Reykjavík Grapevine - 18.06.2010, Side 46

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 08 — 2010
The Kindle, the iPad, the
Nook, the Cybook Opus,
the Sony Reader, the
iLiad—and now: Megan
Fox’s right f lank.
We’ve come to accept the fact
that books are no longer just pages
tied together. Just as we graduated
from scrolls and tablets, we’re now
in the process of graduating from
paperbacks and hardcovers to more
novel (pun intended) ways of pre-
senting our texts. From storing
entire libraries in a pocket-sized
computer to encoding bacteria
with poetry to programming ma-
chines that summarise, mash-up,
read aloud and produce new texts,
to print-on-demand and the imme-
diate publishing that blogs offer—
traditional books are no longer the
only vehicles for poetry (or other
texts), leaving traditional book pub-
lishers desperately clinging on to a
past that’ll never come back. The
“book” has been born again—but
the world of literature (from au-
thors to publishers to buyers) is
still going through painful labour.
This doesn’t necessarily mean
that the old book is dead, although
there’ll probably be less of it around
in ten years time. All the different
vehicles for text, including the pa-
perback and the hardcover, have
their own value, their intrinsic
qualities. Bacteria carrying poetry
will probably outlive humanity.
Storing text electronically takes a
lot less space, doesn’t waste paper
(although the reading gadgets are
hardly ‘environmental’) and reduc-
es the cost of distribution (fiscally
and environmentally). Print-on-
demand makes (almost) anything
that can be printed publishable in
book form, no matter the “market-
ability”. Blogs give us the chance
to share text with lightning speed,
making it easily accessible across
the globe in a matter of seconds.
And paperbacks and hardcovers
feed our more fetishistic needs—
reading as religion; personal librar-
ies as shrines of knowledge, trib-
utes to genius.
But until recently, we’ve not
cracked the mystery of how to make
sure that what we write will be read
by millions, rather than just our
devoted mothers. We’ve not had an
obvious vehicle for this, the most
desired quality of all: guaranteed
success (short of printing our po-
etry in humongous letters on the
moon, of course).
Enter: ultra vixen of oozifying
sex appeal, smooth-skinned smor-
gasbord of poetry, mighty trans-
former of all our textual realities,
Megan Fox.
The first poem to be published
on the oh-so-popular body of Meg-
an Fox was the somewhat tradi-
tional “Chinese symbol”—in this
case “strength”—on the back of her
head. From Chinese minimalism,
she moved on to publishing a bit
of Shakespeare: “We will all laugh
at gilded butterf lies” on her right
shoulderblade. She followed up
Shakespeare’s success with a bit of
her own poesying: “there once was
a little girl who never knew love
until a boy broke her HEART” on
her right f lank. Last but not least,
quite recently she added a myste-
rious line to her left f lank: “And
those who were seen dancing were
thought to be insane by those who
could not hear the music”—vari-
ously attributed to Friedrich Niet-
szche, Jelaluddin Rumi, the 18th
century mystic Rabbi Nachman,
Henri Bergson, George Carlin or
an “unknown” poet by the name of
Angela Monet. But no matter who
wrote it, there is no doubt whatso-
ever no poem was read as widely
last week.
But just like the iPad or the Kin-
dle, blogs or bacteria, Megan Fox,
although a welcome addition to the
plethora of poetic vehicles, is more
of an addition to book culture than
a replacement of it.
Poetry | Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
Inscribed Round The Rectum Of A Hollywood Superstar
Now translated into over 14 languag-
es, Hallgrímur Helgason’s novel ‘101
Reykjavík’ literally transformed the
traditionally held view of Iceland as
an untouched Eden into one of party
excess. After the underground suc-
cess of Baltasar Kormákur’s 2002
movie starring Pedro Almodóvar’s
cult diva Victoria Abril, Faber and
Faber (UK) bought the English-lan-
guage rights. Hallgrímur’s novel is
one of the few pieces of contempo-
rary Icelandic literature that are rep-
resented by the commercial main-
stream.
