Valkoisen hehkun kritiikeistä

(This is in Finnish, sorry. It's about the reviews I've been getting on White Heat. See below for English-language material.)

Valkoisen hehkun arvosteluja on ruvennut tippumaan. Olen parin päivän sisällä lukenut kaksi ison sanomalehden arviota. Aiemmin olen lukenut yhden tieteellisen foorumin arvostelun (joka oli kohtuullisen kiittävä) ja yhden ylistävän sanomalehtiarvostelun sekä kuullut Antti Lindqvistin kehuneen kirjaa TV-maailmassa. Lisäksi Parnasson elokuvakolumnissa Antti Selkokari moitti minua siitä, etten ollut nähnyt kaikkia kirjassa mainittuja elokuvia! (Tapasin Antin juuri kun tuo oli ilmestynyt ja totesin hänelle, että kirja ei ilmestyisi vielä kymmeneen vuoteen, jos se olisi edellytys. Lisäksi eläisin vaimon rahoilla koko tämän ajan, mikä ei kuulosta kovin reilulta diililtä Elinalle.)

Minua on kirjan vastaanotto jännittänyt aivan tavattomasti (tiedoksi niille, jotka pitävät minua pelottavan itsevarmana!) ja olen ollut kahden vaiheilla koko ajan sen suhteen, kommentoinko arvioita vai en. Jossain vaiheessa sanoin Elinalle, että en aio edes lukea niitä. Se ei varmaankaan olisi kovin järkevää - joskin olen monen veteraanikirjailijan kuullut sanovan, etteivät he millään tavalla edes pyri etsimään arvioita omista kirjoistaan, mikä kuulostaa tasapainoiselta asenteelta omaan työhön.

Toisaalta arviot kiinnostavat, toisaalta niitä pelkää. Uteliaisuus lopulta ajaa niiden pariin. Joskus sitten harmittaa, että on ylipäätään pyytänyt jotakuta postittamaan jonkun arvion. Toisaalta kun lukee kaksi hyvin erilaista arviota peräkkäin, huomaa väkisinkin sen, että kirjoja arvioidaan hyvin erilaisilta pohjilta, ja sen että arvioijilla on hyvin erilaiset käsitykset siitä, millaisia tietokirjat ovat. Tämän huomaaminen on jollain tavalla vapauttavaa, vaikka kaikille tekisi mieli vain sanoa, että hei, tieteellinen kustantamo on sen julkaissut, se ei voi olla huono!

Tänään sain Hämeen Sanomissa olleen arvion, jossa kirjaa moitittiin enemmän kuin aiemmin näkemissäni. Luonnollisesti otti päähän ja rupesin jo kehittelemään vastakommentteja, joita olisin laittanut tuntemalleni kriitikolle, mutta sitten tajusin, että kritiikki kohdistui asioihin, jotka olisin itsekin valmis nostamaan esille, jos pitäisi valita piirteitä, jotka tekisin uudestaan, jos voisin. Tällainen on esimerkiksi lähteiden vähäisyys joissain kohdissa.

Tähän sanoisin tosin, että kyse on - herra nähköön! - vain johdatuksesta, peruskurssista, tieteen ja tiedon popularisoinnista, eikä mistään omaperäisestä tieteellisestä tutkimustyöstä (eikä se ole myöskään mikään "labour of love", vaan yksinkertaisesti päivätyötä (mitä ei tietokirjailijoille suoda, vaan oletetaan, että he tekevät tämmöiset pikkuhommat kuten yli 400-sivuiset kirjat sivutyönään)). Tämä on tuntunut jääneen huomaamatta joiltain arvostelijoilta, kuten Hämeen Sanomien kirjoittajalta (joka myönsikin minulle kun tapasimme kadulla (ennen kuin olin hänen juttuaan nähnyt), ettei hän osaa sanoa, arvosteliko hän Valkoista hehkua tiede- vai tietokirjana: näillä asioilla on huomattava ero!).

Mutta kuten sanottu, olisin itsekin nostanut lähteiden vähäisyyden kritiikin kohteeksi, jos olisin saanut Valkoisen hehkun eteeni ja sanottu, että kirjoita tuosta. Toinen asia, mistä kirjaa Hämeen Sanomissa moitittiin, oli että esitän arvostelevia lausuntoja elokuvista. Anteeksi.

Yksi asia minua on vaivannut pitkin matkaa. Joka paikassa jutut alkavat Peter von Baghilla! Miten yksi mies on muka voinut halvaannuttaa suomalaisen elokuvakirjoittelun niin, että jokaista alan kirjaa verrataan väkisinkin häneen? Valkoinen hehku ja Baghin Elokuvan historia eivät ole mitään toisiaan poissulkevia kirjoja, jotka kamppailevat keskenään. Ne on kirjoitettu erilaisille yleisöille, mutta itse näen ne toisiaan täydentävinä kirjoina.

Lisäksi olen ihmetellyt, että Baghin kirjan käyttöä lähteenä on kritisoitu. What the..? Eikö toista elokuvan historiaa käsittelevää kirjaa saa käyttää lähteenä? Baghin kirjassa on monia ongelmia, mutta ei se tee siitä käyttökelvotonta. Varsinkin kun Bagh on varmasti nähnyt prosentuaalisesti enemmän käsittelemiään elokuvia kuin minä! (Ja lisäksi: näyttäkää minulle kirja jossa ei ole ongelmia.)

Aamulehden kirjoittaja muuten totesi, että olen unohtanut kokonaan "maailman parhaan ohjaajan", Stanley Kubrickin. Se on ihan totta ja kyllä hänet siellä olisi voinut mainita,* mutta on hauskaa, että toinen kirjoittaja vaatii tämmöisiä lausuntoja pois ja toinen on pahoillaan, kun niitä ei ole enemmän. Ole siinä sitten.

