Reykjavík Grapevine - 19.11.2018, Blaðsíða 25

The tools of a narrative
In Sjón’s writing, this amalgam
of sources and influences is sub-
verted as well as celebrated, so that
the final effect reaches far beyond
simple retelling. “If
I choose to write in
a biblical style, for
example, it doesn’t
mean I ’m retel l-
ing stories from
Christian or Jewish
my tholog y,” Sjón
explains. “Rather,
I’m experimenting
with what happens
when you use the
tools those narratives offer to tell
a wholly different story. You might
say that I’m trying to tell the story
of the narrative itself, rather than
a particular story from that narra-
tive world. This is especially true in
‘CoDex 1962,’ where the narrator is
attempting to thread together all
the various ways in which human-
ity has tried to tell its story into one
narrative.”
Fiction as dialogue
This narrator, Joseph Löwe,
freely admits to being a golem—
a physical manifestation of writ-
ten language, shaped out of clay by
his father and mother after their
chance meeting in WWII-era Ger-
many. As he recounts the story of
his birth and the whole of his life,
Joseph draws equally from the an-
nals of history, folklore, theology,
literature and science as from en-
tertainment such as pulps, comics,
films and music. Sjón is adamant
that although such interplay of
sources might be particularly ap-
parent in his work, all fiction is in
some way doing the same thing.
“It’s nonsense to think that you
can write in a vacuum,” he stress-
es. “You can only write in dialogue
with other writers.
I’ve always readily
admitted that a part
of my process is har-
vesting other texts;
texts that I converge
with my own text.
The only rule I have is
that I would never ap-
ply this approach to
another writer’s fic-
tion; merging some-
one else’s fiction with my own—at
least not without making it explicit
in the text that I am doing so.
“However, news reports, in-
terviews, academic and autobio-
graphical writing and so on; those
texts fall within the realms of the
real world. They might be offering
a processed reality, but they still
claim to represent reality. Fiction,
on the other hand, stands separate;
it speaks to reality from outside of
it.”
The voice and character
of a book
All of this research takes up a
major part of his writing process,
he says. He might be gathering
material for a book for years before
actually starting the writing, com-
piling things for numerous novels
at the same time.
“Mario Vargas Llosa said that
the first character you create is the
voice of the book itself,” he explains.
“I spend a lot of time searching for
that voice. I might be gathering ma-
terial for a book for years, having a
storyline, major characters and so
on, without ever finding the book’s
voice. I’ve started books that never
amounted to anything because I
couldn’t find their voice—the right
way to tell their story. That’s okay.
All that research, the exploration
and experimenting, it all ends up
somewhere—usually in some other
book.”
Writing for dopamine
It is evident that for Sjón this
process is rewarding in itself, and
the act of writing has a separate ex-
istence from the fruits of its labour.
“I think writing is basically a
physical thing,” he ruminates. “I get
agitated and tense when I haven’t
written for a while. Most writers
start writing at a young age. Even
if you don’t actually publish any-
thing until much later, your mind
is already occupied with writing.
It becomes a part of the daily func-
tions of the body. If you start to en-
joy the writing process, you want
more, just like any other stimulus.
The dopamine begins to flow when
things are going well, and you get
addicted. A few years of that and
writing becomes just another part
of being alive. I experience a plea-
sure in writing that is completely
inconsequential to whether the
writing itself is coming together
or not. I like sitting there, stirring
words together, arranging them
into sentences.”
He laughs and gestures with his
fingers. “You know, just finding en-
joyment in kneading the dough.”
25The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 19— 2018
“I wanted to
write a book
just like this;
a take-it-or-
leave-it kind
of book.”

“To me, the novel
form is like a whale: it
swims around, mouth
wide open, gobbling
up anything that gets
in its way.”
He makes a good point
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