The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2008, Síða 16

14
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 62 #1
mentality”.
In England, publishers were influenced
by the prejudices of the United States but
they were the first to begin publishing
Laxness’ books in translation, starting in
the late fifties. In 1958 The Happy Warrior
was published in a limited edition in
England. An English translation of The
Atom Station was also published in
England in 1961. The Atom Station was
not published in the United States until
1982, by Second Chance Press, a small
independent press in Sag Harbor, NY.
Laxness began to see his books published
in the United States in the early sixties.
Paradise Reclaimed was published in 1962,
The Fish Can Sing in 1966 and World Light
in 1969. All of the novels with the excep-
tion of The Happy Warrior were translated
by British television personality Magnus
Magnusson. The books were not best sell-
ers and were published by small presses or
university press publishers. There was no
mention of political controversies on the
dust jackets.
In the late fifties and the early sixties,
Laxness and Iceland were comfortably and
securely confirmed socialists and there was
little threat of the country reverting to
Soviet communism. There was little threat
of that happening when Laxness was being
investigated as confirmed by a declassified
top secret CIA document. The document
dated October 18, 1949 and declassified on
January 23, 1978 titled “Current Situation
in Iceland” states “The Communist Party,
as such, is no longer an important factor in
Icelandic politics. It can no longer make or
unmake a government; it will lose votes in
the coming election, possibly two out of its
ten seats, and its chances of participating in
the new government are nil.”
Laxness visited the United States in
September 13, 1959 and a memo was sent
by the Special Agent in Charge in New
York to J. Edgar Hoover telling of his
arrival and that he was staying at the
Barclay Hotel in New York. It is the last
top secret document in the FBI/Halldor
Laxness files. J. Edgar Hoover was now
losing interest in the Icelandic writer.
For over fifty years Laxness’ voice was
silenced in English.
In 1997, Brad Leithauser wrote “A
Small Country’s Great Book” for the New
York Times Review of Books which result-
ed in the reissuing of the epic novel
Independent People. As a result of that
article and the surprisingly brisk book
sales, Laxness rose like a Phoenix from
obscurity to become recognized as one of
the greatest writers of the twentieth centu-
ry. In 1989 the Berlin Wall was torn down
and in 1991 the Soviet Union fell. Six years
later a novel that had been accused during
the 50s of being a socialist diatribe written
by a “commie sympathizer” would once
again capture the imagination of the
American reading public. Today, Laxness
is acknowledged as deserving of the great-
est literary prize. There is little chance that
his books will be out of print in English
once again and he has entered the interna-
tional literary canon. English speaking
readers and academics have accepted
Halldor Laxness.
Halldor Laxness died in 1998, just one
year after the reissuing of Independent
People by Vintage International. He was 96
years old and had been suffering from
dementia for several years. He may have
had some realization that his book was
going to once again be offered in English in
the United States, but he died before the
full implication of its reemergence became
clear. It is important that we acknowledge
Halldor Laxness as one of the blacklisted
artists of the period. He was not a novelist
whose great work was lost because of a
fickle and disinterested public, poor mar-
keting by his publisher or because of some
literary anomaly.
Halldor Laxness and his great epic
novel Independent People were victims of
political persecution which resulted in the
destruction of a world writer’s reputation.
As a result of petty political interfer-
ence by the two controversial and much
discredited American figurees J. Edgar
Hoover and Sen. Eugen McCarthy the
Laxness' literature was hidden from a large
audience of potential readers.
Generations of English readers were
unable to experience one of the greatest
novels ever written.