[ Iceland (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) [ ICELAND (AMERICAN LITERATURE (DALKEY ARCHIVE)) ] By Krusoe, Jim ( Author )Jun-01-2002 Paperback

by Jim Krusoe

Iceland follows the absurd adventures of its narrator, Paul, from making love to a woman named Emily whom he meets by a swimming pool filled with floating internal organs, to falling into an underground river in a volcano in Iceland, to sitting in a piano bar for six years crying over the lyrics to "The Banana Boat Song." Driven by Paul's obsession to be reunited with Emily, the plot leaps hilariously through time, coincidence, and disjointed logic, with only the narrator's ludicrous perspective to hold it on course. Reminiscent of Raymond Roussel and Harry Mathews, Krusoe has combined an eccentric character and an outlandish plot to create an unforgettable book.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Magical Realism, 21st Century, Literature

Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

About the author

Jim Krusoe is an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. His stories and poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, BOMB, Iowa Review, Field, North American Review, American Poetry Review, and Santa Monica Review, which he founded in 1988. His essays and book reviews have appeared in Manoa, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and The Washington Post. He is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund. He teaches at Santa Monica College and in the graduate writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His novel, Iceland, was selected by the Los Angeles Times and the Austin Chronicle as one of the ten best fiction books of 2002, and it was on the Washington Post list of notable fiction for the same year. His novel Girl Factory was published in 2008 by Tin House Books followed by Erased, which was published in 2009 and Toward You published in 2010, also by Tin House Books.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Oddball squared.

Iceland is Jim Krusoe's first novel published back in 2002 when Jim was age fifty-eight. Jim went on to write five more novels, all equally wacky and off-the-wall - Girl Factory, Erased, Toward You, Parsifal, The Sleep Garden.

A Jim Krusoe novel is like a Coen brothers film or short-stories from Richard Ford's Rock Springs, only with Jim, we're talking even more out-there flaky.

Personally, I gobble up this type of fiction. I wish Jim started his novel writing earlier and wrote twelve novels rather than just six.

Jim Krusoe told an interviewer: "I suppose that I’m what Charles Baxter calls an Unrealist, and my own unreality is based in the logic of dreams. Dreams are never surreal—at least mine aren’t—but neither are they just sitting down to eat a burger and fries. A dream, when I think about it the next day, may seem strange, but while I’m dreaming, I always believe it. I’d like my fiction to remind readers not only of their daily lives, but of the lives they could have, and maybe do have, lying in wait."

Speaking of unreality, on the first pages of Iceland, Paul, the tale's narrator, enters an institute to pick out an organ that will restore him to heath. Paul never tells us exactly what organ - liver, bladder, kidney...who knows?

Anyway, to his surprise, this institute doesn't have men in white smocks and freezers, rather something more peculiar: all varieties of human internal organs - lungs, kidneys, livers, stomachs, intestines, pancreases , spleens - float and drift across an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Just then, Paul catches sight of the most beautiful woman he's ever seen in his life wearing scuba gear at the far end of the pool. The beauty introduces herself as Emily and apologizes for being late for his appointment. Minutes later Paul and Emily strip down for a luscious round of lovemaking. A deep emotional bond is born.

And Paul the twenty-something typewriter repairman living in the small Midwestern city of St. Nils develops a number of other relationships throughout the novel but Emily is never far from his mind and heart.

If a director ever turned Iceland into a film, a few clips from the trailer could feature Paul becoming friends with a burly rug cleaner by the name of Leo, Paul and Leo traveling to Iceland and venturing too close to an active volcano, Paul trekking up an Icelandic mountain only to get caught in an avalanche.

This to say there's plenty of action but, and here's the Jim Krusoe rub: quirkiness and weirdness provide the tenor for the entire tale as Paul, a completely likeable kind of guy, provides a running philosophic commentary on love and death, fate and freedom, dreams and our everyday knocking about as we deal with things like tragedy and grief and our occasional joys.

The novel's opening paragraph sets the tone: "I had been dying little by little and bit by bit, I thought. On some days I felt fine, as if the animal, or machine, or whatever I was at that moment could easily believe that the whole thing, this dying business, had been only a bad dream, although a waking one to be sure, which had somehow leaked into my mind while I was waiting at a street corner for a traffic light as all around me cars went about their business, their exhaust spewing into my lungs, their radios hurting my ears. But the catch was that they would continue doing this forever, and I would not."

