The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.2009, Síða 46

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 62 #2
Bll _ L HOLM
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WINDOWS OF BRIMNES AN V Ml RICAN IN ICIUND
The Windows of Brimnes: An
American in Iceland
By Bill Holm
Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, 2007,
216 pages
Reviewed by Rev. Stefan M. Jonasson
Halfway through The Windows of
Brimnes, Bill Holm reflects upon what he
calls “the melancholy quotient”—the study
of genealogy—wished upon him by his
namesake cousin, which inspired “a con-
sciousness of my own death, of the disap-
pearance of everything I’ve loved or done,
and also of the extent of my failure and stu-
pidity. If those people are dead, so will I be
soon.” Little could he have realized just
how soon after the publication of his last
and arguably best book these words would
seem fulfilled, even if we refuse to allow
either failure or stupidity to be attached to
his name, given that he was surely the finest
Icelandic American author of his genera-
tion. Needless to say, he had no way of
knowing that this work necessarily would
be his last, having noted wryly, “only one
certainty beckons ever closer though still
invisible—like any sane human, I would
prefer that certainty to remain invisible a
good while yet.” So would we all.
I have now read The Windows of
Brimnes three times—once shortly after I
bought it, a second time because I loved it
so (and had promised to write a review),
and most recently because of Bill Holm’s
death. I would like to say that it has been a
different book each time I have read it, but
the truth is I have been a different reader
each time I’ve thumbed through its pages.
The book has affected me a little different-
ly each time I’ve picked it up and it will
surely affect me a little differently when I
read it for the fourth and fifth time. And I
surely will, for it is rich in both style and
substance.
The Windows of Brimnes is an inter-
woven collection of essays on a wide array
of matters upon which its author reflected
in the quiet sanctuary of his Icelandic sum-
mer home. Birds and landscapes, huldufolk
and hauntings, racism and xenophonia,
genealogy and gastronomy, poetry and
economics, immigration and mass media,
worship and weed whackers, history and
humour—there’s little that Bill Holm did-
n’t touch upon as he looked out the win-
dows of his cherished cottage at Brimnes
onto both his immediate surroundings in
Iceland and his American home, from
which he had become a voluntary exile for
three months every summer. And yet he
managed to weave these varied strands
together into a tapestry of modern life as
witnessed from an unlikely vantage point at
the top of the inhabited world.
Bill Holm contended that we do not
observe reality directly but “always
through a window of some sort,” which
may be physical or mental—perhaps both.
At Brimnes, he was able to get away from
the distraction and noise of his American
home and, through its panes, see things
more clearly. Comparing Brimnes with
Henry David Thoreau’s cabin on Walden
Pond, its “grand windows” became for