“Claims to Be an Author”: Halldór Laxness’s American Years

Abstract

Although the Icelandic author Halldór Laxness frequently highlighted his debt to American literature and spent several formative years in the United States during the 1920s, few Americanists have investigated his literary and political relationship with the United States. This essay delineates Laxness’s American years through archival sources by mapping his first failed venture to Ellis Island in 1922 through boat records and by tracking his second trip, from 1927 to 1929, through letters, newspapers, and other documents, including a film pitch written in English. Laxness’s biographical experiences in the United States during the 1920s shed light on immigration policy and illuminate some of the struggles that novelists in Hollywood faced while attempting to navigate a cinematic marketplace. His unsuccessful film pitch became the basis for Salka Valka, an epic novel influenced by American writers, most notably, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, and Sinclair Lewis.