#Halldor Laxness
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two human beings have such difficulty in understanding each other, there is nothing so tragical as two human beings
Halldór Laxness, "Independent People" (Vintage International, February 19, 2009)
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"If one wants to steal, dear boy," said the pastor, "then for God's sake one should never steal from the rich. A rich man has a hundred peats, and then suddenly he has only ninety-nine left: one of them has been stolen. He won't forget that even on his deathbed. A poor man has only one peat and is just as poor if it's stolen; and by the next day he has forgotten all about it. The wealthy man will inevitably get you into trouble if you steal from him; the poor man doesn't even bother to mention it. That's why all genuine thieves have the good sense to steal from the poor. The only really dangerous thing to do in Iceland is to steal from the rich, and the only really profitable thing to do in Iceland is to steal from the poor, dear boy."
- from World Light by one of the great socialist novelists, Halldór Laxness; written in 1938
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the incomprehensible labyrinth of fate
—Halldór Laxness, Independent People
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Iceland. The scene reminds me of Halldór Laxness’s book Independent People.
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In the blood of some people there is bred only one wish, and they are the children of happiness, for life is exactly big enough for one wish, not for two. In her suffering his mother had planted in his bosom this one wish: he wished for other countries.
Halldór Laxness, Independent People
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"May I ask, what did this Adam ever accomplish?" said the Lutheran. "Did he ever make any money? I've never heard it said that he got himself a house, far less a carriage; not even a pair of shoes. He probably just lived in a dugout like me. And what did he have to eat? Do you think he had broth every weekday and turkey with cranberries on Sundays? I wouldn't be surprised if he never had a square meal except for that apple his old hag offered him."
Paradise Reclaimed by Halldor Laxness
#novels#quotes#fiction#20th century#icelandic#halldor laxness#paradise reclaimed#nobel prize in literature#adam and eve#the apple#theological disputation#prosperity gospel#food
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"Eccentricity never did anyone any good, dear Sälvor, and obstinacy even less," he said in a fatherly tone, yet without taking any obvious offense at her brusque reply. "Never-- in all of human history. On the contrary, han history reveals how eccentricity begets obstinacy in every possible way. It takes only one bad apple to spoil the bunch. What would happen, for example, if all the pretty, shapely girls stopped thinking of house and home, wore trousers on Sunday and founded all sorts of unions? What would that do to our nation?"
"I don't think I follow you, Bogeson," said the girl.
"No?" he asked. "Well, then I shall try to express myself more clearly. What do you think would happen if all the foreign trends from down south were allowed to spread in a little fishing village such as this, and people took them as some sort of divine revelation and whirled from one to the next, whatever they are called: Krishnamurti, bobbed hair, influenza, Bolshevism, just to name the ones that first spring to mind from the southern newspapers-- yes, what would happen? What becomes of a person, what becomes of a village, if he or it loses its self-determination? Aren't all the most beautiful names in the Icelandic sagas, all the most wonderful memories of the nation, bound in some way to the nation's self-determination and cultural heritage? I say that they are. And are we then to lose all of this by going and aping every sort of foul trend that comes to this village from the south?"
"Speaking of bobbed hair, Bogeson, as far as I recall, it was your daughter Áugústa who was the first one seen here with that style of haircut," said the girl.
"Yes, but isn't that something entirely different? She is married to a naval officer in Copenhagen."
"The fancies, whims of gentry proud, the rest presume to be allowed," said Salka Valka, who knew her Hallgrímur Pétursson as well as anyone else in the village.
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Conversation
Tourist: I shot some geese for you, what did you do with them?
Summerhouses children: Boiled 'em.
Tourist: You... you what? But... but my beautiful fat geese... you have to fry geese in butter...
Summerhouses children: Don't have any butter.
Tourist: Why NOT?!
Summerhouses children: Dad doesn't want to buy a churn.
Tourist: ...what DOES your dad like?
Summerhouses children: Sheep.
