Portrait with a Purpose

INDEPENDENT PEOPLE (470 pp.)--Halldor Laxness (Translated by J. A. Thompson)--Knopf ($3).

In the dark, cold, turf-walled farmhouse, Bjartur's wife lies dead in a pool of her own blood. The fire in the stove has gone out. The oil lamp is empty. On the bed, with only a half-starved dog to warm it, lies a newborn baby.

Bjartur has been gone for days. He knew his wife's time was near, but one of his sheep was lost, so he tramped off across the moors to find it. His wife begged him to stay at home, but he told her to hush: "I'm sick of listening to this hysterical babble." Bjartur is used to doing things his own way. He takes back talk from no one. He is, he likes to boast, an independent man.

Bjartur of Summerhouses is the central figure in Independent People. This grim, graphic novel of life on the Icelandic uplands, circa 1900-1920, is the Book-of-the-Month Club's choice for August and, according to the publisher, an "epic in the grand tradition of great fiction." It may be less expansively described as a half-sympathetic, half-scornful portrait of the Icelandic peasant mind, done with broad "epic" touches and special political intent. For Author Halldor Laxness uses his fine portrait, which is drawn in almost Holbein-like detail, as the text for a two-part sermon on the sins of capitalistic Iceland and the promised blessings of Marxism (he is a member of Iceland's Communist, or so-called United People's Front-Socialist, party).

King in a Palace. The preaching becomes a harangue only at the end. For the rest, there is a long, slow-moving narrative, often vivid, of daily life at Summerhouses farm. The nearest town is a five-hour trip by packhorse. The nearest neighbor lives out of sight, over a ridge.

"Take my word for it," he tells his dog, "the man who lives on his own land is an independent man. He who pays his way is a king. He who keeps his sheep alive through the winter lives in a palace." Hardly a palace, Summerhouses farmhouse is a combination living room-dining room-bedroom-kitchen, with a reeking stable for the stock below. The one true luxury in the house is Grandmother's solid silver earpick, an heirloom.

Bjartur's children get no coddling: "I had boiled fish and tallow and cod-liver oil in my sucking-bag before I was a year old, and throve well on it." Food is scarce; winters are cold.

Worker in Flight. Bjartur doggedly hangs on, growling at his family, glorying in his independence. World War I--that "blessed war," that "beautiful war," which sends the value of Icelandic exports sky-high--makes Bjartur prosperous. But only for a time; and when the crash comes, Summerhouses is sold to satisfy creditors.

"The lone worker," preaches Novelist Laxness, "will never escape. . . . The life of the lone worker, the life of the independent man, is in its nature a flight from other men, who seek to kill him. From one night-lodging into another even worse. ... Such is the story of the most independent man in the country."

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