Reviewing the book, American
novelist Tim Sandlin said: “Imag-
ine if Henry Miller had written
Tropic of Cancer on crack instead
of wine. [‘101 Reykjavik’] has the
least likeable narrator in literary his-
tory. Worse than Donleavy’s Ginger
Man or the fat guy in Confederacy
of Dunces.” Despite this, Sandlin
highly recommends this book—if
anything, for sheer maudlin dis-
gust. Certainly ‘101 Reykjavik’ is a
tome to the urban slacker generation
and Hlynur, the protagonist of the
story, is not the man you’d want your
daughter to bring home for dinner.
He’s a lame, grubby drunkard, but
he has his moments of prophetic in-
spiration. In his thirties and weaving
on the fringes of society, Hlynur still
lives at home with his mother and
does as little as possible. Mostly he
surfs the internet for porn, seeking
any possible depravity he can get his
hands on.
A loose deconstruction of Ham-
let, this is a one-man rant against the
world of normalcy; a coming of age
story which never truly comes of age.
Hallgrímur seems to favour the trag-
ic character. Even in his more recent
work ‘Rokland’ (‘Stormland’—as yet
unreleased in English), a misunder-
stood rebel named Böddi from the
deep countryside village of Krókur,
sets out across country to kill the
Prime Minister.
‘101 Reykjavik’ reads a little like
some kind of stream-of-conscious-
ness, post-modernist novel in verse:
“We watch the light as it slowly fades
on the eastern horizon, witness
the mountains in their final battle
against the powers of darkness, a
battle they’re doomed to lose, heroic
but doomed, about to be wiped off
the map of a visible world…What the
hell am I saying?...There are more
ideas in one unsmoked cigarette
than five heft tomes of sagas.”
And yes, you can feel the tragi-
comedy that emerges in Hall-
grímur’s unlikely Hamlet, Hlynur.
At times, Hlynur’s puns and jokes go
a little over the top; and in the Eng-
lish translation it is hard to say, but
it does appear that Hallgrímur has
achieved the semblance of an Ice-
landic street jive. In a review in the
Guardian, Julie Myerson said: “What
this writer is doing is being current,
being new, shaking up notions of
literariness with naughty terrier
teeth…He has done the best thing
possible: found a new way of telling.
It is a kind of pop prose which looks
easy, but is far from it.” Yes, there are
some real zingers in the book, but
the comic plot takes its good old time
to f lesh out. And despite the capable
translation by Brian FitzGibbon one
cannot help but think that this novel
might have better achieved its pur-
pose with some heavy-handed edit-
ing.
Hallgrímur's slacker-hero
Hlynur assigns each of the women
he meets with a monetary value
based on how much he would be
willing to pay to sleep with them:
Mother Teresa (1.700 ISK), Pamela
Anderson (4.700.000 ISK). His di-
vorced mother has just come out of
the closet, and Hlynur finds himself
sexually attracted to his mother’s
lover Lolla. All of a sudden Hlynur
discovers out that Hófí, the girl he
occasionally shags, is pregnant.
Meanwhile, when his mother is con-
veniently out of town, Hlynur ends
up having drunken sex with Lolla
who he proceeds to impregnate too.
This is Jerry Springer-inspired trag-
edy. It’s funny, it’s poignant, but it re-
ally doesn’t lead us anywhere except
back where we started.
I can’t help but get the feeling
that even if the Reykjavík party scene
of the ‘90s—of the late nights with
Björk and Blur’s Damon Albarn (who
co-wrote the score to the movie), that
untold Icelandic youth empathised
with Hlynur as they led their own
shenanigans through Reykjavík’s
wild and cantankerous Eden of Ec-
stasy and debauched sex. But was
Reykjavík ever really that wild?
