Drunk

I'm pretty drunk as I write this. We went over to an Indian restaurant and ate well (even though the waiters were as bas as always in Finland; this is something I already miss from German: happy, friendly, service-ready waiters) and then went to a bar nearby to have one cider. Now, I've decided that I won't drink anymore of that bulk cider that is most often available in Finland, those goddam Upciders and Golden Caps. I've even grown tired of Golden Cap Classic, which has been to me the best of the Finnish ciders (with the possible exception of Dark Cider that is made no more, unfortunately: it had a good, almost mystery taste of cola in it). I've grown tired of such phrases as "Apple or pear?" or "we have Upcider in the tap". Stuff it up your arse, I tell you! Have something good for a change!

Now, the best cider I've ever tasted was from South Africa. It was called Savuti and they no longer import it. Screw you! But I'll manage as long as there's some French cider available. If not that, I'll settle with the British and Irish. Today after we'd had our dinner we went to Mallaskukko, a bar nearby, that I knew had a good stock of ciders. It had diminished to my chagrin (you bastards!), but they still stocked Henry Weston's cider that is 6,5%. We had one pint both and came to be very very drunk. Elina had even drunk a bottle of Indian beer with her food; I had declined the offer to drink Finnish cider ("Apple or pear?") with my delicious meal.

Earlier today I read a good description of a Canadian cider. Me want! Ugh!

***

Enough of this crazy alcohol talk. The best part today (apart from the headache pill incident Elina knows) was that I heard that "White Heat" is going to the printers. Yippee! It will appear in August. Of course it comes out sooner, but no one pays any attention to books published in mid-Summer. I asked the publisher if there's gonna be booze and gals, but I hear no.

I've been having the luxury of spending the holiday this week. I've done nothing. Well, except blogging and writing a travel journal of our flea market trip I mentioned earlier. That's not much. I was going to go to a park to read, but the weather wasn't nice enough. Instead I ended up buying clothes at Uff and books at the flea market. I'm so predictable. I started reading "Cinderella Spy" by Philip Daniels, but can't still say much about it. I got to the end of one Hank Jason, but the less I say about it, the better. I am still in the middle of Pete Garroway's "High Stepping Jezebel" (1953).

Why am I reading these obscure works? Because I'm doing a new book! On British paperback crime fiction! It will be called "Pulpografia Britannica". It doesn't have a publisher yet, but there will be.

Berlin, by the way: I still have pictures to come. And stuff to write. I knew I had forgotten something.

Kompleksi

My friend pHinn (check also this) has just released his first record! Hurrah for Kompleksi! It's a 7" vinyl, with "(I Ain't No) Love Child" on the A-side and "Moscow 1980" on the B-side. They are brooding, but energetic garage electro with just a hint of the rougher eighties sound, yet safely on the 2000's side (no nostalgia here). "Love Child" also reminds me of bit Iggy and the Stooges and other Detroit bands of the late sixties. Maybe also early Suicide comes to mind.

Both songs are great and should deserve radio play. I also hope they are picked up by some bigger company. More power to Kompleksi!

The 7" was released by Lal Lal Lal who also published The Demars' "Veriläiskiä". (You can check The Demars also here. It's in Finnish. Their summer hit "Pallomainen vittu" was in the web, but I can't find at the moment.)

You can hear Kompleksi and pHinn's other music projects here. Check it out.

Ottilia, me and Kauto at the sofa at home. Kauto is eating the remote control. In this picture he looks like Elina's father - or actually her grandfather Niilo or so they tell me. (For the fashion polices out there: I'm not wearing white sports socks, they are white suit socks by Falke to be worn with white shoes. The shirt is vintage, I think Swedish from the early seventies.) Those scrappy flowers are ours, I'm sorry to say.

A typical DDR block house. It may be torn down already as I write this. This was right at Alexanderplatz.

The history of Germany: the cathedral that was bombed during the WWII, but somehow survived, and the new cathedral beside it. This is quite striking architectural combination of new and old.

Kauto and I again, in a clearer picture. It was hard to get Kauto waving at Elina taking the picture. Notice the pair of new jeans.

Kauto and I at the Alexanderplatz, the way it's left from the leftists of DDR. Notice the mural at the back. It has something to do with the solidarity of the peoples.

Elina and Kauto (looking straight at camera, although you don't notice it from the picture) at the holocaust memorial.

Berlin, final note (I hope)

I promised to say something about the sightseeing in Berlin. Now we have photos - I'll scan them in a minute.

We saw some pretty ordinary views, Brandenburg etc. etc. I even forget the names of the places. I'm not much of a sightseeing man and could be more interested in the forgotten buildings in side streets. But hey, once you go to Berlin, you can't skip the essentials. (But hell, we didn't even see the Reichstag - from a S-Bahn window, yes, but not from the inside.)

The new holocaust memorial by Daniel Libeskind was quite impressive, even though contradictory. Due to bad weather, though, we didn't spend much time between the concrete blocks. The thing raised more questions than it was capable of answering. I've read that the thing has been accused of making Jews nameless victims, instead or real persons in real history - and I think that's a right thing to say. But the memorial is good to produce a sense of claustrophobia and angst. I can imagine that if you spend some two hours between the blocks, you just want to get out. The memorial shows that the German government really cares about the issue: the thing is in the middle of the city and takes a huge place of surely a very expensive lot. It's no light feat to have the history of Germany.

We dropped by the former East Berlin side and visited a large shopping mall (the name of which I already forgot). The city also seems to forget its history very easily and very quickly: only 15 years back this was a communist country and hostile to capitalist ideology of shopping. Now there was a huge temple dedicated to spending money (or "usura", as Ezra Pound used to say). I don't personally mind and I actually liked shopping in there. (I would've liked to shop at the expensive boutiques at Ku'damm, Louis Vuitton and the others, but maybe I should have more money... Maybe there are some bestsellers waiting for me to write them...)

Architecturally the mall was very interesting and very bold - something you'd never see in Finland. In Berlin it seemed quite ordinary. I also visited the film museum that was located near the mall. It was quite nice, good balance between the experience-oriented and the fact-oriented museum. I was only wondering why the German post-war film got so little attention, with Fassbinders and all. They also had a smaller room for the stop motion technique of Ray Harryhausen. I haven't seen many of his films, such as Jason and the Argonauts, but now I'd really like to take a look. The museum had a small theater that showed classics, foreign films and new marginal movies, but the films showing at the time didn't seem very interesting. A week earlier they had been showing Erle Kenton's Island of Lost Souls! If only I'd been there...

As for the former East Berlin, there were many bits of it still showing - for example, the clock of the world or Weltzeituhr that is the monument to the solidarity between the peoples of the world and the peace etc. etc. Yeah, right. Some of the DDR buildings were collapsing and were only waiting for the machines to tear them down. But it does make the city more interesting: it has two histories and they can never be totally united.

