Bragi Ólafsson - The Ambassador

Sturla begins to read the English text:

Dear Mr. Jonsson

2,000 OUTSTANDING INTELLECTUALS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines intellectualism as the “doctrine that knowledge is wholly or mainly derived from pure reason” and it follows by saying that an intellectual is a “person possessing a good understanding, enlightened person.”

Surely, therefore, this definition is the reason for your selection to be included in this prestigious publication which is due for release in early 2007. I invite you to take your place within its pages. Only two thousand intellectuals can be featured from across the world and I therefore urge you to complete the enclosed questionnaire as soon as possible.

He takes a break from reading and lets himself scan the rest of the text with his eyes. Is he being mocked, or has he ended up on a list of world intellectuals because of some kind of misunderstanding? Could it really be the case that the recipient has to act fast to avoid being excluded from the two thousand people there is room for in the volume? Who’d had the idea of sending him — Sturla Jón Jónsson — this letter? The name of a Nicholas S. Law is written below the body of the letter, his signature looking rather like the lines of a cartoon EKG; what on earth could this man have been thinking as he put down his pen after signing the letter? The postscript asks the recipient to recommend someone he knows who deserves to be in the book by writing their name in a special box on the reverse side of the letter. Here is the answer to why Sturla received the letter: some spiteful individual from the crowd of Icelandic writers had also got a similar letter — at the recommendation of another spiteful author — and he had added Sturla’s name to the list of suggested recipients. The person had thought they should add, “of course, the inferior poet Sturla Jón Jónsson — who has never had any thoughts that have had any influence on other people — he ought to be very much at home on your list of the two thousand most vital thinkers on earth.”

Sturla would without doubt have done the same thing, if he’d been able to step outside himself and look from a distance at the mediocre poet Sturla Jón. In fact, his first thought is to return the letter with the words to the effect that he isn’t worthy of or able to accept this honor which has been offered to him, but he can instead recommend the bearded Icelandic poet Svanur Bergmundsson, the same person who had, in conversation with his fellow poet, friend, and countryman Sturla Jón, described how the Japanese-English author Ishiguro (or Japenglish, as Sturla can’t resist adding for his own benefit) had shown complete disregard for his loyal readers by allowing three-quarters of an hour to pass inside just two minutes during one of his novels.

But perhaps a similar letter has already dropped into Svanur’s mailbox.

Suddenly Sturla is depressed at the thought of how little these colleagues, he and Svanur — and also their fellow Icelandic poets of a similar stature — have contributed to world literature; their contribution even to Icelandic literature is pretty modest. And on the heels of this thought he begins thinking of his neighbor Áslákur, and an even greater gloom descends over him; in all the apartment buildings in the country — in all the high rises in the world — life goes on in exactly the same way as inside the residences of Skúlagata 40 in Reykjavík; how pathetic it is, how miserable. Weren’t fathers of numerous children all over the world fetching brooms from laundry rooms of apartments, only to return them to the same place later? Is there anywhere in the world where you can’t find insignificant men struggling to write some insignificant texts which are of no use to anyone but themselves — in other words, useless products that actually prevent the people who write them from being human beings of any value.

Or are they?

Doesn’t the piece Sturla wrote yesterday have any message? Could it be that the actual message of his damning, sarcastic critique of poetry festivals is self-deception, which springs from his discomfort and dissatisfaction over his own impotence and uselessness? That’s all very plausible, but he isn’t able to shake the feeling that this decision to make the leap from poetry to prose — a personal change of form — has aroused something entirely new inside him, something which really means something, for him or to others. He decides to fix himself a drink, and on his way into the kitchen (where the drinks are), he puts the newest Richard Thompson album, Front Parlour Ballads, on the CD player.

Isn’t this something that happens to him at regular intervals, these reflections and this doubt about his occupation? After having gulped down two shots of vodka and persuaded himself, by scanning his eyes briefly over his article from yesterday, that he is on the right path — that he couldn’t be on anything but the right path — Sturla rings the editor Jónatan Jóhannsson.

“I think I’ve written you an article,” he says, letting Jónatan know he will swing by in the morning with it; he is heading abroad on Friday.

“Is it a short-story?” the editor asks and continues noisily eating something he’d picked up while Sturla was saying his name at the beginning of the conversation.

“Not exactly. It’s more in the family of narratives of events which have yet to happen.”

“More in the family of?”

“This is what it is: a narrative of something which isn’t.”

“Sounds peculiar. Is it speculative fiction? Is it science fiction?”

“No, I wouldn’t really call it science fiction, not exactly.”

“I’ve got to apologize to you, Sturla: I don’t take any sort of ‘invention fiction’ for the magazine. If you’re planning to give me science fiction, I’m going to have to turn it down.”

Sturla laughs into the handset; he isn’t sure whether his father’s old friend is joking or not.

“Listen, something’s changed about you,” Jónatan says cheerfully, and when Sturla keeps quiet Jónatan continues: “It’s hard to believe you’re still the same person, given the size of your nostrils.”

“What on earth do you mean?” asks Sturla.

“You know, I’d never realized before that you had such big ears,” the editor continues, and for a moment Sturla wonders if there was something wrong with him, if he was crazy, even.

“What I’ve got for you is a report from the future,” says Sturla, and after hesitating briefly to see if Jónatan will interrupt him and continue with his convoluted description, he adds: “What I mean by this is that this thing that I am writing about, the thing that’s going to happen,” and Jónatan lets him barrel on unimpeded, “is a poetry festival that I am on the way to in Lithuania in two days, and the article I’m going to let you have in the morning has to do with that festival — it gives an account of what happened at it.”

“So in other words it’s a kind of prophecy?” asks Jónatan.

“We could perhaps call it speculative fiction,” offers Sturla. “I am writing about something which hasn’t yet come to pass, but in a way that. .”

“Just send it to me,” Jónatan interrupts, giving Sturla his e-mail address, jójó@frometof.is. “I’ll be in touch once I’ve managed to read it.”

“I will, of course, have headed to Lithuania by then,” replies Sturla, feeling fairly certain the article will surprise the editor when he reads it; he can hardly be expecting such a merciless autopsy of the state of poetry as he will find in the article. “But I’ll have a cell phone with me,” Sturla adds, asking Jónatan to wait while he looks for his new cell phone number. When he gives Jónatan the number, Jónatan repeats the digits like he’s never heard a row of numbers placed in an order before, as if placing one numeral next to another is a foreign concept. It is, Sturla thinks, smiling, indicative of his antipathy to numbers which begin with an eight, the way all cell phone numbers do.