Paras kritiikki, mitä olen kirjasta saanut, oli kun kuulin, että se oli otettu Oulun yliopiston tutkintovaatimuksiin. Muu on vain pulinaa ja unohtuu. (Yhtä asiaa olen vielä ihmetellyt: miksei kukaan arvostelija ole maininnut, että Hollywoodin studiokauden lajityypit käsitellään yliolkaisesti eikä lajityypeille ole omia alalukujaan? Minä vaatisin niitä ensimmäisenä, heti kun olisin maininnut von Baghin.)

* Kubrick ei tosin oikein sovi mihinkään yleiseen kehityslinjaan, joista Valkoisessa hehkussa on kyse. Hänet olisi voinut toki mainita film noirin yhteydessä ja käsitellä The Killingiä tai spektaakkelin yhteydessä ja sanoa, että hän teki yhden parhaista (taas arvostelma!) historiallisista elokuvista eli Spartacuksen, mutta muu olisi jo vaikeata. Ja sitäpaitsi: maailman paras ohjaaja? C'mon!

Just One Night, part 3

(13-year old me writing here again.)

”What are you going to do after this?” Brougher asked.
”I think I’ll go to Paris. I hear it’s a pretty place.”
”If you like big cities. I prefer smaller ones, just like this Austin”, Brougher said.
”This isn’t so small”, the woman said.
Someone came crashing into the room. It was Camaro.
”What is it?” Brougher asked.
”Hersey’s car has been spotted. It’s coming this way.”
”Red Plymouth Fury, fiftyeight?”
Camaro nodded.
”Go down and wait for me”, Brougher said and Camaro left the room. Brougher took his coat and said to Suzie: ”Get the clothes and your most necessary things ready. It’s possible we have to leave fast. My car is the cherry red Mustang. Take this. Just for security.”
Brougher put a small Beretta on a desk.
”Just aim and pull the trigger. You got it? Good. I’m out of here.”
Brougher headed out of the room and went down the stairs. He saw Moose and Camaro finishing up their pizzas at a lounge table. He went over to them and said: ”Finish your food and let’s get on with this thing.”
Camaro wolfed down his pizza. Moose asked: ”Aren’t you going to eat anything?”
Brougher shaked his head. ”Where was the car seen?” he asked.
”Fourth Street”, Moose said.
”It must be coming this way”, Brougher said, more to himself. ”When was this?”
”Two or three minutes ago”, Camaro said.
”Who reported it?”
”John”, Camaro said.
”Okay, get ready boys, it’s soon action time!” Brougher said and went to the counter and ordered a shot of bourbon. He gulped it down. Damn Hersey. I’d be sleeping by now, if it wasn’t for him, Brougher thought. But without him I wouldn’t have seen Suzie Terrell naked. Brougher grinned to himself.
Camaro had appeared by his side. ”What’re you thinking?” he asked Brougher.
”Nothing much. Cursed Hersey, that’s all.”
”We get good money out of this. Terrell’s dad is a rich man.”
”Yes, I know”, Brougher said.
Moose, who had gone to the hotel door, came back and said: ”They are coming.”

TV stuff

I was in a meeting concerning the TV show I'm about to host. Nothing scary happened, even though they hadn't told me the day when they were gonna shoot the test pilot - "It has always been this", they said, even though that wasn't the exact truth.

I also met the managing director of the Yle Teema digital channel. She wanted to meet a new face and to hear I'm in with 110 %. That was scary.

Actually no, she was quite a nice lady. I also met one of her assistans (I didn't quite actually comprehend who she was) and turned out that she had known my father when he ran the cinema club in Pori in the seventies! The lady said it was the best cinema club she's ever been in, because my father used to encourage comments and discussion after the screenings. (He's always said that that's what cinema clubs are for, the discussion, not just for the screenings.)

I'm still not 100 % sure I know what's going to happen with the show, but I keep telling myself that I've now discovered that the TV shows are always made in the midst of chaos and no one knows what the result will be.

What's with leggings?

I'm currently reading Joseph Finder's corporate thriller Paranoia and one thing in it reminded me of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, even though Finder's book is vastly better.

Both books have protagonists admiring women with leggings. In Brown's novel, this gets very embarrassing, because the guy clearly has no clue of what women wear. The effective Sophie of the novel wears stuff straight out of '89, but in the real life she'd be wearing a pinstripe suit with high heels. Instead she has a large sweater and leggings. In Finder's novel the guy goes on a date with a young woman who's supposed to be very sexy and trendy. And she shows up in leggings.

Now, there's nothing wrong with leggings per se, but at the moment they just don't cut it. (Yes, I know, they are back in style again, but for girls under 25, not these business ladies!)

Finder shows his lack of fashion knowledge in a scene where the same girls has platform shoes! C'mon! Platform shoes?!

Early Spillane

Mickey Spillane has never been a favourite of mine, but this is an interesting item: an early aviation story that was a filler story in a comic book. Spillane worked as a script writer in the comic industry before creating his private eye hero (or actually, "hero"), Mike Hammer in 1947.

http://img199.imageshack.us/my.php?image=034blueboltv3007032fightingmad.jpg
http://img199.imageshack.us/my.php?image=035blueboltv3007033fightingmad.jpg

Upea yleisönosastokirjoitus

Nauru tappaa tutkimusten mukaan:

http://phinnweb.blogspot.com/2005/11/hymy-perseeseen.html

Just One Night, part 2

(Continuation of the crime story I wrote 20 years ago, as a teenager. The first installment here.)

