as Reykjavík—pop. 120.000—can be considered a “big city”); that is to say: drugs, alienation, loneliness and murder.

The farms of Icelandic crime fiction.

This form of representation is not limited to books written for a foreign market—the Icelandic condition is one of constant awareness of the (ridiculous) size of the country as well as the speaking population and the limits that this imposes. Thus Icelandic literature tends first and foremost to represent Iceland to Icelanders, and this reaches back to (Nobel laureate!—woohoo!) Halldór Kiljan Laxness teaching Icelandic farmers basic hygiene (and thus claiming they were filthy) and propogating the literary myth that goes all the way back to the Sagas, that Icelanders were first and foremost a stubborn independent people not willing to be subjugated. Although Laxness did not necessarily glorify these traits, as is done in the Sagas (and in some modern literature), he nevertheless maintained that they were present, which still today means that Icelanders cannot by definition be “complacent”, “tame” and easily led – despite any evidence to the contrary, such as the national ecstacy over the “success” of “our” “financial vikings” (known as the “outvasion”—Iceland invades the entire world, “outvades” the world); or the vilification of protesters before and after the immediate uproar surrounding the actual financial crash; or the easily manufactured consent for lax civil liberties to uproot “undesirable” organisations (such as Hell’s Angels) or allow inclusive privately-owned genetic databanks with everybody’s medical information; or the current national lunacy, which claims that reducing spending on health, culture and education can be done while simultaneously jumping for joy that “we finally have a left-wing government”.

Icelanders have their own personal agenda; they are individualists who refuse their common identity. Or so goes the myth. Someone like me might in turn argue (bitterly, foaming at the mouth) that Icelanders are in fact a bunch of easily manipulated sheep.

Bowing to the mighty Medici

Nýhil selling out.

Up until the crisis many of the financial institutions in Iceland played Medici-like patrons to artists – and used the artists’ image to promote their loans, overdrafts, savings and pension-plans in national ad-campaigns and carefully orchestrated media events, complete with oversized cheques, handshakes and photo-ops. Everybody (more or less) played along. There were sponsored squats for artists and a rubbing of shoulders with European jet-set elites—including the president’s wife, Dorritt Moussaieff and the baroness Francesca von Habsburg—a considerable portion of the young art scene in Reykjavík had in this way direct access to some of the most powerful people in the European art scene. And the financial institutions—mainly Landsbanki Íslands—would throw petty alms at the starving artists, who proved more than willing to prostitute themselves (including me and my friends) for what was in all honesty a mere pittance.

A collossal symbol of this situation is a series of commercials done for Landsbanki Íslands, where a large group of people are playing football—variously inside the bank or outside in a field. The ads read like a veritable “who’s who” of Icelandic arts, literature, culture and music. Everybody was involved in this scene. Even self-proclaimed revolutionary organisations, such as Nýhil (which I had a large part in founding and running), were for sale—on the premise that a) everybody else was doing it b) it’s good to get money to run this proverbially bankrupt industry and c) it’s not as if they control what we say, just ‘cause they give us money. All of which were illusions, it turned out. Some people did in fact refuse to participate (although not many), the little money we got did not help (we got overly zealous and almost literally went bankrupt; and it deprived us of much credibility) and whether or not they “controlled” what we said … at least they were never openly criticised. They may not have bought our silence, but they did buy our friendship—or at least a sort of kindness.

Before the collapse only a constantly fading grey line seperated what painter Tolli Morthens once called “two of humanity’s greatest interests”: The arts and the financial market.

After the collapse this situation has hardly been mentioned, let alone discussed to any serious degree—the artists in question variously denying involvement (even doing so overtly to foreign media), pointing to others as “having been worse” or trying to kill any mention of it by saying it only aimed at provoking bitterness and “blame-games”. As for the Icelandic literary scene, routinely when anything controversial is about to be discussed collectively, memories are invoked of “the great rift” of the early eighties, when the Writer’s Union split over some argument which nobody really remembers anymore—and thus everyone becomes convinced that, as the song goes, silence is golden (and everything else is not).

Not there anymore: The Ground Beneath Our Feet

Immediately after the “hrun” (collapse) – followed by the “kreppa” (crisis) and the “kitchen utensil revolution” (named for the banging of pots and pans during the protests)—questions of an aesthetic nature started forcing themselves on unsuspecting artist circles. What does this mean for literature? For music? For the visual arts? What will be the response? For a few years before the collapse artists had been becoming increasingly political, although it was mostly in the realm of the environmental issues rather than economics or social justice—and it had less to do with their art and more to do with parallel activities (like playing concerts for nature, as opposed to writing songs against aluminum plants).

Critic Valur Gunnarsson probably echoed a common sentiment when he said that people would start paying more attention to “serious” art and (at least partially) turn their gaze away from inconsequential popular culture. Though not necessarily implicit in Valur’s words, I often found that this sentiment included a disdain for the experimental, avant-garde or plain “weirdo” arts—that which at times in history has been described as “degenerated” art, devoid of the socially improving agendas of either “beauty” or “message”. Before the collapse there might have been a sort of pointlessness, or self-obsession, habitual to the art scene, where artists ritually explored the possibilities and limits of art itself—repeatedly asking the same (important?) question: “Is this art?” And after the collapse you could feel an increase in the disdain for artist happenings such as cleaning an apartment or standing on a street corner for a week—a hatred for the pointlessness in art, which for some is the whole point with doing arts, the true zen-like magic of art; that which seperates it from the goal-orientation of everything else in the world. Why were these people getting paid, people asked, to fool around like idiots, often from the empty pockets of taxpayers—while the government was closing hospital wards and firing “actual” workers? And, like in any society of (relative) less-than-plenty, the artists themselves had to ask themselves these same questions: why were they getting paid, when people needed hospital beds?

Fabulous Iceland: Selling Icelandic Literature at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Valur also predicted that the “outvasion” of Icelandic artists would come to a halt, like the “outvasion” of Icelandic businessmen; and that consequent generations would be more angry than their “cute” predecessors—“cute” being a derogatory term for musicians Björk, Sigur Rós, Amiina, múm and the like. This has not necessarily proven to be the case, although it’s hard to notice in the short run, but it seems young Icelandic musicians are still touring the world—and while there might not be a new Björk on the scene, that has hardly anything to do with the crisis. As for literature, Iceland is going to be the guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, which means that international interest in Icelandic books is probably greater than ever before.

Groupies cum Revolutionaries

Interestingly enough, just as artists played groupies to the “outvasion”, they also had a grand presence in the “kitchen utensil revolution”—being both numerous among protesters and in the forefront of organising and rabble-rousing. Most self-respecting artists made sure they were seen on Austurvöllur-square, beating pots and pans—participating with various degrees of irony, from going “all in” and seemingly taking a sincere interest in an important cause, to somehow completely missing the point and taking a break from the tear-gas and mayhem with the masses to attend an exclusive champagne-party with the Baroness von Habsburg at a nearby theatre (which many did): celebrating the still-standing aristocracy while cursing the fallen aristocracy, and seemingly not experiencing it as a contradiction.

Living abroad I only attended one of these protests—on a quiet sunday in early December when it seemed the revolutionary fire was going out. That day a group of younger boys climbed up on the balcony of parliament, where it had become tradition to hang protest banners, but this time the hooligans were in fact not protesters but a little-known rock band using the momentum to advertise their MySpace-page. At another instance I heard of an Icelandic rapper, famous for his “revolutionary stance”, having his picture taken outside a siege at the Central Bank—before leaving to attend to more important business. There were a number of similar events, where artists tried to “use” the protests to up their public image, in a somewhat less than sincere manner.

