Raporttia suomalaisen elokuvan festivaalilta

A week ago I was at the festival of Finnish cinema. It focuses mainly on older films. Here are some capsule reviews - in Finnish. I'll have to write about Soviet-Finnish Sampo (1959) later on and in English, since there's an American connection: Roger Corman made his The Day The Earth Froze (or something to that effect) on that.

Mikko Niskasen Sissit: sotakohtaukset olivat hyviä, mutta psykologisoivat kohtaukset olivat aika kankeita eikä kuvaus lottien kanssa vehtaamisesta tuntunut jostain syystä kovin uskottavalta. Hopeaa rajan takaa taas oli hiukan liian lepsu - jos se olisi ollut amerikkalainen elokuva, Speden roolihahmo olisi joutunut venäläisten vangiksi ja muut olisivat pelastaneet tämän. Nyt ei missään vaiheessa ollut tunne, että pojat olisivat olleet todellisessa vaarassa. Uusiaaltomaiset kohtaukset vanhensivat muuten ihan sympaattista elokuvaa. Pankkiaiheinen Syksyllä kaikki on toisin taas oli pirun kankea ja liian pitkä, eikä Niskanen ollut löytänyt siihen oikeata tyylilajia.

Asfalttilampaat oli parempi, mutta siinäkin oli omat ongelmansa: missään vaiheessa ei kerrottu kunnolla, mikä Eero Melasniemen näyttelemää päähenkilöä oikein vaivasi. Katsoja ei päässyt kiinni vainoon, joka häneen Naantalin pikkukaupunkimiljöössä kohdistui. Lisäksi elokuva oli homovihamielinen, ja ehkä monien muidenkin Niskasen tavoin myös naisvihamielinen (mistä juhlittu Pojat on yksi räikeimpiä esimerkkejä ollessaan jopa äitivihamielinen). Tuottajana hääränneen Donnerin näyttäytyminen raiskauksia harrastavana gynekologina oli täysin käsittämätön kohtaus. Mutta paljon oli valmis antamaan anteeksi, kun lopussa soi Oksasen ja Chydeniuksen Sinua, sinua rakastan - biisi on tehty elokuvaa varten.

Valentin Vaalan Loviisa - Niskavuoren nuori emäntä sen sijaan oli rikkeetön mestariteos näihin verrattuna, upeasti kuvattu, hienosti näytelty ja mahtavalla draivilla eteenpäin kulkeva tragedia. Sen oli hetkittäin pilata se, että yksi henkilöistä oli nimeltään Roope-setä.

Teuvo Puron Vaihdokas (1927) oli sekavahko mykkäelokuva, mutta kyllähän näin vanhoja elokuvia aina katsoo, kuriositeettinakin. Sen kanssa nähtiin pätkiä kadonneista elokuvista, kuten Puron Sylvistä (1913) ja turkulaisesta äänielokuvasta Sano se suomeksi - jälkimmäisissä pätkissä Rafu Ramstedt teki vaikutuksen hiukan gay-henkisellä esityksellään.

En nähnyt Olavi Kallaksen muutama vuosi sitten löydettyä Miehen vankina -elokuvaa 40-luvulta, mutta juttelin paikalla olleen Tapani Maskulan kanssa ja hän oli sitä mieltä, että turkulaisten Kivimäen veljesten (Huijarien huvittavat huiputtajat) tuottaman elokuvan käsikirjoitti ja ilmeisesti myös ohjasi Harry Etelä eli Aimo Viherluoto, suosikkini kaikkien kotimaisten pulp-senttarien joukossa. Pentti Viherluoto on kuulemma muistellut, että Aimo-veli olisi kirjoittanut elokuvan käsikirjoituksen. On toivoa, että käsikirjoitus löytyisi Viherluotojen kotiarkistoista.

The first film at MySpace

I just posted my first film at MySpace. It's called Shoot Out, but it's no Western. It takes nine seconds.

Kids' book shelves

See below. This is also turned sideways, but you can see what's in there.

More kids' shelves

Sorry, this is upside down and I don't have a program in our laptop to be able to turn it.

The kids' book shelves

Lurker challenged people to a meme about their kids' book shelves. Couldn't resist.

At first, here's the first two floors. As our desktop is at the other side, there are some reference books on the same shelf, with their backs turned away.

Back in business

As you can see from three posts below, I'm on top of my form and will be posting again with some regularity. And I even created a MySpace account!

My Space dot com slash jurinen

I've created a My Space account here. In due time, you'll find very short documentaries of sort of our everyday life. I don't know why I'll be doing this and I'm quite sure the result won't be interesting, but nevertheless.

Ralph Bakshi's Wizards

I saw Ralph Bakshi's animated feature Wizards from 1977 couple of weeks ago, but haven't had time to write about it. It was more interesting than good, and most of the time it was pretty boring.

It wasn't bad - the animation was good throughout and there were some striking scenes in which the animators brought together wholly different styles. My main concern was that there was too much of that interplay with different styles - it seemed that Bakshi never really knew what he was doing. He never quite manages to bring his characters alive and they are too different from each other. You never believe they are characters in a fantasy story, reminiscent of Lord of the Rings or some such. And they are too much in the vein of Terrytoons of Bakshi's early career. The same thing with the gags in the film - they are never good enough, only getting somewhere close. The idea of wizards of the future using Nazi propaganda films may have been a good idea to begin with, but it gets pretty abrasive in the end.

It's been said that this is closer Lord of the Rings than Bakshi's dreadful attempt to animate it in 1979. Well, maybe - nevertheless, Bakshi used some of the footage of Wizards in his LoTR. The latter film suffered from financial troubles and Bakshi's visions never come truly alive, but even in here, his better-liked film, he has to resort to voice-over and stills. (Some of the stills must've gained the attention of the Winis and influenced the outlook of their Elfquest graphic novels.)

One thing I really liked in the film were some of the drawings by one Ian Miller who did similar drawings for A Tolkien Bestiary which David Day edited in 1979. He must've gotten the job via Wizards.

A Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers

One of the books I've been reading is The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers (2001). Now, I'm not big on legal thrillers and I've never read a John Grisham or a Scott Turow. I was quite bored with two or three Perry Masons I've tried. The court-room scenery holds no appeal to me, for whatever reasons. I picked this up at the library mainly because of some interesting authors in the table of contents and because the book was compiled with both new and old stories, an approach that does hold an appeal for me, for whatever reasons. I haven't had - and won't have - a time to read the whole book and I'll have to take this back to the library and get on to other things in life (and book shelves), but I managed to read some dozen of the stories. Here are some brief reviews:


Francis M. Nevins jr: Night of Silken Snow: well written, but the end comes from a bit far
Joe Lansdale & Andrew Vachss: Veil's Visit: quite funny tall-talish story with Hap and Leonard
Michael A. Black: Reasonable Doubts: pretty okay story, but would've hoped for more action; James Reasoner liked Black's one-off crime novel very much, details here
Irwin Shaw: Triumph of Justice: quite good as a story, but I thought Shaw was using some racial stereotypes in here, as late as 1978
John Lutz: Dogs and Fleas: sorry, don't remember much about this, even though I know I read it
Brian Hodge: Speedball: a very good and original story about a hunt for the last days of John Belushi, from a known horror writer
Morris Hershman: Bail Hearing: about this I remember only that it was written as a letter and there was a surprise twist, expertly handed, I'm sure
Henry Slesar: Thicker Than Water: a good court-room story, with a nice twist in the end; some of the forensics was a bit dated, though
James Powell: A Murder Coming: from 1972, a pretty tough one to follow, but actually quite good
C.J. Henderson: The First Thing We Do...: clever ending, but I don't really know if it was satisfactory
Mat Coward: Tomorrow's Villain: otherwise very good, but I didn't believe in the revelation about how and why the crime was committed
Mike Wiecek: The New Lawyer: funny short-short whose end I had to read twice to get a grasp of what really happened; I've published one short-short by Wiecek in Isku, "A Brother's Gift" from Hardluck Stories

Still sick

It seems that I'm being sick all the time. The flu developed into sinutisis (poskiontelon tulehdus, that is). I went to a doctor and had a prescription of antibiotics. The first pill made me sick and I almost vomited - probably the thing you really wanted to read when you came here.

I'm editing the last pages of the drafts for the thriller book. When I get the book out of my hands, I'll lie down for a couple of days and let the antibiotics work their way. I'll maybe read some books during my sofa time. I'm fully aware that I'm way behind my reading and viewing reports, but I'll get to those eventually.