Moose said with a grin: ”Chicken barbecue pizza.”
”Sure, go ahead. Make it a family pizza”, Brougher said.
”We are one big family here”, Camaro said and sat on the couch. Moose danced to the door and pushed the phone button beside the door. He placed the order through the phone.
Camaro said to Brougher: ”Should we watch something? I brought The Last Boy Scout with me.”
Suzie Terrell opened the door and shouted: ”You won’t watch anything! I’m trying to get some sleep here!”
”Alright alright”, Camaro mumbled.
The door closed with a bang.
Moose had made his order and came to sit on the coach. ”So we don’t get to watch anything?” he said. ”Even now that we have a pizza coming?”
Jack lifted his eyes from the book and said: ”Why don’t we just be quiet?
Camaro said: ”Suzie girl tries to get some sleep.”
A shout came through the door. ”I am not a girl to you!”
”She makes me mad”, Moose said.
The bedroom door opened and Suzie Terrell stood at the door with only her pants on.
”Vow!” Camaro said.
”Damn it! Can’t you morons let people get some sleep? It’s fucking one in the morning! And you there, stop staring or I’ll bust your balls!” The door slammed close and soon the men heard crying come from the bedroom.
Brougher looked at Moose and Camaro and said: ”What if you guys go out to eat your pizza or whatever, miss Terrell seems to be very tired. I’ll leave some of the chicken pizza to you.”
”Alright. You’re the boss”, Moose said. ”Let’s go”, he said to Camaro.
Jack put the book away and went to the bedroom door. He knocked and opened the door gently. Suzie Terrell wasn’t sleeping or crying, she just lay there and watched the ceiling. ”Yes?” she asked when he noticed that Brougher had come in.
”Nothing. I came to apologize.”
”It’s alright. It’s all my fault.”
”Sure. I know that.” Brougher grinned and sat on a stool beside the bed.
”You got any cigarettes?” Suzie asked.
”Sure.” Brougher took the pack of Kents out of his shirt pocket and offered one to Suzie. She took it and put it between her lips. Jack also took a cigarette and lit both. Suzie got up to a sitting position. When she noticed that Brougher was looking at her admiringly, she said: ”I’m sorry. I’ll put something on.”
”Don’t worry. It’s a pleasure.”
Suzie rolled her eyes and got up. She put a long red t-shirt on. She remained standing up.
”What are you going to do after this?” Brougher asked.
”I think I’ll go to Paris. I hear it’s a pretty place.”
”If you like big cities. I prefer smaller ones, just like this Austin”, Brougher said.

Editing your own stuff for publication

Shit!

Earlier today when I was alone at home with Kauto, I happened to take the latest issue of Isku (the self-published crime/adventure fiction magazine I edit) and read some lines of my Joe Novak story, "The Case of the Walking Sticks".

And what did I see:

Pappa laittoi keppinsä tuolia vasten ja otti harmaan takkinsa taskusta ruskean piipun, tupakkapussin ja tulitikut. Pitkillä, kuivuneilla sormillaan hän kääri sätkän ja sytytti sen.

The old man placed his cane against the chair and took a brown pipe, tobacco bag and sticks out of the pocket of his grey coat. With his long, dry fingers he rolled a cigarette and lit it.

My first reaction: "What the..?"

I understood later what had happened. I remembered that the old man smoked pipe in the early versions of the story. Then I thought that he's an old pro, booze smuggler from the twenties and even earlier, used to run liquor for Capone and took a bullet in his leg and still didn't get caught, and he just can't smoke pipe. He's a tough one, not some intellectual reminiscing his lost youth. I switched the pipe to tobaccos, but forgot to take out the pipe!

I'm the only editor of Isku, but it seems that I clearly need someone to proofread my own stories. Dave Zeltserman once wrote on his blog that you should always edit on paper, never on screen. I do exactly that: edit on screen. That's why my texts seem so good...

I've already done the layout for the next issue's Joe Novak, maybe I should print them out...

Hellboy

I watched Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy just last night and was mildly disappointed. I haven't yet read Mike Mignola's comic and can't compare, but this wasn't just original enough. It looked just like another film from Blade to Captain Sky. The plot line should've been tighter and focused more around the Seven Gods of Chaos (and they should've attacked the Earth! I would've loved to see Hellboy to kick their asses!).

The biggest problem, however, was that they had saved money in the wrongest possible place: the actors were almost uniformly bad. Ron Perlman was OK in the lead, but John Hurt was a bit lame all the time and all the others came out of straight-to-video grade stuff. (Especially Rasputin, who should've revelled gleefully in evil and sin, was just another baldhead. I could've done his part just as well. His partner-in-crime looked great, but was no actor.)

It's too bad for del Toro. I really liked Cronos and Mimic (though I should've seen that one again) and his film about Spanish civil war, The Devil's Backbone, is very stylish and full of spooky atmosphere. (The last five or ten minutes are a let-down, though.) I understand he's doing Lovecraft's "Mountains of Madness", hope he gets something more original this time done.

Morgan Kane

I was scanning some books by Louis Masterson aka Kjell Hallbing for an article that's about to appear in Ruudinsavu/Gunsmoke. It's a commemmoration of the fact that Morgan Kane, Masterson's hero, was born 150 years ago.

The first one is the last in the actual Morgan Kane series and it's called The Last Hunt. Sorry, the scan is only black & white, since I thought about posting them here only after I'd completed the scan for Ruudinsavu. (I don't know if this has been translated into English and if it is, I don't know the exact English title.)

El Diablo

Kane adventured still in the El Diablo series, but he dies in the last one, Stormens oye/The Eye of the Storm. These are the original Norwegian books, published by the nation's leading paperback house, Bladkompaniet. They had been Masterson's publisher from the sixties on, when he started out doing Western one-offs and war novels.

Still another Diablito

This is just about Diablito, Morgan Kane's son, whose real name is Paco Galàn. In The Cross and the Sword he gets into the dangerous world of bullfighting.

