Independent People

I was excited to begin reading this book after reading the rave reviews. Boy, was I disappointed. I cannot . I had no clear understanding or connection to the main characters. It was the worst book I have attempted to read in years!

In 1954, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to one Ernest Hemingway; his successor the year following was a considerably lesser known Icelander named Halldor Laxness. Yet Papa Hemingway would no doubt have felt both admiration and kinship with Laxness's stubbornly comical, almost tragic hero Gudbjartur Jonsson, in INDEPENDENT PEOPLE. Bjartur, as he is called, is undoubtedly one of literature's great single-minded characters, a Don Quixote of Iceland's punishing sheep country, a Candide devoted to the seemingly simple concept of personal independence. Unlike Sartre's spineless seeker of freedom, Matthieu Delarue (THE AGE OF REASON), however, Bjartur has both guiding principles and a backbone, although probably too much of both. The plot lines are surprisingly minimal for a book of nearly 500 dense pages. After eighteen years of working as a sheep-herder for the local (and wealthy) Bailiff, Bjartur scrapes up enough money to purchase a scrabbly piece of boggy land and a few sheep from his former employer. The land is rumored to be cursed, but Bjartur disdains these superstitions and resolutely forges ahead, optimistically naming his homestead Summerhouses. Refusing to assume debt or even ask for help in order to preserve his cherished independence, Bjartur of Summerhouses builds a sod house (the sheep live downstairs, the humans upstairs), slowly expands his flock through birthing, and marries a woman (Rosa) who dies alone in childbirth; Bjartur is out in a violent snowstorm searching for a sheep that he doesn't know his dead wife had cooked and eaten. The infant (named Asta Sollilja - Beloved Sun-Lily) only survives thanks to the body warmth of Bjartur's dog. Later, Bjartur marries again and fathers three boys (Helgi, Gvendur, and Nonni), as well as several stillborn children. His second wife dies, but Bjartur and his children eke out an existence that suddenly improves with the increase in price in Icelandic wool during World War I. Of course, this newfound wealth brings its own set of curses, luring Bjartur and his farming colleagues into building new, more modern houses. The intrusion of worldly affairs into Summerhouses also threatens the solidarity of Bjartur's family and results in breakup and tragedy, but also in a certain degree of good fortune. By the end of the story, Bjartur and his much-reduced family and flock are forced to set out for new land even further into the rugged north, recalling nothing so much as the ending of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN. Plot and story is not really what INDEPENDENT PEOPLE is about. Laxness has penned a great satire of Icelandic mores and customs, turning Bjartur into the sort of close-minded, impossibly stubborn farmer who, the more he strives for independence, the greater and tighter are the shackles that bind him. Bjartur is surrounded by a colorful group of supporting characters, from the equally stubborn Asta and romantic Nonni to the other sheep farmers, the odd and slovenly Bailiff Jon,

I first read "Independent People" in 1996 after reading Brad Leithauser's essay in the "New York Review of Books." Leithauser's praise of the book and the author were so intriguing that I went to the library that day and found an earlier edition. I recently had the opportunity to read the book again, with Leithauser's essay serving as an introduction. A single reading cannot exhaust this outsize, obscure novel by the 1955 Nobel-prize winner from Iceland.On a simple level, "Independent People" deals with the lives of the poor sheep grazers in Iceland early in the 20th Century. The hero is a farmer named Bajartur of Summerhouses who, after 18 years of working for another, the baliff, earns enough money to buy his own small farm. Bajartur's goal is to be independent and self-sufficient, to take what he earns and not take or give to others. In addition to this simple economic credo for independence. Bjartur is an "independent person" emotionally in his relationships with his wives -- he is twice married in the book -- his three sons and his daughter -- actually his first wife's daughter but not Bjartur's -- whom Bjartur names Asta Sollija the "beloved sun -lily" whom he refers to as his soul's "one flower." Much of this long, multi-faceted book involves Bjartur's relationship with Asta Sollija -- their estrangement and ultimate reconciliation.Bjartur and Asta Sollija and their relationship frames but hardly exhausts this book. There is a picture of Iceland -- or of modernizing society in general with its conflict between farmer and town. There are long discussions of poetry and literature, of war, of politics, and particularly of philosophy and religion, see below. For all its length and seriousness, much of the book is funny, almost satirical in tone in the way it pokes fun at Bjartur and his intellectual and emotional limitations. The reader still comes to admire Bjartur for his fortitude and stubborness.The book is timeless in character and the chronology is blurred. World War I plays a pivotal role in the middle of the book but the times before and the times after seem to be endless and undefined. There is something that is prototypical and archetypical about this book -- it is hardly an exercise in the realistic novel.From a subsequent essay about Laxness by Brad Leithauser, I learned that Laxness was the kind of person generally called a seeker. This made me admire him and this book all the more and informed greatly my second reading. Growing up in a small, isolated nation, Laxness read exhaustively and put something of himself into his readings. He changed his mind many times during his life, being at various stages entirely secular, a socialist with perhaps communist leanings, and an adherent of various forms of Christianity. He took a rare delight in important ideas and showed an openness and fluidity to them that I find reflected in the themes of "Independent People." Most obviously, their is Bjartur's character with its em