A quicker update

Much better today. Result: didn't get any reading done.

Posted a short essay on my ex libris here. It's in Finnish. And I've forgotten to mention that I've been posting entries from my first book, Pulpografia, here, with some additions and corrections. In Finnish.

A quick update

Sick again, with a flu. My head feels like it's filled with oat meal. Some work had to be done, though: been checking the drafts of the thriller book. The publisher wanted to cut the book in half and put the American authors in one book and the European ones in the other. Now, Lee Child is with the Europeans - is that correct? He lives in the US nowadays, but was born in the UK. What should I do?

Finished last night Max Allan Collins's CSI novelization the name of which escapes me. Pretty boring workman stuff, which was surprising to me, even though the merchandise behind this holds no interest for me. The plot simply wasn't intriguing enough. I haven't read much Collins, but his reputation has been pretty high. Maybe he just lacked real interest in this. I still have another tie-in to go (I'm writing a review), a 24 novel by Marc Cerasini (who I think is a Lovecraft aficionado, am I right?).

Today I started to read one of the first Hard Case novels, Peter Pavia's Dutch Uncle, which seems pretty okay so far, with Leonardish characters and snappy dialogue. Will report back. Watched Monte Hellman's slow motion Spaghetti western, China 9, Liberty 37 (1978), last night and pretty much enjoyed it, but it wasn't nearly as intriguing as Hellman's earlier westerns, The Shooting and Ride the Whirlwind. I'm going to watch The Shooting tonight or tomorrow.

Have to write more about books and films later on, and I'm too lazy now to make any links. Hope everyone had a good Easter!

I won!

I just received an e-mail saying that I was one of the winners in the short story contest of the Usva magazine. The theme of the contest was "everyday weird" and my contribution was a small story of 1,700 words about some strange shit going down on a gym. I talked about it a bit here.

Now I can quit my day job and pronounce myself a writer. Yii-haa! (As if I had a day job.)

Reed Farrel Coleman and others

Realized after writing about Dibdin that I've forgotten to write about books I read during our trip to Cyprus. I ran out of time and didn't get to Matheson's The Shrinking Man, but I'll read it eventually.

Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1957). Didn't like this, even though it's been described as a noirish science fiction novel. The style was too literary and I never felt easy with it. I was also left wondering why the heroes went to the mysterious place on the Moon only in the end of the book. If this had been translated in Finnish, I know I'd've gotten more out of it.

Reed Farrel Coleman: The James Deans (2006). Winner of the paperback Edgar last year and it sure is a winner. A very thoughtful private eye novel, in which almost everything seems to be in the right place. (My only grudge is that it wasn't solved who sent those small limerick notes to Moe Prager, Coleman's private eye hero. Or if it was, it went completely past me.) Nothing pulpish here, more like something by Ross Macdonald or Laura Lippman. (But I know that if I were to recommend this to Finnish readers, they would think it's just some pulp: everything I touch turns into pulp.)

Leigh Brackett: Eric John Stark: The Outlaw of Mars (1964, containing novellas "The Secret of Sinharat" and "People of the Talisman"). I'd be really interested to hear how these compare to Brackett's other space adventures. I thought these were tightly written and fast-paced, without any empty moments. Really close to hardboiled westerns of the fifties and early sixties. It's just that I'd left some 50 pages to read on a plane and I didn't really manage to get on with it, with Kauto jumping around and all that.

Michael Dibdin dead

Just read in today's paper that crime writer Michael Dibdin has died, aged 60. Here's more about him at The Rap Sheet.

I read two or three Dibdin's crime novels about Aurelio Zen, Italian crime detective, in the mid-to-late nineties and liked all of them. Can't point a favourite, though - maybe it should be Cabal (1992, translated in Finnish as Salaseura, 1996), about Vatican's power in the Italian politics. Dibdin's novels are a good example of how one can get past the genre boundaries (meaning hardboiled vs. cozies, or even police procedural vs. psychological) and talk about the society and its effects on people. I was rather dismayed, though, that Dibdin saw it important to babble about Zen's private life and his love affairs and cooking delicious meals. (I'm not one of those who think it's essential to cook in a crime novel. I just can't figure out the connection.) That put aside, Dibdin was easily one of the best crime novelists of the nineties. Maybe I should go back and reread some of his stuff and start out some new ones. (I just know I won't have time for that in, say, 20 years from now. I'll have to check the drafts of the thriller book. Bye now. Check out these covers, though.)

Again: trouble at work

After having felt pretty good about work for a couple of days, I received yesterday and earlier today several drawbacks:

1. We didn't get a grant from a publisher that was interested in a lightweight reference work on erotica classics I proposed with two writer friends of mine. Not knowing if anything will come out of this.

2. Just read a review of the latest issue of Isku from Body Culture, the magazine of Finnish Whodunnit Society. I tried to evade this as long as possible, as I'm very touchy about reviews of my own work, but simply couldn't hold myself longer. The writer was polite and said it was nice of someone to do this kind of a non-profit, small press magazine, but the stories clearly didn't appeal to him. Almost none of them. Mediocre and disposable, he seemed to say. I know that the latest issue of Isku wasn't as strong as some of the earlier ones, but these things happen.

3. A writer friend and I have been trying to scratch together a collection of essays on Outsider, the most prominent Finnish pulp writer from the thirties to the fifties, but today I received two e-mails from proposed contributors that they won't have the time do their essays. They sure have other, more important work, and I can't blame them for anything, but after other drawbacks it just adds to the depression. We already have three of the articles and I don't really know how to tell the authors that they won't be used, if we decide not to waste our time anymore with this project.

A spam classic

I've been posting some spam e-mails I've received. I know that at least my friend Jussi saves them on his hard disk. Here's a very Joycean one I got today.

barryhavecarlinwongsockeyegogoflounderwainscotvineyardabrahamhoffman galtmainhimselfairfareincursionspatefreedmuzzlesacrale'ertrim coalesceaffiliategroupcytosinearchangelclothesmenlilianblewappertaingarlic goofmarseillesfastidiousresumptionpyroxenecurtainpropellermarionmansfieldheadwallcarey sisterpullmanchallengecommutatedieselleapratepayerbeginhurrayyoghurtbiceps peasanthoodofleetversatileineluctablearticulatoryirreparableaerobicreligioushodgepodgequantico claudepigeonberrybarnetspecialcadaveroussystematicappletonresistivebreakoffstuart randomhecubanosesaloonkeeperlimerickhydrothermalptolemytrouncedruggingsubsumed exudationloadcommuniquerectitudeinceptionafflictfifebaptistegraciousyiddishadmit o'dellextractumberderivaterudolfdrearybouquetnonchalantbreathsaudsyllabus gymnospermwheresoeverjuragrillworkfirminequitablepurviewcontortgoldstinedeclarator distributorimpiousfreyamicronesiahydrocarbonsimperreliantbludgeonrequisitedaphnealgenib 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Donald Hamilton dead

Spy writer Donald Hamilton has died - and already in last November! You would think that the death of a writer of Hamilton's caliber would've been noticed by media, but no. He hadn't published anything new for 15 years - if my memory serves me right -, but he was a best-selling author in the sixties and seventies with his Matt Helm books. Hard Case Crime reprinted recently his standalone thriller from the fifties called The Night Walker, which should at least have merited more obits.

I've never been much of a spy thriller fan, but Hamilton's Matt Helms are so fast-paced and tough that I'm willing to forget that, at least when it comes to the very first books in the series, especially the first, Death of a Citizen (1960), and the second, The Removers (1961). The books have had a lasting influence on me: Matt Helm says in one of the books (maybe he says it in all of them) that if you come into a room and catch the enemy by surprise, shoot him. Don't talk, just shoot. I remember this everytime whenever there's a scene in a movie or a book in which someone surprises an enemy and even though they have guns in their hands and they aim to kill the enemy, they start talking and telling about how they are going to kill the guy.

Aside from his spy thrillers, Hamilton wrote top-notch westerns. The best to me was The Man from Santa Clara (1960). His westerns are tough, fast-paced and intelligent.

Here's an overview of his works and here's Wikipedia. Here's a Finnish site, in English. John Fraser on Hamilton at Mystery*File. Has anyone ever seen the sole film Hamilton scripted in 1957? I seem to remember that Matt Helm talks about his short tenure in Hollywood in the beginning of Death of a Citizen. Imdb.com also says that the film version of Death of a Citizen is at works.