Kirjailijapareja Suomesta

Tapani muistutti minua Armas J. Pulla -erheen lisäksi muistakin kotimaisista kirjailijaduoista. Hän itsekin kirjoittaa yhdessä Karo Hämäläisen kanssa, mutta kirjat julkaistaan kummankin nimillä tasavertaisesti.

"Nuortenkirjapuolella meitä on paljon, mutta suurin osa tekee omilla nimillään: Nina Repo ja Seita Parkkola, Anne Leinonen ja Eija Laitinen. Ja tietysti Nopolan sisarukset. Taru Väyrynen kirjoitti miehensä kanssa salanimellä Taru Mäkinen. Jouko Raivio ja Kirsti Manninen tekivät dekkareita. Karistolta tuli Paitsiokeikka, jonka kirjoittajaparina oli kouvolalainen poliisi ja toimittaja. Lommi taisi olla toisen nimi." [Paitsiokeikka oli Jukka Lommin ja Harri Mannosen kirja vuodelta 1999.]

Itse Elinan kanssa muistimme Ville ja Laura Rauvolan, jotka kirjoittajat lastenkirjoja Laura Lähteenmäen nimellä.

Ja sitten olemme tietysti me, Elina ja minä. Olemme tosin tehneet vain tietokirjoja eikä kirjoittamastamme nuortenkirjasta ole vieläkään tietoa, ilmestyykö se.

Just One Night, a crime story

I wrote earlier about the crime stories that I did when I was a teenager. I read some and one of them seemed good enough. I'll try to translate it and post here as a sort of serial. Here's the first installment. I edited it a bit and took out the most puerile elements. But you'll have to remember that I was 13 at the time. (I took the joke straight out of the web.)

Just One Night, part 1

”Please, turn it off. I don’t feel like listening to some Mozart or whatever”, Jack Lee Brougher said to a young woman who was witting on a sofa.
She was Suzie Terrell. Suzie was 23, very good-looking and nicely shaped blonde. She made a nasty laughing sound and said: ”It’s Bach, not Mozart. And try to show some respect to the great masters.”
”I have respect only for B.B. King. And besides that, Hersey might catch you any minute, if that thing is still on for another second.”
”What do you mean?”
”It makes me bored.”
Jack Lee Brougher was a security man of the Flanagan hotel. He was 26, tall, but not very muscular, and quite handsome. He had dark hair and wore blue jeans, a white shirt and a black tie. In his holster there was a Luger in account of Rodger Hersey, the criminal mastermind. Brougher guarded Suzie Terrell, because Hersey had just got out of jail and Suzie was the one to turn him in three years ago.
”Please”, Brougher said again.
”Alright. But only if you don’t change it to some B.B. King.”
”Alright”, Brougher said. After Bach had faded, he got up and turned on the radio. ”It’s no B.B. King. I don’t know what it is”, he said, when he found the blues station. Brougher grinned and lit a cigarette. Suzie Terrell didn’t look too pleased with him.
Moose Vincent came into the room. He was a tough one, with over six and ten, 110 kilos and bulging muscles. He had his hair up in a ducktail and he had black spitters and a black leather jacket on.
Brougher smiled when he saw Moose Vincent tap his fingers to the rhythm of Jerry Lee Lewis, who had begun to play on the radio. Brougher crushed his cigarette in the tray and said: ”Miss Terrell looks bored. Why don’t we do something funny. You could dance.”
Moose grinned and started to jump into the rhythm. It looked stupid as hell, but Suzie Terrell just sighed.
Moose stopped jumping and said: ”Camaro has a good joke or two.”
Camaro Cunningham was the hotel’s third security man, a tall and skinny man.
”Well, get him here quick”, Brougher said. Moose left the room. Brougher humphed and asked Suzie Terrell: ”What’s the matter with you?”
”This waiting. And the three of you, damn it! Why don’t you hell leave me alone?”
”Don’t you understand that you have to be guarded?”
When the woman didn’t say a word, Brougher shrugged, got up, turned off the radio and went to the living room shutting the door behind him. He lit another cigarette and picked up a paperback copy of Gores’s Hammett from the small desk. Moose came back with Camaro.
”Sorry”, Brougher said. ”Miss Terrell wants to be alone.”
”Damn shame”, Moose said. ”Just when Camaro had a good one.”
Brougher knew that Camaro’s jokes were always too long. He put the book away and waited. Camaro started: ”There’s this girl, Katie. She hears that her granddaddy has died and she goes straight to her grandparents’ house to visit her 95-year-old grandmother. This girl, Katie asks how her grandfather had died and her grandmother says that he had a heart attack while they were fucking away on Sunday morning.” Camaro started to giggle.
Brougher asked: ”Is this long?”
Camaro didn’t pay any attention to him and went on, still giggling: ”Katie tells her grandmother that two people who are hundred years old and fucking are asking for trouble.”
Sure, Brougher said to himself.”Oh no, my dear”, Camaro said implicating the whining tone of the granny. ”Many years ago, when we realized how old we were, we figured out the best time to do it was when the church bells would start toring. It was the right rhythm. Nice and slow and even. Just in on the Ding and out on the Dong.” Now Camaro made a pause. ”Granny wipes away a tear, and says that he’d still be alive if it wasn’t for the ice cream truck.”
Camaro and Moose started to laugh and pound their feet with their hands. Brougher grinned and when the two men had stopped he said: ”Let’s order some food.”

Writer duos

My friend Tosikko talks about on her blog about the Finlandia prize of literature. The shortlist has a SF novel by Risto Isomäki, and the jury said that it's not a perfect piece, but it discusses important matters and henceforth could receive the prize. Tosikko asks, rather rightly so, why Isomäki's novel is up there, if it's not well written. Someone commented that Finnish writers are usually not great stylists, or if they are, they don't discuss important matters (for example, Jari Tervo, who on the other hand wrote Myyrä/The Mole, an Ellroyish piece about Urho Kekkonen, the president of Finland 1956-1981 [or was it 1982? or -83?]).

