2/18/12

Dustin Long - A twisty murder mystery with rich overtones of Nabokov, Norse mythology and pomo fiction


Dustin Long, Icelander, McSweeney's, 2006.

"A Nabokovian goof on Agatha Christie — a madcap mystery in the deceptive tradition of The Crying of Lot 49 — Pale Fire meets The Da Vinci Code?Icelander is the debut novel from a brilliant new mind, an intricate, giddy Icelandic lore and pulpy intrigue.
When Our Heroine’s dear friend is found murdered, it’s an obvious job for her mother, a legendary crime-solver and evil-thwarter. But her mother is dead, and Our Heroine has no interest in inheriting the business, or being chased through a sewer, or listening to skaldic karaoke, or fleeing the inhuman Refusirkir, or — But Evil has no interest in her interests, and thus: adventure ensues."

"Nabokov meets Lemony Snicket in this manic Chinese box version of a mystery. The story, on the surface, is a whodunit set in Iceland, but it's an Iceland of fictitious cities and fantastical underground lands, in which Our Heroine (the only name given to the book's central character) searches for her lost dog while resisting and then reluctantly solving the mystery of who murdered her best friend. The book's multiple narrators include the grownup Our Heroine, a Hollywood actor, a pair of detectives whose style of speech owes more than a little to Yoda, the murder victim's husband, an Icelandic gossip columnist, and the overnarrator who speaks through the book's 53 footnotes, Prefatory Note, Prelude and Afterword. Through all of this ancillary material, the overnarrator refers to a series of mystery novels featuring Our Heroine's now-dead mother and now-demented father and their nemesis, an Icelandic Moriarty. The murder victim herself speaks through notes she has left behind, one of which reads: "We must create incomprehensible things in order to have an analogy for our incomprehension of the universe." Perhaps it's not quite the imperative she thought." - Publishers Weekly

"Long aspires to the linguistic acrobatics of Nabokov and Pynchon in this clever but somewhat tedious mystery debut. The tale revolves around the daughter of Emily Bean-Ymirson, a criminologist and anthropologist, who, along with her Icelandic husband, Jon, solved a slew of cryptic cases before her death in 1985. (Fictional scholar Magnus Valison has novelized the late Bean's diaries in 12 volumes, matter-of-factly titled The Memoirs of Emily Bean.) Emily's daughter, known only as Our Heroine, reluctantly takes up her mother's work following the untimely demise of Shirley MacGuffin (yes, the name is a nod to Hitchcock), a "continually aspiring" author who pens insufferably pretentious prose. Even the most patient readers may find themselves exhausted by Long's legions of footnotes and excessive narrative shifts. There's also the strange cast, which fills a three-page list and includes a rogue librarian, a pair of metaphysical detectives, and a missing dachshund with better breeding than any of the two-legged characters. Long is a talented wordsmith; pity he couldn't demonstrate his verbal dexterity in a more reader-friendly way." - Allison Block

