Small Pets and Lies: An Interview with Bragi Ólafsson

Bragi Ólafsson, the Icelandic writer (and former bassist for the Sugar Cubes) came to Seattle last week to promote The Pets, the first of his books to be translated into English and published in the U.S. (thanks to Open Letter). Paul, Silas, and I were lucky to have him over for dinner with a few friends. We talked about a lot of things—his beautiful two year-old daughter, eating shark (that, apparently, smells awful but tastes pretty good), and Jack Kerouac. He also talked about the process of getting The Pets translated:

Bragi: “The publisher went through and changed some of the words to American words.”

Guest: “What were some of the words they changed?”

Bragi: “Well, there’s this one word, love bite?”

Me: “Hickey.”

Bragi: “Yes, they changed it to hickey.”

Guest: “I didn’t think anybody used the word hickey after the age of 20.”

Bragi: “Oh, maybe I should talk to them about that.”

The Pets is a dark, funny book about a man, Emil, who having just returned from a trip to London, opens the kitchen window and puts some water on to boil for coffee. He then spots a man in an anorak who he recognizes as Havard, an unsavory old friend who, last Emil heard, was in a mental institution in Sweden. Havard decides to crawl in through the open kitchen window, so Emil does the only thing he can to get away—he hides under the bed.

Ólafsson uses his keen sense of space—which he’s developed writing plays (did I mention that he’s also a successful playwright, and poet?)—to give the novel the perfect claustrophobic tone that is at turns wildly hysterical and eerily foreboding. The Pets is everything I want a novel to be—spare, perfectly paced, reflective without being brooding, and, best of all, a total crack up.

We had coffee outside Top Pot Doughnuts under the monorail track, where we discussed the book, and a few other things:

Amazon.com: Have you done a lot of interviews?

Bragi Ólafsson: Yeah. Well, with the Sugar Cubes, we did.

Amazon.com: Tell me more about that, what that was like.

BÓ: Most of the time it was very stupid questions and silly answers. That’s what the pop press is basically about. Playing around. Because there isn’t so much to talk about. And, of course, we had to talk about Iceland because people were curious about the music scene in Iceland and how cold it is in Iceland. We told a lot of lies about Iceland because we were in the position to make fun of the whole thing, instead of just giving dry answers to these questions. And, I think Björk still does that sometimes. She gives really strange facts about our country.

Amazon.com: Do you remember any of your lies?

BÓ: Well, it was about what the food is or the drinks or some extremities. Probably something about drinking, because Iceland, like Finland, has a reputation for being big drinkers. So we tended to exaggerate that a bit. Here’s a story about playing with the media: Once, when in Denmark the government passed the laws on gay marriage--it would have been ’89 or ’90--they were the first European country to allow gay persons to get married. Me and the main singer of the Sugar Cubes, we sent out a press release to the press saying that we had gotten married in Denmark and had gone on our honeymoon in Sweden, and the press believed it. Every single newspaper. It was on the front page of Liberation in France.

Amazon.com: So it was the worldwide press?

BÓ: Worldwide press. Yeah. If you read some rock encyclopedias today--I think the Rolling Stone encyclopedia, Virgin--they both have this information that we were the first people in the rock business to get married.

Amazon.com: But it was a total fabrication?

BÓ: Yes, yes.

Amazon.com: Were you writing when you were in the Sugar Cubes?

BÓ: I started writing seriously before the band formed, and I wrote most of my first book of poetry when I was staying in Spain for a year in 1985. It was published around the time that the Sugar Cubes started. I think it was the second publication of Bad Taste, our publishing company. And so then, in these six years that the band existed I didn’t write much but I was always taking notes, and I published one book in that period.

Amazon.com: Of poetry?

BÓ: Yes, of course. And then two more books of poetry, and I went then to writing more short stories and then novels.

Amazon.com: Do you remember the point when you started writing short stories, when you switched from poetry to short stories? Were you kind of always writing a little of both?

BÓ: Yeah. A little of both. Because when I started writing when I was about 13 or 14 years old, I was trying to fill in all the forms, so to speak. So, poetry, drama/dialogue, and short stories. But I never actually found the right tone for stories until very late. Maybe 15 years ago.

Amazon.com: When you were first writing prose, were you emulating certain writers?

BÓ: No, not really. I think maybe the first short stories were more like prose poems. Not really stories with something happening. I’ve always been really attracted to this form, the prose poem.

Amazon.com: So they were very short?

BÓ: Yeah. I think it’s an influence from French poets, 19th century, and also European modernists who used this form quite a lot. I still try to write poems now and then. But somehow I’m a little bit shy against the form of poetry--the lines. I’m more comfortable with

[demonstrates with hands]

Amazon.com: …the block.