All its f laws aside, ‘101 Reykjavik’
is an iconic work that sets the tone
for this decade and those to come. It
has many interesting and humorous
moments, and despite the fact that
it is more of a poetic diatribe than a
novel, that doesn’t quite seem to mat-
ter. The New York Times called ‘101
Reykjavik’ “…a desolate howl from
an in-between decade and an in-be-
tween land.” Without ‘101 Reykjavik’
Iceland would be a far duller place.
In some way, this novel may be seen
as a prophetic lead-in to more cur-
rent events: the amorality of hipsters
and banksters gone mad. The world,
of course, is entirely what you make
of it.
Literature | Marc Vincenz
The Cult of 101
Have you ever seen the film Insomnia?
Both the Norwegian and the Hollywood
versions are a good watch. It’s a
detective drama with the added twist of
the investigation being set above the Arctic Circle
in the middle of summer. As the film progresses,
we see the lead character in charge slowly come
apart as the constant sunlight prevents him from
sleeping. I can almost certainly relate to how he
feels right now. Ladies and gentlemen: Icelandic
summertime is here! And it's wrecking my waking
world ...
Now, I don’t hate summer full stop. Summer can
be loads of fun. Eating charred BBQ and sitting in
Austurvöllur drinking warm beer, while a friend’s
baby vomits on me I have no problem with. In fact,
it's rather dandy in its own little way. Also having
a massive party weekend in the middle of summer
not only is hugely enjoyable, but is probably one of
the few things keeping the economy afloat these
days.
No, my issue is how the relentless march of
daylight in Iceland literally takes a baseball bat to
the kneecaps of my biorhythms. Unlike most people
in Iceland, I’m definitely a winter person. I just
seem to be more hardwired for the night, the cold
and the snow. Perhaps I have vampiric DNA spliced
into my own system, but rest assured, at least I
won´t fucking sparkle when you take me outside.
Of course like any other Útlegmaginganaga
n00b, when I first came to Iceland the idea of
nearly 24 hours of sunlight appealed to me greatly.
Especially the more party-on aspects of this
situation. And there were some lovely memories
of that first summer. Having a pint in the Celtic
Cross at 4 AM while watching the sun come up.
Or doing a solo midnight hike up a mountain trail
at Þórsmörk. At 3 AM, I’m miles from anyone, while
I watch the sun rise over a mountain pass. I almost
wished I had some decent psychedelic drugs and
Sigur Rós on my MP3 player at the time, as I’m sure
there would have been a transcendental moment
that could have changed the course of my life in
many different ways
But as the years have progressed along with my
need to perform mundane day-to-day tasks, like
work, I find myself engaged in an ever increasing
battle with nature as my insomnia grows worse and
worse. Take right now. Right now, while I write these
notes, it's 2:30 in the morning, I have to be up in 4
hours and I have PiL’s Metal Box in my headphones
(admittedly that's not the best choice of music
when you're trying to wind down). I am fully aware
that tomorrow I am going to experience waves of
nausea while my eyes will look like pissholes in red
snow.
Personally I’m not sure of how to alleviate my
current predicament. I probably need to change
my lifestyle. Perhaps I need to cut down on the 25
cups of tea I drink over a day, do more exercise and
eat fresh fruit. It would probably also help to stop
listening to stuff like experimental French Black
Metal or Russian Drone-Folk and give something
more calming and soothing a chance.
Or I could utilise my waking state and do
something constructive. Perhaps work a second
job, like several of my friends do over the weekend.
Sounds okay, but I can’t drive and I’ve had my fill of
working in 101 dive bars. Or maybe I should start
an illegal underground fighting club, using that as
the base to create a semi anarchic anti-corporate
terrorist group aiming to bring down Icelandic
society with pranks and blowing up shit. Do you
think I can get a government grant for that? Maybe
Jón Gnarr will help?
Waking Dreamstates
and eyes like pissholes
in the snow...
Opinion | Bob Cluness
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