"At one point in Dustin Long’s endearingly wacky puzzle novel, “Icelander,” two “metaphysical detectives” discover a copy of “The Case of the Consternated Cossacks” on a bookshelf between Herman Melville’s “The Confidence Man” and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Valley of Fear.” Since this bumbling pair, a kind of existential Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, see everything as a clue, they have no doubt that the book’s placement is significant, but as usual they just can’t figure out what the significance is. At this juncture, the novel’s “editor” intrudes. In a cranky footnote he observes that there would be equal meaning embedded in the fact that the books placed just above and under “The Case of the Consternated Cossacks” are by, say, Vladimir Nabokov and Elizabeth Peters (who, to the uninitiated, writes mystery novels about a sleuthing female Egyptologist). You see, the books have been shelved by “the most ingenious library scientist of modern times,” whose plan for a nonlinear “rhizomatic replacement of the Dewey Decimal System” entails sorting books without hierarchy, according to an “infinite skein of interconnections.”
“Icelander” itself could well occupy exactly the same spot in this system as “The Case of the Consternated Cossacks,” a book that doesn’t actually exist. Somewhere close at hand would also be one of Richard Russo’s wry novels about small-town life in rural New York. “Icelander” is set in New Crúiskeen, a college town in a state called New Uruk and the former home of Emily Bean-Ymirson, “an anthropologist by profession and a criminologist by birth.” Emily’s crime-solving exploits in the company of her husband, Jon Ymirson; her faithful dog, the Fenris dachshund, and various assorted friends and allies have been immortalized in a series of novels, based on her diaries, by Magnus Valison, “one of the 20th century’s master prose stylists.” (“Consternated Cossacks” is one of those novels.)
But by the time “Icelander” begins, Emily has been dead for years, and the once formidable Jon is suffering from Alzheimer’s. The protagonist of this novel is their daughter, known only as “Our Heroine,” a professor of Scandinavian studies at New Crúiskeen University. The action transpires over a few snowy days after Our Heroine learns that a close family friend, Shirley MacGuffin, has been murdered. Our Heroine strives mightily to hold onto the tragedy of her loss; she wants to avoid getting drawn into investigating the crime, something everyone else in town blithely expects her to do.
If you can’t already tell from the name of our murder victim that “Icelander” is a giddy sendup of postmodern fiction in all its referential frenzy, bear in mind that Magnus Valison, before writing his Emily Bean books, also produced two novels titled “Itallo” and “Ripe Leaf,” which if you work the anagrams pegs him as a Nabokov stand-in. Then there’s the Hollywood heartthrob and wannabe novelist, Nathan, who has come to town to celebrate Bean Day. And we haven’t even gotten to the Norse mythology yet, from the underground realm, Vanaheim, that Emily and Jon discovered in Iceland, to the shape-shifting fox warriors who can be glimpsed skulking all over town. Our Heroine was married to the hereditary prince of Vanaheim, but he has recently left her to return to his people.
Admittedly, this sort of thing isn’t for everyone — the very mention of a novel with footnotes has by now become enough to repel many readers. But the charm of “Icelander” lies in its refusal to take itself too seriously. Long plays the pomo game quite skillfully — one of Shirley’s literary projects is a “Two Story House,” a structure in which two different stories are written all over the walls and objects of the house, one story written on the first floor and the other on the second. But he never forgets that playing is exactly what all this is, and so he avoids the tedious solemnity with which so many metafictionists attempt to demonstrate their impishness. (Naturally, a dead body turns up in the Two Story House.)
Besides, at the heart of “Icelander” is a very believable woman who doesn’t want to be a detective, damn it. Our Heroine just wants to mourn her friend and her shattered marriage and to find her lost dog, the grandson of the Fenris dachshund. She’d like nothing better than to leave behind her former life (which involved such adventures as being kidnapped by an archvillain and rescuing her mother by bashing in a bad guy’s head with a stolen gold brick). “Icelander” is about her struggle not to be so fictional, and you can’t help but root for her, as secret passages and mysterious black limos confound her at every turn. On the other hand, you can’t help but root against her, since vengeful princesses and nefarious masters of disguise are pretty hard to resist from a reader’s perspective. Long obviously knows what it’s like to hover between wanting to read about underground kingdoms and purloined documents and wanting to read about just plain real people. In fact, he seems perfectly happy to keep on hovering there, and he knows how to make his readers happy there, too." - Laura Miller

