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The Great Weaver from Kashmir

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That epithet would describe the character, Steinn Ellethi, as he initially appears in this ungainly first novel by the Icelander Halldór Laxness, but it would equally suit the author himself. There are pages and pages of brilliant writing in The Great Weaver, of a sort that preview the originality and pungency of Laxness's later novels, but the whole book is a muddy slog through 436 pages of semi-autobiographical philosophical agony. Possibly every great novelist has to write such a book in order to learn to that 'writing' well isn't enough, and probably most great novelists have the good fortune to lose the manuscript before it's accepted for publication. Above all, dear reader, if you're unacquainted with Laxness, please don't read this novel first. Read "The Fish Could Sing" or "Iceland's Bell", and then go on to "Under the Glacier" and "The Atom Station". If any novelist ever deserved his Nobel Prize, it was Halldór Laxness, who had, as the NYT Book Review declared, "an unearthly ability to find beauty in a landscape of destitution, wisdom in a congress of fools."

Laxness was in the throes of uncertainty about his adopted Catholic religion when he wrote The Great Weaver; one wouldn't need any preface to intuit that fact, since the character Steinn wallows in spiritual turmoil. Steinn is the scion of a powerful and wealthy Icelandic family, a 'golden boy' of overweening talent who aspires to be a great poet. Part Peer Gynt, part Siddhartha, with a spicy glaze of Faust, Steinn leaves Iceland and his childhood friend Diljá to become "perfect." That's his parting explanation of himself to Diljá, the woman who will love him and be destroyed by him. Steinn is every bit as prodigious as he thinks himself to be -- of course -- and probably the most insufferable narcissistic puppy of all of literature. Eventually his quest leads him to monastic Catholicism, which he embraces with the most exquisite heretical perversity. The 'quest' is its own exegesis; Scandinavian writing, from the Viking romances to Peer Gynt to The Great Weaver, is replete with quests that double back in fated failure. Steinn's quest for perfection leads him to the conclusion that he is spiritually worthless, the worst of men, and that that sinfulness is precisely his unique claim to redemption. There's a powerful undercurrent of Catharism in the most austere and mystical forms of Catholicism -- in the life of St. Francis and his 'poveretti' followers, for instance -- and from the external point of view of the reader, Steinn's eventual rejection of the Church seems as inevitable as age. In the meantime, however, Laxness compulsively belabors his holy sinner's stages of self-knowledge in almost embarrassing detail. The novel ends, eventually, with Steinn still a disbelieving devotee of Catholic gnosis and a guest in a Carthusian monastery. Apart from being glad to say good-bye to the arrogant brat, anyone who has read Laxness's later work will be grateful for the knowledge that Laxness himself DIDN'T take the final step into the oblivion of vows.

Women readers should be warned that Steinn is Laxness's mouthpiece for the most odious misogynist rants this side of Saint Paul. On the other hand, Diljá is the one character in the novel whose fate can elicit any sympathy. I'm reminded again of Peer Gynt and of Goethe's Faust, but the redemption that those two 'pilgrims' find in the love of the Eternal Feminine is explicitly rejected -- trampled on! - by Steinn. I'm happy to report that Laxness got this misygynist putrescence out of his bloodstream in this novel, and that the women characters in his later books are as richly multi-faceted and empowered as the women in the Medieval Icelandic sagas.

One final note: if you are yourself a practicing Catholic -- I like that expression PRACTICING in all its possible senses here -- you definitely OUGHT to read this novel, turgid though it be, as a spiritual exercise. Writing it was clearly transformative for its author.

Let's cut to the chase, The Great Weaver of Kashmir is not a great novel. However, as a devoted fan of Halldor Laxness, his first major published fiction is a must read. There are many pages of brilliance intermingled with very unLaxness-like drawing room soap opera drivel.

Laxness writing about the wealthy seems phony-- where are the sheep? The home fields? The croft and the damp hay?

Cigarettes and silk ties? This is Laxness trying to write like Maugham. Still, if you can plow through the artifice, the over-wrought philosophical ranting and the loathsome lead characters, you'll discover a writer of genius just starting to find his voice.

Halldór Laxness wrote this unusual novel when he was 23 years old when he was a practicing Catholic. This book was definitely born of that experience, large sections of it are dialectics about sin (usually meaning women), perfection and the relationship of man to God. Laxness was struggling with many religious and political questions (as were many others in the aftermath of WWI) and this book covers them in almost tedious detail at times. If Laxness hadn't been such a good a writer this book would be as insufferable as trying to engage in meaningful conversation with an overly verbose, narcissistic young man. The "hero" of the story, Steinn Elliši, leaves Iceland and his adolescent sweetheart Diljá in a quest to become "the most perfect man on earth." His journey takes him deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the "one true faith", estranging his family and ultimately his humanity in the process. That Steinn's life is portrayed as a downward spiral and not a spiritual ascent shows the conflict Laxness endured; in the book lively domestic scenes exist in sharp contrast to the drab, internalized life of the abbey.

As with Laxness' World Light, (1937), this novel has a searching central character. Whereas Ólafur in Light is a light-hearted ne'er do well, Steinn plays his part in dead earnest. Even more of a contrast is comparing Weaver with Laxness' next novel Salka Valka which had the very much grounded and human Salka facing her difficult and often grim reality head-on in a way which would be unconceivable for the selfish Steinn. The other Laxness coming-of-age-novel, The Fish Can Sing, (1957) possesses a gentle, almost magical realism which is also far removed from the struggles of the unhappy Steinn.

The Great Weaver from Kashmir, while a must for Laxness completists, is a tough go for the general reader and possibly Halldór's most difficult work currently available in English.