By the way, the cover above (presumably by Barye Phillips) was used in Finland to accompany a Shell Scott novel by Richard S. Prather, another paperback legend died recently.

Black Horse Westerns on crime/western authors

I've forgotten to link to this: Keith Chapman alias Chap O'Keefe talks in lenght about British and American crime authors who've also written westerns (or vice versa). It's very interesting and gives background on British paperback and pulp authors. There are also other articles of interest after Chapman's piece.

Utterly fascinated by Mystery*File blog

Everyone blogs about Finnish politics and other important matters, but I'm most fascinated by articles, essays and reminiscences about largely forgotten mystery and other authors on Mystery*File: just take a look at these two long posts about H. Beam Piper, M.E. Knerr and Elliot Chaze.

Pictures from Cyprus

Don't have time to write a full travelogue, but here are some shots from our trip to Cyprus. Captions explain at least something, hopefully.

There are some other pictures at the Daddy Blog here. The texts there are in Finnish.

Here's Kauto and me playing minigolf in front of the hotel.

Haunting pictures

Here are two misfortunate shots from somewhere in Cyprus. Don't know what they are, but they seem like stills of an experimental film, don't they?

At the airport

We had to wait for two hours at the Pafos airport on Sunday. Kauto was able to entertain himself playing zoo with his plastic animals and empty strawberry packages.

At the old castle

On the last day on Cyprus, we visited the medieval castle in the centre of Limassol. It was very impressive spatial experience. Here Kauto and Elina are at the roof of the castle. Elina was afraid all the time that Kauto would fall off.

At the zoo

We are so poor photographers that we when we visit the zoo, we don't take pictures of animals.

Too much wine?

Kauto and Elina at the delightful meze meal somewhere in the mountains. Kauto has had too many glasses of wine (which was excellent, by the way - and cheap!). Meze, for those who don't know, is a large festive meal with some dozen plates of different courses. This one was the better of the two we had during our trip and everything was self-made, even the excellent halloumi cheese. Kauto enjoyed his bulgur, cooked with tomatoes and onions. Elina has fond memories of potatoes cooked with white wine and then fried in oil.

Afrodite and I

We climbed to a

hill on top of which had been a temple dedicated to the worship of Afrodite. The large urn had been found intact among the ruins. It was very impressive.

Kauto and I at an old church

Here we are at an old church in the little village of Lania (or Laneia).

Ellroy's Blood On the Moon

I mentioned James Ellroy and my admiration for his LA Quartet in a previous post and that reminded me that I completely forgot to make a mention that I read his Blood On the Moon (1984) just recently. I didn't like it at all. In this, for some reason, Ellroy's characters are not believable in any sense, they are just walking symptoms and manias, especially the hero Lloyd Hopkins. The plot is pretty thin and doesn't have the depth of which Ellroy's better novels are known. The serial killer angle doesn't feel much nowadays, after dozens and dozens of serial killers have stomped crime literature to death (well, boredom, at least!).

The Finnish publisher of the recent translation claims that this was the first serial killer novel. Please!

True Confessions by John Gregory Dunne

Ed Gorman posted a list of ten forgotten crime novels that should be read and reread over and over:

Odds Against Tomorrow William P. McGivern

The 31st of February Julian Symons

How Like An Angel Margaret Millar

The Blank Wall Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

Night and The City Gerald Kersh

The Far Cry Fredric Brown

Cocaine and Blue Eyes Fred Zackel

True Confessions John Gregory Dunne

On The Yard Malcolm Braly

Something in The Shadows Vin Packer

I've read, I think, three books out of the list (wanna guess what they are?) and I have Zackel's Cocaine and Blue Eyes on my TBR pile (which must be a mile long).

I'm getting to the climax of John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions (1972) and I must say that it's a very good crime novel that approaches literary novel without being pompous or "deep", like some books by someone like Dennis Lehane. There's a bit too much of inner monologue in here, too, but it's always connected to a greater scheme of politics and corruption in the Catholic church. And the book is very funny - Dunne writes great dialogue and especially the scene with the detectives in a radio show people can call their clues to is hilarious. Compared to Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, well, I'm a fan of Ellroy's LA Quartet, but the books are so different from one another that they don't compare very well, even though both are about the Black Dahlia case.

I haven't seen the film with Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro, but I remember that my dad used to like it - and he's not someone to recommend films too easily.

Borowczyk's Dr Jekyll et les femmes

Last night I saw Walerian Borowczyk's weird erotic horror film Docteur Jekyll et les femmes. The film is from 1981 and very weird indeed. It takes Stevenson's novel (Borowczyk claimed that he had found the original manuscript Stevenson's wife is said to have burned because of its erotic content) and takes the erotic aspects of Edward Hyde's behaviour to the extreme: he rapes and kills with his 35 cm long penis.

The film is very disturbing, because it celebrates the beauty of destruction at the same time it shows there's nothing glamorous in it. I was reminded of Luis Buñuel's The Golden Age: they both tell the same story of a man and woman who try to make love, but are always stopped by stupid rules and regulations or tepid discussions on metaphysics, religion and science. In the end, they both reach transcendence - but only through giving themselves up to lust, killing and raping. Very beautifully photographed, the film sure is one to stick to mind.

The film also reminds me of Guido Crepax's rendering of Stevenson's novel, but it lacks the political undertones of Borowczyk's film in which the world of bourgeoisie deserves nothing but the destruction.

A book out

I just saw the first drafts of the Turku crime story anthology I've edited. It looks good, with the cover by Jukka Murtosaari. I'll post the scan and other stuff later on. The book will be out Tuesday, third of April.

Viides testamentti, Turun alueen kirjoittajien jännitystarinoiden kokoelma, julkistetaan tiistaina 3.4. klo 15 Turun Akateemisessa. Paikalla on kirjan kustantaja Harri Kumpulainen, kirjan toimittaja (c'est moi), kirjoittajia sekä haastattelijana Kari J. Kettula. Kaikki Pulpetin seuraajat ovat tervetulleita!

Kirjan sisältö on seuraava. Mikäli toisin ei mainita, novellit ovat alkuperäisiä:

Pirkko Arhippa: Välikäsi, ilmestynyt alun perin RikosPaloissa 1/1987
Boris Hurtta: Ikonipuinen arkku
Harri Erkki: Tunneli
Harry Etelä: Mustaa verta, ilmestynyt alun perin Seikkailujen Maailmassa 11/1939
Totti Karpela: Perin inhimillinen tekijä, ilmestynyt alun perin Suomen Kuvalehdessä /1974
Olavi Tuomola: Hantšungin kultainen buddha, ilmestynyt alun perin Mustassa Kuussa 1/1945
Markku Soikkeli: Viides testamentti
Sami Myllymäki: [uups, tästähän puuttui novellin nimi, pitänee kaivaa se sitten esille kun kirja ilmestyy]
Aake Jermo: Hiljainen yö, ilmestynyt alun perin teoksessa Outsider (toim.): Hiljainen yö, Lehtiyhtymä 1944
Kirsti Ellilä: Pyhän kosketus

Lisäksi mukana on toimittajan alkusanat ja kustantajan jälkisanat.

Vastakkainasettelun aika on jälleen

(This is about Finnish politics.)

Sunnuntain Hesarissa kirjoitettiin kokoomuksen vaalivoitosta. Jutun kärkenä oli Sanna Perkiö, jonka boheemius kuulemma auttoi häntä ja puoluetta vaalivoitossa. Perkiön boheemius on sitä, että hänen firmansa sijaitsee Kaapelitehtaalla ja hän keräilee kotimaista nykytaidetta. Heikoissa kantimissa on boheemius nykyään. Näin ajatellen mekin olemme vaimon kanssa boheemeja, jopa varsin hurjia sellaisia.

Jutussa puhuttiin myös kokoomuksen onnistuneesta vastakkainasettelun aika on ohi -sloganista. Sanottiin, että se oli erinomainen idea, jonka suomalaiset ottivat vastaan tyytyväisinä ja innostuneina. Jutusta kävi kuitenkin ilmi, että maassa vallitsee edelleen toinen vastakkainasettelu, vasemmisto-oikeisto/duunari-porvari -vastakkainsettelua julmempi ja häikäilemättömämpi: siinä nimittäin sanottiin, että moni äänesti kokoomusta, koska tuntuu paremmalta samaistua voittajiin kuin häviäjiin.