"In Norse mythology, there’s a powerful brew called the “mead of poetry.” How Odin acquired this drink is a pretty complicated tale, but it winds down with Odin disguised as an eagle, flying back to the home of the Norse gods, pursued by the giant he’s stolen it from. To save the mead, Odin basically pukes it into a bowl as he’s flying overhead, but a few drops of his dribble trickle down to Earth. Whoever drinks the actual poetry mead is blessed with brilliance. Whoever drinks the dribble is a temporary master of nonsense.
I don’t know what Dustin Long’s been drinking to come up with a tale as wacky and fantastic as Icelander, but as long as it eventually wears off, I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on some of it. There are moments, especially in the first pages, when Long’s first novel glimmers with comic brilliance, and there are moments when the faint stench of dribble sets in. Maybe it’s poetry mead spiked with ormolu tea, a powerful drink that we are told is “gaining popularity in topside Iceland, though it has yet to make a successful market-shift to the United States.”
Unfortunately I googled “ormolu tea” and it only seems to show up on emilybean.com, a fake Web site Long has created to honour one of Icelander’s more important characters. Though we never meet Emily Bean, her legend haunts this novel and the life of her daughter. Known only as Our Heroine, she is the resistant heir to Emily Bean’s reputation as a master criminologist. Kind of like a light parody of a female Hamlet, Our Heroine would like nothing more than to escape the expectations that she will follow in her mother’s footsteps. The last thing she wants is to spend her life drawn into capers like The Case of the Consternated Cossacks. She’d much prefer to spend her life as an alcoholic, somewhat slutty academic, but her main skill—the ability to drink anyone under the table—seems to come in pretty handy as an Icelandic sleuth... and as the dustcover helpfully forewarns us, “Evil has no interest in her lack of interest.”
And so Our Heroine is drawn into the mysterious death of Shirley MacGuffin, “a continually aspiring author whose prose was matched in ambition only by its pretentiousness.” MacGuffin was in the process of writing her own version of Hamlet. The murderer may have hoped to pass this off as the famous version written by Thomas Kyd, which academic lore believes pre-dated Shakespeare’s version.
The search for this murderer is further muddled by the appearance of two “philosophical investigators,” kind of the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the story and postmodern multitaskers. “We take on mundane cases such as murder and missing persons as a sideline to support our investigations into the larger Mysteries that others pass over in silence.”
And then there’s Nathan, a Hollywood actor who bears a striking resemblance to Ethan Hawke. Throw in a Norse goddess, a half-human ex-husband, some other characters like a rogue library-scientist, a beloved missing Dachshund and a trickster named Snurt, add some entertaining if digressive footnotes and you get quite the meandering literary funhouse. Part Da Vinci Code, part Nancy Drew, and fortunately a very small part Infinite Jest.
Long writes more like a verbal trickster than a traditional novelist, and there are times when the tricks wear a little thin. If the novel were a little more engaging, one might be tempted to go back and solve, or speculate on some of the puzzles Long incorporates into the story. In the end, however, Icelander probably won’t be everyone’s cup of ormolu tea. But for quirky minds cluttered with more literary trivia than is probably good for them, Icelander is like the poetic version of a good bender." - Juliet Waters