My overall impression of Berlin was that it was too large. I'm accustomed to smaller circles. But now Turku seems too small.. it was a bit depressing to get back home and see the same old places that you've seen so many times. Maybe this is what happens every time when you travel - keep in mind that this was my first true trip abroad. Now I really see why there's no real café culture in Turku. And now I see the limits of the Finnish yoghurt production: where's the fig yoghurt or the marzipan yoghurt? Only the same old vanilla and strawberry...

I have a feeling I'm forgetting something. There was lots of stuff to see, as in other major cities in the world, and I want to get on with the scanning, so I'll rest my case. Many thanks to Päivi, our host and guide! It was a nice trip. Maybe I got bitten by a travel bug...

James Hadley Chase's "The Flesh of the Orchid": the Canadian reprint (yup, that's the same Harlequin) from the late fourties. Courtesy Steve Everett.

Schaefer's book. It's from 1999.

Berlin, part three

Did I promise to say something about the books I bought? I thought that Berlin would be a good place to buy new English books and that they would have a good stock of new noir and hardboiled, maybe something from Hard Case Crime or Point Blank Press. And that Berlin would have lots of good used book stores that stock English books. But no. Actually: hell, no! The English section of a big book shop (I forget the name, but it has three stores in it, so it cannot be small) was even smaller than the ones in Finland! I did find books to buy, though: "Hard Rain" by Pelecanos, a paperback reprint of Elmore Leonard's Western novel from the fifties, and Scott Phillips's "Cottonwood" that is a sequel or actually prequel to "The Ice Harvest" which I was reading during our trip and which is simply wonderful.

We visited the Helmut Newton show at the museum of photography: very nice kinkiness, with stylish hint of sexual violence in every picture; not for everyone, of course, but then again these are quite stylish and commercial. The museum had a very good book shop and I ended up buying a large book about the cultural history of photography, a history of striptease dancing (!), and the New York sex scene, with lots stuff about rock music and sleaze publishing.

Later on we found a very nice art bookshop at Savignyplatz that had a great deal of English books. I was trying to decide whether I should buy a book on European Art Deco or a book on micro cars of the sixties or something about the surrealism or the Soviet futurism, but then I decided to drop it. I was so overwhelmed by the abundance of the books - which was good since I noticed later that if I had bought the books, we wouldn't have had money enough to eat...

They also had a separate shop for the cinema books, where I found "More Than Night", an excellent study of film noir, by James Naremore, and "Hollywood Babylon" by Kenneth Anger. The most interesting book was by far "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959" by Eric Schaefer which chronicles the classical exploitation film that flourished at the same time as the classical Hollywood cinema: educational sex cinema, reefer movies, African travelogues filmed in the backyard of the producers etc. It's huge with over 470 pages and academic: it's from Duke University Press. There was lots of other interesting stuff on film noir, but I decided I don't have the money...

Hmm.. was that all? We went to the big flea market near the Zoo, but didn't find any books. Well, there were several interesting books, such as the biography of Georges Bataille, but only in German... The English books were nowhere in sight. I saw some very clumsy hardback Westerns in German by such pulp authors as L.P. Holmes. I should've taken a picture of them, since I can't find any in the web. We did buy a very funny plush rhino from the fifties. I'll put a photo here once it's ready and scanned.

Next: the sightseeing.

Fan fiction

I've said something here about fan fiction earlier - when I had a Tolkien binge - and I have written an article for Pulp about the Tarzan clones in which I also mentioned the ERB fan fiction. The theme has risen in Lee Goldberg's blog * and has sure raised some bad blood. He's had over 90 comments on one of his posts on the subject! And, boy, are they furious!

The answers are not very literate, to say the least. I especially like this one:

"Naomi rocks! You are stupid! Fanfic rules the earth! We are smater [sic] and better writers then you are one!
Fanfic writers will out-sell all other writers one day becaause fanfic RULES!
You will wither and die under our mighty brains and are pens!!!
If you knew what your talking about you would write fanfic but you don't! FANFIC RULES!!!!!"

That sums up the basic fan fiction writer for you, huh? No wonder Lee Goldberg is so pissed at these fellows...

Ah, just kidding. I don't really understand the urge to write fan fic about some new writers. What's the point doing new Harry Potters? Or Kay Scarpettas? Boooooooring (and it's just one way to participate in the marketing the new books and their bestseller authors, who certainly don't need any marketing).

But - this may be illogical or paradoxical - I can understand the idea of writing fan fiction based on some old stuff, say, Burroughs or Tolkien. It's no way to guarantee any good writing, sure, but at least you wouldn't be part of the business. Don't tell me that the fan fiction stuff is there to undermine the real thing - no no. It's just a way to take part in the consumer society. Now, write something set in the universe of, say, Otis Adelbert Kline. Where's the commerce in that?

I've been toying with the idea of doing some fan fiction myself. But only to stay in the world of the obsolete and obscure. I already have two stories about Mikko Jarmo, who is a private eye in the war time Helsinki. Jarmo was the invention of a pseudonymous Finnish magazine author Jaakko Ensio in the early fourties. Provided I find the time I'll write some day a new Tarsa novel - Tarsa being a brain child of one Lahja Talakivi, a Finnish Tarzan-clone from the era of the Winter War, a wild man born by wolves. I'll just add some twists...

But, now I could ask, is this fan fiction? There have been hundreds of Sherlock Holmes pastiches and parodies and I don't think Lee Goldberg has nothing against them. (May have written one or two himself, for all I know.) They have never been called fan fiction. For some reason, fan fiction is fan fiction because it's not professionally produced. Is that fair?

Heck. There seems to be no good answer for the discussion, but I guarantee that you cannot escape fan fiction, because it's at the core of our consumer society and the almost violent need to be somebody. You can imagine being there with J.K. Rowling or Patricia Cornwell if you write stories with the same characters, same setting, all that. And that's just what everybody wants.

***

I didn't mean to write this. Hey, we just got back from Pori where we spent the weekend with my mother. Weather was nice, and so were the Finnish flea markets and book stores. I saw some home movies my brother Matias (the man from the Demars, you remember?) has made with his buddies. Exhilarating. I saw the first two parts of the Blatnaja series, about a Russian hitman. The guys have dubbed the thing in pseudo-Russian. It's just great. "Faschist muschinaya!"

* Oh, I almost forgot. For the Finnish readers, the name Lee Goldberg doesn't mean much. He's an American novelist, specializing in tie-ins of the TV series (Diagnosis: Murder and Monk; I don't know if the former has been shown here) and non-fiction books on TV shows.

A five-year old poet

I found a rather recent book in the library consisting of poems by a five-year old boy, Elias Tenkanen. It's quite nice and I've translated bits of it (hope no one's accusing me of stealing or anything).

DON'T BE ANGRY TO A CHILD

He's just a nice child
children are calm
it's not a child's fault
blueberry can drop all by itself.

***

I SPEAK FRENCH

I'm a French-speaking mother
I say "unklendo"
it means "you cannot walk"
I'm the mother to all my children
and all of them can walk.

***

I saw some air fish flying up here
I caught them
and ate them.

***

Poems are difficult
sounding like the same words
quite like the same.