The media having failed, in the opinion of most of the protesters (and the people at large, I assume), an online webzine called Nei. (No. – including the period), run by poet, novelist, philosopher and filmmaker Haukur Már Helgason (who coincidentally is my best friend), became the hub for both immediate (reliable) information about events as they unfolded as well as in-depth commentary and first-person accounts after-the-fact.

The main organiser of the protests on Austurvöllur, starting with only a handful of people shortly after the collapse, was old-timer Hörður Torfason—a troubadour and gay-rights campaigner who was most influential in the seventies and early eighties. Of the 47 speeches held at Austurvöllur from October 11, 2008, to January 31, 2009 – 22 were held by artists or people immediately connected to the arts, including writer Einar Már Guðmundsson and poet Gerður Kristný. At one point, famed writer Hallgrímur Helgason was seen banging his hands on the hood of the Prime Minister’s car; “distorted with rage” claimed the media. After the “kitchen utensil revolution” at least two of the artists involved with the protests got elected to parliament, as members of the newly founded Borgarahreyfing (Citizen’s Movement – soon after they split and the parliamentary faction was renamed Hreyfingin, The Movement)—poet Birgitta Jónsdóttir and novelist and filmmaker Þráinn Bertelsson. Besides the “bona fide” artists, a creative spirit was plentiful on Austurvöllur during the protests – noticable on anything from slogans, signs, flags, dolls, clothing and the “instruments” themselves: anything that made a racket was suddenly useful.

What is ‘Crisis’? What is ‘Book’?

Defining what literature counts as “crisis-literature” is not an easy task. To a certain extent (practically) all literature written during (or right after) the crisis is “crisis-literature”—and even a great deal of the literature written during the economic boom, before the crisis. Many books included the crisis, the collapse and/or the protests – simply adapted the storyline to the times. If the story happened in 2008-2009, there was no way of skipping it, although most of the books that included the crisis were not about it at all—they neither reflected it to any degree nor did they comment on it. Then there are books which don’t mention the crisis as all, but somehow seem to allude to it constantly – this of course goes mostly for poetry books, which are more easily interpretable in all directions, and if you look for it you can probably find in them whatever you wish to find. Finally there was plenty of immediate work being published both online and on protest-signs at the time of the crisis—small bits, ranging from video cut-ups of speeches to remixing classics of modernist and pre-modernist Icelandic verse, fitting it to the political situation. Much of this was non-authored and none of it had a consistency justifying a specific treatment, other than of the whole thing as a social phenomena—it wasn’t necessarily many poems, but one really big poem.

Excluding the non-fiction written about the crisis—like Einar Már Guðmundsson’s ‘The White Book’ – the prose fiction which deals with the crisis does so, in a certain sense, peripherally. The novels are all essentially about something else—they stand right in front of the crisis and they turn their gaze away. ‘Bankster’ by Guðmundur Óskarsson, winner of the Icelandic Literature Prize 2010, is for instance first and foremost a story about being unemployed and falling into self-deprecation, self-pity and thus losing control of one’s life. The protagonist is an employee in a bank which comes crashing down, and subsequently he loses his job. For the rest of the book he lounges about in a Raskolnikovian introversy, without the guilt—and while lounging about his life falls apart around him, his wife leaving him and so forth. At the same time the massive protests are going on, literally outside his house, but he hardly notices—and the one time he gets mixed up in them he flees the chaos back into his introvert world of spiritual exile.

Kári Tulinius’ ‘Píslarvottar án hæfileika’ (‘Martyrs without talents’) is about a group of young would-be revolutionaries, pre-crisis, who wish to start a terrorist cell. These are young people, with young problems—love, ideals etc – trying to find a footing in life. The first section ends in september, 2008, days before the collapse, when two of them go as volunteers to Palestine on a humanitarian aid mission. The second section starts in November, when the volunteers are back. Instead of throwing themselves into the revolutionary spirits of Austurvöllur, they (like the protagonist of ‘Bankster’) are thrown off track by a personal tragedy: namely the accidental (yet violent) death of one of the main characters in Palestine.

A third novel, ‘Vormenn Íslands’ (‘Iceland’s Men of Spring’) by Mikael Torfason, is about a former assistant to a financial viking who is reckoning his past—but instead of dealing with the years as an assistant to a financial viking, it jumps over it and mostly focuses on the protagonist’s childhood. A fourth, ‘Paradísarborgin’ (‘The Paradise City’) by Óttar Martin Norðfjörð is a Saramagoan account, if a tad more Sci-fi-ish and less style-orientated than the Portuguese nobel laureate, about a fungus growing under Reykjavík and which entices the minds of the people, like a shamanic drug. It does in some sense deal directly with the crisis but it does so with a metaphor which is perhaps too vague and too general in its presentation, and too conspicuous in its (solicited) interpretation – and the author did at some point stress that it in fact wasn’t about the crisis.

‘Allir litir regnbogans’ (‘All the Colours of the Rainbow’) by Vignir Árnason is a strangely puerile self-published novel about an anarchist movement, which runs quickly through the kitchen utensil revolution into total (melodramatic) civil war between cops and revolutionaries. An interesting account, if rather callow, which never surpasses the expression of its teeth-grinding angst to provide anything resembling an idea.

Thus these authors, whose novels deal most directly with the crisis of all of the novels published in Iceland since the collapse^[1], avoid dealing with the actual events of Austurvöllur or the crisis itself, but circle it, or rather confront it and, having seen a glimpse of it, take a violent turn towards the personal and away from the general, the masses, the overtly political.

This may of course be interpreted in a symbolic sense, as literature’s utter defeat before the “actualities of life”. In private correspondance poet and novelist Haukur Már Helgason confided in me that after editing Nei. he felt a much greater need to engage in text that directly affected the world—and perhaps this lack of ‘crisis’ in the ‘crisis-literature’ is mainly a symptom of another ‘crisis’, namely the lack of agency in contemporary literature which for too long may have been busy picking at it’s own bellybutton and now knows not what to do.

Cue the Pre-Cog

Bizarrely the novel most tenaciously associated with the collapse was written before it happened and published shortly after the banks fell. ‘Women’ (‘Konur’) by Steinar Bragi is symbolically foreboding—it tells of a young woman, Eva, returning to Iceland from living in the USA and her inhabiting a borrowed apartment of a wealthy friend. The apartment—showy, expensive and in bad ‘nouveau riche’ taste—turns out to be (almost) alive, an entity of it’s own, and it starts sadistically manipulating Eva’s life, pushing further and further until the end, when she literally gets sucked into the walls.

One of the major noticable symbols of the “plentiful years” in Reykjavík was the building of houses (in great part by Polish workers). Entire neighbourhoods were built without anyone to live in them; the rich tore down their mansions to build better mansions; higher income apartment buildings for the elderly were built, only to stand empty while the contractors built a lower income apartment building next to it, one that the elderly could “afford” to live in; a woman could not have a dog in her apartment building, because she needed a signed aproval from the inhabitants of the 20 other apartments in the house, all of which were empty. Loans for building were granted without fail and plots were distributed with much ease.

It should therefore be easily understood how ‘Konur’ might be construed as a crisis-novel, where the newly-built house of ‘nouveau riche’ plenty, owned by a “financial viking”, turns on the inhabitant, starts torturing her before literally (and symbolically) devouring her. It is in all ways a novel written about the times pre-crisis and it successfully demonstrates the seeds of the city’s, and the country’s, self-destruction, through a kind of symbolic pre-cognition.