Paljon on puhuttu myös SAK:n vaalimainoksesta ja sen aiheuttamasta äänten kadosta. Olisi ollut kiinnostavaa nähdä, mitä olisi tapahtunut, jos mainosta olisi käytetty aiottuun tapaan eikä media olisi ruvennut kohkaamaan siitä, miten ikävä, vanhanaikainen ja syyttelevä se on. Monet niistä, jotka omaksuivat median näkökulman, eivät ole mainosta YouTubesta tai vastaavista jaksaneet kaivaa eivätkä ole siis nähneet sitä. Mietin myös, miksei kukaan ottanut kantaa kokoomuksen järkyttäviin nami nami -mainoksiin, joihin oli isketty reivien flaierityyppisesti kaikkea kivaa sälää. Olen itse sarjakuvien ystävä, mutta silti mielessä käy, että vaalit voitti sarjakuvapuolue.

Lukekaa myös Kari Kosmoksen hieno analyysi Jyrki Kataisen työaiheisesta retoriikasta. Kari ei voisi olla enempää oikeassa.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and other flicks

In lieu of a travel report, here are some bits of films seen lately:

John Cassavetes: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1974): a great, underrated attempt to deconstruct a small crime flick, Ben Gazzara's night club owner is clearly a precursor to many loser characters in the neo noir of the 1990's and 2000's (say, Jason Starr's novels). The film has a loose new-wavish narrative, but it's not really new wave and there's none of the trickstery the new wave films used. It's a bit close to some of Altman's films, but the looseness seems more improvised. The night club scenes with a weird stand up comedian and his girls are quite odd, but entertaining in a way.

Herman Shumlin: Confidential Agent (1945): I don't really recall if I've read the Graham Greene novel this is based on, but the film itself is very good, atmospheric and adventurous political film noir about a Spanish freedom fighter on a desperate journey to buy coal from British industrialists. Lauren Bacall should be a British lady, but she just doesn't have the right flair. That notwithstanding, she's a treat.

Joe Novak

I've mentioned my private eye hero Joe Novak here so often that I thought the thing could need some explaining. Here's an entry I wrote for Kevin Burton Smith's extraordinary Thrilling Detective site:

Joe Novak
by Juri Nummelin

Joe Novak is a private eye working in Los Angeles, getting mixed up in sleazy swindles, but usually looking at things happening as an outsider.

Joe Novak stories are somewhere between parody and pastiche, and some of them are not really stories about a P.I. solving cases, but they can also be about a P.I. getting out of the troubles in his own personal life. Novak is a WWII veteran and he has horrible memories from the Ardennes. Novak delights in reading hardboiled paperbacks, but he has also studied philosophy at university under the G.I. bill. He dates several women and has trouble finding a suitable one.

The series of short stories is written by Juri Nummelin, who is normally a non-fiction writer. The Joe Novak stories have been published in the Isku magazine, a Finnish small press zine specializing in hardboiled crime fiction.

The stories:

Änkyttävän naapurin tapaus/The Case of the Stuttering Neighbour, Isku # 5 (2006).
Eripuraisten naapurien tapaus/The Case of the Quarreling Neighbours, Isku # 4 (2006).
Merirosvoaarteen tapaus/The Case of the Pirate Treasure, Isku # 3 (2005)
Kävelykeppien tapaus/The Case of the Walking Sticks, Isku # 2 (2005).
Ikkunattoman monadin tapaus/The Case of the Windowless Monad, Isku # 1 (2004).

Another fictionmag coming - soon?

Here's a cover by Jukka Murtosaari for another fictionmag that's coming out some time later this year: it's called Mälli/Spunk, with the subtitle (do magazines have subtitles?) Tosi Miesten Toimintakertomuksia/Action Stories For Real Men. (Joo, tiedän, että kuvassa lukee "seikkailukertomuksia", mutta pitää pitää palaveria kuvittajan kanssa vielä.) It's supposed to be a pastiche of a early sixties' men's mag à la Argosy, Rogue or Man's Story or Male, etc. My story is about Joe Novak and it's called "The Case of the Sleazy P.I." I mentioned having started the story some time back and I think I managed to sneak in all the references I mentioned in the earlier post.

The logo is made alongside the old logo of Jermu, a Finnish men's mag from the seventies.

A new fictionmag

A new fictionmag came out today: it's called Seikkailukertomuksia/Adventure Stories and it contains mostly new stories by Finnish writers, but also one reprint from Heikki Jylhä from 1940 and translations of stories by Stanley G. Weyman and Molly Brown. The mag is meant to resemble a general pulp magazine à la Short Stories or Argosy and the stories have great variety: there's swashbuckling adventure, a crime story set in the late 1800's, a story about ancient Egypt, a weird Western short story, and so forth. So it should be a treat.

Published by me, of course. For the Finnish readers (and for others, too, since there's a cover), go to the Isku magazine's own blog here.

Bill Clinton in a Finnish pulp story

Here's a snippet from a Finnish horror story from 1939 that I'm editing for a collection of short horror stories of Harry Etelä (about whom I'll have to write more in a near future):

At first I couldn't remember who the boy resembled, but when he got nearer to us and I could see his pale face clearly, I felt like my brain had turned upwards and a freezing cold filled my body. Bill Clinton.. Bill Clinton.. kept pounding in my head. The boy dressed up in work overalls was Bill Clinton... without a doubt.

(From Kauhun kahleissa/Frozen In Terror, Seikkailujen Maailma/The World of Adventures, 4/1939. Transl. by JN.)

A quick follow-up

Sorry, I must've seemed quite pissed off and grumpy in my posts lately. So I duly apologize for any incovenient use of language and all that.

Nevertheless, I finished the book on Tuesday. There were some minor glitches that needed working out on Wednesday, but nothing serious. I don't remember the last time when I did two full eight-hour workdays back to back. I'm quite washed out and I think I'll go lie down on a sofa.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that the cover illo that was supposed to be waiting in the mail arrived on Monday morning, so I got it in time. I would post it, but you'll have to wait till the book comes out - it's the book with old and new crime stories by writers from the Turku region where I live. It'll start a new series of short story collections, but I'll have to write about some other time.

Thanks, guys

Thanks to pHinn, Bill and Peter for their happy holiday wishes!

The Just Got Back Blues

Just got back home. Um, well, two hours ago. It's fucking 11 p.m.! Go to sleep, you moron! We travelled 12 goddamn hours, with four hours on a plane, which is never nice. And I'm exhausted in a way I didn't think was possible.

But nevertheless, great time was had by all, but I'll report back later, maybe with pictures. Now, only bad news:

1. A publisher turned down my crime novel.

2. I haven't as yet received all the entries for the thriller reference work and the goddamn latest fucking final deadline was today, on March 18!

3. I was told that I've got a cover illo for the Turku region crime short story anthology in the mail. But, well, no, I haven't got it. There's nothing of the sort in my mail. It should've been in the printers a week ago.

4. Do I sound like I've been on a holiday?

Heading off

We are soon leaving to Cyprus and I won't be blogging for a week. Take care!

(I didn't finish Dunne's True Confessions and won't be taking it with me, even though it's very good, sentiments ranging from grotesque to dark noir and gritty politics. The publishing year, by the way, was 1972, not 1982, as I wrote earlier. The plot is quite familiar, but that's because of the James Ellroy film and the De Palma movie, The Black Dahlia.)

Tired of slackers

As I've mentioned couple times before, I've been editing a reference book on thriller writers. I ordered some 15 articles from guys I know are good and capable writers. Little did I know. The deadline for the entries was 15.2., and I'm still waiting for the majority of the entries. The publisher sent me a note saying that all the entries that come after 15.3. just won't get in the book. Luckily that day I'll be away and I was able to negotiate that I'll deliver the finished manuscript by 20.3.

Now, what really bugs me is that we are going off to a holiday. We'll be at Cyprus for a week and immediately after that I'll have to edit the late entries and patch up the book - in a day! And I can't relax fully knowing that I'll be with my hands full of work that other people knew they had to do a month before! Christ! (I'd like to say worse things, but this is a fuckin' family blog after all.)

Okay, another bad news concerning work: a publisher phoned me yesterday and told me that the big compilation of Finnish pulp fiction crime and adventure stories that I've put together won't be out until next Spring! In 2008, that is. Aw Christ... Lord knows I need money next year, too, but still... I compiled the stuff in the Fall of 2005, one and a half years ago.

