Interview: Sjón

Sjón is the pen name of Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson, an Icelandic novelist and the author of one of my books of the year The Blue Fox. Here is a fascinating interview in which his answers are miles more interesting than my questions.

SP: The Blue Fox is a short book, with the words used sparingly on the page. I am guessing that this didn't mean it was a quick book to write - or am I wrong?

S: You are right. I wrote it over a two year period. The first year was more or less spent researching 19th century Iceland and reading about the different subjects that make up the story, such as fox hunting, accidents at sea, avalanches, burial rites, the care or abuse of mentally handicapped people, opium smoking, cravats and bow-ties (late Byronesque or otherwise). During that time I also worked hard on the structure of the book and its style. The style came quite naturally as the language of the 19th century documents slowly became natural to me but the structure was informed by my work with the Brodsky Quartet. It was while working with them in the autumn of 2002 that I realized that I could take the classical string quartet as a model for the composition of the Blue Fox. That is why Schubert has a cameo in the book, and his Winterreise and the Death and the Maiden quartet are my imagined soundtrack to it. So, when it came down to actually write the book it took me about four months. I knew from the beginning that it was going to be a short novel so I had to continually slap my wrist when it started to stray in the direction of the epic. And while we are on the subject of long books and short, I read somewhere that when asked why he wrote such long books Sir Walter Scott answered that he didn't have time to make them shorter.

SP: You have written lyrics for Bjork in the past, so a lot of people will know your words without necessarily realising that you wrote them. Presumably you have to approach lyric writing very differently to writing a novel?

S: Yes, as I do not write the music it is by nature a collaboration. When writing the novels I am the creator and king of my little world, enjoying my freedom to choose and refuse which elements to put into play. But when I work on a song with Bjork I have to take into consideration which ideas and feelings are its source. We usually sit down for an afternoon and brainstorm about the narrative possibilities of the story we are going to tell in the song. And as I only start working on the words after she has laid down the melody, the melody practically defines the meter of the verses, bridges and choruses, the number of syllables I have to wrap in words of some meaning and emotion. After finishing each of my novels I seek out such collaborations. They are a great way to relax and to deflate the overblown ego one tends to develop when playing God and Emperor for so long.

SP: Congratulations on being nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. What are your thoughts on translation? There is always an element of compromise involved, do you find that difficult?

S: Thank you. I think that the translation of literature is one of the greatest projects our species have undertaken. It satisfies elemental needs which seem to be at the core of our being, that is to swap stories, to get news from faraway places, to cry over the misfortune of strangers, to laugh at the mishaps of rascals. There seems to be a growing interest in world literature and it might stem from people's wish to look beyond the global news media's fragmented and clichéd presentation of exotic and ravaged places. Regarding the translation process itself I very much enjoy working with the translators of my books. I know I do not make their work easy as I never think about if a book will travel or not while writing it, so I do not hesitate to use the most obscure, nearly forgotten, untranslatable 17th century term if it happens to make a sentence sound better. How the translators always manage to escape from those traps amazes me. Being brought up on translated books I know that when the book is well written in its foster language the reader will not realize that a compromise was made. I once witnessed an incredibly long and boring conversation between Jose Saramago and and Icelandic moderator about how much he suffered because some of his translators insisted on placing the commas in the text according to the grammatical rules of the target language. I couldn't care less and imagine most readers do not miss out on much ...

SP: I have been recommending The Blue Fox to anyone who will listen and some local book groups have read it as their monthly selection. There seem to be many different interpretations of the story, about what is real, what is imagined, the symbolism involved. How does it feel to have your work discussed and analysed in this way?

S: It is always a good feeling to know that someone is actually reading your book. That the readers have opinions about what it is made of is even better, and when opinions differ it is plain flattering, especially when they go against your own intentions. "The Blue Fox" seems to be especially open to personal interpretations and sometimes quite surprising ones. A journalist I met in Warzawa told me that the discussion about the pros and cons of electricity reverend Skuggason has with the vixen at the end of the book was the most erotic thing she had read in a long while. She insisted that it was meant to show an interspecies intercourse taking place and the shudder she felt when the hunter-reverend plunged his knife into the beast proved it. In a case like that, who would dare to disagree?

SP: Are we going to be able to read some more of your work in English soon?

S: I hope so. Telegram has just acquired the rights to my latest novel, Rokkurbysnir as it is called in Icelandic and roughly translates as 'the Twilight of Marvels'. The year is 1635. The earth is still at the centre of the universe, the chambers of the heart are two, birds hatch from seaweed, unicorn horns are in demand as luxury goods and stones are used as medicine. The artist and wordsmith Jonas Palmason 'the learned' is sentenced for spreading the knowledge of witchcraft and sent into exile on a tiny islet, Gullbjarnarey, off the east coast of Iceland. I based it on the life and mental world of this self-educated Icelander who can be said to have embodied the seventeenth century Iceland. And it tells of the chilling aftermath of the Lutheran Reformation, the heroic exorcism of a walking corpse in the remote county of Snaefjallastrond, secret Virgin Mary rituals, the massacre of Basque whalers in the western fjords and a family on the run in times when neighbourly charity had become obsolete. In his exile Jonas 'the learned' reflects on his life so far, and the reader follows him on his journey as he braces the storms of the heart and the mind in the age of 'The Twilight of Marvels'. It will be a must read for all the unicorn fanatics out there (yes, I expect them to be a legion), though a bitter one, as in one chapter I reveal how Jonas the Learned's contribution to Natural sciences led to the dissolution of the myth of this fantastic beast.

SP: Are there any other Icelandic authors we should be checking out?

S: There is our Nobel prize winner from 1955, Halldór Laxness, and his beautiful novel The Fish Can Sing. It is published in the UK by Harvill Press. Then there is Bragi Olafsson's dark and quirky comedy The Pets, published by Open Letters Books in the US. And Gyrdir Eliasson's short story collection Stone Tree, published in the UK by Comma Press, and recently longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

SP: I am always keen for my guests to recommend a favourite book. What would you suggest we all rush out and read next?

My favorite book for the last 29 years has been The Master and Margarita , but as I expect that many of those reading your blog have read it, I will also recommend House of Day, House of Night by Poland's greatest living novelist Olga Tokarczuk. And please read Babette's Feast by Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen if you haven't done so five times already.

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The Blue Fox is published by Telegram Books and is bloody marvelous, so stop what you are doing and grab a copy now.

Comments

[Annabel]

I bought this a while ago after your recommendation. After your great interview, what an interesting guy! It'll be the next thing I read. Thanks.

[Marie]

Sold. Sold, sold, sold.

[John Self]

I read it and liked it earlier this year - now I look forward to The Twilight of Marvels (or whatever it ends up being called). Also some cracking recommendations there.

[Scott Pack]

I was really hoping you'd review it on your site John.

What did you think of Franky Furbo in the end?

[Paul]

Marvelous interview. Very illuminating comments about the structure of the BF.I may have to re-read it now with those comments in mind.
Was "inflate the overblown ego" a typo? I'd imagine he'd mean the opposite.

[Stewart]

I concur with him on Bragi Olafsson's The Pets: a very funny novel. And it's also got the Björk connection, with Bragi having played in the Sugarcubes.

This is great little interview. I read 'The Blue Fox' a couple of months back and never did get round to writing about it, but the beauty is that it being so slight, it won't feel like a slog to get through it once more. I'll certainly be looking out for the next novel and hope the same translator is working on that one, for the sake of consistency.

[Scott Pack]

There were a couple of typos Paul which Sjon mailed me to correct. They are now sorted!