Logicomix

The Logicomix graphic novel (which I believe is available in English) has been getting high praise from just about everyone here in Finland. The premise is interesting: it's a metatextual rendering of the history of mathematical, exact logic. It's told from many perspectives: the artists discussing the book under construction and Bertrand Russell telling about his life in a public speech, with the story moving forwards and backwards in time. The examples of logic Russell gives in his speech are also played out in the present time, with the artists discussing them. 

Logicomix is a fluent read, but I got the feeling it's also overhyped. The art is a bit stale (the artists are said to have collaborated earlier on the Babar animated TV show...) and while there's a lot of stuff going on all the time, with many important mathematical thinkers and philosophers popping in and popping out, I didn't realize what the fuss was about. (Plus I didn't understand many of the dilemmas presented, which may explain why I wasn't as fascinated as some others.) The stuff with Ludwig Wittgenstein was probably the most powerful. But I'd say if you're interested at all in the mathematics or the history of philosophical logic, you should try Logicomix. I just wish it would've been more original, more courageous. As a graphic novel, it's way behind Spiegelman's Maus, anything by Will Eisner, Alan Moore's and Eddie Campbell's From Hell etc. 

Controversy over Ace Atkins's forth-coming Spenser books

Ace Atkins and TV writer Michael Brandman will be continuing Robert B. Parker's Spenser books. This has caused a lot of controversy at the Rara-Avis e-mail list, with people shouting "couldn't they at least wait until the body was cool? I mean, shit, Parker hasn't been dead two years". From my perspective, I can't see any harm someone writing more mediocre books that read pretty fast and tell about nothing. I mean, I've never been able to understand what's behind Parker's success and cult status. I don't want to hear stuff like "you just had to be there" or "Spenser's voice is unique" (which it doesn't really seem to me), I want to hear solid analysis.

Interview with Woodrell

Apart from just about everyone else, I'm not a big Daniel Woodrell fan, but do check out this interview with him.

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.)

Antti Tuomainen strikes a deal

Marvellous news from my writer friend, Antti Tuomainen, the noir man extraordinaire! Beware of the Finnish noir apocalypse!

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Concrete Jungle

The Concrete Jungle is the US title for Joseph Losey's The Criminal (1960). It's a very, very tough crime film, reminiscent of the best, the most hysterical film noirs à la Kiss Me Deadly or Brute Force. Very hardboiled (and not very unlike Sean Connery) Stanley Baker is the head character, a career criminal just getting out from the prison and already developing his next big gig. Everything goes well and they get 40,000 pounds, but afterwards Baker's criss-crossed, in the best tradition of the genre. The ending is very grim, which means it's very good. Some of the scenes are so hysterical you want to jump up and shout: "Stop!"

There are some problems with the film: there's too much music, some of the scenes are a bit stagey and there are some inconsistencies in the script, but all in all, a lovably dark crime film from one of the masters. There are some things here Joseph Losey couldn't have done if he hadn't left the USA after being blacklisted: the homosexuality of the inmates is not hinted at, it's plainly shown (even though there are no kisses here or even a mention of the relationships), and the violence is harsh and brutal. Here's a good review of the DVD. Check it out, if you can.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here.

Fool, enigma, suicide

Here, try this.

Little Red Riding Hood on View-Master

I'm unpacking feverishly and coming up with very weird items in my collection of sorts. Here's one, a folder for the View-Master discs containing the story of Little Red Riding Hood (in Finnish language, if anyone's wondering). Can't find the year this was published. I know I have somewhere a similar folder for Tarzan discs, will have to post a picture of the folder and its photos, provided I'll ever find it.

Brian Garfield on Donald Westlake

Long interview with Brian Garfield about his long-time friend, Donald Westlake.

Cape Cod Noir

This reminds me of the idea I pitched to Akashic two years ago: the Helsinki Noir anthology. Thanks to Kevin Wignall, I got a very good line-up for the thing. I'll have to dig it up and refresh it.

Gil Brewer's bibliography

Just a quick note: here's a pretty complete bibliography for Gil Brewer's short story fiction, with some discoveries (i.e. Gil Brewer wrote some short stories as by Jack Holland).

We just moved

We carried almost all of our possessions to our new apartment - our new home! - today and we are all pretty tired. Kauto threw up after eating almost only candy and snacks all day and this new place is a mess, with all the 6,000 books lying around, in boxes, on tables, on shelves, everywhere. Plus all the clothes, Elina's vintage dresses, 120 shoes... and I'm not someone to blame her, since I've got at least 100 T-shirts and what not. We've talked about opening a bottle of Moët & Chandon when the move is over, but it's not over yet. Wish us luck!