Collective Poetry

Jón Örn Loðmfjörð reading Gengismunur. Photo:smugan.is

There’s boatloads of poetry about the crisis. The immediate answer to the crisis was poetic, with countless and nameless online personalities sharing remixed versions of modernist classics (with metre and rhyme)—so you could literally sing the kitchen utensil revolution in real time, if you wanted to. Hallgrímur Helgason wrote a rap and performed on TV (printed in the Reykjavík Grapevine), several people made YouTube videos with cartoons or cut-up news footage—making poems from the bits and pieces surrounding them. Actor Hjalti Rögnvaldsson read political poetry at the protest events on Austurvöllur. During the kitchen utensil revolution the whole of Iceland somehow became (at least for some) a poetic dimension. Even that which wasn’t poetry, was still somehow poetry.

In the months and seasons following the collapse this energy seems to have dissipated as it has not been extensively seen in the poetry books published, where the poets seem to have reverted back to the “contemplative” and away from the “immediate”. Most of the poems which deal with the crisis do so in a rather mundane manner (though by no means all of them) and many of the books supposedly about the crisis seem to be not at all about the crisis—but as if either the author or the publisher had decided the crisis was an easy sell. Crisis-stuff was in vogue, so everything was “somehow” and “symbolically” about the crisis.

Selected Poetry

There were two notable exceptions to this trend. ‘Gengismunur’ (‘Arbitrage’) by Jón Örn Loðmfjörð and ‘Ljóðveldið Ísland’ (‘The Poetic Republic of Iceland’) by Sindri Freysson; both very ambitious projects. The former is a computerized textual mashup of a nine-volume, 2.000 pages report written by a parliamentary investigative committee on the events leading up the collapse of the banking system (resulting in a 65 page long poem); and the latter is its own investigative report, of sorts, published before the actual report—a long poem (over 200 pages) divided into chapters for each year from the founding of the republic (1944) until the supposed bankruptcy of the republic (2009—a few months after the collapse, when the government finally fell).

‘The Poetic Republic’ is as highly “creative” as ‘Arbitrage’ is not. While ‘Arbitrage’ deals with and represents the banality (and hilarity) of the language surrounding the crisis, the politics and the market—as well as dealing a blow to more traditional poetry, ‘The Poetic Republic’ is a flamboyant retelling of Icelandic 20th century history in a traditional postmodern ironic tone. Its vision or historical perspective is hardly new, but nor does it have to be. Its vision is probably correct (from a liberal, (moderate) leftist stand-point), however common it may be.

‘The Poetic Republic’ doesn’t dwell on any single event for more than a few lines, and thus it starts casually but increases in weight and speed until you feel you’re drowning in knowledge, memories, history and feeling; while ‘Arbitrage’ reads like a malfunctioning economic robot—like a Burroughs adding machine for the 21st century—and hardly needs to be read at all, being first and foremost a conceptual work. One would probably benefit more from looking at it like one looks at a painting, rather than reading it from A to Z like a (traditional) poem.

These two poetry books deal with the crisis in an almost unthinkably dissimilar manner; and yet they somehow belong to each other, could be published in tête-bêche format as brother and sister, hand in hand, shoulder to shrugging shoulder; not having a solution, but somehow trying hard enough to get us an inch closer to “something”, whatever it is.

A Total Uncontrollable Shitstorm of Metaphorising

A literary reaction worth mentioning is the constant metaphorising in public debate surrounding the crisis. Common phrases included “the financial thunderstorm”—the word for thunderstorm being used is “gjörningaveður”, a weather of great “happenings” (same noun as used for performance art happenings); the national ship (a common euphemism for the economy of a fishing nation) was shipwrecked; the leaders of the country were the crew of a ship; the old government (which refused to resign) were arsonists in charge of putting out their own fire; the crisis was rough seas or a game of war (“hildarleikur”); the nation needed to “arm itself” (“vígbúast”); Iceland was “in flames”; a great “catastrophy” had hit the international financial market – there were earthquakes, tidalwaves and the markets were frozen; the infrastructure had collapsed (like a building); the people were sheep; the currency was in “free fall” (and subsequently either getting “stronger” or “weaker”); the wheels of the economic life (called “the job life” in Icelandic) needed to be kept in motion; the plentiful years had been a raucous orgy and the aftermath was the hangover, and somebody had to clean up after the party; unemployment was an infectious disease and so forth and so on. ^[2]

According to a media study conducted by Álfhildur E. Þorsteinsdóttir, in the week following the crash the most common categories of metaphor were “ocean and sailing”, “militaristic”, “fire and catastrophy” and “weather”—in this order. No one needs to be surprised that on a volcanic rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean people would resort to metaphors of fishing, fire or weather—but military? In a country whose traditional role in NATO is not having its own military but nodding yes to the American agenda (they had a base in Iceland until 2006). Iceland has neither had conscription nor a professional army, excluding the dozen or so “peace keepers”—who are more like our former foreign minister’s tin soldier collection than anything else. Militaristic metaphors were furthermore the second most common category after ocean and sailing metaphors.

This is the popular poem—poem of the people, for the people—the world democratically poesied; sometimes in extremely mundane and predictable manners and at other times divine, fresh like spring and/or mighty. It’s always there and we hardly ever notice it. But when an event occurs which sends the minds of a certain community seeking in the same direction, like the economic collapse in Iceland, all of a sudden the visibility of this collective metaphorical agenda increases manyfold and we’re presented with a massive lingual project which can not be fully understood or interpreted outside the poetic dimension.

Finnish Lama vs. Icelandic Kreppa

I’m told that in Finland, my adoptive country, which experienced its own total collapse in the early nineties (the “lama”), the crisis got relatively little attention in literature, if it was dealt with in words at all—the cliché, which undoubtably is at least partly true, being that the Finnish people suffered in silence, making their (relative) poverty and social problems go away by not mentioning them. But of course there were certain social and economic effects which could not leave the literary scenes be. The bigger publishing companies, for instance, started publishing less poetry—what with the lack of funds for this financially disastrous art form—eventually leading to the emergence of a scene of poetry collectives, self-publishing and small-publishing which still thrives today, two decades later. During the “lama”, and in the wake of it, there also seem to have been certain tendencies to “bring the poetry to the people”—a trend towards a popular realism in the vain of Charles Bukowski or Hal Sirowitz, rather than experimentation or political confrontation, which may have been left to what is termed “the new millenium generation” whose debut works have only been published in the last few years.

Fighting over the Paradigm

I think it is safe to say that the literary response to the crisis in Iceland has been both swift and markedly honest, even if it seems that the authors and poets don’t have any particular answers to give. There is no new moral center, no serious deconstructive (or reconstructive) tendency, no reckoning with capitalism nor exacting analysis within the ‘belles lettres’ published as a reaction to the collapse. You could even imagine many of the authors mentioned here objecting to being construed as “reacting to the collapse”, as indeed in some respect they hardly deal with it at all (while simultaneously standing knee-deep in it).

The non-fiction about the crisis has mostly been fighting over the paradigm, constructing present-day history and bickering about the interpretation of events, the focus of discussion—ranging from confessions of aged, right wing, cold-war newspaper editor Styrmir Gunnarsson, to megolomaniac (and disturbingly disassociated, in an ‘American Psycho’ kind of way) accounts of financial viking Ármann Þorvaldsson during the economic boom, and the clear-cut anti-capitalist and metaphorically raptured essays of Einar Már Guðmundsson.

A Healthy Distrust

One of the immediate responses of the Icelandic critics—not to call it a “critical response”, as it was mostly presented in the form of commentary rather than an attempt at succinct analysis—was to question, belittle and even ridicule the attempts to portray or comment upon the crisis in fiction or poetry. This was of course not an across-the-board response—there were many exceptions amongst the critics, especially in more formulated essays, reviews and articles, which were by and large less irritable and more generous than were stray comments. But this one was, in my opinion, most obviously felt as a response to the phenomenon in total, as opposed to more generous critical responses to individual books or projects.

