Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.01.2018, Qupperneq 40

40The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 01 — 2018
Writer Jónas Reynir Gunnarsson didn’t
publish just one book in 2017, but three—
all of which met with great praise from
critics. It’s safe to say that Jónas Reynir
is a newly minted star of Icelandic lit-
erature, as it’s not often that an author
steps into the spotlight with such a strong
impact. We at Grapevine wanted to know
what moulded this young and bright
mind, and these were his answers.
Three important works
from childhood
I thought about writing just a list of
people whose work moved me the most
(first three names would probably be
Franz Kafka, Tomas Tranströmer and
Tsai Ming-liang). But then I thought
about finding the hidden and forgot-
ten influences, things that made their
mark on me long before I knew what I
wanted to do in life. And here they are:
Three, almost forgotten, important
works from my childhood.

Tóta tætubuska by Kamma Laurents
My mom read this children's book to
me when I was three. Through short
rhymes, it tells the story of an unruly
child who terrorises her home, break-
ing things and ripping clothes apart.
Then she has a horrible nightmare
where her parents go into her room and
start destroying all of her stuff.
When I heard this nightmare being de-
scribed, I cried as hard as I could, just
like Tóta. The next time my mom read
the book to me, she tried to skip over
the chapter that had traumatised me,
but I wouldn't let her. Again she read it,
and again it affected me just the same.
I cried and felt horrible. I had her read
this horror story to me many times af-
ter that. This was the first poetry I was
ever exposed to.

Ravenous by Antonia Bird
I was fourteen when I saw this “West-
ern black comedy horror-suspense
film.” I laughed, was shocked, disgust-
ed and on the edge of my seat. But what
elevated it from “a film that a 14-year-
old thinks is cool" was the protagonist's
struggle with cowardice. It wasn't this
banal type of struggle, like when the
hero has to stop being afraid of battle,
get over his fatal flaw, beat the bad guy,
etc. The hero is struggling against his
own ethical cowardice. This is a deep-
ly philosophical film, where the hero
has to choose between his beliefs and
his life. And has to make this choice
through cannibalism.
I've probably watched this film around
30-40 times. The influence it had on
my work I think has to do with real-
ising what fuels a story. You can have
fireworks, fights and action, but what's
always moved me is an all-but-unsolva-
ble existential struggle.

Waters of March by Antônio Carlos Jobim
The rhythm of the Portuguese lan-
guage and the music is so bright and
beautiful it's hard not being moved by
this song. But the lyrics are what make
it great.
They’re in the form of a list of things
that are by themselves without much
effect: A stick, a stone, a sliver of glass,
a knot in the wood... but it’s in the com-
bination of these things that the poetry
happens. They're clear and precise, but
then, all of the sudden, the perspec-
tive widens and gets impossibly broad:
it’s life, it's the sun, it’s night, and it’s
death.
The list is deadpan and neutral, but
flows between precise objects that feel
like they represent dreams and memo-
ries and unexpected too-big-to-under-
stand-concepts. It is true magic how
combining these simple words fills
the song with a deep feeling of seren-
ity. Life is just a stone, it’s just a body
in bed, it’s just death, it’s just a bunch
of things floating in the river after a
heavy spring rain. This is true poet-
ry that affected me long before I knew
what poetry was.
Culture
Of Cowboy Cannibals
And Unruly Tóta
A few of Jónas Reynir’s favourite things
MAKING OF
AN ARTIST
Words:
Jónas Reynir
Photo:
oto Austurfrétt/
Gunnar
Jónas Reynir
gpv.is/making
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