On Dylan

As everyone by now knows, Bob Dylan got the Nobel prize for literature earlier today. Now, I've never really understood why people like him and his music so much. To me his music always been a bit boring and at times obnoxious, and it's not just about his singing voice. I have a strong taste for more rhythm and more vigorous beats, and you have to admit there's not much of those in Dylan's music. I have found his orchestrations noisy and incoherent, and it's something I don't like in Bruce Springsteen either. The Big Sound just escapes me. I like it when The Byrds made "Mr. Tambourine Man" into a jingly-jangly pop song.

My ex-girlfriend and the mother of my first child is a great Dylan fan. She had to have everything Dylan ever did. You can easily see this caused some difficulties between her and me - our tastes in music were too different. This wasn't the cause for us breaking up apart, but it had something to do with it. It has also cast a shadow over me and my relationship with Dylan's music. Still, whatever I do, I just can't get the taste of it.

Of course, Dylan got his Nobel prize for his lyrics, not his music. In rock music, though, they are inseparable, but as for me, I've never really cared for listening to the lyrics. I don't really know why this is - maybe it's because it reminds me of my work, reading and writing, and I want music to be something else entirely.

There are some exceptions to my views of Dylan. I like Dylan without a noisy band, like for example here.

Milestone post!

I didn't realize my post on the men's adventure mags book Weasels Ripped My Flesh was my 1900th post. Will have to celebrate! Only one hundred to go! What should I do in my 2000nd post? This was my 1000th post. Seems like it takes five years to do thousand posts!

Just a work-related update

I've been working my ass off lately, writing articles and reviews for the magazine of the Finnish Western Society, Ruudinsavu (= Gunsmoke), getting some of my future books together (been working on several projects on Finnish history and the history of misanthropic thought - not much pulpish content here), translating Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature... He's an awful writer, you know? I think there must be more, but I keep forgetting. None of these bring much money, I'm sad to say. I keep reviewing some books from time to time, but for some reason or another they always end up on the boring side - the most recent example being a new thriller by Finnish writer Max Manner, which I barely managed through.

I'll try to work up some decent blog posts in the near future.

Misanthropy in crime fiction

Question for the group mind: can you think and name any examples of misanthropy in crime fiction, classic, hardboiled or other? I should be writing an essay on the subject, but can't come up with enough examples, though I think Jim Thompson (especially Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me) and Patricia Highsmith (Tom Ripley!) are essentials. What about Charles Willeford? Isn't a book like The Woman Chaser misanthropic?

Someone suggested Andrew Vachss, but he seems to have an ethos that the innocent can and should be saved. There's of course lots of nihilistic neo-nah (the phrase coined by Kevin Burton Smith), but I haven't really sampled those. I'm not sure, though, whether mere nihilism is enough. Misanthropy is more of a philosophical stance, whereas nihilism seems more like a juvenile attempt to be tough and rough.

Any ideas? I'm not really sure if I can do this (the idea wasn't mine to begin with), but if there are enough examples I'm willing to try. I appreciate any thoughts on the subject. If there's a book on the subject, or even an essay, I'd really like to hear about it.

My first sale was 25 years ago!

I've been going through my stacks and boxes of paper (the memory boxes, as we say with Elina) as I'm making a donation to the county archive here in Turku, Finland. I found the first newspaper article I ever sold: it was to the magazine my father was working at, the small Leftist newspaper called Satakunnan Työ (The Satakunta Labour News or something to that effect). I was only 14 at the time and I think I pretty much ripped the piece straight out of a mechanics journal as it was about the new car models being developed at the time in the Soviet Union! There's much to laugh about this, but then again I noticed that this was almost exactly 25 years ago, as the article was published in the mid-December 1986!

Later on I started writing movie reviews for the same newspaper (under the moniker Umberto D.*) and honestly I think that was better suited to me than writing about cars, since I still don't have a driver's license!

* Umberto D. being of course the famous neorealist movie by Vittorio de Sica. My dad thought I should use a pseudonym so that noe one could argue they favour relatives in any way. I must've been the last movie critic in Finland to use a pseudonym! They were pretty much in use in the fifties and in the sixties, but by the eighties they were gone - except for me. This car-related clip was published anonymously. 

Merry Christmas to everyone!

I was going to post a nice Xmas picture my daughter did, but I just made it vanish! We are away on a Christmas trip and I can't get to the picture at the moment, so you'll just have to wait until tomorrow. Merry Christmas until then!