I suggested that Finnish literature could benefit from a system in which someone comes up with the plot and the characters - and of course the issues - and someone else does the actual writing. This hasn't happened much in here, while it's very common everywhere else. Do you remember any actual writer duos from the annals of Finnish literature?* Take for example Ilkka Remes, the most best-selling thriller writer now. He could easily increase his income by making up a plot and characters and giving the stuff to some other writer. Then they'd split the advance fee and royalties (or whatever the system is in the US or UK).

This could also help some aspiring writers who don't have yet a novel of their own (or have had one), but who show promise. As the Finnish paperback and fictionmag industry has waded to almost non-existence, there's no real let-out for young writers. They have to make their breakthrough immediately with their first novel, which is kind of silly. I know couple of young writers who could easily fill out the pages from an existing synopsis.

* Tuuri Heporauta and his brother Arijoutsi wrote a SF thriller in the fifties, called The Mines of the Moon. Mika Waltari and Armas J. Pulla wrote as Captain Leo Rainio in the thirties. That's just about it. Any other suggestions? [Nota bene: Tapani said that I was in error first. It was Armas J. Pulla, not Leo Anttila who collaborated with Waltari on the Captain books. I changed it into Pulla now.]

My private eyes

We were in Pori to visit my mother (I also attended a class reunion; only ten people showed up, but we managed to drink quite a lot of booze) and I got to dig old notebooks of mine that my mom keeps in the closet. I was actually looking for some poetry experiments I was talking about with an acquaintance of mine for another possible project (and found them; will be reporting about it here or on the other blog), but then I came across some notebooks that had crime stories in them. As I've written here earlier, I wrote lots of P.I. fiction in my teens - say, from thirteen to eighteen. All of the stories took place in America (one might've been in Australia, though) and the heroes had great names. Here's a list:

Johnny LaShelle
Ed Aristoteles [should be Aristotle, of course, were he meant to be American)
Monty Suffern
Mel Shawcross
Lou Parker [this might've actually been a screenwriter down on his luck, getting mixed up with some criminous producer or something like that]
LeRoi Taylor [a space private eye]
Joe Stone
Curtis Strock
Jim Amadeus
Spencer Cartmell
Joe Villalobos
Sam Odessa
Ted von Mayerling
Jack Lee Brougher
Jimmie Christina
Evan Taylor
Charles Leroy
Philip Hunter
Lou Carroll
Eddie Ray Ford
Eddie Carradine
Charlie Waits
Arnold Clothes

Then there was of course Joe Novak, who's still my hero. Ted von Mayerling is now a part of the Novak mythology, popping up every now and then as a rich and annoying private eye (something like Jake Gittes in Chinatown). (He hasn't been mentioned in any of the published ones, though.)

I like those names, man! I don't think the stories are anything close... Take note that the later ones are the more parodic ones: Sam Odessa, Joe Villalobos, Ed Aristoteles. The early ones are more straight-forward.

I also had heroes called Nero Woodward and Archie Moulton. It's pretty obvious who I'd been reading...

I also found something that I hadn't remembered: I was clearly on my way to be a professional book packager! I had made notes for two series about international spy rental offices, with meticulous detail into what cars the spies drove, what kind of guns they had, and so on. The one was about the Netzer & Netzer Agency (the story was about a spy called James Stapley) and the other was about the multinational Smith-Mao-Buligin agency. Very nice! From the handwriting, it seemed that I was 11 or 12 at the time.

I took some of the stories with me and I'll read them. I don't think they'll hold up (the dialogue seems pretty stilted), but it strikes me now that maybe I should've pursued this line of work more powerfully, instead of going to the university and tried hard to be an intellectual. I could be a published fiction writer now, doing top thrillers... I'll report about the stories here later on.

STOP THE PRESS: I looked up some more from the experimental anti-novel that's up on my other blog: Nick Partner, Chuck DeWitt, Arthur Shape, M. Ed Pierce, Ray Minerva, Socrates Hulce. Tom Soupdish doesn't really work, unless in some zany parody. Ray Minerva was purported to be gay, but I don't think I ever got on with it. (I remember now that a friend of mine once told me about a story he had written in school with a hero called Jeremy Graveyard in it!) I seem to remember now that I made a list in a small notebook with all the private eyes I'd come up with... Must look that up next time!

P.I. novel; VHS tapes

My P.I. novel is starting to develop into a climax. I just wrote myself into a situation where I have to decide whether my hero is going to kill one of his girlfriends or does she have time to wash his trousers first. After that it will be pure hell.

It wasn't a good day doing any work, since Kauto slept pretty badly (his diapers leaked in the middle of the night and he was awake for over an hour even after we changed them). I've felt pretty tired all day and I slept for 20 minutes after reading Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange (which is still strangely eluding me).

***

I mentioned getting some old VHS movies from my dad. He picks these things up from the flea markets and sometimes he manages to sell them on. I get usually to choose something beforehand. Here's what I got:

George Schaefer: Pendulum, with George Peppard (1969)

Sebastian Gutierrez: Judas Kiss, mid-nineties noir, Gutierrez scripted later The Big Bounce

Lewis Teague: Polly (1979), from the John Sayles script, gangstery story set in the 30s

R.M. Richards: Revenge, Burt Reynolds flick from -86, with a small cult reputation, was supposed to be directed by Robert Altman, but fell into the hands of Dick Richards; the final director is hiding under a pseudonym; I missed this when it aired for a week in Pori and I didn't get a chance to write a review of it, now I'll have my second chance

I also got Hellboy by Guillermo del Toro which I haven't seen (nor have I read the graphic novel...).