Give Iceland a whirl. Chances are, you'll want to read more Jim Krusoe, a fresh voice on the American literary scene.


Jim Krusoe, born 1943

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first thought is of Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s infinitesimal novels and their arbitrary “and-then-something-else-happened” plots, belying perhaps some structural sleight-of-hand, or perhaps not. In Krusoe’s novel, Paul is a bumbler whose chance encounter with Emily at the organ pool (literally a pool of organs) shapes the next fourteen-plus years of his life—he’d gone there to acquire an unspecified organ but ended up having unscheduled hanky-panky on the diving board. As you do. What follows in this surreal novel is an altered reality—not exactly dreamlike, not a cold authorial playpen . . . but somewhere in between. Accepting the writer’s ludicrously wooden dialogue as a humorous meta-ha is crucial, otherwise Krusoe would be guilty of Dan Brown-level crimes against naturalism. But the cartoony cardboard-like narrator, bumbling oaf or not, barely holds the novel together, especially during the overly descriptive bridges between the next “something-else-that-happens” (usually involving unscheduled sex and volcanoes), and lapses at times into a weary absurdism. Otherwise, a highly entertaining slice of playful and wilfully weird comic fiction. And Martin Amis likes it too.

[andeeeeee · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the weirdest, most beautiful, and most romantic books i've ever read. a man is sent to a clinic to pick out a new internal organ, he immediately falls in love with the bikini clad woman paid to swim in the pool where the organs are kept, to make sure the organs remain stimulated and as hard as it may be to believe, it gets weirder from there. The rest of the story involves volcanos, piano bars, death, betrayal, sadness, marriage, children and of course prison, but it all started with a bikini clad woman swimming in a pool full of internal organs. Wow.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warum der Abwechslung halber nicht einmal am (Buch)Ende beginnen?
---Achtung, Spoiler---
Wenn wir also Paul, den Protagonisten dieses Kurzromans, auf Seite 182, der letzten des Buches, verlassen, befindet er sich auf einem Friedhof; glücklicherweise immer noch über der Erde, obwohl er uns im ersten Satz des Romans bereits mitgeteilt hat, dass er „Stück um Stück“ stirbt. Eine geheimnisvolle Krankheit ist es, die ihn da quält, und Paul begnügt sich mit der sonderbaren Auskunft seines Arztes, ein Organ in ihm würde sich auflösen und müsse daher erneuert werden.
Ohne, dass Paul sich fragt, welches Organ eigentlich des Austausches bedarf, besucht er auf Anraten des Arztes einen sonderbaren Organ-Pool, in dem die unterschiedlichsten Organe friedlich vor sich hin plätschern. Anstatt sich eines auszusuchen, und die Auswahl ist beileibe (!) groß, verliebt er sich stattdessen sofort in die wunderschöne Emily, die als Organpflegerin im Pool schwimmt und dafür sorgt, dass die Stimmung unter den Organen gut ist (abgestorbene werden natürlich gleich aussortiert). Es scheint zumindest, dass Paul sich in Emily verliebt. Sofern wir uns an die Tatsachen halten, wäre die sachlichere Auskunft wohl zutreffender, dass er sofort und mehrfach Sex mit Emily hat und sie fortan nicht mehr vergessen kann.
Kehren wir zum Ende des Romans zurück, denn hier ist die Sicht unverstellt, und wir sehen, dass Paul zwar immer wieder an Emily gedacht hat, nachdem er sie am Pool geliebt hat, doch dass es dreimal sieben Jahre braucht, bis er sie wieder trifft (plus/minus ein Jahr).
Zunächst führt ihn das Schicksal, wenn man es so nennen möchte, mit einem Teppichreiniger namens Leo, den Paul nur sehr flüchtig kennt, nach Island. Hier stirbt Leo, dafür lernt Paul Greta (richtig, fünf Buchstaben, genau wie Emily) kennen, heiratet sie, hat mit ihr zwei Kinder, und verliert schließlich die ganze Familie durch eine isländische Schneelawine. Nach sieben Jahren in Island kehrt er nach Amerika zurück, wo er seiner Intuition vertrauend sich auf die Suche nach Emily macht, stattdessen aber für die nächsten sieben Jahre in einer eigenwilligen Piano-Kneipe namens „Calypso“ strandet und sich in die Wirtin Sally (muss ich die Buchstaben vorzählen?) verliebt, die drogenabhängig ist. Der Versuch, das Geld für die Befriedigung ihrer Sucht aufzubringen, befördert Paul dann für weitere sieben Jahre ins Gefängnis, bevor er dann endlich Emily wiedertreffen kann, die inzwischen ein Zoogeschäft hat.