***

POEM ABOUT COMING OF A POEM AFTER A COUGH

Simsalabim
it pitches the door open
and then it's there
and falls into a paper

with pen
from pen on to the paper
and it knows what's going on
and says
simsalabim

***

If I knew what I was doing
when I long in the world
to be by the boring?

In the world
I'd build something as lovely as this
I'd poetize the best poem.

***

The book is called "Goes Round Like a Charmed Day" and is over 70 pages long. It's published by Kansan Sivistystyön Liitto (um... the Union for the Civilization of the People... uh.. forget it, but the book is wonderful).

"Berlin, third message" on its way. Tomorrow. Maybe not. Damn, this proof reading is a boring job!

Berlin, second message

Actually this is about flying.

Most of you reading this know that I hadn't flown before. It wasn't because I had a flight scare or something. Well, I have a scare of high places - it developed only when I became a father. I've waken several times from a dream in which I see my kids fall from a window or a balcony. I used to play around at roofs when I was twenty or younger. We even made a film at the roof of a seven-story building with a friend of mine. I photographed with a 8 mm camera when he jumped from a small maintenance shack to the actual roof of the house, only two or three meters from the threshold. No way, man, I'd do that now!

It's just that I haven't felt that travelling is a necessity. And I've been pretty poor all my life. I've put all the extra money I've had into books (and lately clothes, snob that I am).

Now I flew to Germany. The first take-off was quite an experience. The houses and cars and all that escaped me so fast I couldn't believe it. And suddenly I was above clouds. The weather on Friday was so beautiful that there weren't many clouds - I saw more of them when we came back. Boy, were they beautiful. The land seems pretty odd from up there. You recognize that's the stuff the maps are made of, but you don't really realize that until you see it yourself.

We had to land in Helsinki and fly off again to Berlin, so there were two take-offs. My ears went dumb when we came to Berlin, maybe due to bad weather, and I got a bit of a headache. The take-offs and landings were the situations that would've scared me off if that had been the case. When we set off for the return, for a brief moment I had a thought: this thing is up in the air and there's not much to keep it there. But I decided that I won't think of it again. Elina said that it's so absurd to be so high. And that's true. You can't grasp that with rational thought.

When we came back and flew over the Baltic Sea, the weather was so nice that I could see the little flows in the water. It was nice.

Is it common that you want to experience the take-offs again? I mean it wasn't very pleasant, but it was something akin to rollercoaster rides. I don't like those either, but the idea of getting into one speeds up my blood. (Last Summer I declined the idea of going to the rollercoaster with Ottilia, but I think this Summer I can't...)

Next message will be about the books I bought and the book shops in Berlin in general.

Chase, once again

It's "The Flesh of the Orchid" and it's from 1948. The Finnish translation is from 1966. The French film is from 1975. Check it here.

The Finnish cover for Chase's novel. I don't know the artist. I should suspect one Heikki Ahtiala, but he usually signed his work. This is from the mid-sixties.

Berlin, first message

First the books.

I read two books during our trip. The first one was Scott Phillips's debut novel "The Ice Harvest" from 2000. It has received hearty recommendations and is indeed worth every one of them. It's funny in a very difficult way: you don't feel like laughing when you're reading the book, because the stuff is so grim and violent, but when you start explaining to someone what's happening (as I did several times to Elina) you realize that it's actually very funny. Try this and you'll notice it's not easy.

For the Finnish reader, the premise might be a bit implausible, because Phillips relies much on the fact that the US folks cannot drive their cars if there's snow. Use the goddam winter tires! That's why they were invented!

The book reminds me a bit of old crime paperbacks and it's full of intrigue and double crosses and partners in crime killing each other, but you couldn't mistake "The Ice Harvest" having been written in the 1950s.

The second book I had with me was James Hadley Chase's sequel to his debut, "No Orchids for Miss Blandish". Someone has torn away the title page of the copy I have, so I don't really know what's the original title. (Even I don't bother to check all the time.) The book is very absurd and very implausible, but you never know if it's because Chase was a poor writer or because he wanted it to be so. There's a ridiculous thing about having a law according to which if you escape from the mental institute and manage to not get caught in fourteen days, you get to go free. What the fuck? If you manage to forget all this, I guess the book could be enjoyable. There *are* some genuinely chilling moments and Chase has a knack for outrageous violence, but in the end it's a rather empty book.

The French director Patrice Chereau made a film from this in the early eighties (or late seventies?). It emphasized the dream-like quality that I think is involuntary in the book and is a much better work of art. I should check the title of this as well, but I'm too lazy. Instead I'll scan the cover.

Here's the route Kauto took when he brought me the piece of paper. He walked all the way through the hall to the study.

Kauto walking

I realized that I've been writing too little about Kauto. He's an amazing kid. Today he opened the door to the toilet where I was shaving. It was closed, I swear it. He reached to the latch, pulled it down, peeked in and smiled broadly!

Today he also took a piece of paper from the garbage paper bag and walked all the way to the study to give the paper to me! It was clear that he had a mission. I'll draw a picture of the act; the walk was about seven or eight meters. I'll put it here in just a sec'.

***

I'll write about Berlin in a next message. I thought that I'd wait for the pictures (we were the only tourists in town who didn't have a digital camera), but there's too much stuff to write.

Just a short note

We got safely back from Berlin yesterday. I'll post a bigger travelogue later on. Now I'm swamped with work: I'll have to get the movie index to "White Heat" done and check the drafts for the horror book by Friday (I also had to edit the Gallagher entry that came from Toni J. today and check the interview for the Aikalainen magazine). Won't post until the index is done.

What I'd really like to write - really?

I wrote a week back thus:

"I'd be even happy to write for a publisher like West-kirjat who made four large-sized paperbacks with ugly covers in the mid-sixties."

Here's one of the books West-kirjat published. It's by one Ylpö Salonen and it's called "Hekumat kirot/The Curses of Lust". Yes, it's ugly and the book has been reported to be pretty bad. And it's actually a reprint. Ylpö Salonen is a pseudonym, but no one knows who it really was. Except the guys at West-kirjat - whoever they were. The first edition came from Kustannusliike Kaleva in 1932, and I think that was as small as West-kirjat. At the time it was called "Suvun kirous/The Family Curse".

But hey, whoever Ylpö Salonen was, he got some money out of this (unless the book was pirated). The same with Kaarlo Nuorvala, the hacker extraordinaire. He got a reprint from his mildly erotic South Sea novel "Etelän rakastava tytär/The Loving Daughter of the South" that had earlier been published by E. Viljanteen kirjakauppa (the book shop of E. Viljanne, whoever he was) in 1946. It was published as by Alex d'Ornot (catchy pseudonym there, huh?). (I'll put the cover of that book here in the near future. It's just as great as "The Curse of Lust".)

It's intriguing to think what kind of world was out there when these things happened. Couldn't happen nowadays - unless in the just as confusing world of POD publishers and vanity presses. There are dozens and dozens of authors who published a book or two in the seventies or eighties and dropped out. Now they can have their early work reprinted or even new ones. Finland has some professional authors who have had books published by vanity presses - Harri Raitis and Boris Hurtta, for example. (Hurtta's publishing career (check it here) reminds me of those bygone days of West-kirjat and other entrepreneurs.)

