Reykjavík Grapevine - 27.09.2019, Síða 38

38The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 17— 2019
Interweavin!
Reality And
Ima!ination
McEwan brin!s hauntin! realism to
his fictional works
Words: Sam O’Donnell & a rawlings Photo: Art Bicnick
Halldór Laxness Prize
British author Ian McEwan awarded
inaugural literary prize
Literature has always been inte-
gral to Icelandic culture, though
literary awards are a relatively new
feature of the country’s heritage.
In 1995, Halldór Laxness received
the Nobel Prize for Literature, and
remains the only Icelander to date
to receive the honour.
The newest literary award on
the block is named for Laxness,
and was founded to support au-
thors—via a 15,000 euro prize—
who work to renew the narrative
tradition. Shortly after publishing
‘Machines Like Me’ in April, Brit-
ish author Ian McEwan was an-
nounced as the first recipient of
the Halldór Laxness International
Literary Prize.
The decathlete
of literature
Fast forward to September: liter-
ary enthusiasts crowded into the
University of Iceland’s Lögberg
building and listened as Prime
Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir re-
ferred to Ian McEwan as “the de-
cathlete of literature. He does not
focus on just one sport, but com-
petes in all of them.”
The crowd—including Presi-
dent Gu!ni Th. Jóhannesson and
former president Vigdís Finnbo-
gadóttir—stood and cheered as
she presented the inaugural award
to Ian.
Naked hunger
His translator, Árni Óskarsson,
addressed the crowd. “The warm
reception of McEwan’s work can be
attributed to the fact
that he considers the
pleasure of reading
of the utmost impor-
tance,” he said. “Ian
sees it as his obliga-
tion not to be boring.”
The author has in-
vaded what he calls
“the dead hand of
modernism,” and said
that it is a major goal
of his to incite a naked
hunger in readers. Ian
does this by weaving
a sense of dread or
unease into his work,
and by setting his
works in significant times in his-
tory.
All writers start
as readers
Ian approached the podium and
called the award an enormous
honour. “All writers start as read-
ers,” he said before diving into his
own background.
He did not come from a literary
household. Both his parents left
school at the age of 14. They had
no notion of children’s literature,
so when Ian visited the library at
the age of 8, he had no compass.
Still, he had a desire to read, so he
simply “chomped through books
alphabetically.”
He spoke extensively on the in-
terpenetration of social realism
with a world of imagination, fan-
tasy, and a profound sense of the
supernatural that permeated not
only Laxness’ work, but the work of
many literary geniuses including
Tolstoy and Kafka.
Profound reading
experiences
Ian mentioned two profound read-
ing experiences which coloured
his experience as both a reader and
a writer. At the age of 8, McEwan
had the first of these reading expe-
riences when he read a book called
‘The Gauntlet,’ about a boy named
Peter who finds a rusty gauntlet
that transports him to 14th centu-
ry England. He was so enamoured
by this story, he realised he didn’t
want to read any other book, so he
reread ‘The Gauntlet.’ To this day,
he feels that rereading is of the ut-
most importance.
His second profound reading
ex perience took
place when he was
in boarding school.
He sat in an ornate
reading room, all
by himself, and
read. One of the
books he read was
the famous British
novel, ‘The Go-Be-
tween.’ One of the
major plot points
of this novel is a
massive heat wave.
On the hottest day
of the year, (a sa-
tirical magazine in
the novel) Punch
acknowledged the heat wave with
an illustration of the clown mop-
ping sweat from his forehead with
a handkerchief. When Ian read
this, he put the book down and
checked the archive in the library
to see if this was a real magazine.
He discovered that the heat wave
was real, and so was the maga-
zine. In that moment, he saw the
interpenetration of the real with
the imagined, and it haunted him
ever since.
The Cockroach
Ian’s forthcoming book, ‘The
Cockroach,’ makes intertextual
reference to Kafka’s ‘Metamor-
phosis.’ In Ian’s novel, a cockroach
wakes up to realize he is no longer
an insect, but the prime minister
of the United Kingdom. “I can’t
wait to have a discussion with the
current prime minister of the UK
about what he thinks of it,” Katrín
remarked to the laughing crowd.
It will be released on September
27.
Ian McEwan shows audience invisible apple
Books
“The warm
reception
of McEwan’s
work can be
attributed to
the fact that
he considers
the pleasure of
reading of the
utmost impor-
tance.”
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