Simon Lelic's Rupture

I read the Finnish translation of Simon Lelic's Rupture (A Thousand Cuts seems to be the US title) book and wrote a review of it for the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper. I liked it quite a bit, but not enough to keep it on my shelves. It's a frightening tale of a teacher who kills four pupils, one teacher and then himself. Lelic, whose debut novel this is, writes the first half of the book mostly through fragments and witness testimonies which makes for a compelling read, but the second half is marred by a didactic tone and an ending that's way too upbeat. It's simplistic and makes one hope Lelic wouldn't have pulled his punches this way.

Recommended, though, if you're into serious British crime writing or the topic of school shootings. It's interesting to me, since I've been having these dreams of... writing something about school shootings (a publisher actually once proposed I'd write a novel of a school shooting, but nothing came of it).

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. 

Three books in two weeks!

I'm not sure anymore whether I got any new books out last Fall. At least three books were delayed - which of course lead to the situation where they suddenly come out with a burst. Last week the collection of articles dealing with the copyright debate that I edited came out, and this week the reference work to the contemporary historical novelists came out. And as if this wasn't enough, I got a call from the publisher that the vampire anthology is just out of the printers! Yikes! Three books in two weeks! (Must be said, though, that none of these is written by me, they are just anthologies and compilations. I did ten or so entries for the reference book, but I'm "only" credited as one of the three authors, the other two being Sari Polvinen and Jukka Halme.)

There's still one book coming out this Spring that was supposed to be published last Fall - it's the collection of the Finnish outdoor and hunting stories I edited. It'll probably come out next month.

I'll post later more details about these books.

Michael Koryta's A Welcome Grave

You might remember I lost this book for at least a week and my reading experience was a bit ruffled by the incident, but it was still a very good book, a good example of the recent private eye fiction that doesn't have any of the noirish clichés of the private eye fiction that still marr the image of the hardboiled gumshoe in people's eyes. Very few of these books have been translated in Finnish, which means many have the wrong image of the new PI novels.

Okay, to the book. The setting is very intriguing and fresh: someone kills brutally the guy who "stole" Lincoln Perry's (Perry being Koryta's PI hero) girlfriend many years ago and married her. Lincoln Perry is the first suspect, since he's known to have  fought with the deceased. The wife knows the dead man had a son and someone should notify him about the death of his father. Perry finds the son quite easily, but in the middle of the night, in a gazebo somewhere, the son pulls the trigger and kills himself.

And then I lost the book.

And then I found it. (Or actually Elina, my wife, found it while cleaning.)

But I got back on the track. A Welcome Grave is one of those touching and tragic PI novels in the mould of Ross Macdonald or Jonathan Valin. The webs of history and family life are very complex in this book. At times I felt there was a bit too much dwelling on Perry's love life and he has a mildly weird sidekick (a trait I don't really like in new PI fiction), but I'm not really complaining. The climax is quite shattering and full of action. This would make a nice film. My only complaint is that Lincoln Perry is not as memorable characther as someone like Philip Marlowe or Dan Fortune. Maybe that's the point: the people around the PI are the story.

Oh, here's Koryta's website.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Marquise of O

In Arthur Penn's seminal private eye film, Night Moves, Gene Hackman says that watching an Eric Rohmer film is like watching paint dry on the wall. Hackman is not a nice man in the film, so everything he says should be approached with caution.

Especially when Rohmer makes films as beautiful and stunning as his (only?) historical film, The Marquise of O (1976; the same year as Penn's film!). It's based on a story by Heinrich "Mikael Kohlhaas" von Kleist and it's about a widow who gets mysteriously pregnant after being saved from some village savages by a Russian count (played by Bruno Ganz). The sets are very well done, the compositions are beautiful (I believe Rohmer has stolen some images from the famous paintings of the era; see the image on the left), the dialogue is very funny in its pompousness and German strictness, and the story is moving. What more can you possibly want? The film is absolutely hypnotic, even without music (yes, this is an European art film without any music). My only gripe with the film is that the ending, the last line of the film seems a bit too ironical.

More Overlooked Films here.

PS. And oh, I could also mention The Jack Bull, a rather recent TV western I watched some weeks ago, because it's based on "Mikael Kohlhaas", von Kleist's best-known story. The transition of the 16th century Europe to the late 19th century Wild West is made quite well, but I didn't buy John Cusack as a Western character, for some reason or another. Recommended otherwise.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Patricia Highsmith's A Game for the Living

It's been a while since I last read something by Patricia Highsmith. I haven't read enough of her work to call myself a fan, but I've liked what I've read. For some reason or another, it's almost twenty years since I've read any of the Tom Ripleys.