And the said publisher had some bright ideas about splitting the book in two, putting out first a book with only old stories and then, if that one sells enough copies, putting out a book with newer stories. I don't think a book with only stories from the 1930's to, say, the 1950's will interest anyone but some collectors and some veteran readers who may remember some of that stuff from their own youths. Here I was thinking that I could grasp the whole phenomenon of Finnish pulp fiction with one sweep, putting together stories from the early thirties to the present day. But no such luck.

Okay, calm down, calm down, these things happen. Worse things have happened to writers. (They shouldn't, though.)

The good news was that the said publisher will bring out a paperback-size biannual anthology of crime fiction short stories. I'll wish him luck (in the country where even the best known names won't sell even one thousand copies of short story anthologies).

Okay, enough of complaints. I hope I'll have enough time to read unread books during our stay at Cyprus. I've packed these books:

Leigh Brackett: (um.. what was the title.. one of her Mars story collections, with Eric John Stark)
Richard Matheson: The Shrinking Man
Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon
Reed Farrel Coleman: The James Deans

And I hope I'll be able to finish John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions (1982) before we leave.

James Reasoner's private eye stories

James Reasoner has been reminiscing his career from the seventies on and written two lengthy posts about his private eye heroes. It's an interesting piece of history of hardboiled literature and fictionmag publishing - the story goes from the last of the hardboiled fictionmags to small press magazines and to theme-edited anthologies.

It's sad, though, that I've never seen any of these stories and I've never seen a single issue of the Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine James wrote for! I've read his sole private eye novel, Texas Wind (1980), and it's a very good piece of writing.

Bill Crider's blog project story

Here's Bill Crider's great blog project story that's meant for the Quertermous-White blog project. Bill didn't just want to write a crime story about blogging, but instead he put up a blog to tell the story in the form of blog posts. It works, even though I have my doubts about whether anyone would really post something starting with "Frank was killed today". (The same problem is with all the letter and diary novels. "Oh, here he comes, he bangs on the door, now he opens it, now he grabs my hand, oh, what cruel fate this is!")

A music video by my pals of Kompleksi

Well, actually I know only one of the guys of the duo... Nevertheless, here's the first music video by pHinn and Mike Not, also known as Kompleksi. The video was made with the artistic cooperation with Australian experimental filmmaker Tina Ulavik, and there's sure nice artistic touches. The track is great too, check it out - if you're at all into electronica.

Films seen recently

I've been forgetting to write about films I've seen lately:

Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo from 1961 is one of the most hardboiled films I've ever seen. Toshiro Mifune in the lead (not "as the hero", since he's quite far from a regular hero) could beat the shit out of any other hardboiled hero. I mean, anybody. The film is effectively edited and photographed and the fight scenes are expertly staged. I seem to remember that the sequel (it was called The Samurai Sword in Finnish, was it so in the English-speaking countries as well?) is even more hardboiled and Mifune cooler than ever before or later. (Well, he doesn't exactly look cool in that picture.)

Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers: one of my all-time favourites. I said to Elina watching this: "You need to remember that when I die you print these words in my obit: "I'm dead today, shutting out all beautiful tomorrows"." That's what Groucho says when he mimicks Eugene O'Neill ("Why, you couple of baboons, do you think I would marry either one of you? How strange the wind howls tonight. It reminds me of poor old Marsden.") The film itself is very, very poor, poorly staged and photographed and clumsily edited. Yet, one of the very best. I haven't been as fond of Duck Soup as many others and I should nominate Monkey Business the best of the Marx films. "If a nightingale could sing like you..."

Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Zvenigora from 1927 was a very pleasant surprise after his abysmal last fiction film, Under the Red Flag (1939), a disjointed narrative that was filled with Bolshevik propaganda. Zvenigora was cryptic, poetic, delightfully and surrealistically stupid, with some great dream sequences. I detected that many people in the audience didn't understand all of what was going on - especially the scenes with Russian emigrées in Paris (or in Prague?) were a puzzle. I'd like to know whether the contemporary audiences knew what was happening.

My newest book

I think I mentioned this earlier. I wrote once, some ten years ago, a series of articles about little known Finnish poets to the Kulttuurivihkot magazine. Now, the editor at the time, Tuomas Kilpi, was recently nominated editor-in-chief of the BTJ publishing house. He e-mailed me and asked whether the articles could be reprinted as a book. What do you say to an offer like that? "Umm, yeah, I'll have to think about that, let me get back to you next year, I'm a bit busy at the moment..."

I received my author's copies today and it seems to be up on the publisher's website. Check out the contents here.

And, um, yes, it's in Finnish.

What we've got

Haven't done a meme in ages. Well, I may have taken part in three memes altogether, but this seems fun. Via Urpo, who's an old friend reblogging. Sooooorry, this is in Finnish. I was first thinking I could translate the terms, but then I said to myself: is this really what I want to do with the rest of my life? It's a list of things we've got. I'm sorry it didn't ask how many ties I've got - it seems I've got some sixty or seventy of them. 90 % of them came from flea markets and other such places.

[ ] akvaario
[x] arabian astioita
[ ] arkkupakastin
[ ] astianpesukone
[ ] autotalli
[ ] digiboxi
[x] digikamera
[ ] digitaalivaaka
[x] dvd-soitin
[ ] epilaattori
[ ] farmariauto
[ ] henkilöauto
[x] hiirimatto
[x] hiustenkuivain
[ ] höyrysauna
[x] iittalan astioita
[ ] ilmakiharrin
[x] ilmakitara (soittelen useammin kyllä mitä tahansa käteen osuvaa, kuten peffaliukuria)
[ ] ilmankostutin
[x] jenkkisänky
[x] kahvinkeitin
[x ] kahvipannu
[ ] kannettava dvd
[x] kannettava tietokone
[ ] keittiövaaka
[x] kenkäteline
[ ] kerrossänky
[ ] keskuspölynimuri
[ ] kirkasvalolaite
[ ] kopiokone
[ ] kotiparturi
[ ] kotiteatteri
[x] kottikärryt (lasten muoviset!)
[ ] kuisti
[ ] kuivausrumpu
[x] kultaisia koruja
[x] kuntolaitteita
[x] kylpytakki
[x] laajakaista
[x] lankapuhelin
[x] langaton hiiri
[ ] leipäkone
[x] leivänpaahdin
[ ] lemmikkieläin
[ ] litteä tietokonenäyttö
[x] luistimet
[ ] maasturi
[x] matkapuhelin
[x] mikroaaltouuni
[ ] moottorikelkka
[ ] moottoripyörä
[x] mp3-soitin (mää en oo vaan kertaakaan käyttänyt sitä!)
[x] musiikkisoitin (vinyylisoitin, cd-soitin, kasettimankka)
[ ] navigaattori
[ ] oma ranta
[ ] omakotitalo
[x] ompelukone
[ ] pakettiauto
[x] partakone
[x] parisänky
[ ] parveke
[ ] pelikone
[x] polkupyörä
[x] polttava cd-asema (ei toimi kannettavassa)
[x] porakone
[ ] poreallas
[x] pyykinpesukone
[x] pölynimuri
[x] pöytätietokone
[ ] rappuset
[x] rikkaimuri
[ ] rullaluistimet
[ ] salarakas
[ ] sauna
[x] sauvasekoitin
[x] silitysrauta
[x] skanneri
[ ] suihkulähde
[ ] sukset
[ ] suoristusrauta hiuksille
[ ] sykemittari
[ ] sähköhammasharja
[x] sähkövatkain
[ ] sälekaihtimet
[ ] takka
[ ] taulutelevisio
[ ] tauti (ellei neurooseja lasketa)
[x] teepannu
[ ] tekohampaat
[ ] tietokonepöytä
[ ] traktori
[x] tulostin
[ ] uima-allas
[ ] ulkorakennus
[ ] ulkosauna
[ ] useampi televisio käytössä
[ ] vapaa-ajan asunto
[x] vedenkeitin
[ ] vene
[ ] verenpainemittari
[x] vhs-videonauhuri
[ ] videokamera
[x] viinaa
[x] villamatto
[ ] vohvelirauta
[ ] voileipägrilli
[x] vuodesohva
[ ] web-kamera
[ ] wokkipannu
[x] yleiskone
[x] yläkerta (siellä on metelöiviä naapureita)

Everything's settled

I wrote once here about trying to acquire rights for a reprint from a writer's heirs who seemed to be in constant fight. Now, a grandson of the said writer phoned me and told that it's been settled and I can move on with the reprint! Yii-haa!