BÓ: Yes. The block.

Amazon.com: But your early poetry books were in lines?

BÓ: Yes.

Amazon.com: But it was too hard to go back?

BÓ: I think, yes, because earlier when I started writing poetry I thought about writing poetry all the time and poetic images and I tried to form poetic images in everything I saw, but now my thinking has come more towards stories and characters and so I’m probably more interested in characters and conflicts between characters.

Amazon.com: Do you start from characters and conflicts between characters or do you start more from an idea or a plot?

BÓ: Mostly I start from perhaps one image I see--just one pair of shoes or--

[we’re interrupted by the noise of the monorail passing overhead]

--for example, one of my novels, the thing that started it was just a pair of shoes outside my parents’ house. I started thinking: No one knew who had these shoes. They were not supposed to be there. There was something mysterious. So, something started developing from that. It turned out to be a novel with lots of conflicts and characters. But I think now, as I’m more used to writing stories, I start with the characters, not the actual plot, but some type of characters. And actually, the novel I’m writing now comes as a continuation of the last one, because it has some of the same characters. So it’s based on what happened in the last novel. But it’s an independent story.

Amazon.com: And that last book was called The Ambassador.

BÓ: Yes. And the next one has the working title The Screenplay. The Ambassador was about a middle-aged poet who goes to a poetry festival in Lithuania, and everything goes horribly wrong.

Amazon.com: Of course.

BÓ: I mean, that’s what you expect in a poetry festival.

Amazon.com: Right.

BÓ: The book I’m writing now is about this character’s father, who is approaching 70 and his friend--a film director and a playwright, but they’ve never had the opportunity to make a film or have a play staged. But all of a sudden they got the opportunity, because an old friend of theirs, who’s a pharmacist, gives them money to start making a picture. So it’s about that, and it’s about other things. At the same time, one of these characters, his father dies and he lives in Hull, it’s an old fishing port in England, and they had to go to Hull to collect his inheritance. As usual in my books, it’s two stories that come together somehow.

If I would have to explain what these books are about, I would say it’s about how to write, how to write a fiction. Because what interests me most in writing fiction is the view, how you see the world, from what point of view. And so, this story I’m writing now is told by a female character, who knows these characters. She’s not really a part of the story, but she’s somehow connected to it. She both knows everything about these characters and she knows nothing. It’s the first time I’ve used a female protagonist.

Amazon.com: How was that?

BÓ: It was very interesting.

Amazon.com: How did you approach it? Did you think about it differently?

BÓ: Not really. I don’t know if women think differently.

Amazon.com: I wonder if you found yourself talking to more women or listening to more conversations between women.

BÓ: No. Not really. But, I probably, without realizing it, I very often think: how would my wife see this? I put myself in the position of a woman, but I don’t know to what extent.

Amazon.com: I want to talk to you about The Pets. I was a little worried about it, because you wrote it quite a while ago, right? So I was wondering if it would be strange to talk about it now.

BÓ: Actually, it’s both nice and healthy for me to think about this book again. And, also because one of the characters is one that I’m still writing about.

Amazon.com: Which character?

BÓ: The linguist. Armann Valur. The older guy.

Amazon.com: That’s funny. Is he one of the guys?

BÓ: No. He knows these two guys, but he actually pops up in my latest book, The Ambassador. He’s like a minor character there but he also has a role in the book I’m writing. But you had a question about The Pets?

Amazon.com: I have a lot of questions. One of them is about genre. What genre do you see it in?

BÓ: I’m not sure about that. Some people see it like a thriller but sort of a mystery.

Amazon.com: I saw it written about in that way, so I was curious. I don’t see it that way.

BÓ: But it has some elements, especially in the first part, because you are following these two guys. The first chapter is the main character coming back, and then the second is about some menacing person on the way to somewhere. And it has something like that thing at the end of chapters--cliffhangers?--it doesn’t have those but, you know…

Amazon.com: There’s certainly a sense that something could go really badly wrong. 

BÓ: Yeah. I tend to see everything I write, even the poetry I write, and the plays--I think of it as just realism. Some people look at realism with a negative eye. But I don’t know what else to call it.

Amazon.com: You were saying that in the beginning it was like a thriller, but I think that’s also true at the end. That’s all in Havard. What was your inspiration for Havard?

BÓ: He’s a mix of two or three characters I know, so he’s not based on anyone special.

Amazon.com: Is that true of most of your characters, they’re sort of an amalgam of people you know?