But I have a book project for which I'm supposed to read some Highsmith. I grabbed one of the Finnish translations from the shelf, but it proved to be one of her weaker books - or at least that's what I think. It was A Game for the Living from 1959, translated literally as Peli eläville in 2000. It's set in Mexico which makes it resemble some of Margaret Millar's work, but Millar seems quite liberal compared to Highsmith when it comes to her depiction of the Mexicans. Highsmith's view of them is racist: the Mexicans are stupid, arrogant, child-like, corrupt, violent, acting on a whim. One of the whims is a deadly one: a beautiful woman who's affiliated with many artists is killed brutally and the two men with whom she was in love with begin to act out their own guilts.

This seemed interesting at first, but then it bogged down to a mediocre thriller, with too many scenes in which the lead men were just suffering. The climax wasn't very grabbing, I'm sorry to say. It has to be said, though, that I had some difficulties to concentrate in reading the book - I had to read some other stuff at the same time and that always eats the experience. I'd be interested to hear about other opinions on the book.

Other Forgotten Books for this Friday can be found here at Patti Abbott's great blog.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Pirates of the 20th Century

Seems like I'm doing only these Overlooked meme posts nowadays... (And I keep forgetting the blogger's rule No. 1: don't complain about why you haven't posted and why the stuff you post is lame.) I'll try to remedy that, with posts coming on Michael Koryta's A Welcome Grave (I found it!) and James Reasoner's long-lost novel Diamondback. Okay, back to the meme.

Pirates of the 20th Century (1980) is possibly the only Soviet karate film ever made. And it is possibly the only full-blown action film ever made in the Soviet Union. There have been some actioneers along the way, starting from the early 1920's (and Civil War films like Red Imps that resemble American Westerns very much) and moving well to the 1980's. But Pirates of the 20th Century is something of an anomaly: there's no social or political message to be seen, there really are some karate and diving scenes, with some tough violence. All in all, the film resembles the James Bonds and at times even the Hong Kong karate flicks of the seventies. The Soviet public wanted this stuff so badly the film received over 100,000,000 viewers!

It's not a bad film. It's stagey at times and the characters are not much more than cardboard sketches. There are some scenes in which you can only wonder what the script writers were thinking, and the climax is way too easy. There's some heavy-duty violence against women (whipping with a bamboo stick on a bare back, for example), which is surprising. The music is mostly Italian-styled funkjazz. The only Soviet angle thing is probably that there are no lonely heroes: these guys act as a group in which there are no hierarchies. (Okay, the bad guys, the pirates of the title, are mercenaries who've worked in places like South Africa and Angola, which places them with the imperialist gang.) The film is entertaining throughout, though, and if there's a copy available I suggest you grab it: this is one of a kind. I believe the film is on out DVD. Below are the opening credits and the climax, without English subtitles, though. (More Overlooked films at Todd Mason's blog.)

Tuesday's... er, Wednesday's Overlooked Film: Manifesto

Honestly, I was going to post this already yesterday, on Tuesday, but I never got around to doing it, so I'll do it now and send a link to Todd Mason who collects all the posts on this meme here.

Okay, to the point. I'll be short about this. Dušan Makavejev was the often controversial Yugoslavian director of the late sixties and early seventies, with his politico-pornographical essays Sweet Movie and WR, but he more or less vanished from sight after those films. He's been making films still in the 1990's, even though the results haven't been up there with his early films.

However, Manifesto from 1988 which I saw recently on the big screen is a very funny rendering of an Émile Zola short story, set in an unidentifed country just after the First World War, with people trying to kill the (hilariously stupid) king. It's full of sexual exhilaration and the film boasts with surreal ideas. It's incoherent, but always hilarious, with some good actors (Simon Callow, Eric Stoltz, Alfred Molina). It's not as experimental or as political as Makavejev's old films, but the fact that the lead woman in the film is very firm in getting her sexual satisfaction is enough for me to make the film political. Actually the erotic content, mixed with absurd comedy, with some mild domination thrown in, made me think of my own sleaze paperback, Lausteen himokämppä (and its sequel, which I, by the way, finished writing the other day).

What's interesting is that this was a Cannon Group film, produced by the Israeli duo of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. They made some artsy films, at least one by Robert Altman and possibly others. I don't have time to look for the other titles now...