The argument mostly went that it was “too early” to write about the crisis; that the authors and poets were lacking the necessary “historical distance” to provide understanding (an argument surprisingly not present in the treatment of non-fiction books about the crisis). This attitude may be criticised for confusing the writing of history with the writing of fictional accounts, which are not subject to rules of “providing understanding” nor even historical accuracy, and as propagating an elitist attitude towards literature—i.e. that instead of literature being a massive democratic project to try and approach (as opposed to provide) any understanding of our societies and “the human condition”, an understanding inherently impossible in any perfect or even near perfect sense, the author is (supposed to be) a demi-godly figure who steps down from Olympus to tell us what is what, in no uncertain terms (and yet perfect bull’s eye metaphors). If I may be so bold: This is of course nothing short of the 20th century fascist idea of the genius classes—the leaders of society.

But this is also evidence of an attitude of displeasure and dissatisfaction which has in general increased after the crisis – a (healthy) distrust of the amazingly populous army of self-proclaimed prophets and analysts who have bombarded the public scene (newspapers, radio and TV as well as the blogosphere, where they naturally enjoy a free reign) with their ideas and thoughts, sometimes perhaps provoking more confusion than anything else—and often one suspects that confusion (misinformation) is in fact the point, with great political and economic potential at stake. And this distrust does of course not limit itself to the non-fiction army of fiscal messiahs found online, but reaches the poets and authors as well.

It is nonetheless my opinion that this distrust would’ve been put to better use against the non-fiction books, most of which attempted to maintain (or re-attain) the status quo; to explain Iceland post-crisis in pre-crisis terms and thereby reinstating the old paradigm. Whereas I’ve found the ‘belles lettres’ to be inspiring, thought-provoking and, though less assertive and less self-confident, better at providing new (and limber) views and senses of what happened in Iceland in the first decade of the millenium. Most of the non-fiction felt as if it were there to provide a dead-end explanation—a final stop for thought—while the novels felt like serious attempts at seeing something—no matter if they turned away, which also constitutes seeing something (not to mention saying something)—serious attempts to not constrict understanding or meaning with exceedingly easy explanations; and the poetry did what poetry does best, and approached the weird, stupid, cerebral and divine about the crisis—all at the same time.

A Call for Immediacy

One of the myths or clichés about Icelanders goes that they are all kind of trawler-sailers—“the sort of people” who like to work like crazy and then lounge about sucking on beers and scratching their asses, that they are somehow simultaneously hard-working and lazy, and that they are willing to do a half-assed job if it means they get to go home early. Their natural habitat is thus the trawler-boat, where you fish for a month and rest for a week or two, your pockets lined with money.

Despite the exceedingly limited truth found in these mythological self-explanations, the Icelandic “outvasion” was in fact deeply characterised by amateurism, lack of experience and a sense that “it was all gonna work itself out”—it was performed in the optimist spirit of the seasonal worker, the one who’s resourceful enough, strong enough, resilient enough, quick enough and daring enough not to need years of experience or time to mull things over. This may factor into the aforementioned critics’ response to the quick and sudden representation of the crisis, collapse and kitchen utensil revolution in Icelandic literature—seeing it as arriving in the same spirit, being performed in less than perfect tune, with a similar attitude of “anything’s possible”, and thereby foreboding a similar (aesthetic) collapse. But a thriving literary society needs not only mulled-over concise accounts of metaphorical precision (if it needs those at all), but a sense of immediacy, a sense of belonging to, and partaking in, society as it is happening—lest it want to be relegated to the dimension of history-telling, fairytale-ism.

Notwithstanding the fact that it would be horrible to keep repeating the same books about the crisis (which is not unlikely, as literature has a tendency to reproduce in it’s own image), and notwithstanding the relative excellence of the work produced thus far, it would be a great tragedy, in my mind, if this attempt to portray the crisis, collapse and kitchen utensil revolution in poetry and fiction were to end here, if it were to be buried now with an inscription of a job well done—as the job, the collective experiment, is still very much in its infancy.

^[1] For obvious reasons I’m leaving out my own novel, ‘Gæska’ (‘Kindness’, 2009). But suffices to say, it also leaves off moments after the economic collapse (which, having been written before the actual collapse, looks quite a bit different from real life) and resumes “a while later this same endless summer”—meaning that it too contains a gap where the actual “action” took place, and does not deal directly (unsymbolically) with the events of Austurvöllur or the crisis itself. I’m leaving out at least two other novels, simply because I’ve yet not read them, ‘Martröð Millanna’ (‘The Nightmare of the Millionaires’) by Óskar Hrafn Þorvaldsson and ‘Önnur líf’ (‘Other Lives’) by Ævar Örn Jósepsson, both primarily crime fiction, but apparently taking place in the business world and the rebel world, respectively.

^[2] Many of these examples are taken from Álfhildur E. Þorsteinsdóttir’s excellent analysis, ‘Krepputal. Myndlíkingar í dagblöðum á krepputímum’ (“Crisis-talk. Metaphors in Newspapers in Times of Crisis”). http://skemman.is/handle/1946/3625 Last read August 29, 2010

Originally appeared as a feature in The Reykjavík Grapevine. This version is slightly longer (I cut out the part about Finland for the print version, as paper is a finite text-holder, as explained to me by the editor).

Photos: © Hörður Sveinbjörnsson, The Reykjavík Grapevine et al (i.e. “the interwebs”).

The Art of Any Impact

Eiríkur Örn — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:27:28 +0000

Thor Vilhjálmsson, Icelandic poet, died a week ago. Standing up, with his feet on the ground. It's an important talent to learn.

The most important thing to keep in mind during a fistfight (or while writing a poem) isn’t what to do with your arms and knuckles, but where to place your feet. If you keep them too close together, you’re liable to fall over – and if you keep them too far apart you leave your genitalia vulnerable (you don’t want to do that, not even if you’re a girl). If you have one foot directly in front of the other, you might keel on your side, whereas if you keep them side by side, you risk falling on your ass – or alternately, your face. So while your fists may be doing most of the bodily harm, your punching is pointless if you don’t mind your footwork.

The same goes for writing. Or, for that matter, living. (I have now assumed the position of life-changing prolonged metaphor – do not stop reading!)

Writing does of course not cause much bodily harm. In fact writing entails only a bare minimum of bodily harm and it’s mostly harmful for the person doing it (long bouts of writing have been linked to bad blood flow, back aches, haemorrhoids, alcoholism, sleeplessness, severe angst and frequent panic attacks), while the person reading need not worry. At least not much.

But just like when you punch someone in the face (which I’m supposing is a reality most Grapevine readers are intimately familiar with) to perform any good (nevermind great) writing you need to find a comfortable base-stance from whence you throw your jabs, strophes, plots and uppercut in-rhymes.

And yet. And yet. And yet.

And yet most poets, most writers – and indeed perhaps most people (not excluding me, alot of the time) – tend to put a great deal of effort into perfecting their punches (the most obvious aspects of their technique) while failing to seek good grounding. Now what I’m trying (and failing, obviously) to aggrandizingly metaphorize towards (besides changing your life), is that (sometimes) I get the distinct sense that most writers, poets, painters, musicians and performance artists seldom stop to think about why they do what they do, what it is they seek to accomplish. That is to say: where they want to place their right foot, and where they want to place their left foot. Rather, they seem to have perfected their quick-jabs and knockouts – their paintstrokes, metaphors, plots, frills and moaning, without seemingly having the slightest idea why they are doing so. And so the world slowly but surely gets filled – not with revelatory art curious about life, its bits and pieces, but hollow posing.