#no milk no cows no butter only sheep#Independent People#I do wish my translation had translated Asta Solilja's name#because on the one hand it sounds better as Asta Sollilja#but you really miss the point of how ridiculous her name is by not having her constantly referred to#as Beloved Sunlily#Halldor Laxness did not put that psychic damage in the book to slap you every other page#just for translators to take it back out#look guys it's not even hard to translate Sola just call her Sunny it's literally already a name#I have translation philosophy differences with whoever this is#anyway Dad did in fact put by a bunch of money#and the kids got super excited thinking they might get a house#after living for 13 years in the sheep shed with the sheep#but no#he built a better pen for the ewes instead#now they share the shed with the horse and the cow instead#(against his will Dad was forced to buy a cow and has not stopped grumbling about it)#(it's been - a year? eighteen months? his family is more healthy happy and energetic and he Hates the cow)
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Every book/movie/show Sara Quin has recommended.
and some reviews at the bottom, not the ones on skq reads
Books
Abandon Me by Melissa Febos
After the Tall Timber: Collected Nonfiction by Reneta Adler
Against Everything by Mark Grief
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy by Dave Hickey
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & and Clay by Michael Chaboan
A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
*An Education by Susan Choi
*Anything That Moves, Dana Goodyear
*Are You My Mother? By Alison Bechdel
*Artful by Ali Smith
*A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
*A Widow for One Year by John Irving
A Zine Yearbook by Jason Kucsma
Barbarian Days Surfing Life by William Finegan
Bark by Lorrie Moore
Barney’s Version by Mortecai Richler
Behind The Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
Berlin Stories by Robert Walser
Borne by Jeff VadnerMeer
Bossy Pants by Tina Fey
Blood Horses by John Jeremiah Sullivan
By Blood by Ellen Ullman
By Grand Central Station by Elizabeth Smart
Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
Can’t and Won’t by Lydia Davis
Cats & Plants by Stephen Eichhorn
Changed my Mind by Zadie Smith
Cleopathra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
Colour by Icons by Never Apart
*Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Death & Co by Alex Day and more
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Diary of a Bad Year by J.M Coetzee
Don’t Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
Do What You Want by Ruby Tandoh
Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechel
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
Empire Of Illusion by Chris Hedges
Empty Nest
End of Eddy by Edouard Louis
Epilectic by David Beauchard
Essays Against Everything by Mark Grief
Essex County by Jeff Lemire
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
*Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
Farther Away: Essays by Jonathan Franzen
Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem
Feeding My Mother by Jane Arden
Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis
*Flutter by Jennie Wood
Forty One False Starts by Janet Malcolms
Forgive Me if I’ve Told You This Before by Karelia Stetz Waters
Fosse by Sam Wasson
Fraud Essays by David Rakoff
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechel
Getting A Life: Stories by Helen Simpson
Girls in the Moon by Janet McNally
Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks
*Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Groomed by Jess Rona
*Habibi by Craig Thompson
Half Empty by David Rake
Helter Skelter by Curt Gentry and Vincent Bugliosi
Her Body And Other Parties by Carmen Machado
Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis Benn
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the II by Christopher Warwick
*H is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald
*Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I Am a Camera by John Van Druten
I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morries, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton
*Independence Day by Richard Ford
Independent people by Halldor Laxness
Intimacy by Jean-Paul-Satre
I Pass Like Night by Jonathan Ames
I Want To Show You More by Jamie Quatro
Jamilti and Other Stories by Rutu Modan
Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera
*Kramers Ergot by Sammy Harkham
Krazy! By Bruce Grenville
Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
*Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls- David Sedaris