The pirate issue of Isku

My self-published fiction mag Isku is soon coming out with the great pirate issue. It has five stories, with two classics, one by Arthur Conan Doyle himself and one by the Finnish legend Marton Taiga. The rest three are by me, Petri Hirvonen and Petri Salin. (I tried hard to get other writers, but it seems that people think it's hard to write about ships and all that. It didn't matter in the 1930's, did it, now?)

Well, the illos are great. Here are the cover by Jukka Murtosaari and the illustration by Timo Ronkainen for my story about Joe Novak and the lost treasure map. (I think it's one of the best Novak stories ever.)

By the way, if you speak Finnish, check out my other blog. I'm humiliating myself completely by publishing something I wrote at the age of 15 or 16. It's an experimental novel or what's left of it now. Joe Novak makes an early appearance, which I didn't remember.

German paperbacks

I was doing layouts all night and came up scanning some interesting German paperback covers. First batch is about two pirate novels. It's said that the covers are better than the text... German paperback fiction doesn't have a good rep, even though the industry there has been large.

The titles: Black Cargo and Under the Wrong Flag.

Cliff Coppers

Here are some covers for the German Western series that was published in Finland as Cliff Copper. The original series was called Red Rock Ranch. The hero of the series was Finlandisized and given a Finnish background, but not very inticingly. The titles are great: Horses Don't Whinny at the Graveyard, The Bloody Hard Ground, Blood Pudding for the Vultures... (The Last Draw of Breath doesn't hold up in that company!)

BLOOD-SEARING ACTION!

They are building a new house just next to us. As I sit here and type, I see the machines digging up earth and drillers clawing into the ground - and explosions! They are granading away huge pieces of ground rock. The traffic stops, loud beeps announce there's danger in the air - and then - BOOM! the smoke rises above the ground and big pieces of plastic (truck tyres spread open?) fly in the air. You don't see this kind of King Action in the middle of day very often. Keep up the good work, guys!

Weekend

Just a quick post:

on Friday, at the university library checking out some old pulp stories, then rush off to Tampere to a party that was held for the contributors of the Valo weekly; Elina's dad got sick and Elina couldn't come; lots of booze and The Crash live (they are much better than HIM and Nightwish (I still don't get why they didn't break up sooner)); I also had a quick chance to check Libris, my favourite used book store in Tampere and find some interesting paperbacks;

on Saturday, off to Nokia to see Markku and have lunch with him (thanks again for the food!) and then to see my dad and pick up books and old VHS's from him (will write about these later), he had also found a neat stack of old children's napkins for Elina's and my collection; we also had a quite long and not very friendly chat about grammatological things; then to Hämeenlinna where Kauto and Elina were;

on Sunday, back to Turku and then Ottilia came to us for Fathers' Day, which amounted to lots of noise between her and Kauto and finally to some small conflicts, but also some nice moments of warmth and friendship; then at seven o'clock I took Ottilia back to her mother and said that we'll have to rearrange some of the meetings next Spring since I'll be having a job (she said: "It's good for you to have some kind of a job"; well, does anyone reading this think I don't do work?) and then back.

Ottilia had made a very nice tie for me as a present out of felt with Kauto's picture (!) on it. The best part of Fathers' Day was, though, when Kauto behaved nicely after I'd got back and started to babble in his own way, saying words that sound like "buoy". Just imagine a small boy, sitting by himself, playing by himself, saying over and over again: "Buoy buoy buoy!" We almost started to cry, after all the commotion today.

And then I said to myself: "I don't feel like opening the computer any more." Here I am. Had to make corrections to the latest issue of Pulp which is almost mainly about British stuff.

Banalologies

I had finally some time yesterday to pick up the copies of Banalologioita, my latest self-publication. See the cover. (Oops, the scan seems to be pretty bad. Don't mind that. Just admire my AD skills...)

I read it last night. It could've been shorter (it's 42 small pages now), since there are one or two essays that now read like reader's letters to the editor. But there are some bona fide classics, such as the one about eating your lunch in public places or the one about sneezing. The one about wanking and its impact on the economy (or rather the other way around: economy's impact on the amount of wanking) is still disputed by academics all over the world.

Not.

But I am serious. I'm glad this finally saw the light of day, even as a self-pubbed book that has a limited distribution.

Lord Lister

Here is a cover of another pastiche that those German guys, Matull and Blankensee, made. Lord Lister was modeled after the British Raffles.

Great name, that Lord Lister, doncha think?

More of faux Doyle

One of the Harry Taxon stories I wrote about earlier has been published in English. Anthony Boucher picked up a story from the Spanish anthology called Memorias Intimas del Rey de los Detectives and translated it and used it in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. This was later reprinted in Allan Barnard's anthology The Harlot Killer in 1953. The story is about Jack the Ripper (as is the whole antho). The Taxon story has Jack kill his 37th victim.

Faux Conan Doyle

I wrote a small piece for the Finnish Whodunit Society's Ruumiin Kulttuuri magazine on two Finnish-language books that have been published as by Arthur Conan Doyle, but are not vintage Doyle.

The other one is one of the German Conan Doyles that were written by two guys, Kurt Matull and Theo Blankensee. It's already apparent from the outset that it's not a real thing - Watson has been replaced by Harry Taxon, young man who is an apprentice of Holmes. The Holmes is no real Holmes either, since he has loads of technical apparatus at his help. The German Holmeses appeared in 1907—1911, and Harry Taxon had his own mag, too, called Harry Taxon und sein Meister. It was published in 1908—1909. The Noble Thief is the one below.