A healthy break from Ridley Pearson and Sidney Sheldon

I decided to let my own entries in the thriller reference book rest and took Lawrence Block's Tanner's Twelve Swingers (1967, a No Exit reprint from the nineties) from the shelf. It is indeed much better than anything I've read by the said writers. I'm no big fan of Block, but I've liked his early work.

Nothing much else here, except work. I was yesterday at the university library studying old Finnish pulp and other fiction mags and came up with quite a bunch of photocopies of old stories for possible reprints. It seems nowadays that typing is my most recent profession. I said to Elina that if someone asks about my hobbies, say, in an interview, I say: "I collect photocopies of stories from old fictionmags." (Now, what label should I have for this post? I say nothing substantial about Block and I don't really know what category the latter paragraph should belong to. I'll put up here a new ephemera label. My life is just a big piece of ephemera, so it's fitting.)

My political career

(As the elections are approaching, I thought I'd revise my short political career. In Finnish.)

Urani poliittisten järjestöjen luottamustoimissa:

SDNL:n Porin osaston puheenjohtaja, 1988-1990 (?). Osasto on aina ollut vireä, mutta jostain syystä noina vuosina tarvittiin jotakuta bulvaania heiluttamaan nuijaa kokouksissa. Piirisihteerihän kuitenkin hoiti käytännön työt.

Porin sosialistiset koululaiset, puheenjohtaja, 1988-1990 (?); jäsenmäärä oli muistaakseni kolme, jolloin se käsitti minut, sihteerin ja tilinhoitajan. Tilinhoitaja ei ollut porilainen koululainen, vaan aikuinen ihminen (hän oli Tiedonantajan Porin-konttorin hoitajan vaimo). En tiedä enää, kuinka tosissaan sihteeri oli mukana toiminnassa. Järjestö oli siis käytännössä olemassa vain paperilla. En tiedä, onko sitä enää edes paperilla.

Osallistuin vuonna 1997 SDNL:n liittokokoukseen, jossa vahvistettiin - jos nyt oikein muistan - SDNL:n nimenmuutos Vasemmistonuoriksi. Jälkeenpäin minulle sanottiin, että kokouksessa jyräsivät "enemmistöläiset" - todistus siitä, miten vanhat rintamalinjat elävät vasemmistossa edelleen. Demokratiassa tietty enemmistö jyllää, vaikka ei aina olisi syytäkään. Näiden kytkösten takia minulle tulee edelleen Libero, ja luenkin sen aina mielelläni.

Äänestänyt olen Vasemmistoliittoa, SKP:tä ja vihreitä. Olen aina pyrkinyt äänestämään naista, mutta kaksi kertaa olen äänestänyt miestä. Tampereen kunnallisvaaleissa äänestin vihreitten Kai Ovaskaista, joka nyt on ehdolla eduskuntaan - jos luette tämän ja uskotte minua, niin äänestäkää häntä, hän on erittäin fiksu mies. Ylioppilaskunnan vaaleissa äänestin aina naista, puoluelinjathan siellä ovat usein merkityksettömät. Kummatkin ehdokkaani seitsemän vuoden aikana pääsivät läpi ja olivat erittäin asiallisia ja fiksuja.

Oman poliittisen urani fiksuin teko oli kieltäytyä kahdesti pyynnöstä lähteä ehdokkaaksi ylioppilaskunnan vaaleihin. En kuitenkaan olisi ollut riittävän kiinnostunut asioista, vaikka uskon, että silloisella näkyvyydelläni esimerkiksi Aviisissa olisin varmasti päässyt läpi. Minua pyytänyt ihminen on sittemmin ollut tärkeä Tampereen vihreiden taustavaikuttaja - en koe vihreitä niin omaksi porukaksi, että olisin tuntenut olevani järkevästi mukana heidän poliittisissa päätöksissään. Voi tietysti olla, että ko. ihminen pyysi kaikkia vastaantulijoita ehdokkaaksi.

Oikeastaan pyyntöjä lähteä Tamyyn oli kolme - Olli Löytty, joka nykyään tekee kirjallisuudentutkijan uraa, sanoi minulle joskus -91, että hän tekee minulle niin hyvän kampanjan, etten voi olla menemättä läpi. Annoin ymmärtää, etten ole kovin kiinnostunut. Ollista tuli sittemmin Ilkka U. Pesämaan kanssa Tamyn kulttuurisihteeri.

Huumoriehdokkaista on tosin Tamyn vaaleista noussut esiin kiehtovia ilmiöitä, kuten Pasi Heikura ja Simo Frangén, jotka eivät tainneet käydä yhdessäkään edustajiston kokouksessa. Sympaattisin vaalikampanja oli Tero Alangon ja Markku Makkosen johtamalla poppariryhmittymällä - heidän vaalilauseensa oli "Hyvä biisi on tärkein". Tero ja Markku olisivat myös olleet fiksuja kavereita edustajistoon - on mahdollista, että Tero pääsi läpikin, en enää muista.

Tampereella oli Tamyssa enemmän aatteen paloa ja vaihtoehtojen tuntua kuin sittemmin Turun yliopiston ylioppilaskunnassa, jota tarkkailin muutaman vuoden ajan Turun Ylioppilaslehden toimittajan ja päätoimittajan paikalta. Nyt jälkeenpäin hiukan hävettää, että suhtauduin Tyyhyn niin ylimielisesti kuin suhtauduin, mutta kokemus kertoi, että sinne oli pesiytynyt enemmän ns. poliittisia broilereita. Ville Niinistöä tosin kunnioitan enkä pane vastaan, että meillä perheessä häntä äänestetään. Saatan äänestää häntä itsekin, mutta en haluaisi antaa enää periksi naisperiaatteestani.

Edelläolevasta voi päätellä, että minulla ei ole poliittista kotia. Onko ihme? Miten tällaisessa poliittisessa ilmastossa (tai ylipäätään kulttuurissa) voisi olla jokin asiallisesti muotoiltu johdonmukainen poliittinen mielipide? En ihmettele, että juuri nyt on noussut esille puheenvuoroja, joiden keskeinen sisältö on "ihmiset ovat tyhmiä" (viittaan esim. Jyrki Kiiskisen hienoon kirjoitukseen Hesarin sunnuntaisivuilla, mutta myös Ilkka Halavan kommentteihin ihmisten poliittisesta mielipiteenmuodostuksesta, joka parhaimmillaankin on sattumanvaraista).

En keksi asialle mitään ratkaisua, paitsi vallankumouksen. Mietin aiemmin tänään, että lehdet ja muut mediat voisivat tehdä päätöksen olla uutisoimatta mitään politiikkaan liittyvää vaalien alla - silloin ihmisten pitäisi oikeasti ottaa asioista selvää ja muodostaa mielipiteensä. Mutta se on yhtä mahdoton ajatus kuin vallankumouskin.

The history of thriller

I posted the history of thriller I mentioned earlier to this blog. It's in Finnish.

Congrats to Tapani

By the way, I forgot to mention that Tapani Bagge (whose novel Puhaltaja I'm translating) recently won the Clue of the Year award of the Finnish Whodunit Society.

Gordon Young's Everhard stories

Here's a short post I posted to the Rara-Avis e-mail group earlier today, about who was the first hardboiled crime writer:

Stephen Mertz writes in this article:

"It is recorded fact that Carroll John Daly, in the pages of Black Mask in 1923, produced the first hardboiled private eye story, predating Hammett's first Continental Op tale by a number of months."

Isn't it always a bit dangerous to claim someone or something was the first one? There certainly were hardboiled stories before that and there certainly were private eye stories before that. I've read Gordon Young's story about Everhard, who was a private-eyeish hero who likes to shoot and doesn't even shake hands with anyone. I seem to remember that he was more hardboiled than Daly's Race Williams, who likes to show off, which Everhard never did.

Gordon Young had lots of Everhard stories in the Adventure pulp magazine from 1917 to 1921 - so they stopped a year before Daly wrote his first story in Black Mask!

My other activities at the moment

Mentioned being busy. Well, today I submitted a new book to the publisher. It's a collection of old and new crime and adventure stories by writers of the Turku region. The oldest story is from 1939, by Harry Etelä (Aimo Viherluoto), who was also known as a songwriter, mainly specializing in schlagers. I may have to write more about him. There's a good adventure story by Olavi Tuomola, taking place in Shanghai just before the WWII.

