The author of three books — "Absolution" and "The Journey Home," and now "Walking Into the Night" — Olaf Olafsson seems an unlikely candidate to be a great novelist.
After all, his college degree from Brandeis University in Massachusetts was in physics, and his professional life has been marked by executive positions at Sony and Time Warner.
Olafsson jokes that he "never understood the right brain/left brain thing — I can't remember which is which."
One thing is certain: from his youth in Iceland, Olafsson has been deeply interested in literature and even wrote a book of short stories, published in Iceland, when he was 23. When he came to the United States, he decided "to take a chance on something new," and he studied physics — simply because he knew nothing about it.
"I got a master's degree in physics," Olafsson said during a telephone interview from his vacation home in Long Island, N.Y. "Then I met the chairman of Sony and he suggested I join the business world. He said they needed people who understood science. So I took a job with Sony and moved to California. I decided to do it for two years, and it ended up being nine years. I started Sony interactive businesses. It was a marriage of technology and the media."
Even as he continued to enjoy business success, Olafsson stole time in early mornings to write. Finally, he became so busy with his professional commitments that in 1996 he quit his job to devote himself to writing full-time. "I was not content."
Yet, he recently signed on with Time Warner. "I write five hours every morning, and then I've exhausted myself. So I go into Time-Warner in the afternoon, and it's good to turn my attention to something else and see people. People give you nourishment."
Nevertheless, Olafsson gets his greatest pleasure in life from writing. "There is pleasure when you write a sentence that works. While I'm writing, I'm disciplined — every day. Between books I'm always anxious. I always feel like an empty barrel when I'm not doing it."
"Walking Into the Night" came from a true story told to Olafsson by a physician friend in New York. "I knew within days I was going to use this story in a novel. The basic premise stuck in my mind. It took me a year and a half to prepare before I started writing it in earnest. The character, his grandfather, left his family in Iceland and fell in love with a New York woman — and he wasn't discovered until many years later, working as a butler for William Randolph Hearst's wife in New York."
Olafsson kept the theme of the story, except that Kristjan, his main character, ended up being Hearst's butler at his San Simeon estate in California. "The Hearst castle is both grotesque and charming at the same time. I decided it was the perfect setting. I read everything the Hearst family gave me, including letters and journals. I picked up everything like a vacuum cleaner."
After he began writing, it took two years to finish. "Many of the anecdotes about Hearst in the book are accurate — his lavish parties, his food, the surroundings, the movie theater, Marion Davies' character and career in the late '30s. All these were grounded in reality. I used them as a framework and then fictionalized within the framework.
"Both Hearst and Davies are plausible characters. Hearst did more damage to Davies than good by trying to make her a successful, serious actress. In the end, he couldn't buy her a career."
Olafsson wanted to tell the story in a way that would not confuse the reader. "We all live in the present, but the past is always with us. The mind is always going back and grabbing things from the past to help us make decisions. I wanted to weave the past and present together. I
decided to paint the main character through the letters he never sent. It was sort of like making a quilt."
It is not Olafsson's practice to diagram or outline the story on paper before he begins. "I carry a notebook, and all kinds of things find their way into it. But writing an outline would force the story. You could be a slave to the structure, and it should be the opposite. It needs to be flexible."
Admittedly, there is a "romantic streak" in Olafsson's writing. "I write with lyricism. I use nature, the surroundings, the birds, the howling wind — and then in describing cities, the stone and glass and so on. For me that's a part of the characters, a way to describe what they're doing. It's a great device to tell a story."
Initially, Olafsson wrote in his native Icelandic. "I was 12 when I started reading English. Now I've spent half my life here, and English has become part of my DNA. I wrote 'The Journey Home' originally in Icelandic, and then translated it into English. But I wrote 'Walking Into the Night' in English.
"I'm fascinated with the unpredictability of human nature. Why does someone who seems to be living a perfect life leave it without a trace? I can't stay away from my two kids for more than a week at a time. That aspect grabbed me. There has to be a reason someone leaves. Kristjan felt he was in the shadow of Elisabet. He could not live according to her standards. She is somehow above him. He feels inadequate around her."
That, says Olafsson, "became the fundamental reason in my mind for Kristjan doing what he did — and then not being able to go back. I always thought that when he left, he had not decided to leave forever. But people lose their footing and do irrational things, and when they want to retrace their steps, it is too late.
"The wall of time is insurmountable."
E-MAIL: dennis@desnews.com