Mack Bolan: The Fiery Cross

The Fiery Cross, an 1988 entry in the Mack Bolan series, written by Mike Newton as by Don Pendleton, is something we sorely need, when the Nazis - the so-called alt-right - are marching in the US, and in Finland as well. In the book, Mack Bolan beats the Nazis and the Klansmen somewhere in the Deep South and finds out that the extreme right wing is financed by the Russians (as they might well be in Europe, don't know about the US). The Nazis and the Klansmen are ridiculed throughout the book, which is very fine by me.

I didn't think this was a particularly good book, though it's solidly written by a professional. I kind of leafed through the whole thing, just looking for something to pass the time. Which is what this kind of entertainment was made for. But it should be vital that this kind of information also tells us what's important, what are the values that are really worth fighting for. And being low-level literature, it's available also to those who are prone to social exclusion and marginalization and thus to the temptations of the right-wing populism. Mack Bolan could never be called a Leftist social justice warrior (a pejorative moniker used by the right-wingers), so there might be a chance for someone to realize fighting Nazis is also manly.

Just a quick update: election, new books, coming books, a beautiful cover for one

Just announcing I'm not dead yet, though the latest blog post is from, what, two months back! Can this really be? Time flies really fast, doesn't it? 

There have been things going on around here, that's for sure. 

I ran for the city council here in Turku, Finland, in the ranks of the Left Alliance and was elected, almost to my surprise, vice member (or deputy member, I'm not really sure what the right word is). So far, I haven't done much in this official post, but we'll see. 

My publishing house, Helmivyö, has put out new books. One of them is my own "The Short Introduction to Trash/Pulpy Literature" (Roskakirjallisuuden lyhyt historia; it's a tour around the world, focusing mainly on the United States), and one of them is a volume of the the collected short fiction of Kaarlo Bergbom, Finnish writer from the 1860s. There are only four stories, one of them being a Biblical fantasy, one being an almost Westernish story of an old career criminal living as a hermit, and two being psychological short stories. You can check the books out here. (The site is understandably in Finnish.) 

My hands have been full of work, and besides all of the above I've been writing and compiling my own books. I had to postpone one that was supposed to come out next Fall, but the book about the film versions of classic and new Finnish literature is still in the works. It's a sequel to the book I wrote earlier, about film versions of known and forgotten books around the world, not only in Finland. 

And there will also be a collection of fairy tales for adults I edited. It's called "The Hundred Years of Sleep" (or "Dreams"; Sadan vuoden unet in Finnish), according to the shorty story of Johanna Venho that was simply wonderful. I wish someone possibly in the publishing business reading this blog would get excited and ask for a translation sample of some of the stories. Check out the cover above, it's by Charlie Bowater. 

I haven't been reading much hardboiled/noir/pulp/sleaze literature, as I have been deeply immersed in my work, but here's hoping I can squeeze some in during the Summer. So far, it looks bad... 

Donald Trump

I haven't been blogging and I realized why that was. Even though Pulpetti has for years mainly focused on crime fiction in its many forms, I realized I can't go on pretending nothing happened.

You know, I've been devastated. I know now that there were many flaws with Hillary Clinton's campaign, and I hoped Bernie Sanders would've been the Democrat candidate. I don't know whether he'd been able to defeat Trump, but it still would've been the same, right? And maybe Sanders could've set something else entirely in motion. (There's still that Clinton got more votes than Trump. She was more popular. Maybe the Americans should do something about how the votes are counted.)

But Trump? I can't begin to understand what went on here. You would've thought his story would've ended during many points of his career, like when he made condescending remarks about a journalist with a handicap. C'mon, you let this guy run your country?! Okay, I've read lots and lots of reports and articles about how bad things are for the American middleman, but this is still no excuse to vote someone who runs on racism, hatred and bigotry. (Not to mention the notion that also the rich voted for Trump. They are the real ones who benefit from Trump and his politics.) Lots of people have been trying to be moderate and saying that maybe Trump will not go with what he said during his campaign, but however his campaign and his victory made hate speech and vitriolic racism more acceptable.