But for some reason I'd be more happy with West-kirjat and E. Viljanteen kirjakauppa, cheapo houses they may have been. Maybe it's because you can't live by writing for vanity presses. There are of course exceptions, but no POD books have been bestsellers in Finland, as some seem to have been in the US. But maybe future will prove me wrong. We'll see.

A Finnish Hank Jason, illustrator unknown (maybe Spanish). It's a triple book, but not in the Ace Double fashion. This cover is the best of the three, the rest are quite appalling.

The cover of Boys Will Be Boys. It's fascinating reading, even though the stuff is largely unknown to the Finnish audience (including me).

My first jeans

I *did* go shopping yesterday and bought a pair of jeans. Now, this may seem rather trivial to many of you, but I haven't had jeans for almost ten years! (Well, I had one pair that I found in a trashcan outside the supermarket, but I used them rarely and ditched them, say, in 1998.) I've been wearing slacks since. Lately I've felt that I could use some redecoration in my public image.

My bible in these matters has for years been Quentin Crisp's and Donald Carroll's "How To Do It With Style" that says that whatever you do, you have to be consistent. At least you mustn't give up to the temptations of fashion. And that's just what I've now done! You can blame me an opportunist...

Elina said that if they look great, there's not necessarily point in making it an identity thing. And indeed, they look good with low waist and flared leg. They fall somewhere between the rock jeans and the loose hip hop jeans. (And here I'm hoping to look like an intellectual...)

But hey, I'm not alone. Tosikko here did the same thing. (It's in Finnish.)

***

Of to more literary and cultural (hey, fashion is culture!) matters: I started writing the short story for Tapani's anthology. It will be situated in the early eighties in Pori, where I was raised and lived for 18 first years of my life. There's a punk band called The Murha (Der Murder) with a female singer and a young cop investigating a supposed drug charge. I don't exactly know what will happen, but I think there will be enough turns and twists.

I also received the final drafts of "White Heat". Now I have only to compile the movie index... Not a small job for 429 pages!

We are going to Berlin and leaving on Friday, so don't expect anything before we get back next week. pHinn hoped for some images. I hope we'll find some obsolete building that no one's interested in so that I can take a photo for my obsolete building archives. And maybe we'll go to the zoo, in case you haven't seen animals before. (You may gather that I'm not much of a photographer.)

Reading: old Hank Jasons and Boys Will Be Boys, the history of British penny dreadfuls and early magazine fiction.

Poem in Finnish

Syytökset, väitteet, avuttomat ihmiset,
meille annetaan tietoja ylhäältä,
on se hyvä että jotkut tietävät paremmin,
kaiken maailman rasittavat typerykset osaavat enemmän kuin me,
yhteiskunta auttaa heitä parhaansa mukaan:
antaa heille työpaikat ja rahaa,
muut jäävät ilman,
perhoset kiertelevät ympäriinsä vatsassa,
minkäänlaiset täyskäännökset eivät auta,
kukaan ei tule meitä vastaan junalle,
kaikki, kaikenlaiset ajatukset,
murhanhimoiset, väärät, syntiset,
kuolemaa kaipaavat, itsemurhaa haikailevat,
entiset kandidaattimme, eiliset muistomme,
kukin saa elää tahollaan,
mutta muistakaa ettei saa lyödä avutonta,
aurinkoisellakaan ilmalla
matkustajia ei saa hylätä tienpientareelle,
palkat pitää maksaa ajoissa,
kuka muuten tekee työt,
minulle on maksettu taannoin jokin summa,
koiran palkkioita nekin olivat,
kuinka voisin parhaiten avustaa itseäni ja yhteiskuntaa:
menemällä lähelle ja näyttämällä viatonta naamaa,
kasvot ovat naamio,
kuinka voisin parhaiten tajuta sen,
mikä joillekin näyttää olevan itsestäänselvää:
itsellä on parhaat edellytykset selvitä,
kaikki muut ovat esteitä tiellä,
kivettyjä aikomuksia,
kaduttuja tekoja, aikeita, elkeitä,
leivän murutkin voi laskea yksitellen,
niitä sataa Azerbaidzhanissa,
ne ovat armeijoiden jakamaa ravintoa yksinkertaisille,
sammakot putoilevat:
se on ikiaikainen kosto,
jo ammoisilta ajoilta tunnettu,
mutta jatkunee vielä kauan.

Work done, pt. 2

There were some misdemeanors today. Elina went to the unemployment's office obligatory info, but sat there for an hour feeling totally useless. No new info from the previous time and no questions were permitted! I also hassled with a contributor to the horror book about some points in his entry. There was some other stuff, too, and I began to feel irritated.

One thing nice about today is that the Sun is shining. Also: "Joe Novak and the Case of the Missing Treasure Map" is a good story, very funny and touching. I edited it and it's ready for Isku. I also found out that I just might be able to use Marton Taiga's pirate story I found in a 1958 magazine for free. It is piracy (no pun intended), since the man died in 1969, but there is no trace of relatives taking care of copyright. They don't seem to want the money. This is often the case in Finland: no one's interested in keeping up an author's work.

Maybe I'll just go shopping for the rest of the day...

Work done

I rewrote the Beckford entry, as I added some stuff from the foreword by Malcolm Jack in "The Vathek Episodes" that I found in Varastokirjasto. I also found a great site that has stories and tales by Beckford here. They are quite difficult to read, since they are not edited.

I also finished off the Joe Novak pirate story. I thought I'd have difficulties ending it, but I think it turned out fine and I was even able to put some sort of warmth in it. As I say somewhere, maybe in Isku's editorial, Joe Novak is the most sympathetic P.I. in Los Angeles.

Why do I write stuff situated in America? I don't know. Maybe it's the pastiche thing. It wouldn't work in Finland. No one hires private detectives in Finland. At least to deal with the things Joe Novak does.

I also took out some homosexuality stuff from the YA novel I wrote with Elina. It has no good title at the moment. It was Kokkisotatyttö/Girl of the Cook Wars, since Sade in the lead wanted all the time to make food. Now I don't know what it should be.

Then I finally posted the Pulps. Sorry about the header in the editorial: it's from the previous issue! It looks pretty stupid...

My father in 2003, at the Yyteri beach. Does it still say "kukkuu"? (Or he, actually...)

This is a test picture. Does this still say "kukkuu"? How do I get rid of it?
kukkuu

Vathek's British paperback edition (NEL 1966); don't know the illustrator; I think I bought this one with only one markka several years back

Henry Klinger's Essence of Murder (Perma 1963)

Borges on Vathek

Someone sent me an URL for an essay in which Jorge Luis Borges talks about Beckford's Vathek. Very interesting, especially when Borges says that Beckford's creation in the end of the novel is the first atracious Hell in literature (he says that Dante's Hell is not atracious).