Ob sie Paul wirklich geliebt hat und mit ihm zusammen leben wollte, wie sie es im Brief gleich nach dem ersten Treffen schrieb? Wir werden diese Frage nicht mit Sicherheit beantworten können, dafür aber Zeuge werden, dass sie Paul die Grabstelle verkauft, an der der Roman sein Ende findet.
---Spoiler Ende ---
Diese kurze Inhaltsangabe vorweg geschickt dürfte unschädlich sein, denn ICELAND ist vieles, aber bestimmt kein Spannungsroman. Es ist ein so eigenwilliges, schräg-schrilles skurriles absurdes Büchlein, dass ich kaum hilfreiche Vergleiche finde. Der erste fiel mir interessanterweise dann aus dem Bereich des Films ein. Guy Maddins Doku-Fantasie „MY WINNIPEG“ (Maddin ist einer meiner Lieblingsregisseure; wer auf schräge Filme steht und Maddin nicht kennt, sollte sich unbedingt bei Gelegenheit einen seiner Filme anschauen) kam mir in den Sinn, vielleicht um die liebenswerteren Elemente von SOUTH PARK bereichert. Murakami und Yoko Ogawa waren die ersten literarischen Namen, die mir in den Sinn kamen. Aber warum überhaupt Vergleiche? Aus schierer Hilflosigkeit, denn ICELAND ist ein so sonderbares Buch, dass eine sachliche Beschreibung nicht nur schwer, sondern auch wenig hilfreich wäre. Es ist stellenweise urkomisch, dann wieder ernüchternd depressiv; immer skurril und überquellend vor witzig-absurden Einfällen.
Als ich das Buch aus der Hand legte und mich fragte, was ich gerade gelesen hatte, wurde mir bewusst, dass sich hinter dieser über lange Strecken scheinbar oberflächlichen und linear erzählten Geschichte eine Frage verbirgt, die so alt und abgeschmackt ist, dass es ein genialer Schachzug von Jim Krusoe war, sie hinter einem scheinbar ziellos durchs Leben mäandernden Protagonisten zu verstecken, der noch dazu ausschließlich auf sich selbst fixiert und wenig liebenswert ist. Sie lautet: Was machen wir aus unserem Leben?
Was hat Paul aus seinem Leben gemacht? Er hat Schreibmaschinen repariert, und das hatte auch sein Gutes, hat es doch schließlich seinen Aufenthalt im Gefängnis verkürzen können (und wo vorhin schon von Filmen die Rede war: gerade gestern habe ich wieder Cronenbergs „NAKED LUNCH“ gesehen. Wie hätte Bill seine Berichte aus der Interzone verfassen sollen, wenn er nicht immer wieder an eine neue Schreibmaschine gekommen wäre bzw. eine alte hätte repariert werden können?). Überhaupt gibt es in diesem Buch eine Ansammlung seltener Berufe. Leo verbringt seine Berufszeit auf Händen und Knien, er ist Teppichreiniger. Greta macht Führungen auf isländische Vulkane (gleich bei ihrer allerersten Führung stirbt Leo und sie bekommt ein lebenslanges Berufsverbot); Sally ist Pianisten, hat aber eine krankhafte Angst, öffentlich aufzutreten. Emily kümmert sich erst um Organe, dann um Kleintiere.
Pauls Obsession ist Emily, die er wiedersehen und mit der er leben will; eine Obsession, der er eigentümlich umschweifig nachgegangen ist, so dass ich zu sagen geneigt bin, dass er sie bei jeder denkbaren Gelegenheit aus den Augen verloren hat, um später wieder auf sie zurück kommen zu können. Paul ist ein passiver Held (gibt es solche Helden?), dem sein Lebenslauf bzw. Schicksal immer wieder zuhilfe kommt, um selbst nicht allzu aktiv werden zu müssen. Paul fügt sich in das und begnügt sich mit dem, was sich auf seiner Suche nach Emily ergibt. Dabei gelingt es ihm nicht, aufrichtiges Interesse an anderen Menschen zu entwickeln und an das alltägliche Leben anzudocken. Überhaupt scheint mir unklar, in welchem Maße er auf sein Leben Einfluss nehmen möchte. Wieviel steckt von Bartleby in ihm, dessen Verweigerungshaltung vor nichts halt macht?
Pauls Ziellosigkeit und sein Desinteresse sind schmerzhaft und werden durch die Skurrilität der Geschichte erst erträglich.
ICELAND ist unterhaltsam und kurzweilig, und doch wirft es Fragen auf, die erst dann ihre volle Kraft entfalten, wenn das Buch schon zugeklappt ist und der Leser sich fragt: Was habe ich da gerade gelesen?

