Sjóræninginn: skálduð ævisaga

Jón Gnarr #2

by Jón Gnarr

Sjóræninginn er skálduð ævisaga Jóns Gnarr eins og Indjáninn og sjálfstætt framhald þeirrar bókar. Þótt frásögn Jóns sé einatt fyndin er hún bæði einlæg og tregafull, enda má segja að öll vegferð höfundar um íslenska menntakerfið sé vörðuð harkalegum árekstrum, bæði hugmyndalegum og raunverulegum.

Genres: Nonfiction

266 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Jón Gnarr Kristinsson is an Icelandic actor, comedian, and politician who became the Mayor of Iceland's capital city Reykjavík on 15 June 2010, and stepped down on 16 June 2014. Born Jón Gunnar Kristinsson, Jón legally changed his middle name in 2005 to the way his mother pronounced it when he was a boy. He is married to Jóhanna Jóhannsdóttir with whom he has five children. His daughter, Margret, is a fitness model and IFBB competitor.

Jón Gnarr suffered from dyslexia and had learning difficulties as a child. Jón Gnarr recounts these experiences in his book The Indian, an autobiographical account of his childhood. Jón Gnarr has been diagnosed with ADHD and has actively discussed his life with ADHD publicly.

Jón was known as Jónsi Punk as a teenager and played bass in a punk band called Nefrennsli ("Runny Nose"). He attended a number of high schools,but didn't complete the university entrance exam. During the 1980s Jón and his future wife, Jóhanna Jóhannsdóttir, became acquainted with the members of the band the Sugarcubes, including Björk and Einar Örn Benediktsson. Björk remained a close friend to Jóhanna, while Einar would become an important political ally to Jón.

In 1994, Jón teamed up with Sigurjón Kjartansson to form the radio duo Tvíhöfði. In 1997, he joined TV station Stöð 2 where he wrote and starred in several seasons of the Icelandic comedy show Fóstbræður. His best known movies are The Icelandic Dream and A Man like Me. His stand-up comedy show Ég var einu sinni nörd (I Used To Be a Nerd) is autobiographical.

In late 2009 Jón formed the Best Party with a number of others with no background in politics, including Einar. The Best Party, a satirical political party that parodies Icelandic politics and aims to make the life of the citizens more fun, managed a plurality in the 2010 municipal elections in Reykjavík, with the party gaining six out of 15 seats on the City Council. Einar, second on the party's list behind Jón, won a seat on the council.

Jón ended up defeating the Independence Party-led municipal government of Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir. His victory is widely seen as a backlash against establishment politicians in the wake of Iceland's 2008-2011 financial crisis.

Jón's political platform included promises of "free towels in all swimming pools, a polar bear for the Reykjavík zoo, all kinds of things for weaklings, Disneyland in the Vatnsmýri area," etc.

Upon being elected, Jón announced that he would not enter a coalition government with anyone that had not watched "The Wire", eventually entering a coalition with the Social Democratic Alliance (Samfylkingin) as its junior partner to govern Reykjavík.

As mayor, Jón has been a source of amusement and shock. He also protested the Chinese government's treatment of human rights activist Liu Xiaobo. He has stated that the importance of the EU is highly over-rated. On October 30, 2013, Jón Gnarr announced that he would not seek a second term in office when his first term expired in June 2014.

Since leaving office, Gnarr has campaigned for Iceland to abandon its laws requiring citizens to have traditional Icelandic names. Gnarr also authored a book entitled Gnarr!: How I Became the Mayor of a Large City in Iceland and Changed the World.

Reviews

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jón Gnarr is the stand-up comedian who became mayor of Reykjavik during Iceland's financial crisis in 2010. He has written a trio of "memoir-novels," which sounds like one of those vague new genres that allows the author to invent when necessary without the danger of enraging Oprah Winfrey. Whatever the term is meant to convey, The Pirate, the second book in Gnarr's trilogy, is not a memoir told from the mature perspective of an adult looking back on his younger years. Gnarr fully inhabits the voice of this version of his adolescent self. This is a kid who, having found escape and possibly salvation in punk rock, can talk in depth on the finer points of anarchy, but who still refers to afternoons spent with friends as "playing." The story is alternately funny and appalling. Jón faces clueless parents, horrific bullying, and an educational system that has not begun to acknowledge the learning disabilities he faces. Punk Rock is the answer for Jón and the small band of like souls he finds.