BÓ: Most often, the main character is maybe 40 percent myself, and I think that goes for almost every fiction writer. And for poets. I’m reading a book at the moment by a Spanish author called Enrique Vila-Matas. I saw a phrase in his book. He is actually quoting Faulkner. I wrote it down because it captures really well how I see my books—

[the monorail passes again]

--and also because people have said The Pets is about these doppelgangers--his description of a novel as “a writer’s secret life wherein exists a man’s shadowy twin brother.“

Amazon.com: Oh, so the protagonist is your shadowy twin brother.

BÓ: No, because in some ways this Havard character could be another side of this guy under the bed, Emil. You could interpret it that way. I don’t, but…

Amazon.com: Well, but he does come to his house and he inhabits his house and hangs out with his friends.

BÓ: Yeah. Because he takes care of his guests and he probably gets into bed with the woman who Emil was hoping to…

[laughing]

Amazon.com: Can you talk a little bit about how you use Moby Dick?

BÓ: How I use it?

Amazon.com: There’s the object, the book, Moby Dick. And there are a lot of references. And Emil’s name is taken from Ishmael.

BÓ: No. That’s a coincidence. I did not choose the name Emil from Ishmael. Actually, the names of the pets--the guinea pig [Moby] and the rabbit [Dick]--I just thought it was comical that they shared the name with the great white whale. And, could you say that Havard is in the role of the whale? That’s a possible interpretation.

Amazon.com: It seems like there’s a sense of karmic retribution--but I don’t think that’s quite right. Like, you do a good thing and you get a good thing. Or you get a good thing, and then you have to pay for it?

BÓ: In what sense does he get a good thing?

Amazon.com: He wins the lottery.

BÓ: He is punished for his lottery prize?

Amazon.com: That’s what I’m wondering.

BÓ: You could see it as a punishment for it because he is selfish. I mean, he wins the million kroner in the lottery and he goes to England. He is going to buy a car when he gets home, but he spends a lot of money on silly things.  And he is expecting a call from a girlfriend who is living north of Iceland, but also expecting a call from this other woman. I’m not quite sure what it means. Retribution?

Amazon.com: It’s punishment. It’s the same.

[the monorail passes again]

BÓ: He is thinking when he’s under the bed, he imagines some eccentric above, probably meaning God, who is avenging people without them having any say. And he thinks that this eccentric, this God, is playing around with good or innocent people, then people with bad intentions, they manage on their own. They get away. Havard is one of them. He takes things under his control, while Emil, he’s a backwards guy. He leaves the decisions to someone else. The main message of the story is: make a decision. If he had made that decision, if he had just dared to come out from under the bed to face this unwanted person, everything probably would have gone right. But he didn’t,  so the person who makes the decisions is Havard. He gets his way.

Amazon.com: How did you get the idea to have him under the bed? Was that the inspiration for the book, or was that something that came to you later?

BÓ: I had been thinking of writing a story of two guys taking care of pet animals, without succeeding. Something goes wrong. I like this idea of people who are entrusted to do something very small and they can’t manage to do that. I found it very funny. And I was always thinking of writing a story about this, but somehow I didn’t find the right frame. Then one day when I was looking at my kitchen window I was thinking, if someone came in and I went under the bed, what would happen? And these two ideas came together, just in that one second.

Amazon.com: This novel, to me, really has a sense of space. I can see the whole layout that you describe. Is this influenced by your experience with writing plays?

BÓ: Yes. I had written one radio play. I had read lots of plays, and my favorite type of play is like a living room drama. I’m very conservative in my taste in drama. I’m not really much into experimental. I think my main influence in writing is the English playwright, Harold Pinter. I don’t think my plays or my work resemble any of his, but he’s a very great influence. His dialogue. It’s a very claustrophobic atmosphere. People stuck in small rooms, fighting for their existence somehow. I see the work very much in that one room. And most of my short stories, they take place in one room.

Amazon.com: It adds a comic possibility also.

BÓ: Yes, I think so, yeah.

Amazon.com: A lot of the comedy relies on the knocking on the door, and his perspective of what’s happening.

BÓ: I call it--it’s sort of a joke--a chamber novel. Like chamber music.

[monorail passes]

And there’s a farce element. That’s something I like very much. That’s why I like writing plays. They don’t use the traditional rules of the farce--those are very strict rules--but they have this element. Like, I wrote a play five years ago for the city theater in Reykjavik. It’s a half-hour play about an old woman in an old people’s home, and the main character, the old woman, was played by a 50-year-old male actor. And it got so popular, it was only supposed to be shown six times, but it was shown 100 times. All the old people wanted to see it. And this just takes place in the one room.