Now, lest I be misunderstood (oh! the horror of possibly being misunderstood!): I’m not saying everyone should now go fill their poetry with social consciousness or political messages. I’m not saying art can’t (or shouldn’t) be made for the sake of art. I’m saying art shouldn’t be made for the sake of nothing-better-to-do or being-an-artist-seems-fun (or, at the very least, if so, then be it decisively so).

What I’m saying (with any and every ounce of whatever authority I may have, and a lot of assumed authority I have never had) is that the fundamentals of what you do are more important and deserve more of your attention than your technical prowess. When you know what you want to do, you may accidentally stumble upon a great way to do it. But if you don’t, you most definitely won’t.

Originally appeared in The Reykjavík Grapevine.

Short story: May Oral Gnarr Annualize?

Eiríkur Örn — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:00:16 +0000

Illustration: Inga María Brynjarsdóttir.

Municipal decree stardate 01012021-001 — January 1^st, 2021. State anarcho-surreo-separatist municipality of central Laugavegur and the united TGIFs of the greater eurafrican kingdom.

Citizens of love and the Tao! I beseech you! Hark, hark! Hear, here! Lo, lo! Whiff! Feel! Taste! Orgasm!

I write you now to say: Another decade gone *poof!* with all its wars, poverty and abundance in abundance – yay! Past rejoicing, you rejoicers-you, of holidays a’bountiful – we hope you’ve had meals worthy of the tallest tales and presents in glittery packaging, another winter, o ye of mostly fashionable clothing – it is, alas (we might add), now time for more serious business. As your incumbent mayoral dignitarious “Gnarr” (dee harr harr), I’m thoroughly empleased to announce the latest in modern fads:

More rules! Better rules of greater precision!

First of all, less service (not really a rule – more a “rule of thumb”, if you will), although this perhaps goes without saying: We must make sacrifices for the common good, and even more so, for the individual good. We must, that is to say, make sacrifices for the good, and not just some of the good (as in the past) but all of the good, the absolute totality of the good. This is not a joke. We do not make fun of the good. Unreproachable, we are, in no jest whatsoever.

Hah, got ya! (No, really, we’re totally serious).

As a follow-up to the successful transaction of city concrete to the unlaughably retro-capitalistic suburbs (for which we received an abundance of extremely extreme nail-polish remover, traded with the Commonwealth of northeastern Buenos Aires for 250 grand frappucinos (including disposable stir-spoons)) it has been unanimously decided, within the municipal council, that the bicycle paths on upper Laugavegur (strictly speaking the property of our theocratical neighbour municipality, a matter of some concern, I assure you) will be auctioned … going once, twice … sold! to the Pescal Harbour Duchy of Sæbraut (for two half-portions of delicious halibutt – two tails, in fact, fins intact, in tartar sauce with potatoes and broccoli, yummy!)

(My telephone seems to be ringing, but I’m not answering. I’m not! No, no, no. Busy, busy, busy. *Sigh* I wish I’d known politics was such a drudgery).

And then some: as this is a greater decree of glee than thus far we’ve permitted (the revolution must not stop at the local petting zoo), it is with some sternness and severity (ha ha!) that we now decree a “gleeful grump-hinder”. The mosques of central Laugavegur (as well as the prayer booths at TGIFs worldwide) will now carry mandatory cartoon commentary on the prophet (and his terrorist followers), the at-laughing of which will be equally mandatory (three times during the cleaning rituals). Laughter may be rendered in the form of an islamic prayer-call, an adhan, but only if it is provably (beyond the slightest doubt) of a humourous quality.

No joke! (Funny, no?)

Nextly, I would like to start by apologizing for using the word “bitch” in a recent radio interview. As amends I’ve forbidden the word (unless pronounced with the utmost of lisps) and any mention of “the incident”, private or public. To those concerned (I’m looking at you, sisters!) you have my sincerest “oops”. I was speaking as an artist, a true surrealist, and meant nothing by it. Nothing at all. Your ideologies disgust me and I’d never sink to that level. I’m sorry already, get a life.

I probably need not remention that this is a tough job, I am under a lot of pressure. I am just a normal guy, I am no “tough cookie”, and cannot be expected to be a Superman nor am I, as some of the most humourless fuddy-duddies amongst you have deigned to imply, a super-villain – and to tell you the truth I’m, like, totally tired of your Predator-jokes (your sense of humour, btw, is highly unprofessional – this is a skill, people, it needs to be learned) They are so ten years ago it’s not funny. Not even in the so-not-funny-it’s-funny way of funny.

[Angry diatribe self-censored]

I’ve had time to mull this over. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart. The depths of my soul. I have now referred to the Bhagavad Gita and truly you are entitled to your criticism and your own sense of humour. I’ve already deleted the worst of it, as it was below me. I have just [insert appropriate verb] smoking again, and am a bit on the nervy side. I shall henceforth receive your scorn as the humble vessel that I remain, despite life-long adversities as punker, author, sugarcube, business executive, comedian, artist, celebrity and now mayoral entity.

I shall not let the slings and arrows of outrageousness hurt me!

True individuals of spiritual means must set themselves above the quotidian bicker of petty grievances. Ooooommmmm. Ooooooommmmm. I still feel obliged to mention that the municipal council is not entirely in agreement on this subject, as apparently the surrealist manifesto has proven largely incompatible with the Bhagavad Gita, as well as the teachings of St. Paul, whose advice we seek on a weekly basis (not personally, of course, but in the “Bible”). But then Breton was a communist, like Stalin, whose Gulags we despise.

Lastly, thusly: At a time like this, where years meet at the apex of increased communal blood pressures, while the burned sticks of yesteryear are still gliding on the nocturnal ashes of party-town – and the world smells like Beirut in heat – it is customary to reflect upon past passed actions and render judgment, or to paraphrase the jolliest of men (in a jovial sort of glee, and yet admittedly paranoia-inducing): we know if you’ve been good or bad, so be good for goodness’ sake (and if not for goodness’ sake, then for the absolute totality of goodness’ sake). Mind you, that is also a rule. There’ll be more to come, and I’ll relay them all in good time.

Ah, the good times! Remember the good times? How we wish we all were young.

Hope&Pray, Hope&Pray, Hope&Pray,

(and don’t forget to thank God it’s Friday, as approved by our sponsors).

Yours truly (lol),

Herbert Friðbert Albertsson

Honourable Gnarr of the state anarcho-surreo-separatist municipality of central Laugavegur and the united TGIFs of the greater eurafrican kingdom .

This short story was solicited by the Reykjavík Grapevine, on the theme ‘Iceland and the next decade’ and appeared in the January issue of 2011.

This is Your Brain on Crack Cocaine

Eiríkur Örn — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:39:14 +0000

Buy more books! Buy more books! Buy! Buy! Buy!

Each year, for about eight weeks, Icelandic book culture loses its cool and turns into a crazed media circus. When the clock strikes ‘october’ literature suddenly gets two-handedly drowned, literally strangled, with attention – having been mostly ignored or patronizingly shrugged off for the previous 43 weeks of the year (the final, remaining week, the last week of the year, is kept free for actually reading books). All of a sudden, as if somebody snapped their fingers, literature becomes important enough to warrant a series of author-interviews, book-reviews, the incessant parlour games of ‘best cover’ and ‘best title’, and the motormouthed drivel of ‘the author’s favorite recipe’ and ‘fifteen personal questions’. Automatic for the people, indeed.

All of this is performed in the rising harmony of what has been termed “the inflation of adjectives”, with books being judged as either “a superb piece of unparalleled genius” or “an utterly immoral diatribe which might have been worth reading were it not also death-defyingly boring.” Granted, there are varying degrees of poetic ecstacy and abject dismissal, but what remains is that the only question ever asked – in book reviews or among authors or readers – is: “is it any good”?