George "Jerry Cotton" Nader's gay porn sci-fi novel

James Reasoner has written about the German pulp series (or Romanhäfte, as the actual term is) in his blog here and here (and here). Just today a friend of mine posted this on Facebook: the 1979 cover for George Nader's science fiction novel Chrome that's about the gay robots of the future! (Or some such, I'm not actually quite sure.) The cover is, shall we say, weirdish - and not very erotic.

And just what does this have to do with Jerry Cotton, you ask. Well, George Nader was the guy who played Jerry Cotton in the German-financed and German-directed movies in the sixties and seventies. I once tried to watch one, but couldn't get very far.

Mellors and me

Over at Facebook a friend of mine posted this link about different Lady Chatterley covers. I pointed out that this Argentinian cover was my favourite and said I could even use it as profile picture if someone put eyeglassed in it and made the person bald. Another friend of mine did what was asked, with hilarious results.

Xanadu!

I've never seen Xanadu, but Vince Keenan's blog post about it is very funny and actually thought-provoking.

Moomins, those satanists

Instead of a proper post*, here's a link to a hilariously inane "article" on Moomins, the great fairytale novels of Tove Jansson, the Finnish writer. I really love it when my both children love them just as much as I've always done.

* We just sold our apartment, are prepared to move to a bigger one and I should be packing all of my books, I had a writer's block that lasted a week and now that I'm over with it, I should concentrate fully on writing the architecture book. 


Edit: it came to my knowledge some minutes ago that the Landover Baptist Church is a parody. Well, they fooled me, that's for sure. 

And now for something completely different...

Here's a link to the very stylish latex underwear and lingerie show by the Atsuko Kudo label held recently. I think this stuff is very sexy and pretty and so much reminiscent of the fourties and early fifties style that I thought it might merit posting here - these babes could perform in a classic noir film!

Safe back from the trip

Just wanted to let you know that we came back from our trip that eventually lasted more than a week. I'll be posting something about it - perhaps some photos and reports about the books I read during the trip, including a thorough essay on John Rector's debut novel The Cold Kiss.

Summertime Blues

I know, I know, it is pretty boring to post just to say is busy and will be busy and will be having a vacation, but that's what I'm gonna do right now. My daughter came to Finland to spend the summer with us and we are doing a bit of travelling, so there won't be much to write.

But, ah man, there's been a lot to write about. I just don't know where I'm spending my time (on Facebook, maybe?), but some things I've been meaning to write about but haven't:

1) the Red Riding trilogy: superb rendering of David Peace's book quartet: serial killing put in the social context (I really was meaning to write a long essay about this, but suffice to say that T. Jefferson Parker did this thing better in his California Joe; brilliant nevertheless)

2) Robert Harris's Rome novels: utter bores, don't waste your time on them

3) a Mexican wrestling movie from the early seventies I watched with some friends of mine: forgot the title, but the movie was hilarious, just like the sixties Batman TV show

4) Arturo Perez-Reverte's novels on Captain Alatriste: just can't get hooked on them, even though they are said to be popular and hark back to the golden days of the adventure novels, give me a Thomas B. Costain any day over Perez-Reverte!

I know I'm forgetting something. I just know it.

I'm reading Justin Cronin's celebrated vampire novel The Passage (Ensimmäisten siirtokunta in Finnish) and liking it a great deal, but

Italian disco at its very best

I dare you to watch this. Just how can that.. that.. that thing stay on her, even when she's shaking that.. that.. that thing of hers?

Westlake in Sweden

My friend and Pulpetti's Swedish correspondent, Anders Engwall, took up the task of scanning some Swedish Westlake covers and mailing them up to me. So here they are, in separate posts and arranged chronologically. The comments are Anders's, but I've added some in brackets.

Take it away, Anders!

Book Fair, Schmook Fair

Of course the Turku Book Fair is in October, not August, as I previously wrote. I'm just not able to change the post on Tapani Bagge's new book, don't know why, must be Blogger, not me.

I'm a guest writer

I was invited to promote discussion as a guest writer of the month at the Rihmasto website. The discussion is understandably in Finnish. Here's my contribution - it's about the fact that Mika Waltari's career would be totally different if he started writing now. (Hell, do you think anyone would publish Sinuhe egyptiläinen/The Egyptian now?)

Here's also the too long introduction on me I wrote.

Christa Faust's Money Shot

I was sorry when I didnt' have time to write more about Christa Faust's excellent Hard Case outing Money Shot that came out earlier this year. Luckily James Reasoner provides us with a good and thorough review.

Allan Guthrie's promo video for Savage Night

Do I hear right? Allan Guthrie says that he's vegetarian and a teetotaller? Is that a fact?

Here he talks a bit about this coming book Savage Night.