Ryan's review
The Atom Station
by Halldór Kiljan Laxness
Ryan's review
The Atom Station by Halldór Kiljan Laxness
Ryan's review
rating:
A-mazing. Icelandic Beat style meets the native heroic poetic. Favorite quotes (that aren't so odd you'll still understand them):
"That's just like you northerners, to start talking to people," said the cook when I returned to the kitchen.
Rebellion stirred in me and I replied, "I am people."
----
"We prised up one of the planks of the lid with a crowbar, and I groped among the packing for the contents; and what did I pull out but a small tin, about 200 grams in weight, wrapped in semi-transparent paper? I recognized the merchandise quickly enough from my pantry work in the south: Portuguese Sardines imported from America, that fish which the papers said was the only fish which could scale the highest tariff walls in the world and yet be sold when ten years old at a thousand per cent profit in the greatest fish country in the world, where even the dogs walk out and vomit at the mere mention of salmon."
"That's just like you northerners, to start talking to people," said the cook when I returned to the kitchen.
Rebellion stirred in me and I replied, "I am people."
----
"We prised up one of the planks of the lid with a crowbar, and I groped among the packing for the contents; and what did I pull out but a small tin, about 200 grams in weight, wrapped in semi-transparent paper? I recognized the merchandise quickly enough from my pantry work in the south: Portuguese Sardines imported from America, that fish which the papers said was the only fish which could scale the highest tariff walls in the world and yet be sold when ten years old at a thousand per cent profit in the greatest fish country in the world, where even the dogs walk out and vomit at the mere mention of salmon."