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
*Light Years by James Salter
Likewise by Ariel Shrag
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Love Dishonor Marry Die Cherish Perish by David Rakoff
Love In Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet
Making Nice by Matt Sumell
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall
May We Be Forgiven by A.M Homes
Mean by Myriam Gurba
Me before You by Jojo Moyes
Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit
Music for Torching by A.M Homes
*My Education by Susan Choi
My Father’s Tears and Other Stories by John Updike
My Lifte in France, Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme
My Misspent Youth by Meghan Daum
Mourning Diary by Roland Barthes
My Struggle by Karl One Knausgaard
My Struggle 2 by Karl One Knausgaard
Mythologies by Roland Barthes
Nasty Woman by Heather McDaid
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
Nightfilm by Marisha Pessl
Nobody Is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey
No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics by Justin Hall
Notes on a Foreign Country by Suzy Hansen
Nothing to be Frightened of by Julien Barnes
On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates
Open City by Teju Cole
Opposite of Hate by Sally Kohn
*Paper Lantern: Love Stories by Stuart Dybek
Pauline Kael: A Life In The Dark by Brian Kellow
Paying For It by Chester Brown
*Pirates and Farmers by Dave Hickey
*Pitch Dark by Renata Alder
Political Fictions by Joan Didion
Polyamorous Love Song by Jacob Wren
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
*Provence 1970 by Luke Barr
Pulphead-Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan
*Random Family by Adrian NicoleLeBlanc
Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya
She believed she could so she did by Julie ‘Hesta Prynn’ Slavin
She of the Mountains by Vivek Shraya
Somebody with a Little Hammer by Mary Gaitskill
Speedboat by Renata Adler
Special Exits by Joyce Farmer
State of Wonder by Ann Patchet
Stoner by John Williams
Summertime by J.M Coetzee
Sweet Tooth by Jeff Lemire
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
**Tenth of December by George Saunders
That Summer Time Sound- Matthew Specktor (sara narrates a part in the audio version)
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan
The Best American Comics 2007 by Charles Burns
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009 by David Eggers
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
The Children of Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez
The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal
The Birth House by Ami McKay
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
The Dark Room by Susan Faludi
*The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
The Disappointment Artist by Jonathan Lethem
The Doors Of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley
The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions by Jonathan Lethem
The End of The Story by Lydia Davis
The Essential Elle Willis by Ellen Willis
The Fight by Norman Mailer
*The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits
The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
*The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Idiot by Elif Batumam
The Informed Air by Muriel Spark
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton M. Christensen
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
*The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster
The Irresponsible Self by James Woods
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcom
**The Last Word: Reviving the Dying Art of Eulogy by Julia Cooper
The Little Red Chairs by by Edna O’Brien
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein
The Missing Piece Meets The Big O by Shel Silverstein
The Moronic Inferno by Martin Amis
The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit
The Neopolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
The Nobody by Jeff Lemire
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
The People in the Trees- Hanya Yanagihara
The Notebooks of Malte Laurid’s Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
The Property by Rutu Modan
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy
This life by Martin hagglund
The Sense Of An Ending by Julian Barnes
The Slow Man by J.M Coetzee
The Spirit catches you and you fall down by Anne Fadiman
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner65
The War Against Cliche by Martin Amis
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
Things Are What You Make Of Them by Adam J. Kurtz