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to write a novel as good as this one, unencumbered by convention. Krusoe once recommended I read a novel by David Markson called Wittgenstein's Mistress. I want to write as if I'm unafraid to let anything happen and trust my instincts.

[Blythe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Its sort of like a weird dream where everything is sort of real but there are mysterious human organs in a swimming pool and dude lamenting about bumping uglies with their caretaker. For the entire book. My dreams are more interesting, and I would only give them 2 stars also.

[Colin Angell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eccentric and melancholic: Krusoe doing Krusoe. The dialogue in the book is reminiscent of that of a Wes Anderson film. It's amusing and from the get go commands your attention right away. At points, all of the happenings of the novel don't really make a whole of sense which, although still fun to read, can often leave you scratching your head wondering what just happened. However, after reading some other views on the book, positioning as representative of the way that our memory functions and plays itself out to us, it's easier to just roll with it. All in all, fun and quick read which will not hurt you to read.

[G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Iceland is an absurd and phantasmagorical novel that centers around a decades-long infatuation with Emily, an employee he meets tending the pre-transplant organs in a swimming pool when he is sent to look for a new one. Unfortunately, while it has all of the lightness and strangeness of a dream, it also lacks a coherent meaning. Yes, it's about a man who suffers more officially or literally of a broken heart, but it's otherwise a little empty.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Krusoe is one of my favorite living writers - and you can gather by my list, there is not that many livin' authors on it. Saying that, I like how Krusoe plays with the sturcture of the narrative as well as as his wit that I find very freshing.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

“But the catch was that they would continue on doing this forever, and I would not.”

3.5 ⭐️’s

[Gigi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first third of the novel is excellent, 5/5, love it. In that third and throughout, I love the narrative voice, I love that third-person thinly veiled as first-person POV. The sentences are crisp. The writing is often funny. The whole thing feels like it's a long short story. I love the absurdist, domestic picaresque in, let's say, the first half. It starts to level off when Paul gets to Iceland and rapidly declines when he returns. Why? I think the novel basically has one good trick: a lonely, unreliable oaf in an absurd world who can never go home again. This trick really works in the first half when the world is conspiring with his desire to dictate Paul's circumstances-- it keeps the reader locked in to Paul's experience. It worked for me when Paul was clearly out of control and the world was acting upon him, as if in a dream, with Paul about a half step behind with the reader as a kind of stand in. When Paul starts to try and act upon the world, and determine his own fate within it, when he starts to make choices, it becomes a different proposition for the reader with a different equation to measure the novel's quality, inviting a lot more scrutiny. For me, once this starts, the weaknesses of the book, disguised by the passive protagonist, now stuck out as weaknesses: the flimsy story, the uninteresting central character, the low stakes, the hazy desire, the unfocused story. By the end, things have just ground to a halt and you hear the gears screaming. Shame, but I did like a lot of what JK did here and it seems like a proof of concept for his ambitions in his future fiction-- I'll definitely check out his other work.

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading reviews of this, someone said this is supposed to be parodying Haruki Murakami and while I can see the parody, so to say, I don't think the writer really intended for it to be that. That said, it is not an unfounded observation - the way women are written especially.

Taking it as a sincere novel with elements of parody, I have to say there are some very good passages and I quite like the whimsical story. It did move me in a way, although it really is too ridiculous to be too sad. It does keep you engaged though. I thought the prose was nice, dreamlike, consistent but never annoying. Maybe the descriptions of Iceland could've been a little more picturesque. The surreal elements of the story don't really work. I think the novel would've been much better if Krusoe used his incredible writing skills to write a serious novel focused on beautiful things rather than this parody of magical realism. Overall, I can't say I hated it.