Check it out:

http://tinyurl.com/bg5ae

Henry Klinger

I checked the article Bill mentioned having written. Yes, it's in the first edition (1980) of 20th Century Crime and Mystery Writers. The books are usually about a Israeli police on trip in the USA, picking up clues from his American colleagues. The chapters begin with bits of Jewish wisdom. It seems that Bill didn't like Klinger's books and I don't think I will bother. I'll post the cover at some point, though, because it was pretty nice. (What was left of it after Kauto got hold of it.)

But who was he? There's no information with Bill's article. Google finds several Henry Klingers.

It's not this, since then he would've written his books while he was 15. Not impossible, but rather unlikely...

http://www.virtualwall.org/dk/KlingerHC01a.htm

This could be him, if he has a fascination for old cars:

http://www.internationaledsel.com/gallery/dunkirk2004/DSCN0838

Is it a pseudonym? The TV show M*A*S*H* had characters called Henry and Klinger.

Oh well, I guess we'll never know. Unless the real Henry Klinger does a vanity google and finds his name in here.

My daughter Ottilia (left) and her friend Anni.

Now I know how to post pictures! I'm a genius! Now I flood your computers with blood-curdling pulp fiction covers! And can't really wait to begin... (Drool drool...)

Oops; Vathek and Chamisso; Jimmy Neutron

I wrote yesterday having bought a paperback by one Henry Klinger. After I had written the thing I left the book on the desk and Kauto took it and ripped the cover off. Oh well, it wasn't very expensive.

***

I forgot to mention that I got through "Vathek" in the train. There were some great scenes in the subterranean parts, in which Vathek finds the ancient, pre-Adamite gods (shades of Lovecraft, eh? or the other way around; Lovecraft must've known the book (I don't know where my copy of his "Supernatural Horror in Literature" is, so can't check right now (by the way, if I ever put up a "real" publisher, Lovecraft's essay will be one to be translated (where was I?))). I also read Adalbert von Chamisso's "The Man Who Sold His Shadow". It was better than I remembered (read it while I was 17 or so) and I even had forgotten it's about losing a shadow, not a Doppelgänger. (Given the title, one might ask: what was I thinking?)

***

Those who know me better know that I'm not much interested in playing computer or video games. At the moment, though, I'm playing Gotta Blast, of the Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius fame! (A critical mind in me says that while this is a rather peaceful game (you shoot only the meteors), it teaches accepting war-time techniques and technologies and prepares the way for the computer-controlled warfare for the kids to learn and use later on.)

Good news; Flea market tour, pt. 2

I read from today's newspaper that the funds for writers from Suomen tietokirjailijat (The Finnish Non-Fiction Writers) were announced. Even though the names of all the recipients were not mentioned in the paper, I thought that I didn't get anything, since I hadn't been told in a letter. I rushed to open the computer and went to their website. And there I was - I've been given 2500 euros for writing the book on cinema for children. This saves our Fall - another two months to live...

I should also mention that Ville H. got his share, too. Congratulations!

***

We were on a two-day flea market tour with Tero and Susanna. Kauto was with his grandparents and seemed very happy about it. We went to Kangasala, Orivesi and Jämsä on Thursday and (without Elina) to Toijala and Valkeakoski on Friday. These are small places in Häme, the middle of Finland. The weather was good, so we had a nice trip.

As usual, the charity stores were more interesting than the bazaars. For some reason I haven't been able to fathom, there's more ephemeral and obscure stuff in charity stores run by the church or other organizations than in the bazaars where people can sell their own stuff and are run by some individual entrepreneur.

For example, in Toijala, which is a rather scrubby small town near Tampere, I found Japanese chopstick holders for children from the early eighties - nice colourful plastic, with figures out of Japanese animation. I haven't seen these anywhere in Finland before - as a matter of fact, I hadn't even known they exist. (They must be popular in Japan.) But there they were, in the cellar (!) of the Toijala parish's flea market. Also some children's textiles were pretty amazing at the same flea market (I really must learn how to post pictures here). The bazaars really let us down after that. One in Valkeakoski was like stepping into a new hospital: white, bare walls, too much light, very clinical. (The only thing of interest was a porn paperback from the eighties, part of the series called "Memoirs of the White Slaver". I didn't buy it, though.)

Maybe it's because people think this kind of weird stuff couldn't be worth selling and bringing to the bazaars. But then again, they seem to think that worn-out T-shirts are worth selling. And clothes that were fashionable five years ago, but couldn't really seem more out of date.

As for books, I got some, but nothing very interesting. On the paperback side, I got these:

Delmar Jackson: The Night Is My Undoing (aka The Cut of the Ax), Popular Library 1954 (the first edition was a hardback in 1953): the popular girl of a small town run by a racketeer is murdered
Henry Klinger: Essence of Murder, Permabooks 1963: a police novel, with an Israeli detective Shomri Shomar

Anyone read these? Bill? James? These came from a very large bazaar in Jämsä. Jämsä seemed quite a pretty town, with a small river flowing through. Some nice fifties' and sixties' buildings scattered around the center, with quite a lot of people going about. I kind of like these small towns - but I'm not really sure how long I could live in them. Jämsä had also a second hand book store which I checked in haste. And came out with one book: "The Mad Scientist Affair", by John T. Phillifent. It's from the Man from U.N.C.L.E. series. I already started reading it. Pure hokum, but fast-moving.

Book diary from last year's cabin trip

I remembered just now that I made last year (or a year before?) a book diary from out cabin weekend. I intended it for Pulp, but didn't get around to publish it. So, here it is, in Finnish unfortunately, but I'll make a short list with ratings (one to five).

Jonathan Valin: Extenuating Circumstances. 1989. ***
Brian Coffey: The Wall of Masks. 1975. ****
Karl Edward Wagner: Darkness Weaves. 1970/1978. ****
Georges Bataille, as by Lord Auch: A Story of an Eye/Histoire de l’oeil. 1928. * or *****
Katherine Neville: The Eight. 1988. ** (couldn't get through; read this first time in the late eighties and liked it very much at the time)

***

Maaliskuun lopulla vietimme Elinan kanssa neljä ja puoli päivää mökillä Dragsfjärdissa, Turun lähellä saaristossa. Oli vielä vähän kylmä ja päivät kuluivat kirjoja lukiessa. Seuraavassa lukupäiväkirja.

Jonathan Valinin Kosto (1989) on kirjailijansa ainoa suomennos, mikä tuntuu vähän hölmöltä, kun ottaa huomioon, kuinka laadukas kirjailija Valin on. Hänen yksityisetsivänsä Harry Stoner on sympaattinen, Lew Archeria muistuttava hahmo, joka välittää asiakkaistaan, joskus vähän liikaakin, ja joutuu ainakin tämän kirjan perusteella selvittämään samantyyppisiä asioita. Kunnianarvoisa liikemies ja kunnanvaltuutettu katoaa ja Stonerin pitää löytää hänet. Poliisi vain ehtii ensin – mies on kuollut.
Valin kirjoittaa terävästi ja kuljettaa juonta eteenpäin hyvin ja, kuten sanottu, Stoner on sympaattinen henkilö, mutta kirjan antama kuva homoista ja varsinkin sadomasokisteista on valitettavan epäilyttävä. Jokainen heistä tuntuu olevan mitä on jonkin lapsuuden trauman takia ja on sen takia valmis vaikka kuolemaan. Stoner minäkertojana esittää ymmärtämystä, mutta ei ole valmis myöntämään, että joku voi olla sadomasokisti tai homo tai molempia olematta ahdistunut tai ahdistava.