Thinking, Fast And Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman
*This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
To my Trans Sisters by Charlie Croggs
Tranny by Laura Jane Grace
True Stories by Helen Garner
Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm
Unless by Carol Shields
Versed by Rae Armantrout
Visiting Mrs. Nabokov by Martin Amis
Vitamin PH: New Perspectives in Photography by Rodrigo Alonso
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M Coetzee
WACK! Art and The Feminist Revolution by Cornelia Butler
*Wake In Fright by Kenneth Cook
Wanderlust A History of Walking by Rebecca Saint
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
*We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Whatever happened to Interracial Love by Kathleen Colleens
What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
When Things Go Missing by Kathryn Schulz
*White Girls by Hilton Als
Winter by Ali Smith
Women by Charles Bukowski
(Woman) Writer: by Joyce Carol Oates
Works of Love by Søren Kierkegaard
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
*100 Essays I don’t Have Time To Write by Sarah Ruhl
-Any works written by Renata Adler, Edward Albee, Roland Barthes, Alison Bechel, Beverly Cleary, J.M Coetzee, Susan Faludi, David Hickey, Elena Ferrante, Stephen King, John Irving, Jeff Lemire, and Lorrie Moore, and David Rakoff, Anne Rice, Donna Tartt, and John Updike
Magazines
Harper’s
Lapham’s Quarterly
Rolling Stones
SPIN
The Believer (August 2003, September 2004, November 2004, October 2008, November/December 2008, March/April 2009, June 2009)
The New Yorker
Bookstores
Drawn and Quarterly in Montreal
Sam Wellers Zion in salt lake LA
Strand Books
Housingworks
Mcleods in Vancouver
Powells
Sara wrote something short in ‘do what you want’ by ruby tandoh
also wrote the preface to jess rona’s book
Movies, Documentaries, Shows, Podcasts etc
Adventures in Babysitting
Arrested Development
*Bachelorette
Beauty is EmbarrassingBlack Power Mix Tape
*Bojack Horsemen (same artist as the Hang On music video)Broadchurch
Brothers and Sisters
Brown Girls
Bugsy Malone
Call me By Your Name
Luca Guadagnino
Cameraperson by Kirsten Johnson
*Charlie Rose
*ChungKing Express
*Dan Savage Lovecast
***DeadWood
Drinking Buddies
Fresh Air with Terry Gross
Friday Night Lights
Full House
Game of Thrones
GarfieldGolden Girls Goonies
*Holy Motors
Home ImprovementI
nside Out
In The Loop
Lake
Legion
Little Shop of Horrors
L.O.V.E (tv series)
Madmen
Milk 2008
Moonlight
Nashville
Neon Bull
Orange Is The New BlackPhantom of The Paradise Rocky Horror Picture Show Sense8ShamelessShort Cut because 1992 Julianne Moore
Simon Killer
Sopranos Talk
RadioSpeed the Plow by David Mamet
Still Processing
Terminator 2
Terry Gross Fresh air NPR
The Bridge
The Crown
The Fall
The Fugitive
The Leftovers
The Minipops
The Thick of It
The Office (UK)
The Property Brothers
The Real Housewives of (anywhere)
The Wire
*This American Life
Tom Petty- Running Down A Dream
Trueblood
WALL-E
War of the Worlds
War Witch
Weiner-Dog
West Wing
2Dope Queens
13 Monkeys
30 Rock
and here’s some more book reviews from Sara
Outline
by Rachel Cusk
The truth is that I struggled to pick my favorite book or writing from Rachel Cusk. All three novels in her
Outline series
are fantastic, and I’ve reread each of them first with passion and then again with a studious eye. For me there is the lonely, yet pragmatic, keen observational protagonist that appeals to me deeply. But also, a woman traveling, forever on the receiving end of looping conversation with strangers. I find her writing extremely romantic. What I’d most like to include on this list, is a piece of her writing from the
New York Times Magazine
: "Making House: Notes on Domesticity." It is a perfect piece of writing about the struggle of making a home and living it in comfortably. “Like the body itself, a home is something both looked at and lived in, a duality that in neither case I have managed to reconcile. I retain the belief that other people’s homes are real where mine is a fabrication, just as I imagine others to live inner lives less flawed than my own.
”
Fire Sermon
by Jamie Quatro
Jamie Quatro’s novel about devotion, longing, lust and god was impossible to put down. I read it in one giant gulp. While male writers are given ample opportunity to write about these ideas, it still feels rare and thrilling when women do.
Sing, Unburied, Sing
by Jesmyn Ward
Everything Jesmyn Ward has written has haunted me afterward. Unblinking, brutal, heartbreaking stories. Her writing feels both modern and like something from a masterpiece that every student is meant to read in high school or college.