The other one is a real mystery. The Victim of a Blood-Sucker a historical novel, set in the late 18th century and features one Luc de Kerjean. Baron Luc is setting up a conspiracy against the King. It sounds more like Alexandre Dumas or Ponson du Terrail than Conan Doyle.

The Victim of a Blood-Sucker (great title, huh?) was published in Wisconsin in 1907 in two parts by a American-Finnish publisher. I've been toying with the idea that this is a trunk novel that Doyle was able to sell only to the Wisconsin-based publisher to be translated into Finnish.. but then again, probably not.

My new job

I visited today Helsinki to see my future boss in TV. I've worked with her before and while that experience wasn't altogether successful to me, I was able to get more sense out of her this time. I also met my colleague and friend, Manu, who will also be doing the show. I also heard that Tero, who's taken photos for Elina's and my talkkuna book and some of our magazine articles is doing some inserts for it, too. This calmed me down a bit, even though it seemed that they didn't really know what they were going to do. We are shooting a test pilot on next Tuesday. The real pilot will be shot in December.

Maybe all the TV shows are done like this. No one knows what is going to be done and some just lean back and relax and say: "Hey, don't worry!" Me, I'm an amateur and don't know how things go. But it seems they really have confidence in me, since I heard there were some 20-30 people running for the job.

Someone asked me if I'll show up in tabloids from now on. FAMOUS TV FACE ARRESTED FOR SPEEDING UP CRACK! TV ANCHOR SHOOTS NEIGHBOR! ELINA AND JURI: "WE ARE NOT GOING TO BREAK UP!" JURI: "I'LL GIVE UP DRINKING!"

Blogit ja parodia

Lueskelin sattumanvaraisesti paria suomalaista blogia Sediksen linkkien kautta. Uusi maailma aukeni: maailma, jossa ei ole muuta kuin blogeja ja niiden semanttista pyörittelyä. Huomasin miettiväni, eikö kukaan huomaa, että blogien häviö on jo lähellä. Mielessä nimittäin käväisi vanha totuus, jonka mukaan parodia ja varsinkin itseparodia ovat merkkejä siitä, että jokin ilmiö on menossa mailleen. (Toisaalta parodia on aina säilyttävää, konservoivaa, ja sikäli se on myös merkki siitä, että jokin ilmiö halutaan säilöä sellaisenaan.)

Stuff on the other blog

Let me remind you there's an article on Seikkailujen Maailma in English on my other blog.

I also put the rest of e.e. cummings's poems in there. In Finnish, that is.

Cover for a Finnish pulp

This is a cover for Seikkailujen Maailma, the Finnish pulp that lived 1937-1963. In this issue, there's a story by "Charles D. Hammer", who's better known as Robert Silverberg. It will be included in the forth-coming collection of his early crime stories. Quite bad cover, I must say.

Other stories include Ron Garret's crime-themed juvie Motorcycle Murder and Westerns by Reuben Jenner and John Harrison McLean. There are also some anonymous stories. I'm thinking that Ron Garret could actually be Silverberg's buddy, Randall Garrett.

The blurb says: "The year for mavericks has begun!" (Or something to that effect.)

I got it!

I got the TV job!

Well, that's how I figured it. I was pretty flabbergasted when they phoned me earlier today and announced that they had liked me. I'm going to shoot the test pilot next Tuesday and the first real show - well, that went past me since I was in such a mess during the conversation. It seems, though, that they don't yet really know what they are going to do with the show, but I've decided that I won't mind. It pays the bills.

Now I just have to get new glasses. The current ones show reflection.

Vow! What a man!

This is an old magazine illustration by one Martti Masala, who did lots of book covers and other illos in the thirties. That swimming suit is a knockout! And the guy isn't bad himself either! (It's from a magazine called Reading for Everyone.)

Weekend

Ottilia came to us for a weekend. It was All Saints Day on Saturday and everything was close. Which didn't mean much, since the rain was coming down hard all day and we didn't get out. We had a friend of ours and his daughter come by. Kauto went pretty wild over two girls at the house. Ottilia left today early with her mother to a concert and we spent a nice evening with Kauto. He's much calmer when there's no one else around but Elina and me (and we don't just sit at the computer). He wants so much of Ottilia's attention that when she's not in the mood or is too tired to play and run around, Kauto gets pissed off. Well, not pissed off, but irritated. He performs stunts just to get attention - he for example threatens to walk off the sofa.

Today he tried to kill himself and both of us. He put a little toy box beside the television which is on a small desk and tried to get up on the desk. He tried to pull himself up by pulling from the cords... And he didn't do this only once, but at least 15 times.

It's great he's so energetic and clever, but it does eat us at times.

What else happened? Nothing much. I read some pages of Clarke's Jonathan Strange. I'm still not getting to it, but it seems to have its moments. I'm reading Moomins for Ottilia for bedtime stories. I strongly suggest everyone read Moomins. They were once voted the second best books in the Finnish literature and I won't say anything against this. Very delicate, very funny and sad at the same time, devoid of the so called wisdom that rots most of the children's classics, and also very adventurous. A note should be made of this: Jansson's books appeal to a wide range of readers, not just girls or boys.

I spent one hour of my precious life and tried to watch Perdita Durango by Alex de la Iglesias, from Barry Gifford's novel. What a waste! I mean, I'm not prudish and am the last person to claim any moral for a piece of art, but there should be at last a sign of humanity in the characters. This was too wicked even for my taste. I've seen another previous film by de la Iglesias who was a find of the Almodovar brothers. Accion Mutante was its title and it was just as "evil" and "wicked" and boring as this.

Watch out: there's an article on the Finnish Seikkailujen Maailma on my other blog. In English, so it's a treat.