Having just read INDEPENDENT PEOPLE, I feel as though I have been drawn into the vortex of some great hurricane and am being carried around the globe by it, high above the surface, trapped in its gravity.This story has captured me and will not let me go. It is above all the heroic struggle of a Viking farmer to be free and his refusal to grieve in loss and defeat that grip me. He never grieves. Why then did I continually grieve for him? And why am I grieving for him still? The answer must be that my character is weak in comparison. Laxness may have spoken for all survivors everywhere. "Never mourn what you have lost."--"rather content yourself with what you have left, when you have lost what you had."Some people learn Russian to read Pushkin. I want to learn Icelandic to read Laxness.As for politics and ideologies, not to worry. They are just a little dust here and there on the floor of the croft, at times a little distraction. The story unfolds outside and above and all around them and in its enormous weight little concerns them.Could this book possibly have been written just for me? To enjoy it most, a reader should probably have lived at least a thousand years.

Independent People is not a book for everyone. It is a long, slow and sometimes punishing read. Laxness paints the sheep farmer's life in bleak tones. Think of Solzhenitsyn's Siberia or Rolvaag's Dakota prairie. So dismal is the mood at times that the reader feels the imminent onset of seasonal affective disorder. But Independent People also contains moments of pure, distilled beauty so arresting they seem to stand out from the cold landscape like stars in the ink of darkness. Bjartur of Summerhouses is a true epic hero. As Monte Christo is to vengeance, Bjartur is to self-determination. His emotional intransigence and the suffering he visits on all those close to him is balanced only by the enormity and brute force of his will. Asta Sollilja, his daughter, is the only possible counterweight to his obstinacy, in both emotional and literary terms. She is strong and sensitive, beautiful and grotesque, half Bjartur, half anti-Bjartur. Her duality provides the story's central drama and the book's over-arching metaphor. Masterfully constructed of vignettes woven into small books, Independent People is seamless. Laxness's voice is clear and lyric, never showy. The writing is fresh and modern, yet seems to be channeled from Iceland's mythic past. This is a land populated by many dark spirits and one never feels quite free of their presence here. Certain images from Independent People are indelibly etched on my consciousness. A man violently and accidentally riding a reindeer. A girl longing by a window for a stranger she's met just once. A young man seduced back to the home he has left by a siren on horseback. There is something more to why I love this book. I spent a week in Iceland in July 1998, and was transfixed by its rugged, austere beauty. The feeling I had while reading Independent People was the same feeling that possessed me the entire time I was in Iceland. It was the cold, astonishing sensation of stepping outside your self and gazing on the topography of your own heart.

Every year, I try to read at least one classic work of fiction, whether I need to or not. So far in 1998, my choice has been Halldor Laxness' 1946 Nobel Prize winning novel Independent People. This is a book which I had never heard of until it was re-issued in English (the original is in Icelandic) in 1997. Laxness, who subtitles his work "An Epic," tells the tale of sheep-farmer Bjartur of Summerhouses, and his life-long, monomaniacal struggle for financial independence. In the process, he loses two wives, a son leaves him, and his dearest child -- Asta Sollilja ("Beloved Sun-Lily") -- is disowned. Only by losing all of his wealth does he find what he truly values. While styled "an epic," this is also a whimsical and lyrical work. Bjatur, in addition to farming, is a bit of a poet, and the most remarkable extended scene is Bjatur's desperate struggle with bitter cold in the wilderness while trying to find a strayed sheep. In the middle of the night, to keep his senses and way, he returns to his muse: 'Seldom had he recited so much poetry in any one night; he had recited all his father's poetry, all the ballads he could remember, all his own palindromes backwards and forwards in forty-eight different ways, whole processions of dirty poems, one hymn he learned from his mother, and all the lampoons that had been known in the Fourthing from time immemorial about baliffs, merchants, and sheriffs.'Ultimately, the poetry keeps him alive as he finally crawls his way on all fours to safety. I found myself reading this book in short doses so that I could savor the language, and so it would not end too soon. If someone was with me in the room as I read, I found myself inflicting upon them sentences or whole paragraphs, just to savor the felicity of language and expression. I concur with Jane Smiley's cover blurb: "I can't imagine any greater delight than coming to Independent People for the first time." (Reading this novel and Smiley's remarks, it is clear where she derived many of the themes, descriptions, and grandeur in her 1988 novel Greenlanders. Smiley's work, however, is a much darker book).