The Topeka School
by Ben Lerner
I love a hook, a melody that on first listen gives you goosebumps, or makes your stomach lurch up to your throat. Sometimes I hear one and I think, “that is a smash,” and then settle in to envy that I didn’t write the song myself. That was the feeling I had reading
I couldn’t help but compare our memoir because both books center adolescence and high school at their core. While Ben writes dazzlingly about masculinity and violence and the bubbling rage of teenage boys, I thought about the way we wrote about the paralysis and fear of being a queer girl in that same kind of world. While his boys turn their rage outward, we focused our violence inward, on the most tender parts of ourselves. Ben’s writing opens a door to understanding something about my own experience of those adolescent years. He sheds light on the parents and teachers whose complicated lives indelibly haunt our own, in ways we don’t realize until we become adults. It seems much of our public conversation revolves around what to do about and with men,
The Topeka School is a thrilling response. All of that to say, I think Ben’s book is a smash.
JUNE 3, 2009
1. The Flamethrowers by Rachel KushnerI was so captivated there was no choice but to finish it entirely in one long stretch of days. Passages so beautiful that I found myself re-reading them over and over again in amazement. I think it was in the Harpers Magazine review that they called it feminist and sexy. It’s true. An entirely fresh and inspiring heroine.
2. Light Years by James SalterSo many tears; on the tarmac, on the subway, tucked in my bus bunk. I will cherish this book forever. It is 40 years old and that made the discovery so much more powerful. It’s also a good reminder that I am sentimental and a romantic no matter how hard I try to resist those urges. I’ll cozy up with my tears any day, you can’t shame me!
3. Tenth of December by George SaundersThere aren’t very many writers with a body of work I love so completely. But, I think this is my absolute favourite. I have total admiration/awe for a mind this strange and wonderful
#tegan wrote a song for this book called Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs#it sounds like it could be in the con#you can search it on youtube it's there#there's some * asteriks cause she spoke mo#more about those#or liked them more#Sara Quin#tegan and sara#i'm sorry if i'm spamming tns tags with so much text i only have like 5 posts to make i swear#i've had this shit in my notes for like literally 10 years#from like#and stuff from their insta story or other things#interviews#SKQREADS#arrested development and the crown are both so good#and Moonlight
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Dusk; the boundaries of world and unworld obliterated; a new moon behind the clouds.
Halldór Laxness, "Independent People" (Vintage International, February 19, 2009)
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parasocial relationship with the person in my building who keeps putting quality books in the donation area for me to steal immediately like a thieving and ravenous magpie. authors include but are not limited to: Solzhenitsyn, Roberto Bolaño, Halldor Laxness, Karen Russell, Richard Flanagan, and Judith Butler. who are you dark stranger. can we kiss
#when I was at my lowest point (throwing away shameful consequences of cleaning out the fridge at midnight)#you carried me (left both volumes of the Gulag Archipelago from 1974 with a map on the inside cover)#Egg talks
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Call me Eagle Wolf, fierce opponent of capitalism.
From the footnotes to World Light by Halldór Laxness.
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And when she looked eastward along the gap, expecting to see another hill in front of her, lo and behold, there was nothing to see; it was as if the world came to a sudden stop before her eyes and the depth of the skies took its place, though with a different shade of blue. Or was it that the sky was supported out on the horizon there by a gleaming wall of blue-green glass? This strange blue colour seemed to embrace all the mysteries of distance, and she stood for a moment overwhelmed by the prospect of such infinity. It was as if she had come to the edge of the world. “Father," she said in a perplexed and hesitating voice, "where are we?" "We've crossed the heath," he replied. “That's the ocean.” "The ocean," she repeated in an awe-stricken whisper.
–Halldór Laxness, Independent People
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picked up the great weaver from kashmir by halldor laxness on an absolute whim not even knowing anything about it and it's so eerie how much this book is like made for me... it has a bunch of reviews from disgruntled americans like i picked this book up because I'm going to iceland but its just full of 200 pages of the protagonist's philosophical and spiritual ramblings....well...its me.... hi... girl who loves philosophical and spiritual ramblings 😭
^ see to me this is a 5 star review. what else could you want
#the translation is so artful.. sniffs...im so used to giving and now I get to receive#the gender politics are real af too#and it mentioned grettir like from the saga of grettir#with a footnote for English readers to explain who that is#so I felt like the specialest snowflake for already knowing
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