Now, given how many books are published in these eight weeks– this year 85 novels were published, 747 titles counting all genres of ‘book’ – this approach to literature is hardly surprising. Reading and contemplating 85 books in 8 weeks isn’t just impossible, it’s the dumbest thing you could attempt, as you’d probably get none of all of them, and gain nothing but lost time. Therefore we try to figure out which books we should try before we approach them – to spare us the marathonian stupidity of trying to gobble up the entire universe in one swallow. But by doing this, notwithstanding all our honourable intentions, we turn literature into a competetive sport and authors into racehorses.

To further simplify the enormous task of sifting through a great body of literature in a manner of no time and no patience, we’ve abandoned the more complicated (and time-consuming) philosophical approach to literature, and replaced it with a culture of grading and gossip. The literati (popular and/or intellectual) seems almost exclusively interested in finding out where a piece of literature belongs on a scale of 1-10 – discarding its ideas, its message or even its beauty (evident in the tradition of judging books on a sliding scale according to genre – for instance not putting any stress on the text in a suspense thriller) as irrelevant.

The argument for this ludicrous race is that without it Icelandic literature wouldn’t survive – financially – as people wouldn’t buy enough books to keep the industry afloat if they weren’t culturally required to educate their friends and relatives through the obligatory gift of literature, force-feeding them reading materials in fancy packaging. Intriguingly, it is ritually maintained in political speeches that Icelanders are a reading nation – while the fact that very few people buy books for themselves remains undiscussed.

Some people, of course, enjoy the excitement of the Christmas book-flood. I’m being a bit of a fuddy-duddy, honestly. Irritability towards this phenomenon is hardly news. And I can understand why people enjoy the flood – all of a sudden authors and (at least in a sense) their books are put in the limelight – with all its glitz and glamour, fun and games, rivalries, beautiful heroes and horrifying foes – and I won’t deny that it can be pleasurable and exhilirating, for writers and readers alike. But evidently, so is crack cocaine.

Originally appeared in The Reykjavík Grapevine.

So is The Wasteland

Eiríkur Örn — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 14:37:14 +0000

1st edition of a nutty book.

Oh, alright, I’ll admit it: I don’t understand most poetry. It baffles me. I read it, shaking my head and scowling. I don’t even understand my own poetry. Objectively speaking, most of it’s just nonsense – like how many ‘P’s or ‘S’s can I fit into a sentence? How about if I jumble up the sentences of a politician’s speech? What if I put all the letters in this poem in alphabetical order? Does that make more sense?
Everytime I start unravelling the allusions and metaphors of the poetry I like, picking apart it’s rhythmical devices and unsounding its assonance, I draw blanks, paint myself into a corner and rush off of cliffs probably not meant for rushing off of. I get lost in poetry’s circular aphorisms, its noncommital politics and trivial idiosyncratic observations – I get thrown by its semantics and semiotics, surprised by its rhyme and its imagery and derailed by its linebreaks and crazy indentations. It makes even less sense than before I started trying to fit it into my narrow view of what makes sense.

Put another way, it’s not just that I don’t understand poetry, it’s that poetry doesn’t make sense. And to take it a notch further, the little poetry I do understand, I tend to dislike – I find it banal, mundane, lacking fervour and strength and I’d like to live my life not being bothered by it. It feels like a waste of time and reading it I get a sensation more akin to having overdosed on blog comments than approaching the rapture of poetic hilarity/severity/generosity. I feel tired, uninspired and unmoved. If I feel that I can readily “understand” the poem in question – if I get a clear sense of it’s moral, social, political or emotional message – I brush it aside and move on. Yet I can find logical reasons for liking the poetry that I don’t like – I can see its witty metaphors, its righteous politics and metric rhythms and go: This is good.

But it’s not.

I don’t feel it.

The poetry can be as correct or incorrect as anything else, it can be as funny or right-on-target as anything else – but it remains exactly that: anything else. It does not remove itself from the constraints of everyday written or spoken language, does not leave or jolt the realm of message-giving, does not venture beyond the art form of, say, the text message or the Facebook status – both of which can contain poetry, but don’t have to. Unlike, for instance, poems – which are utterly dependent on poetry.

Not surprisingly, then, I prefer poetry that I don’t understand. It fascinates me, enlightens and illuminates me – vivifies my otherwise dormant, stagnacious soul/mind/heart/body/spirit/breath. And when I say that I like poetry I don’t understand I don’t necessarily mean dadaist odes or jumbles of Zaum – it can seem like perfectly normal text at a first glance. But it’ll contain something that’s a little off. Something jilted or tilted or tainted. A shade of imbalance.

What this boils down to is a dimension of understanding or feeling (or whatever) which I can only recognize as religious – a belief or faith which prompts the reader (or writer) to jump the gap to join the poem on the other side. Prompts unearned and unsolicited participation. To shit or get off the pot, so to speak. I don’t believe in God but I cannot disavow an illogical belief in poetry or language, because I cannot find a logical reason for liking the poetry I like or writing the poetry I write.

But, in my defence, as one benevolent critic of my poetry put it: “The work may be nonsense, but so is The Wasteland.”

Originally appeared in the Reykjavík Grapevine.

Future Perfect Poetry

Eiríkur Örn — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 12:29:16 +0000

Mario Vargas Yosa? Llawn!

When this text is eventually published the world will know who received the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature. It will have been announced yesterday. The person in question will already be lauded worldwide, in today’s newspapers next Friday, with a few dissenting voices perhaps mentioning cultural politics and even fewer voices claiming that prize-giving is invalid, that it reduces literature (and by association, the human spirit) to a competitive sport. But mostly we’ll just participate in the joy, because everybody loves a party. And just like we know that our birthdays and Christmases and whatever don’t have any gigantic “actual” meaning, they’re still fun and we’d like to keep ‘em fun, if possible.

When this text is written, however, the world (with me in it) does not know who will receive the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature, seeing as now it’s Sunday the 3rd of October and the announcement isn’t due until Thursday. That is to say, your yesterday, in my four days time. This is all due to a complicated lag in publishing tangible printed material that I won’t go into. Suffice it to say, it could not have been otherwise.
I am terribly excited, of course.

The front-runner of poetry for the LitNobel this year, at Ladbrokes bookies, is Sweden’s own Tomas Tranströmer – a poet most people in the world have not heard of, but is an immense presence within the inconceivable world of poetry. The Swedes have not got a LitNobel since 1974, when Harry Martinson and Eyvind Johnson had to share one. I don’t know how that works. Maybe you get half a gold medal. Or each winner gets a smaller medal, than had he or she won alone.

And it seems Ladbrokes feels poets are particularly thinkable winners this year, with Adam Zagajewski (Poland), Adonis (Syria), Ko Un (Korea) and Les Murray (Australia) following Tranströmer on the list. They are mostly as or more obscure than Tranströmer (nobody reads poetry anymore, I say, shaking my head indignantly, last Sunday).
By now (or then, I mean, at publication), I guess you will know who got it. It probably wasn’t Tranströmer, was it? Nor was it Philip Roth? It never is. But they always mention him. He’s the guy that never gets it. Apparently he’s nonchalant about it, doesn’t feel it’s any special honour – he feels american literature has towered over world literature for decades and that they don’t need swedish Nobels for justification. Maybe he’s right. But it still sounds a bit arrogant, with a tinge of bitter disappointment. And, I would venture, it has something to do with his involvement with american literature – I doubt that he has read Tranströmer or Ko Un. Americans don’t translate much, as Horace Engdahl, member of the Swedish academy has pointed out, they don’t speak other languages much – and they’re mostly not in any position to judge non-english literature (whereas most people, worldwide, read english-language literature – either in the original or in translation – which is one of the reasons why Philip Roth is so famous).