Brian Coffeyn eli kauhukirjailija Dean R. Koontzin Kiveen hakattu kuolema (1975) on tekijänsä harvoja rikosromaaneja. Tämän perusteella hän saisi kirjoittaa niitä enemmänkin. Suomalainen kustantaja mainostaa kirjaa ”seikkailuromaaniksi vanhan hyvän ajan malliin”, mutta enemmän tämä muistuttaa vaikkapa Donald Westlaken Richard Stark –kirjoja. Kirja vain sattuu tapahtumaan Meksikossa ja siinä varastetaan (moneen kertaan!) muinainen intiaanien kuvaseinä. Päähenkilönä on Mike Tucker, josta Koontz kirjoitti 70-luvulla kaksi muutakin teosta, Blood Risk (1973) ja Surrounded (1974) – nekin voisi kääntää. Tässä ei ole edes Koontzia nyttemmin riivaavaa kirjan lopettamisen kauhua – tiiviit 181 sivua riittävät hyvin.

Karl Edward Wagner oli nuorena kuollut kauhukirjallisuuden asiantuntija, joka toimitti monia hyviä antologioita ja pelasti unohdukselta paljon kirjailijoita, kuten J.U. Nicholsonin ja Mark Hansomin. Samalla Wagner kirjoitti itsekin kauhua ja fantasiaa. Suomennettu on Pimeyden verkot (1970), joka on vauhdikas Conan-pastissi, lovecraftilaisine muinaisine jumalineen ja järjettömän voimakkaine päähenkilöineen. Kirja on ensimmäinen osa Wagnerin Kane-sarjaa – viittaus Robert E. Howardin toiseen sankariin, Solomon Kaneen, on selvä. Tällaisen miekka ja magia –fantasian synkkyys ja julmuus on viihdyttävää, vaikka moni voisi kyseenalaistaa väkivallan ja vallan välisen yhteyden.
Kirjan julkaisi alun perin pieni kalifornialainen Powell, mutta kustantaja lyhensi romaania 30 000 sanalla ja muutti Kanen ulkonäköä sopimaan paremmin kansikuvaan (Wagnerin mukaan kannessa oli ”Cassius Clay oransseissa alushousuissa”). Sittemmin julkaistut laitokset ovat lyhentämättömiä ja suomennoskin on tehty sellaisen pohjalta.

Kuuluisan antropologi Georges Bataillen Silmän tarina ei ehkä kuulu tähän sarjaan. Toisaalta – mikä tahansa salanimellä ilmestynyt pornokirja on Pulpin alaa! Bataille julkaisi kirjansa salanimellä Lord Auch vuonna 1928 ja se on sittemmin julkaistu kyllä ihan pulp-tyyppisestikin, kalifornialaisen Brandon Housen kustantamana 1968. Myös keskisuuri pokkarifirma Berkley julkaisi kirjan 80-luvulla.
Bataille oli vähän aikaa surrealistien jäsen 20-luvulla, minkä huomaa Silmän tarinastakin. Silmien, munien ja kivesten kanssa läträäminen muistuttaa jossain määrin Buñuelin Andalusialaisen koiran (1929) silmänhalkaisua. Väkivaltainen ja orgastinen kuolema kirjan lopussa on samalla jumalanpilkkaa parhaiden surrealististen perinteiden mukaan – joukkoraiskauksen ja kuristamisen kohteena on katolinen pappi, joka riistetään kirkon lattialle rippikopista.
Jotain vanhentunutta Bataillen kirjassa on. Jotkut kohdat tuntuvat itseparodisilta, kuten alkupuolen munapelleily. Sivuhenkilö Sir Edmond ainakin on selvää parodiaa aikakauden pornografian julmista aatelisista (tai miksei vaikka jostain Brontën sisarusten teoksesta).

Katherine Nevillen järkälemäinen Musta kuningatar (1988) on Suomessa julkaistu kovakantisena, mutta alun perin se on Ballantinen pokkari. Kirja on sekoitus naisten romantiikkaa, historiallista romaania ja Umberto Econ Foucaultin heiluria muistuttavaa mystiikan, numerologian ja salaliittoteorioiden esittelyä. Neville sahaa eestaas Ranskan vallankumouksen ja 1970-luvun alun välillä – henkilöinä on niin Robespierreä ja Jean-Paul Maratia kuin nokkelia moderneja naisia ja salamyhkäisiä ja komeita tietokoneasiantuntijoita ja shakinpelaajia.
Kirjan henkilöt metsästävät kaikki Kaarle Suuren shakkilautaa, joka kuulemma sisältää arvoituksen ja sen ratkaisun – kuka hallitsee maailmaa ja miten? Koko homma on tietysti aivan naurettava, mutta parhaimmillaan Neville saa homman kuulostamaan kiehtovalta ja jännittävältä. Huonoimmillaan Musta kuningatar ylimaalailee ja hehkuttaa, kun lihat yhtyvät harvinaislaatuisissa nautinnoissa.
Juri Nummelin

Lukupäiväkirjan bibliografiat:

Jonathan Valin: Kosto. Suom. Pertti Koskela. Book Studio 1996. Alun perin Extenuating Circumstances. Delacorte Press 1989.
Brian Coffey: Kiveen hakattu kuolema. [Kannessa lukee: Dean Koontz nimellä Brian Coffey.] Suom. Reijo Kalvas. Book Studio 1996. Alun perin The Wall of Masks. Bobbs Merrill 1975.
Karl Edward Wagner: Pimeyden verkot. Suom. Mika Renvall. WSOY 1992. Alun perin Darkness Weaves. Powell 1970; Warner 1978.
Georges Bataille: Silmän tarina. Suom. Seppo Tuokko. Odessa 1986. Alun perin salanimellä lordi Auch: Histoire de l’oeil. René Bonnel 1928.
Katherine Neville: Musta kuningatar. Suom. Seppo Loponen. Wsoy 1989. 2. painos: Suuri Suomalainen Kirjakerho 1989. (2. painos sisältää Nevillen esipuheen.) Alun perin The Eight. Ballantine 1988.

Työkkäri

Työkkäriltä tuli tänään kirje, jonka mukaan minun piti ilmoittaa nykyinen tilanteeni. Juuri eilen, kun Elina kävi äitiysloman päätteeksi ilmoittautumassa työkkäriin, puhuimme siitä, miten työvoimatoimisto ahdistaa ihmisiä kyttäämällä ja valvomalla. Olen jo jonkin aikaa ollut kirjoilla töissäkäyvänä työnhakijana ja olin luullut, että tässä tapauksessa ei tällaista valvontaa ole (ja joskus kun aiemmin oli sama tilanne, mitään kirjeitä ei tullut). Soitin työkkäriin ja ilmoitin - melkein hermostuin näsäviisaalle virkailijalle - etten ole enää työnhakija.