The book, called Viides testamentti/The Fifth Testament, according to M.G. Soikkeli's story in the book, is a good collection and hope it gathers some attention. It's just no one seems to be buying short story collections anymore. So it's a bit of an experiment to the publisher. We will be doing more of this sort with the same publisher, for example a collection of Harry Etelä's horror stories that are quite spectacular given that almost no one else wrote horror stories in the late thirties here in Finland.

I'm also doing a rough translation of Tapani Bagge's Puhaltaja. Tapani, as some of you may remember, made a deal with the American Point Blank Press about his first crime novel and it was going to come out under the title The Jack. It seemed, though, that the head of Point Blank didn't have time to do the translation himself (JT Lindroos hails originally from Finland), so I suggested both to JT and Tapani that I could do the first rough version and JT could polish it.

I've done some four or five pages so far, and let me tell you that it's no small feat to translate in a language that's not your own. Especially when Tapani uses lots of slang expressions that even I don't know what they mean. There's also lots of talk about cars and stealing them, and I've been at odds with all the words. However, Tapani okayed my efforts and so I'm continuing at the pace of a page a day.

But once The Jack is out in the US, it will be a hardboiled delight: Tapani writes very sparsely and tightly and he knows his milieu of lowdown petty criminals and car thieves. There's lots of black humor and violence. (I may even up put a new blog to post the translations one day at the time, but I'll have to ask what JT and Tapani think about that.)

And before that, I have a book coming out. It was a small, but very pleasant surprise: an old friend of mine was elected a while back director of a non-fiction publishing house and the first thing he said to me was: "What if we put out your old articles as a book?" It's already in printers. The book collects nine longish articles I wrote some ten years ago about unknown Finnish poets. If it sells enough copies, there should be a sequel. Well, that won't be as easy, since I'd have to do some research for it and read the books.

Dan Brown's earlier thrillers

I've mentioned in passing one or two times that I'm editing a reference book on thriller writers for a Finnish non-fiction publisher. I've been reading Sidney Sheldon lately and let me tell you, it's no pleasure. I had to take a break and start Brian Garfield's The Paladin - it's the last one I haven't read yet. Garfield is God compared to some other writers I've been tackling with, even though The Paladin is not Garfield at his best.

I've been writing also the history of the thriller genre to act as a foreword to the whole book, and it is more difficult than it seems at first, since the boundaries of the genre are so flexible. I think I'm now finished with the article (I'd post it here, but it's understandably in Finnish only; well, that hasn't stopped me before) and just now I got to thinking: what kind of reviews did Dan Brown's early novels receive before he wrote The Da Vinci Code (which, in case you don't remember or even know, I thought was the worst book ever given its popularity and media attention)? It would be interesting to read them, since the reviews now are quite predictable. (I'm pretty ashamed of Nelson De Mille giving a blurb to Brown saying something like "Brown is pure genius". If this guy is pure genius, then I'm Jesus Christ.)

By the way, someone here claims that Garfield's novel The Paladin is stated being based "on fact". I'm pretty certain that Garfield himself says on his short preface that the novel is based only on what "Christopher Creighton" has told to be true. Garfield says that he can't know the truth himself. I'd believe Garfield only wanted to write a thrilling story.

Busy, busy world, pt. 2

Been busy and will be busy. And I slept pretty badly last night. For no apparent reason, except that Leland Palmer singing "come on, get happy, get ready for the judgment day!" kept ringing in my head all through the night. The final count was something like four hours of sleep.

Lots and lots of pulp and other stuff on eBay

Check out this seller. A huge amount of almost everything from original artwork and old fanzines to Disney-related stuff.

Duane Swierczynski about Goodis

As I said earlier, I was writing an article about David Goodis, the quintessential noir writer of the fourties and fifties. For a side article, I asked Duane Swierczynski why he likes Goodis. I'll post his questions here as well:

>What makes Goodis so important?

Well, I'm not sure about important--I mean, reading a David Goodis novel has not been known to cure impotence and/or mild skin conditions. But he is special, because his novels are the blackest comedies you'll ever read. So black, in fact, you can barely detect the comedy.

>What made you pick up Goodis in the first place?

I sought him out because he was writing books set in the Philly neighborhoods I knew; that was a mindblower for me. And he was writing about Phialdelphia about 20 years before I was born; reading his novels are kind of like stepping into a local time machine.

>What's your favourite amongst Goodis's books?

It's a toss-up between BLACK FRIDAY and DOWN THERE (SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER), the ultimate in little-guy-get-screwed noir novels.

RSP RIP

The death of classic paperback writer Richard S. Prather didn't go unnoticed by me - it's just I haven't had much time to blog lately. A great writer at times, some of his best work is found in Strip for Murder (1955) and Slab Happy (1958). His non-Scott work has evaded me so far, I'll read The Peddler reprint soon. (Actually I don't know when I have time.)

Moomins and Lost

Here's some thoughts about what Moomins may have to do with outlining the TV series Lost.

My Goodis collection

I'm writing an article about David Goodis, one of the seminal hardboiled writers of the fourties and fifties, and thought I'd scan some books from my own collection...

Naaaah, just kiddin'. I looked these up on Abebooks. I wouldn't mind owning a book on the left: it's the first hardcover edition of Goodis's most famous mystery novel, Dark Passage (1946). Neither would I have any trouble having the photoplay edition below.

Goodis's first

Here's Goodis's first novel, from 1938. It belongs to the social realist school of the thirties, but the reviews were bad and Goodis abandoned more serious writing to hack away stories for the aviation pulps.

Moon in the Gutter

Just finished this (I read the early nineties (or late eighties?) Midnight Classic reprint). It's very good, even though I had some quibbles at the romantic ending. I decided to name Goodis "a proto-Bukowski" in my article (even though I'm a known hater of Bukowski.)

Romance Goodis?

This looks a bit like a romance paperback, don't you think?

Of Missing Persons

Here's a book Goodis wrote from his own film treatment. It's not said to be one of Goodis's best, but I like the paperback cover.

Another Goodis

Goodis's last novel, published posthumously in the year of his death, in 1967.

The Wounded and the Slain

Here's only Goodis novel to be situated outside the U.S. The book will be reprinted by Hard Case Crime, as most of you already know, and here's also the coming cover by Glen Orbik.

Penkkarimuistoja

(This is about some personal reminiscences.)

Törmäsin eilen - kuten arvata saattaa - penkkariajelijoihin. En jaksanut jäädä katselemaan mellastusta, koska halusin päästä kotiin lepäämään; Kauto oli nukkunut huonosti viime yönä ja olin aivan uuvuksissa vietyäni Ottilian aamulla kouluun ja tutkittuani Leo Mäenpään lehtinovellituotantoa yliopiston kirjastossa parin tunnin ajan. Loikin tien poikki melkein kuorma-autojen edestä ja työnnyin pällistelevien ihmisten välistä kävelykadulle.

Abien rekkoihin liimaamat tunnuslauseet hiukan vaivasivat minua latteudellaan. "Abi on jumalasi - sinulla ei saa olla muita jumalia" (pitäisi kai olla "älä pidä muita jumalia"). "A bit of rock" (get it? minulla kesti jonkin aikaa ennen kuin tajusin). "We will rock you". En saanut viimeksi mainitusta millään tavalla tolkkua, miten se liittyi penkkariajeluun tai ylipäätään koko penkkariajatukseen. Riehuminen huvitti minua, mutta enpä ole siitä ikinä ollut kovin kiinnostunut enkä nytkään nähnyt syytä jäädä pällistelemään ja poimimaan karkkeja. Ehkä sitten kun Kauto tai Ottilia tulevat ylioppilaiksi.

Olen tietysti snobi, mutta vielä pahempi olin itse 18-vuotiaana. 17-vuotiaana kieltäydyin osallistumasta vanhojen päivään millään tavalla ja pinnasin koulusta. Kävin mieluummin poliittista keskustelua SDNL:n (nyk. Vasemmistonuoret) piirisihteerin kanssa Porin Puistotalolla. Muistan nähneeni pari luokkakaveria kadulla penkkariajelujen aikana, mutta katseemme eivät kohdanneet. Menin kotiin ja pysyin siellä.