The race for the Nobel is no longer exciting, not where you are sitting, but over here, in the past last sunday, we’re still all very anxious to know. The writer chosen will enjoy immense rekindling of sales and translations worldwide, increased respectability and mentions, interviews, acknowledgment and critical response. But it doesn’t last. It never does. In three or four months people will be going: “Tomas who?” Or “Did Philip Roth ever get it?” Or “Ko Un who?” (Am I right, was it Ko Un?) Oh, sure, a few nerds still remember Elfriede Jelinek and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio – and a few will remember Thursday’s winner, but not many will be able to spell their names correctly and even fewer than that will be familiar with their work (although some will have bought it today – or tomorrow at the latest).

Because despite the good party, the good fun, the medals and the boatloads of cash – despite the respect, the myth-making qualities, the critical debates and the high-fallutin’ rhetoric – we all know that literature isn’t a competitive sport and nobody can tell you which books enlighten and which don’t. Except for you, of course. But then again, you might wrong.

Originally published in The Reykjavík Grapevine.

Quiet, You Ignorant Booby!

Eiríkur Örn — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 10:18:15 +0000

A booby trap.

Anything an author does (or says) is viable to be used as evidence against (or for) her (or him). Their actions and words are commonly seen as shedding an invaluable light on the work they’ve given the world – and to a certain extent this is of course true. It’s hard to understand the poetry of Ezra Pound if one refuses to see his (personal) fascist tendencies – they may not detract from the poetry, per se, but they do belong to it, they do inform it, enliven it.

Lifestyles and opinions impregnate the poetry of poets from Jack Spicer to Emily Dickinson to Li Po to Gertrude Stein to Sylvia Plath to William Carlos Williams, Tor Ulven, Ingeborg Bachman and Pablo Neruda. We could for instance ask ourselves what would’ve become of Allen Ginsberg had he succeeded with his original plan of becoming a lawyer – or had he just been hetero? What would an indian summer of peyote abuse have done to someone like TS Eliot? Where would the Flarf poets be if they were pastoral hermits deprived of Wi-Fi’s and iPhones? What would a Margaret Atwood sound like, if she had the opinions of an F.T. Marinetti?

We live in times of continuously repeated 15 minutes of fame for everybody – we’re all bloggers, tweeters, facebookers, tumblrs, flickrers; exceedingly sophisticated self-promoters, and we’re all famous ALL THE TIME. This is a well-known and well-documented fact (“nauseamus igitur”). And in this system of self-promotion noone is as suspect as he or she who actually has something to promote. Celebrity Tweeters, like British author and comedian Stephen Fry, can’t possibly tweet without a hidden agenda of also peddling their crap, no matter that their crap sold out weeks ago and actually sounds kinda interesting. It’s still suspect. We know this and they know this.

Most authors (or artists /entertainers in general) live in a universe where they’re forced to admit that even though they might be irrelevent small potatoes today, their Twitter feed, their emails, their scribbled grocery lists and the rate of their production of used-condoms and /or bastard children might be used to “devise their literary intentions” if luck (good or bad) would happen to make them famous. And if they happen to become VERY famous, the devising will be maniacally thorough and the exegeses increasingly inspired.

This, as you may imagine, is a recipe for paranoia and permanently suspended intellectual animation for all partakers – which is why so many contemporary authors stay silent on matters concerning anything under the sun: you know you’re just gonna use it against them. Most authors are even scared witless of writing their own books. It doesn’t mean that the books’ll be bad – but the myth that neurosis is a helpful tool for increasing creativity is about as true as poets having to be alcoholics to write interesting poetry. That is to say, it’s mostly a funny anecdote – a part of 20th century mythmaking and image-related careerisms. Not only was it never true, as an idea it’s also totally passé.

Self-doubt? Yes. – Paranoid delusions? No, not really.

As everyone knows the founding document of Icelandic thought is the Elder Edda – a curiously repetitious ode about the importance of never seeming stupid. In Auden’s translation:

The ignorant booby had best be silent
 When he moves among other men, 
No one will know what a nit-wit he is 
Until he begins to talk; 
No one knows less what a nit-wit he is 
Than the man who talks too much
.
[…]
.
Wise is he not who is never silent,
 Mouthing meaningless words: 
A glib tongue that goes on chattering
 Sings to its own harm
.
[…]
.
Of his knowledge a man should never boast, 
Rather be sparing of speech 
When to his house a wiser comes: 
Seldom do those who are silent 
Make mistakes; mother wit 
Is ever a faithful friend

… and so forth.

These are the verses etched in the wretched souls of Icelandic poets – and poets worldwide. For us, the bitches of Icelandic tradition, that’s where it all began. With a clear and concise precept: Booby, behave! Booby, be still!
And Booby, be sure to be quiet.

Originally appeared in the Reykjavík Grapevine.

Making Perfect Sense

Eiríkur Örn — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 05:27:15 +0000

Yes, mr. Hugo Ball, that is a perfectly sensible way of dressing up for a poetry reading. Like, NOT!

Poetry is the art of the illogical, or even anti-intellectual, performed with the tools of logic and intellectual zealotry: language. Poetry is an invoker of feeling, or more correctly, perhaps, sensation and/or experience – while simultaneously being a way of thinking, of “catching yourself thinking” and “noticing what you notice” as Allen Ginsberg called it. Poetry is the logically/illogically logical/illogical. It’s job is to escape our grasp as we try to pin it down, to defy the defying of defying definition. It tries to look and act as if it were making sense, while basking in it’s own glorious idiocy behind our backs.

Like the Zen monks who threw shoes at each other attempting to use the shock and surprise of the counter-intellectual as a method to induce a divine state of knowing – or getting beyond knowing, or whatever it was and is Zen monks want to achieve with their silly antics – poetry aims to jolt the intellectual, emotional, cognitive and memory senses by presenting texts that are counter intuitive and strive against everything that is coherent. This doesn’t only go for the “mad” poetry of bohemians, from Rimbaud to Hugo Ball to the beatniks – it also goes for the so-called “disciplined” poetry of lawyers and bankers like TS Eliot and Wallace Stevens, whose powerful imagery is constructed to jolt, no less than Hugo Ball’s glossolalia or Rimbaud’s wilder associations. The poetry may be disciplined, but it is not created to form coherent thoughts – neither from the poets and to the text, nor from the text and to the readers.

I’m writing this returning from lecturing and performing at a seminar on sound poetry in Kuopio, Finland, and as I sit here I become more and more amazed at the fact that people, in general, and me, in particular, make a living – however meager it may be – from what is best understood as behaving like idiots on stage (while explaining our behaviour in more intellectual terms in essays inbetween our “fits”).

A large portion of my performance, for instance, was shouting a collage of the poetry of a 17th century Icelandic lunatic; famous sound poet Leevi Lehto sang (in a “melodically deconstructive manner”, which in academic dialect means “very out of tune”) the lyrics of classical Finnish poets – including Paavo Havikko and Eino Leino – to the music of the Rolling Stones and other American rock artists; while Cia Rinne read alphabetized poetry in French; and Miia Toivio and Marko Niemi read Miia’s work in an apparently random chorus, chopping up the words into bits in improvisational inspiration.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I had a blast, and so it seems did the audience. They laughed, cheered, clapped and came up and thanked us afterwards. And they weren’t even that drunk. But that doesn’t decrease my surprise in the least. If anything, I’m even more surprised that avant-garde poetry is generally something people enjoy. It’s mind-boggling.