[Börkur Sigurbjörnsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jón er afskaplega fyndinn og skemmtilegur. Í sjóræningjanum segir hann afar skemmtilega frá ansi leiðinlegum unglingsárum sínum. Bókin er ruglingsleg og þversagnakennd á köflum. Ég var næstum því búinn að láta ruglið fara í taugarnar á mér. En hver sem hefur verið unglingur veit vel að þannig er nú bara lífið á þessum aldri. Jón kemur efninu frá sér á afar sannfærandi hátt ... jafnvel þótt hann skáldi kannski slatta.

[Páll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Átakanleg bók sem setur manninn og feril hans í samhengi og erfitt að sjá hvernig æska hans virðist samfellt hróp á hjálp án þess að nokkur maður heyri. Bókin er vel skrifuð og margar frásagnirnar grátbroslegar.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone who's ever felt out of place, misunderstood, perhaps an outcast, should read this book. The short chapter on Anarchist Land alone is worth the read.

[Helgi Auðarson Guðmundsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frábær bók en á sama tíma átakanleg saga um unglingsár Jóns Gnarr. Það verður ekki komist hjá því að finna mikla samúð með viðkvæmum unglings Jóni, sem skynjar og upplifir veruleikann á annan hátt en mætir svo miklu skilningsleysi og andstyggilegri grimmd að manni finnst ótrúlegt að hann hafi ekki farið í hundana. Það er eflaust vegna þess að Jón Gnarr varð gríðarlega farsæll uppistandari og leikari, höfundur og borgarstjóri sem manni finnst þessi saga svo grípandi; hún sendir fingurinn beinustu leið á skólann og fólkið sem hafði enga trú á honum. Síðast en ekki síst þá finnst mér bókin fallega og einlæglega skrifuð.

[Inga Hrund Gunnarsdóttir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Það eru komnir nokkrir mánuðir síðan ég las Indjánann og þessi bók er beint framhald af henni. Hló oft upphátt. Fljótlesin og flæðir vel. Góð lesning fyrir ferkantað fólk eins og mig.

[Guðdjon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fín bók

[Sigurður Unuson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best er að heyra af óþægilegum samskiptum Jóns við föður sinn og þó maður skynji þessa þrúgandi stemmningu þá kemst maður ekki hjá því að skella uppúr

[Jeff Buddle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second in Jon Gnarr's autobiographical trilogy. This time Gnarr is a little unsure of himself, vacillating between rendering his voice at thirteen years old with that of his adult self. This unsteady narrative makes for a less enjoyable read, but there's still some worthy stuff here.

As I read this time, I got the impression that this is essentially a kid's book, though not the kind of kid's book you hand a kid. It has nothing of the sweet romanticism, and moral underpinning of a book like "To Kill a Mockingbird." This is more a novel that a outsider kid will find completely on his own, read in private, and never tell anybody about it. "The Pirate" is a book for the rejected, the bullied, the left out. Gnarr pulls no punches when he described the abuse that he endured from his fellow kids, but it also spells out how he endured it.

Luckily for Gnarr there was punk rock. Punk gave him shelter in an alternate universe. He didn't have to listen to pop, Icelandic traditional music meant little to him. For him there were the Sex Pistols, Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers and, most importantly of all, Crass. This all led him towards another escape, anarchism. Herein, Gnarr spends hours in the library trying to decipher Bakunin and Prudhon, only to come with the idea that anarchists only want to do their own thing, with nobody telling them what to do.

This is comfort to young Jon Gnarr. It means he isn't going at it alone. There are others like him, with interests like his. When he puts a safety pin through his earlobe he's identifying with all the above. I am sure there are kids like this today, who need to know that kids like this came before them, even in Iceland. This novel is really for them.

[Solrun Saemundsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Skyldulesning :)

[Georg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Einfaldlega frábær bók, fyndin og sorgleg í senn, "Indjáninn" var æðisleg en þessi er enn betri, skólakerfið fær réttilega rækilega á baukinn í henni og fleyri.

[Helena · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hrikalega langdreginn þótti mér - helmingi færri orð hefðu að mínu mati skilað innihaldinu mun betur

[Kristjana Mjöll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Virkilega góð.
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