Seuraavana vuonna olin kyllä mukana meiningeissä, en tiedä mikä muutos oli tapahtunut. Join vain niin pirusti viinaa - yhdellä ensimmäisistä ryyppyreissuistani - edellisenä iltana enkä päässyt ajeluun mukaan. Olin ilmeisesti oksentanut taksiin, koska muistan lompakossani olleen sadan markan setelin eikä se ollut lompakossa enää aamulla. En tiennyt, mitä krapulalle voi tehdä, eikä tiennyt äitinikään. Se siitä sitten. Elokuvakerhon esityksessä kävin kyllä iltakuudelta. Se varmaan kertoo preferensseistäni tuolloin.

Olen siis myös kade juhliville ja riehuville abeille, kun katselen heidän bailaustaan ja esitän kyynisesti kiinnostumatonta. Toisaalta, tekee mieli sanoa, meillä oli sentään jotain ideaa.. tai no, muistan kyllä, että teimme kuorma-autojen tekstit luokkatoverini Kimmon kanssa varttitunnissa, kun kukaan muu luokaltamme ei suostunut edes tulemaan paikalle suttaamaan tekstejä. En tiedä enää, mistä se johtui. Teimme kaksi kylttiä, joista muistan ainakin toisen: "Jeesus tulee, oletko aulis?" Se viittasi ruotsinopettajaamme Aulikseen, tavattoman ujoon ja vähä-ääniseen mieheen, jonka ei olisi kuulunut olla opettajana. Toivottavasti hän ei loukkaantunut.

Kun järjestin samaisen Kimmon kanssa luokkakokouksen muutama vuosi sitten, pidin lyhyen puheen, jossa sanoin haluavani ottaa hiukan takaisin vuoden -90 pelleilyjä ja osata ryypätä jengin kanssa, jonka koin vajaa 15 vuotta sitten pettäneeni. En ollut suurinta osaa porukasta juuri nähnyt, häivyin Porista melkein saman tien opiskelemaan ja sillä tiellä olen pysynyt. (Eräs ystäväni sanoi jokin aika sitten, että alan olla siinä iässä, että muuttaminen kotipaikkakunnalle tulee ajankohtaiseksi. Toivottavasti ei ihan vielä.)

Mainitsin tuossa keskustelleeni vanhojen päivien aikana politiikasta. Enemmänkin keskustelimme siitä, miten olin pettynyt politiikkaan enkä kokenut sitä mielekkääksi ja kiinnostavaksi. Tähän on monia syitä, joihin en tässä mene (osa on niin henkilökohtaisia, että en halua retostellakaan niitä julkisuudessa), mutta tunto vain syveni tämän aamun Hesaria lukiessa: Suvi-Anne Siimes rökötti Vasemmistoliittoa, puoluetta, jota olen useimmin äänestänyt, ja puolueen poliittista ja johtokulttuuria. Tuli hetkeksi olo, että jos en äänestäisikään. Demareihin en usko, vihreistä ei ota oikein kunnolla selvää, SKP (jota olen myös äänestänyt, lähinnä sen takia, että heillä on ollut nuoria naisehdokkaita, jotka vaikuttavat vilpittömiltä; naiivi peruste, myönnän sen) taas on tai ainakin sen voi nähdä nostalgisena neuvostolaisena jäänteenä. Pienimmän pahan äänestämisen logiikka astuu kuvaan, ja se ei ole hyvä, eikä ainakaan kerro hyvää uskostani ihmisiin. Valitettavasti.

An Israeli Goodis

Here's a David Goodis paperback published in Israel by Priory (I think it was actually a British outfit, doing books in Israel for taxing reasons).

More films seen: The Catamount Killing, Rock & Rule, Mars

Last Monday the Finnish Film Archive treated us with two rare films: the Canadian Rock & Rule from 1983 and Mars, a Soviet documentary by Pavel Klushantsev, from 1968. Mars was very beautiful and the scenes on the fictional Mars were breath-taking. It's evident Kubrick learned a lot from Klushantsev. The print was very pretty, with beautifully faded colours, and the Finnish voice-over narration held some poetic descriptions, such as "jos tuhka keväällä vihannoisi".

Rock & Rule, however, was something entirely different. It's an animated film, about 80 minutes long. The tale is set in a distant future after the nuclear war. Rodents seem to have evolved into humanlike creatures and they play rock'n'roll. The soundtrack has some great tracks by Cheap Trick (a band that I've otherwise never really got into) and some not so great by Lou Reed ("My name is Mok") and Debbie Harry. Have these ever been released? I couldn't make out if there's ever been a soundtrack release. The original synthesizer music in the film is horrible.

The animation in the film is actually very good and boasts many different and striking styles. I seem to remember reading that the making of the film took three years to complete. Now it would take three months, with all the computers and shit.

But the storyline in Rock & Rule is not enough - the premise is funny, though: Mok, a super rocker (who's sold "plutonium"), seeks to find a way to bring a demon into one of his concerts. What would Ozzy Osbourne think of this? The story line is a bit thin and there are not enough funny gags. Furthermore, the acoustics in the film are pretty noisy. All the characters are shouting in stupid voices all the time and then there's the synthesizer whining. It's as if the makers didn't believe in their own dialogue. Well, it's evident in many of the recent animated features that there's just gotta be speed and noise all the time.

Lots of people walked out during the film, but I didn't think it was really all that bad. There's a whole web site devoted to the film.

I also managed to see through The Catamount Killing from 1974. It's the most pulp-related film of the three, as it's based on a novel by James Hadley Chase, one of the most important hardboiled writers of Britain. The film is a bastard, to put it nicely: it's situated in America, it's based on a British novel, it's financed by German money and directed by a Polish director, namely Krzysztof Zanussi, who's better known as an art-house director (and one or two of his films that I've seen have been pretty powerful). Also the lead actor is the German Horst Buccholz. He's quite hysterical throughout the movie.

There are some nice touches here and there (especially the climax at the end with Buccholz rushing out of a house with camera following), but overall the film is too slow and you never quite believe how a neurotic jerk like Buchholz could be a bank manager. The music by Wojciech Kilar is very good, eerie and atmospheric.

The Fury of the Vikings

I saw a nice curiosity at the Finnish Film Archive last Monday: the horror classic Mario Bava's The Fury of the Vikings (or The Invaders or Erik the Conqueror, in Finnish, Viikinkien kosto) from 1961. It was the other of the two viking films Bava made in the early sixties.

The film was quite nice, very atmospheric and fabulously shot. Some of the frames were very nicely staged and Bava really knew how to use Cinemascope, with open sea looming at the back. The fight scenes were expertly cut and they hid the low budget astonishingly. The plot should've been better, some of the stuff happening went by all too fast and some of the action wasn't explained enough. The Finnish copy from the sixties was in a bad shape and, especially during the first reel, all the dark objects on the screen seemed to be bursting into flames. I was bugged to see some of the people take a camp approach to the film, even though there weren't any reasons as the film was pretty fluent and well-made (and I'm beginning to get fed up with camp attitude: it's arrogant and obnoxious and so last week).

While it's been pretty obvious to some horror and other genre buffs for many years or even decades now, I've been slowly realizing that the history of cinema is not just a cavalcade of artistic non-genre masterpieces, but it's also, and maybe more essentially so, the history of popular films and popular film-making where there are no deep, hidden messages in the films. I liked this a lot better than some of, say, Fellini's films from the seventies. The magnificent set pieces were there, but there was more dramatic drive in Bava than in Fellini (and in Fellini's films, say Casanova or Satyricon they shout all the time). Well, of course this was mostly eye-candy, but there was also artistic expression blown to full.

Blogger fuckers

I'm not at all very keen to do anything but my work. I really hate adjusting things, be they electronic, mechanical or Blogger accounts. Now the Blogger fucktards scared the shit out of me by forcing me to change over the new Blogger - when I didn't really need that. Do you see any of that AdWords/Flag This Blog/Widget shit in here? I don't even know what they are and I don't want to lose my time to find out. It's like everyone is suddenly some fucking nerd. I don't want to do any of that, I just want to post some shit when I feel like it, and that's it.

For a minute I thought I'd lost everything, but it turned out that it was possible to have many blogs (like I do) with the same Google account. But for the time lost finding this, I should be able to fee Blogger. Would something like 20$ be doable?

I love Bester's two SF novels, so this is fitting

I am: Alfred Bester A pyrotechnic talent who put only a small portion of his energy into writing.

Which science fiction writer are you?