Ihan kuin työkkäristä olisi minulle joskus jotain hyötyä ollut - olen kerran saanut työtarjouksen - Oulusta. (Vai olikohan se jokin yliopiston rekrypalvelu?) Täytyy myöntää, että pääsin työkkärin kautta taitto- ja kuvankäsittelykurssille ja sitä duuniahan olen tehnyt hyvin paljon - eipä tulisi Pulpia ja Iskua ja muita, jos en osaisi taittaa!

Oli miten oli, olen koko ajan inhonnut työkkärin painostusta ja ilmoittautumisia ja raportointeja. Ihan kuin päämäärä ei olisi työllistäminen, vaan se, että työtön pysyy kurissa ja käy kiltisti kertomassa virkailijoille, mitä elämään kuuluu. Se on ahdistavaa, oikeasti.

Mutta nyt on helpottunut olo - vaikka luulisi, että kun ei ole enää mahiksia saada päivärahaa, tulevaisuus pelottaisi. Ehkä vähän, mutta ei paljon. Pelko on oikeastaan vähemmän inhottavaa kuin ahdistus ja tuntu siitä, että koko ajan joku katselee selän takana ja kyselee mitä teen.

Olenkin siis vakaasti kansalaispalkan kannalla. Kaikille sama summa rahaa kuussa, niin työvoimatoimistot voidaan lakkauttaa! (No, ei ehkä ihan niinkään, mutta kyttäämisorganisaatio ainakin!)

Writing jealousy

James Reasoner announced having written his # 177 novel. While I heartily want to congratulate him (he must be one of the prolicic author of his generation), I'm extremely jealous. It's just what I want to do: churn out paperbacks after another. Here I'm stuck with having to do non-fiction books that involve a heavy deal of research and perhaps interviews (I actually hate doing interviews and would want to be only the interviewee!).

I'm not nostalgia type of guy in any sense, but I think that I could do better with the publishing industry that existed in Finland in the decades just after the World War II, when there were dozens of new cheapo publishers. I just glimpsed journalist Aake Jermo's book about the war-time and post-war depression. He writes that some guys he barely knew in Turku came to meet him and told that they had put up a publishing house and wanted something to publish. So, Jermo who had previously penned several short stories for the Finnish pulps (he doesn't say this in his memoirs, though) wrote two very short crime novels as by Riku Rauta (roughly Rick Steel). That's just what I'd like to happen: some guys I barely know come to me and ask if I could write something for them. I'd be even happy to write for a publisher like West-kirjat who made four large-sized paperbacks with ugly covers in the mid-sixties.

Same goes for the YA novels. They are very difficult and intricate today and you have to deal with the extreme problems: anorexia, drugs, neuroses, stuff like that. In the fourties, the only thing you had to do was to write some 50 pages of two bright boys finding the smugglers' den. You could even write a pirate novel, which seems quite far out these days. (Who would want to read a YA novel about the modern pirates of the China seas?)

And the paperbacks - you can't write paperbacks in Finland nowadays. Just give me a novelization to do! Anything!

***

Enough of complaints. I started going through the YA novel Elina and I wrote two years back. It has received good reviews from the publishers, but they haven't picked it up. The last publisher reporting back said that it had a bit too much of tendency in it. It's about the homosexuality of a young girl's father. I'm toning that aspect down and putting more stuff about the girl's everyday life in. I certainly hope that works. We have the sequel (and spin-offs!) planned, but should maybe get this published first...

The Joe Novak story about the missing treasure map is drawing to a close. It's been fun to write! I'm planning a real pirate story, though, and planning to write it under an alias. I should start the crime/music story for an anthology Tapani is editing. If it gets through, it will be my first professionally published story. Here's hoping...

Interviewee

I had promised to be at two o'clock at a nearby café for an interview. A fellow was coming down from Tampere just to interview me about "White Heat". He called me at 14.09 and said that he was a bit late. I go: "Fuck! I forgot!" I was alone with Kauto at home and couldn't go anywhere. I said to the guy, telling that I was very sorry and very embarrassed, that the only chance to get the interview done is to come to visit our place. So he did. Kauto was fortunately in a very good mood and let us do the stuff.

You don't always know whether what you speak makes any sense. Let's hope it does now. It seems I spoke for an hour and I just know that the guy will be in trouble when he has to cut it down to some 400 words. We were talking about the future of the cinema and the possible lines of evolution it will take. I said the cinema in the sense of Lumière won't go away for a long time, but the movies may be shorter in the future, so that people would be able to see the whole film in 20 minutes or so with their mobile equipments. I hope this makes sense. (I don't know if I hope it will happen.)

The guy took a picture of me with the poster of Viidakon valkoinen Pongo when I said that I'd like to write a history of cinema seen from the other side: the trash, cheapo, pulpy side, the wrong side of the tracks. I also said that I might be doing in the future a history of the animated cinema. We'll see about that.

The cabin weekend

Got back safely from the cabin in the Finnish peninsula. It was very quite and peaceful, with the exception of the children that we had along: Kauto, my daughter Ottilia and Anni, the daughter of our friends, Juhis and Sari, who's four (almost five). Together they made a lot of noise.

But boy, oh boy, was it quiet! I heard a crow barking in a tree - this is quite rare. I also heard a squirrel go up and down the tree - and I was a hundred meters away! We also heard either a fox or a tomcat. We couldn't make out. It was a strange, howling and meowing sound at the same time.

I also got bitten by something, while no one else even noticed any mosquitos around. I am sure that the only mosquito in the island of Kimito smelled me from 40 kilometers and buzzed over just to bite me. It itches like hell.

For some reason, my holiday wasn't as perfect as I'd hoped it to be, since I didn't get to go the "city" of Dalsbruk and have a cup of tea and wander around the small center. But hey, that's pretty minor. And I got to throw some frisbee - it was great, I should be doing it regularly. We also went rowing with Ottilia. I'm no rower, but we did a nice trip. Ottilia most certainly admired me.

The best part was that Kauto learned finally to walk! He took several steps several times - usually when he was going toward Ottilia and Anni who played with him. Kauto was thrilled himself - and so were we.

The true identity of Bill Adler

You Americans should've told me... or I should've taken a better look at the book I bought: Bill Adler who penned "Who Killed the Robins Family?" with Thomas Chastain was no amateur. He was (is?) a book agent and an author of many books, even before the mystery novel. And it was no contest where the plot came from - I don't know where I got that idea. The contest was for the public to reveal the killers in the book. The back of the afore mentioned novel contains the contest for the next book, "The Revenge of the Robins Family".

Just woke up in the middle of the night to tell you this. Leaving for cabin in three hours. The police hasn't as yet come to ask me about the missing toilet paper. Hmm.. I can picture that: "Joe Novak and the Case of the Missing Toilet Paper". I forgot to tell you that I started writing a new Joe Novak story, called "The Case of the Missing Treasure Map". It's for the pirate issue of Isku. It will be funnier and more parodic than "The Case of the Walking Sticks". This one will be almost farce, with no real mystery to the plot.