And it made it more acceptable not only in the US, but all over the world. There's been a lot of racist backlash in Europe and Russia, and I'm beginning to fear we are not seeing the end of it. Talks about building a wall on the Mexican border (which sounded only absurd at first) don't much differ from talks about building camps for special people.

"It couldn't happen here." That was the title of Sinclair Lewis's novel of the rise of the American fascist. That's what they said about Hitler as well.

PS. I don't even want to think what this might mean for Putin's Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe and Middle-Asia. 

Marxist Noir

Very interesting interview with Alan Wald about the connections of American proletarian realism and hardboiled school of crime writing at the Crime Time website. Authors mentioned: Jim Thompson, Kenneth Fearing, Ed Lacy, Ira Wolfert, Albert Maltz etc.

My weirdest book yet

I'll do a double post on this subject, in English and in Finnish.

This has gotta be my strangest book yet, and I've done some pretty strange books. Finland has a presidential election coming up next year, and we have some candidates from bygone days, some who came to politics already in the 1970's. One of them keeps coming up even though no one - but himself - thinks he has any chance to win the election and become the president of Finland. He's called Paavo Väyrynen - there's something sly about him, has always been, and he's open to parody and irony (some seem to think he knows this all too well, but some are not so sure). A friend of mine had an idea with some friends of his over drinks at a bar that one could make a short story collection with this Väyrynen guy and mix him with the Cthulhu Mythos. I heard about this early in the morning some weeks ago, and asked Turbator's Harri Kumpulainen if he wanted to publish such a book. He said yes. The result: the book went to the printers early this morning. It will come out just before the first round of the election. The book is hilarious, ripe with good parodies of both Lovecraft and Väyrynen. Some of the stories should work even after the election and if there's ever going to be a proper Cthulhu anthology in Finnish, I'm seriously hoping some of the best stories in this book are going to be included. - The cover is illustrated and designed by Ossi Hiekkala, who's one of the best classic illustrators working in Finland at the moment.

And now, in Finnish:

Kyse siis kirjasta nimeltä On Suurten Muinaisten aika, joka valmistui parissa viikossa parin kaverin baari-illan aikana saaman idean perusteella: miten yhdistetään Lovecraftin Cthulhu-jumalat ja Väyrynen? Helposti - näin ainakin pitää päätellä siitä, kuinka nopeasti tarinat tulivat. Lisäksi Turbatorin Harri Kumpulainen innostui ideasta välittömästi, sanoi että tehdään ihmeessä, että päästään edes vähän vittuilemaan.

Osa tarinoista on muokattu suoraan jostain tietystä Lovecraftin novellista niin että henkilöt ja paikat on vaihdettu Väyryseen ja Suomeen sopiviksi, osassa on viitseliäämmin kehiteltyjä juonikuvioita. Oli miten oli, kaikki jutut ovat hauskoja ja nautittavia ja sisältävät sopivassa määrin vittuilua Väyryselle (sekä Kekkoselle ja Jyrki Kataiselle ja Sauli Niinistölle ja muille). Jotkut ovat kyllä jo ehtineet sanoa, että tästä sataa äänet laariin Väyryselle - käyttääkseni kulunutta ja ärsyttävää fraasia. Mutta tuli vaaleissa mikä lopputulos tahansa, niin takaan että jutut naurattavat ja viihdyttävät vielä pitkään! Jos joskus tehdään varsinainen Cthulhu-antologia suomeksi, niin lupaan, että tästä tulee siihen juttuja.

Idean toimivuudesta kertoi sekin, että kuvittaja Ossi Hiekkala teki aivan erinomaisen kannen nopealla aikataululla. Kirjan julkkarit on maanantaina 9.1. Kekkosen patsaalla Töölössä, jonka jälkeen iltabileet ovat Lepakkomies-baarissa. Facebook-sivut sekä kirjalle että julkkareille löytyvät täältä ja täältä. Kirja tulee myyntiin varmasti ainakin Akateemiseen sekä nettikauppaan mm. Zum Teufelin sivuille, joten sitä pystyy ostamaan aivan normaalisti sen ilmestyttyä. Painoksesta tullee pieni ja kirjasta keräilyharvinaisuus, joten siihen kannattaa tarttua nopeasti!