And, also about this novel only taking place in one room: I usually don’t like reading stories that take place over a long period of time, novels that follow the whole life of a person, I just don’t buy it. I don’t trust a writer who describes the whole life of a person. We have such a limited view. Of course there are books that follow a person ninety years that are good books, but…. The book I’m writing now, the time is about two weeks.

Amazon.com: It’s funny that you call it a chamber novel. You use chamber music. And Elvis. And Big Fun. There’s almost a soundtrack.

BÓ: Especially with this book, yes.

Amazon.com: That’s not true of your other books?

BÓ: Not as much, no. I just use it like colors. Like, usually, I don’t describe people’s faces. It’s something I’ve just noticed about myself. Sometimes I do it, describe one feature of someone’s face, but I don’t describe very much outward appearance. I find it very important to have music and also like band names. I don’t hear music in my imagination, so I probably wouldn’t use it. I don’t know why that is. In my current novel, I have an oblique reference to the Sugar Cubes without mentioning them. I mention one of the Sugar Cubes albums without mentioning directly.

Amazon.com: Do you listen to music while you’re writing?

BÓ: Not when I’m writing, no. I can’t do that.

Amazon.com: Silence?

BÓ: Yes. Yes, yes. I’m not very good at writing in cafes.

[monorail passing]

Yeah, I can’t be distracted. I have to focus.

Amazon.com: When you’re putting together a novel like this, it’s--I don’t want to say mathematical--but things have to fall together in an exact way. Do you plot it out pretty specifically?

BÓ: No. Not for this book, no. But the two books after this, which are longer and more complicated, I had them pretty much organized--not before I started--but after the first few chapters.

Amazon.com: And you found it’s easier to write that way?

BÓ: Now it is, yeah. The book I’m writing now, I have practically written the last chapter. It’s good to know what happens.

Amazon.com: You mentioned that the translator for this book was a Scottish woman [Janice Balfour]. How did you find her?

BÓ: My publisher found her. There was a translator who I knew very well--he’s dead now--who I wanted to translate it but he didn’t have the time because there are not many translators from Icelandic into English and so they have very much to do.

Amazon.com: That’s probably why we don’t have many Icelandic books in the U.S.?

BÓ: It’s very hard to get into the American, and English, market. Because in America, only three percent of your published books are translations, which is a low percentage compared to Germany or France. Until now, it’s been very rare that Icelandic novels have been published in English or America. I was just really lucky because Chad Post was given this--because this translation existed of my book.

Amazon.com: So your publisher learned about Open Letter?

BÓ: No, Chad Post came to Iceland. He was looking for translations. I mean you haven’t read many Icelandic novels in translation. Probably none?

Amazon.com: Probably none, yeah. I’ve heard of Halldor Laxness. I know his books are in translation, but I haven’t seen them.

BÓ: I strongly recommend you read his books.

Amazon.com: That seems like a very U.S. thing to do, find like one author from a country and then publish a bunch of his books.

BÓ: Yeah, because publishers just want to think of that one author instead of three…

Amazon.com: Maybe it will pick up now, with Open Letter.

BÓ: Yeah, my publisher Chad has been asking about other Icelandic authors.

Amazon.com: And they’re publishing another book of yours. Which book?

BÓ: The Ambassadors.

Amazon.com: When is that happening?

BÓ: 2009 or 2010.

Amazon.com: One more question, it’s a really strange question, feel free not to answer if you don’t want to. It’s about the Icelandic comic sensibility. I see something French here. Do you think there’s an Icelandic sense of humor?

BÓ: I don’t have any opinion on that myself. I’ve always seen very much of French movies and Spanish movies and I think that when I was young I started to read and get to know Surrealist and Dadaist literature, and I think that that’s had a really big influence. Surrealism, for me, is the most important literary moment in the 20th century, because it changed so much in how people see things. But, about the Icelandic comic sensibility, many people say it’s similar to the British--very dry, nasty sort of humor. So, I think that’s in many ways true, yeah.

Amazon.com: Is the culture very influenced by Britain?

BÓ: Yes. Although, much of the culture has been, in my view, too Americanized, in what we consume and the movies we get. There are so many good things that come from America, but these American movies, particularly mainstream, are not very positive, I think. We get a lot of things from England. Although we are supposed to be one of the Nordic countries, and we’re supposed to be very friendly with Denmark, and we also have political ties with Denmark. We regard them as our friends, but we don’t read much of their books. We have more respect for the British and Irish. We have Irish blood in us, because Icelandic settlers came from Norway and Ireland.

Amazon.com: This isn’t a fact you’re making up, is it?

BÓ: No, I’m not lying to you.

--Heidi