Volume 44, Number 6 · April 10, 1997
It's a Mad World
By Thomas R. Edwards
The Friends of Freeland
by Brad Leithauser
Knopf,, 508 pp., $26.00
Mister Sandman
by Barbara Gowdy
Steerforth Press, 268 pp., $24.00
In The Friends of Freeland Brad Leithauser suggests something of how the modern world might look from a perspective as disorienting and yet revealing as a polar-projection map is to Mercatorized minds. He proposes an island country where no islands are, between Iceland and Greenland, from which the rest of the globe is 'Down Below.' Freeland was founded in 980 AD by someone whose Old Norse name could be translated as 'Erik the Squalid' or even 'Erik the Shitty,' but who is known to history, if at all, as 'Erik the Other,' to distinguish him from a better-known Icelandic counterpart. The history and modern condition of the country, which became independent of Denmark after World War II, lack splendor. Its national epic, The Freeland Saga, was written by a foreigner and has scant literary merit; though the manuscript has never been to Freeland, its 'return' from Iceland is a passionate local cause.
Review, 3301 words
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