Maybe I am still trying (in vain) to “understand” poetry – which is a no-no, poetry may not be understood, you shouldn’t try. Maybe I’m just trying to get at why it fascinates me so much. And then perhaps, as the cliché about good humour goes, the magic dies if you manage to explain it. Which doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it. It just means we should be sure to never make perfect sense while doing so.

Originally appeared in the Reykjavík Grapevine.

Experimentalism is a humanism

Eiríkur Örn — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 07:16:41 +0000

Poetry smurf may have been a bit too sentimental for our tastes. But that doesn't make him universally bad.

A few days ago (the rather awful) writer’s magazine Writer’s Digest tweeted the following: “Free short story competition to raise awareness for those suffering from depression”. Followed by an url. Now, being the cold-hearted asshole I am, this made me chuckle. I’m sorry for it, I truly am – I don’t mean to belittle the people suffering from depression, nor the writers who’d like to support the depressed, or even Circalit and the publishers at Little Episodes, who so graciously decided that their contest should be “free”. [This is where I meant to insert a “but”, halfways excusing myself – but unfortunately there is no honest “but” to be found, I seem to be nothing short of an asshole. We’ll go on without a but then – bear with me].

Writing short stories (or poetry) is of course highly therapeutic, as a cure not only for depression but also for various other mental ailments. Literature is a powerful tool for catharsis – it is prescribed by licensed psychiatrists as a means to purify the soul, to get stuff out there, to grasp emotions and thoughts before they flutter away, to gain self-understanding. Formulating thoughts in non-linear (and even non-logical) texts can furthermore bring about harmony, coherence and satisfaction for the practicing writer, as well as uncovering hidden bits you’d never’ve dreamt you were feeling and/or thinking. This despite the fact that the result may also be quite the opposite; writing can make you predictable and cause you nothing but anguish.

In international avant-garde circles the cathartic powers of writing are traditionally derided – which is sort of why I chuckled. They’re seen as an evil force hellbent on destroying all that’s good about literature, transforming it into a support group for the mentally needy. And in all truth, cathartic writing is often not very good – it’s extremely self-centred, it’s rarely performed with much artistry (in 9 times out of 10 the cathartic writer never passes the novice-phase) and it’s overtly melodramatic. None of which retracts from the fact that it’s highly therapeutic and healthy. But people don’t seem to have the same hesitancy about publishing their therapeutic poetry as they have about, for instance, recording and publishing their songwriting. Quite simply there doesn’t seem to be much of a border seperating the presentation or reception of serious and therapeutic poetry, which perhaps tells us something about either the literacy of the poetry reading masses or the quality of the so-called serious poetry.

And yet. As mentioned earlier, one of the consequences of the less than artistic nature of therapeutic writing is a growing disdain for anything resembling a humanist tendency within more serious (and/or experimental) literature – and what get’s lost in this desperate flight from the horrors of sentimental confessionalism, is the reader’s catharsis (as opposed to the writer’s catharsis) and the notion that literature can help in explaining “the human condition” – or god help me, provide a (much needed) radical approach to social commentary.

This isn’t necessarily so much seen in the work, as it is seen in the critical reception of scholars and the poetics of the writers, who choose to frame their works outside a humanist context (even when such a context seems self-evident, for instance with Christian Bök’s The Xenotext Experiment – a humanist feat comparable to the moon landing, a sentimental march of hope – or better yet, Kenny Goldsmith’s Soliloquy, a raucous and daring take on Sartre’s maxim that “hell is other people”, without the “other people”).

On the other hand, the writing deemed “humanist” or even “confessional” is often machinistic, foreseeable – as if written by automatons, it’s main collective feature is a massive sameness with a dystopic feel.

The dichotomy of humanist writing vs. experimental writing needs to be put to rest – because just as obviously as therapy isn’t necessarily art, experimental writing is, through it’s radical political and social approaches to language and creative living spaces, inherently a humanist act.

Originally appeared in The Reykjavík Grapevine.

There’s a New Screen in Town

Eiríkur Örn — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:03:01 +0000

Yes! Money! Ultraweb! Interactivity! Javascript!

So far poetry has proved far more adaptable to a higher-and-higher high-tech world than prose fiction, which clings to the book as if the only thing justifying it’s existence were the bar-code and ISBN-number (not to mention the prize-tag). This would be relatively easy to explain away if we were only talking about longer fiction – novels and novellas – since they demand more attention for longer and more numerous time periods than are comfortably provided on our laptops, smartphones and (most) other electronic data readers. But this also goes for shorter fiction, which has very little room on blogs or Facebook (let alone Twitter) compared to poetry. Prose of similar length – non-fiction articles, whether on blogs or news sites – is the most popular text online while comparably lengthed fiction is probably the least popular.

And it makes you ponder.

For one thing: almost everyone’s a poet. As I may have mentioned before, poetry’s the lazy man’s art form. So blogs and online poetry forums are easy to fill up with, excuse my French, emotional drivel in pretty little words. Any teenager with a laptop and an emotional problem; any middle-aged used-to-wannabe with a drawer full of anything from a lifetime’s worth of occasional quatrains to half a manuscript of semi-serious yet dated modernist verse; anyone who’s tired of solving Sudoku while the laundry dries – i.e. anyone without the time or the patience to write longer works (or more ambitious poetry) can self-publish online. And by jolly, let’s not forget that while this may make horrible poetry available to an unsuspecting (and sometimes unsavvy) general public, this is (in itself) nevertheless a good thing – überdemocratic and pretty like peaches.

Another thing: the writers most interested in the possibilities of text, and hence with the hardest hardons for the textual, social and lingual possibilities available online, usually call what they do poetry rather than prose – since prose is somehow supposed to be a story while poetry can (at least peripherally) be whatever the hell it feels like being. So the people who want to make movable or moving poems, who want to make self-generating or interactive texts, who want to write for a new venue – in short, the people who fall flat for the innovative are less likely to wanna constrict themselves to a one thousand year old Arabic invention. For prose, any medium is a vehicle. For poetry, any medium is a limitation on the path towards divinity.

Third: while length does not explain why people read the New York Times online and not the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges; while it does not explain why fiction can’t keep up online with non-fiction, length may explain why poetry beats fiction. You can get snippets of poems – but not stories. You can have a minute of poetry. Or half a minute. A second of poetry. Add to this the fact that a lot of poetry can be disjuncted, spastic and humorously dysfunctional like comedy – it can be very audience friendly. Anyone who’s attended poetry readings and prose readings can attest to the fact that poetry readings are usually much more enjoyable – poetry is (by nature) more performative than prose; by origin it is a spoken or chanted artform. And on the internet you can find anything, save for patience – hence the popularity of short fun.

Fourth: while there is no money in poetry and (for some reason) people have no compunctions about giving away non-fiction, or republishing it online a few weeks or months after it’s printed equivalent hit the streets, the world of prose fiction has been sufficiently conservative and self-protective to avoid both the blogosphere and the webzines – nor has it much of a presence within the (semi-legal) world of peer-to-peer networks.

Much of this may change with the advent of the e-book, which so far is mostly designed around linear prose fiction. For one thing the books of many popular and/or respected writers are now available (illegally, in most countries) in various e-reader formats through torrent-sites. They’re not available in the same enormous way as music or film, but the files are there and they’re much smaller than music or film and therefore more expediently downloadable. Although e-reader platforms are mostly geared towards longer works of prose fiction (including collections of short stories), non-fiction does have some presence, while poetry – with all it’s line-breaks and weirdo layouts – will have to adapt (and become more adaptable) if it wants to fit in.

Originally appeared in The Reykjavík Grapevine.