"It’s hard to even know where to begin when talking about this story. So I’ll begin by saying that even though it was confusing for so many reasons, I really enjoyed it (and the confusions were cleared up over time). This story has so many levels of intrigue and obfuscation, that it’s clear that Long thought quite hard about it (and had some wonderful inspirations).
The book opens with a Prefatory note from John Treeburg, Editor (who lives in New Uruk City). The note informs us that the author of Icelander assumes that you, the reader, will be at least a little familiar with Magnus Valison’s series The Memoirs of Emily Bean. As such, he has included notes for clarification. He has also included a Dramatis Personae. The characters in the Dramatis Personae are the characters from Valison’s series (not necessarily Icelander), and are included here for context. He also notes that his afterward will comment on the disputed authorship of this very novel.
The Dramatis Personae lists the fourteen people who Valison wrote about inThe Memoirs of Emily Bean. Except, we learn pretty early on that the The Memoirs were based directly on the actual diaries of the actual woman Emily Bean Ymirson. Emily Bean died in 1985, but before she died she was an extraordinary anthropologist and criminologist. She kept meticulous journals of all of her exploits, and Valison fictionalized it (to some people’s chagrin, but to general acclaim).
Emily Bean was also the mother of Our Heroine. Our Heroine is, indeed, the heroine of Icelander, although her real name is never given. We learn pretty early on is that Our Heroine’s friend Shirley MacGuffin has been killed. MacGuffin was an aspiring author (whose only published work appears on a bathroom wall). Her final text was meant to be a recreation of Hamlet. Not Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but Hamlet as written by Thomas Kyd. And, indeed, Kyd’s Hamlet predated Shakespeare’s.
There’s also a lot of excitement with The Vanatru. The Vanatru lived underground, and had a serious quarrel with surface dwellers who worked hard at keeping them down. The Queen of the Vanatru is Gerd. She controls the Refurserkir, an inhuman race of fox-shirted spirit warriors who appear literally out of nowhere.
Okay, so how confused are you now?
Despite the sci-fi sounding nature of the story, it is actually not too outlandish. The part about the Vanatru is based on Icelandic/Viking mythology. Characters in the book include: Gerd (a Goddess), Surt (her nemesis), and Fenris wolf (a mythological creature–which Long turns into the Fenris Dachshund). Long successfully commingles the two worlds into a kind of fantasy thriller.
As mentioned, Shirley MacGuffin was killed. Everyone assumes that Our Heroine is set on finding the killer. But she was too close to Shirley and honestly doesn’t care. She knows that it won’t bring her back and, no, she doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s (heavily documented by Valison) footsteps.
And yet, she keeps getting drawn back into the search. By Blaise Duplain, Shirley’s widower, who is intent upon finding the killer himself. By Hubert Jorgen, a rogue library scientist who has experimented with the mystical powers of the Vanatru, by Wible & Pacheco, “philosophical investigators” who are searching for clues, although they’re not sure what kind of clues yet, and by Constance (Connie) Lingus [I just got that joke], erstwhile reporter who seeks to find the truth (and who seems jealous of Our Heroine).
Now, the mechanics of the book:
The first part of the book [Prelude] is written in a kind of high mythic style: “Our Heroine woke to the sound of snowflakes, plaughtting against the window, perfect stellar dendrites that shattered as they crashed against the glass” (15).
The second Part [Ludo] is a series of short scenes, each one told from the perspective of the recurring characters. This comprises the bulk of the story and it solidifies the majority of the plot: Connie trying to get to the bottom of what Shirley was up to. There’s also a lot about Nathan, who I haven’t mentioned yet. Nathan is an American actor who, in his preparation for his upcoming role as Hamlet, learned about Kyd’s version. In his research he went to Denmark (!), which led him to New Uruk and the Vanatru. He bumps into Our Heroine and recognizes her immediately. Nathan hangs out with her for a bit, but then gets back to his main goal: going underground and seeing the Vanatru caves (this whole sequence is wonderful). We also follow Wible & Pacheco as they seemingly bumble around trying to find clues (and basically getting into trouble).
The third and final part [Cluedo] is a kind of denouement. It is written as a close third person narrative focusing on Our Heroine as she slowly puts all of the pieces together. I found this section incredible exciting and quite compelling. It was amazing to see all of the pieces fit together. And it was evening more amazing to realize that this story, which seems so crazy and kind of all over the place, is actually a very intricately structured mystery.
The book ends with the promised afterword in which Treeburg undermines the entire book. He dismisses the author’s authority and questions his intentions. But at the same time, he also concludes the story of Our Heroine because Part Three ends somewhat cryptically. Treeburg tells us about what “really” happened to the main parties after the events of Icelander (although even he glosses over some details, assuming we know it all already).
This is a really clever (really clever) book, full of wonderful word play, terrible (wonderful) puns, and a very heavy dose of Vladimir Nabokov-love: (the review from hipsterbookclub notes (which I missed): “(Valison’s books— “Itallo” and “Ripe Leaf” —are anagrams of Lolita and Pale Fire, respectively).” Icelander isn’t as challenging as Nabokov can be, but it takes some patience and some sticktoitness to get through the confusing beginning (there’s so many characters!). But the rewards are many, and the joys are high.
It’s a great, fun story and I look forward to more from Dustin Long." - Paul Debraski

Read it at Google Books


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Interview by Shane Jones

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