Edit: here's the line-up which I forgot to put down earlier:

Juri Nummelin: esipuhe
Vesa Kataisto: Presidentti Väyrysen puhe Ikaalisten pato- ja matologisen tiedeinstituutin avajaisissa marraskuussa 2019
Harri Erkki: Kalevan uskon paluu
Tuomas Saloranta: Kari Tenho Väyrysen tapaus
Vesa Sisättö: Paavo Väyrysen Ääni
Jussi Katajala: Paavo Väyrynen - elvyttäjä
Timo Surkka: Tulette ällistymään
Niko Aslak Peltonen: Varjo Väyrysen yllä
Juha Roiha: Kasvojen kutsu

Finns getting a right-wing parliament

It was an election day today. Finland voted for a new parliament and decided that what we need is a bunch of over thirty right-wing nuts to deal with such complicated things as the EU monetary crisis, the global immigration and such. Here's a BBC article. Finland follows the route of many European countries, for which I'm very, very sad. Seems like Barack Obama is the only good guy right now. (I'm sure many of my American readers disagree with me on this.)

The financial crisis: nothing new

As I said earlier, I was reading Peter Ackroyd's new biography of Poe (highly recommended, solidly written and short and seems to contain everything one needs to know about Poe, if one's not a scholar) and I noticed that there were at least two grave financial crises during Poe's lifetime - which was short, only 40 years, as all the readers surely know. And the both crises seemed to fasten Poe's demise.

Now there's another financial crisis on. As I was reading Ackroyd's book, I said to Elina that why everyone still thinks capitalism is a good way to handle economy when it seems that the tendency to break down and go into a crisis is inherently built into it. I don't think there were any financial crises during the era 1930-1980 when the economy was regulated heavily throughout the world, starting from the Roosevelt era United States. (And the financial growth was steadier and even faster than it was before the current crisis.) These post-1980 crises started when the regulation ceased - and that was a deliberate decision from the politicians, not just some freak coincidence or a sign of the market's own will. After 1989 there have been at least three global financial crises - in twenty years! And still people think that capitalism is a good system! (Of course the era 1930-1980 contained a world war, the Cold War, lots of international conflicts throughout the world etc., lots of political suppression, but in the Western world, or in the free countries, if you will, and especially in the Nordic countries, many things were better than they are now.)

PS. Hmm.. did I mention the Poe biography only in a comment on Patti Abbott's blog?

Not so groovy prediction from Curt Purcell

Curt Purcell, who does a good job with his Groovy Age of Horror blog writing about ephemeral paperbacks and letting guys like Jaakko (who's Finnish, by the way) post absolutely wacky scans of the Italian fumetti comics, got serious about the American presidential elections. (Sorry about getting to this so late, have been behind in my blogging. Don't think I'll catch up.) Curt's future doesn't look all too promising - his worst case scenario includes George W. Bush taking over by force.

His post reminds me of the rumour that was circulating in the mid-eighties: the constitutional law will be changed so that Ronald Reagan gets elected to this third season. This may have been Leftist propaganda I was fed with during the eighties. (I also seem to remember someone saying they'd nominate Reagan for a king, but.. c'mon, who'd believe that?)

But here's Curt also posting the entire contents of a men's mag from 1964, called Battle Cry. Curt's using a new device called Issuu. It seems nice and works pretty swiftly and is definitely better than posting PDF's on a site, but seems also that it slows down the blog. I might use the same device myself to scan some mags I have or some such - but it would take some time, which I don't seem to have. (Though, complaining about the time I don't have takes up a considerable amount of time, so I should stop and just make whatever is that what I would do if I had the time.)

Note that one of the stories in the mag is written by a guy called Irwin Porges. He was the brother of science fiction and crime writer Arthur Porges and a writer of an Edgar Rice Burroughs biography.

Facebook and CIA

I'm on Facebook, as - it seems - everyone else is. One of those rare friends who's not there just sent me this link, telling all about why one shouldn't really trust in Facebook. Just three letters: C. I. A.