Osmo Pata

Osmo Padan eli Toivo Vuorisen Sannan suudelman (Kirjamylly 1945) kansikuva. Vuorinen kirjoitti myös nimellä Topi Tuisku: novelleja lukemistolehtiin sekä 70-luvun alussa vakoiluromaanin Kolauta kohtuullisesti. Jälkimmäisen julkaisi Iltakirjat-niminen pulju. Kumpikaan kustantamoista ei käsittääkseni julkaissut mitään muuta. Mietinkin, että ne saattoivat olla liikemiehenä toimineen Vuorisen perustamia one-off -kustantamoita ja kirjat käytännössä omakustanteita.

The cover of Sanna's Kiss (1945) by Osmo Pata (= Toivo Vuorinen, who also wrote pulp stories and a late paperback as by Topi Tuisku). Nice outfit! Gotta love that tank top!

Sorry about the B&W photo - it's scanned from a xerox.

Suomeksi blogeista

(Sorry, as this is about blogging culture in Finland, I thought I'd better write it in Finnish.)

Ajattelija Karl Krausilta kysyttiin joskus, miksei tämä, nerokkaana lohkaisijana tunnettu mies, ole ikinä sanonut mitään natseista. Hän vastasi: "Ei tule mitään mieleen."

Tämä tuli mieleen, kun luin Anssi Miettisen juttua Hesarin Kuukausiliitteestä. (Aiheena siis yleisesti blogit, jos joku ei tiedä.) Jotenkin tuntui, että vaikka Miettinen oli perustanut oman blogin, antanut kommenttien lentää, laittanut juttunsa eri versioita luettavaksi ja kommentoitavaksi, jutusta ei jäänyt mitään käteen. Ihan kuin Miettinen ei olisi keksinyt mitään sanottavaa. Ei tullut mitään mieleen.

Tämä johtuu ennen kaikkea siitä, että kaikki mitä blogeista voidaan sanoa on kauhean ennustettavaa. Yhteisöllisyys, uusi journalismi, kansalaisjournalismi, narsismi, julkisuushakuisuus, kaikki tämä tulee mieleen jo viiden ensimmäisen minuutin aikana. Jos liioittelen, niin olisin voinut ilmoittaa Miettisen jutun lopputulemat jo ennen kuin rupesin lukemaan sitä. (Tosin siinä ei ollut kunnon lopputulemia - ehkä se johtuu siitä, ettei aiheesta tule mitään mieleen.)

Blogikulttuurissa ei siis ole - ainakaan omasta mielestäni - mitään kiinnostavaa sinänsä, on vain joitain yksittäisiä blogeja, jotka ovat kiinnostavia (enkä ole varma, onko omanikaan sellainen). (On tietysti joitain blogiryhmiä, joita seuraa, vaikka ne eivät olisikaan mitenkään erityisen kiinnostavia; itselleni tällaisia ovat useat amerikkalaiset rikoskirjailijoiden blogit, joissa yleensä kerrotaan työn etenemisestä tai luetuista kirjoista. Jolloin niiden lukeminen kuuluu enemmänkin työn piiriin.)

Blogeista ei tule mitään mieleen. Tai jos tulee, se on niin banaalia, että sitä ei viitsi sanoa. On erikoista, että Hesari ei saa blogeista mitään irti (mikä ei ole ihme), mutta kuitenkin samaan aikaan se perustaa monta blogia toimittajilleen ja ulkopuolisille (Mikko Rimminen). Siinä on varmaan takana se, että blogit tekevät varsinaisetkin mediat kiinnostaviksi mahdollisille lukijoille - eikö se ole vähän banaali lähtökohta?

Robert Viby's covers

Robert Viby is a Danish illustrator who made some paperback covers in the fifties. Some have been used in Finland. I am putting them here, since I was scanning them for an article in the forth-coming issue of Pulp.

The first one is for Edward Aarons's Sam Durell book,
Assignment - Madeleine, that was published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1958. Quite a striking cover, I must say. Viby has lately done covers for children's and juvenile books and has left the world of pulp sadism.

Prather with Viby

This is Viby's cover for Richard Prather's Strip for Murder (Fawcett Gold Medal 1955), one of the best entries in the Shell Scott saga. In the climax Scott flees the nudist camp naked with a balloon and lands on top of the city hall.

More Viby

Rather static composition for Day Keene's Notorious (Fawcett Gold Medal 1952).

Brian De Palma: Blow Out

I saw Brian De Palma's Blow Out Monday evening and liked it very much. It was at least fifteen years when I saw it for the last time (at least I don't remember seeing it) and didn't remember much of it. It's a tour de force in a technical sense, but it's also an exploding critique of masculinity. It's obvious that John Travolta doesn't really love Nancy Allen, he only sees a possibility to gain back his lost manhood and pride. He uses her and gets quite a punishment.

I wondered, though, why so many people laughed at the climax, when Travolta rushed to save Allen. De Palma uses slow motion, as he often does in climaxes, and I didn't see anything funny about that. Maybe it was Travolta. Well, they could've left out the falling snow from the scene in which Travolta listens to the tape he recorded while Allen was being strangled... The final scene is crushing and very ironic. No one laughed, even though there's also jokey feel to the scene.

Which goes to prove that De Palma is a master of irony.

Even though he's rather underappreciated at the moment. I wonder why. Someone might say that his career is uneven. Hey, whose isn't? I think that even in his worst films there's something interesting, even in Bonfire of the Vanities (I wrote a positive review of it when I hadn't yet heard that it was a box-office and critical failure everywhere else; haven't seen it since, so can't really say). The Mars film has some spectacular scenes and the opening shot of Snake Eyes is breath-taking. Along with Blow Out, my personal favourite would be Raising Cain, with very good overacting from John Lithgow. (I wrote somewhere that Lithgow is a better psycopath than Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, based on the De Palma film and Ricochet by Russell Mulcahy. Should see that again to verify. Maybe I wasn't thinking clearly.)