[Eloise · Rating 2 out of 5]

men should not be allowed to write books. seriously cuz this book was full of bad descriptions of female characters. i’m just not interested! the plot was absurd but in a way that didn’t make an impression

[Gregory Audermatte · Rating 2 out of 5]

M'a fait penser à Charlie Kaufman notamment son grand roman Antkind mais ici l'absurde a plus de mal à faire mouche. Parfois très drôle, d'autre fois un peu ennuyeux. Une certaine mélancolie dans ce personnage de grand solitaire hors du monde. Une vraie curiosité.

[Jonathan Gruber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Krusoe's books are always fun and weird. Interesting characters and a crazy story. Not quite as good as his others but still really entertaining

[Jared · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liked the idea of it more than the experience of reading it

[Nicole McLellan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird, funky, unique. I liked it. There are many paths in life — which will you choose?

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I'll get to the end of a book, and I get almost nervous, worried about how it's going to end. In the best cases, this worry turns to something like relief at the last word, the conclusion exactly what I hoped it would be, which is of course something unpredictable but seemingly inevitable.

Iceland manages to maintain its endearing absurdity and slightly left of real narrative to the very last word. It's such a broad story told in almost a cursory manner. Despite its obvious existential influences, it is emotionally moving, an original look at opportunities taken and missed, and a rumination on the nature of second chances.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is surreal Literary Fiction that sometimes goes a little overboard with those capitalized descriptors. The main character gets quite caught up in details and repeatedly misses the big picture, coming across as an obtuse obsessive. He passes quickly -- like, one sentence -- over the horrible death of his traveling companion, but spends pages describing mundane plans and meals and conversations. The effect is to skew reality and if you can accept that universe, it's a well-written and interesting romp. I can't imagine who I would recommend it to. R checked it out after we met the author at a dinner party and he wanted to get to know him better.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd little book, but funny and unpredictable. Krusoe's narrator's voice is charming and matter-of-fact, and the novel captures a quiet sense of melancholy that rings true.

A recommended effort, especially as it accomplishes these feats in only 182 pages, thoroughly avoiding the modern American novel's usual bloat.

(And can I also just say how much I love Dalkey Archive Press, and the quality of its books, and the quirkiness of its catalog? Lovely. This edition is particularly nice, with an elegant font and slightly cream-toned pages.)

[Erin Beck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul Constant compares every book he reviews in the stranger to this book. It was ok, but you can tell written by a very young author. It was a bit too simple, too many cultural references that will become outdated. What I did like is how years are skipped over in a sentence. The main character meets a girl, sleeps with her - the next sentence is - 6 years later we were married with 2 kids. this made the author able to fit the whole man's life into 200 pages rather tha 600.

[Levi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't even know how to begin to describe this book. It is bizarre, surreal, awkward, hilarious and touching all at once (or in rapid succession, at least). I happened to also get Krusoe's Girl Factory from the library at the same time, so I'm looking forward to delving into that next. His is without a doubt a unique literary voice that I'm glad to have found.

[Jamie Felton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this reminded me of A.M. Homes' This Book Will Save Your Life. It has the same matter-of-fact storytelling style and the same surreal, impossible events that become believable and logical as a result of Krusoe's ability to create realism and truth out of coincidence and implausibility. I loved it.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is probably the weirdest book I have ever read, but it does make you think about fate, infatuation etc. I can't recommend it due to the sexual references which are random, completely inappropriate, and do not add to the plotline other than to make you think the author is disturbed.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book while taking Jim Krusoe's fiction writing courses at Santa Monica College. It combines two genres you don't see often, sci-fi and romance. One of the most unique takes on the the ability to find a lasting love I've ever read.

[Cindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I actually gave up on this book after less than 50 pages. It was just so poorly written, boring, unbelievable, and self-indulgent. I find it hard to believe the author is an instructor at a college.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've gone back and forth on what to rate this one. Really it's probably about 2.5 stars, but for nicety sake I'm rounding up. There was much about Krusoe's style that I liked; however, the story was entirely unrealistic and not in a fun way.

[Day · Rating 2 out of 5]

What?????

[Ben Rameaka · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good impulse buy if ever there was one.

[Kendra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird and beautiful.