One more quote from Vathek before we leave. I managed to read this last night and had to go sleep, totally washed out:

"The good emir, who was punctiliously religious, and likewise a great dealer in compliments, made a harangue five times more prolix and insipid than his harbingers had already delivered."

Leaving books behind

I sent the corrected drafts of "White Heat" back to the publisher. Now it's completely out of my hands. I had to do the last draws in a hurry and I felt a bit confused. Hey, that should've been been this way and this that way and where's that and where did I put this... Aargh!

It's always a bit sad to leave a book behind. At least like this, when you don't feel you've done everything you can to make it as good as you can - that's what I feel: it's unfinished. I feel, for some reason, that "White Heat" is a very uneven book. I said this to Elina and she said that maybe I'll be the only who feels it's uneven. "Maybe others won't notice anything." I certainly hope so.

Maybe I should think like Mika Waltari who said he never reads his books when he finishes them. He just doesn't think about them. Well, to each his own.

We are leaving for a cabin weekend tomorrow morning. Ottilia is here and she's also very confused: she's having the daycare's Spring party tonight (and she'll be performing something) and her mother is moving this weekend and I'll bring her back to their new apartment on Sunday. No wonder she feels nervous...

Chastain-Adler

I checked the more recent edition of Hubin's crime bibliography at the university library (I was ordering some Kipling items to check for the bibliography; hey, I take this thing seriously!) and found out that the Bill Adler-Thomas Chastain novel "Who Killed the Robins Family" wasn't a paperback novel in the first place. The first edition was a hardback from Morrow, the paperback came later. Adler and Chastain did a sequel, with a catchy, but rather inept title "The Revenge of the Robins Family". I wonder if this was already a collaboration between the two - the first Robins book came out of the publisher's contest for new plots.

I wonder what Adler has been doing since (these were from the mid-seventies). Has he tried to come up with more plots? Has he tried to write something himself? Wait.. there is a Bill Adler who has written books about Bill Cosby and Sinatra and buying a house.. and wait, there's more. Bill Adler and Bruce Cassiday wrote a book "Murder Game: There's a $10,000 Reward for Solving the Crime. It Could Be Yours". It must be the same guy. (And Cassiday was - as everyone reading my books knows - a veteran pulpster and paperbacker who survived the industry's many crises, but didn't gain much fame.)

At the university library I also ordered an old translation of a Lafcadio Hearn. And then I stole some toilet paper from the men's room. As you probably know, we have a paper industry strike going on and the stores have no toilet paper. The pains of a scholar!

We just watched a stupid space movie called "Red Planet". It was so stupid I don't even bother to link it. Just wanted to let you know that the novelization was by Peter Telep and came in 2000 from Ace.

Now, off to bed.

Vathek

Okay, since Jukkahoo prompted me...

Has anyone read William Beckford's "Vathek"? It's not very long - I have a Four Square paperback, with 122 pages - and I thought I'd read it in a jiffy. No way, man! Maybe I've been reading too much vintage hardboiled past ten years and can't get along with anything else, but, hey, this guy writes stuffed prose. I'll quote:

"The Caliph [Vathek] happened at this instant to be engaged in an apartment by no means adapted to the reception of embassies, though adorned with a certain magnificence, not only to render it agreeable, but also because he resorted to it frequently, and stayed a considerable time together."

"This dreadful device was executed with so much dexterity, that the boy, who was approaching him, remained unconscious of the fate of his forerunner; and as to the spectators, the shades of evening, together with their distance, precluded them from perceiving any object distinctly."

What was I thinking?! The book is from the 1780's. There were no hardboiled stylists pitching clear prose at the time.

Maybe I was thinking that Beckford could be close to Daniel Defoe (one of my heroes), who is almost as lucid as can be. But Beckford belongs to a different school altogether. He's supposed to have written this in three days, but I don't buy that. You can't come up with those sentences if you're writing that fast.

The story is wonderful, though (from what I can make of it). Vathek, the Caliph, knows everything in the world, but wants more. He meets a weird being, looking like a man, who says he holds secrets Vathek has no way of knowing. First, he insists that 500 young boys are offered to him as a sacrifice (see the above sentence), and then he vanishes and leaves Vathek in a state of confusion. Mohamet is one of the characters - well, actually he appears in only one scene (so far) saying to the djinns (or whatever) that Vathek deserves his faith.

I should read the dumb-downed version if there was one. I've read the Finnish translation some 15 years ago, but it's from the early twenties and very rare and I have never seen it for sale. At the time I got it via the inter-library loan. Now that I'm supposed to write about Vathek for the horror reference book, I thought I'd better read the original text.

(By the way, the Kipling incident Jukkahoo was referring to was about the same reference book we are editing. One of the contributors sent his entry for Kipling, but with no bibliography at all. I had to do it myself. Elina asked why I just didn't ask the guy to do it, but I said that I couldn't trust him anymore with an important task such as this.)

***

Kauto is walking! He goes on for several steps - of course he's keeping hold from something, chairs or a sofa etc. Now he's pushing the chair (keeping a plastic lemon in his other hand) and stopping only because he bumped into me.

***

I was also going to write about the closing of the candy factory here in Turku, but now it's time to take a shower. Z movies: more later. Beware of the "Devil Monster"!

Positive comments

Something nice this time... sorry for sounding so sour the last time.

Well, actually, not so nice things. Maybe I'll get to them in the end. At least I'm listening to the wonderful "Intiaanidisko" by TV-Resistori - nothing can go wrong, if you listen to these guys and gals. (And the photos in the cover of the CD are taken by our very own Tero and Susanna! Hail the conquering heroes!)

But some items from today:

I was doing the index for "White Heat" and then I asked my editor some details and found out that I shouldn't have done it yet, but only after the layout was ready! AAAAAARGH! And it's such a boring job.

My back started suddenly to ache and I ordered time for massage. When I got ready to leave, I noticed that I had no money. Elina had nothing either. It started to rain like hell when I cycled first to the money machine and then to the massager. I was soaking wet when I got there. I sent Elina a text message with one word: FUCK. That's what I would've said if someone had been nearby.

Then I went to get the key to the cabin we are going to next weekend with Ottilia and couple of friends of ours. The guy from the journalists' union's office said he'll be there, but then the m**********r wasn't! The doors were closed, lights were out.

I decided to drop by a second hand book store I rarely visit. The store sells mostly porn on VHS and DVD, but they have some books. It seems someone has brought there the collection of a university scholar - there are lots of books about ecology, philosophy, anthropology etc, with the same signature in every book. It looks as if someone has died and the relatives have taken the books to the nearest book seller. As a result, they haven't got as much money as they would deserve.

Now I bought a book about Soviet art by John Berger and two Finnish books, Antero Järvinen's book about the cultural history of animals and Yrjö Hirn's "Island in the Ocean", the new edition to replace my old and rather crubby copy. It's a wonderful book about Robinson Crusoe, his ancestors and other relatives. It was published first in 1922 and is still one of the best literary studies made in Finland. I don't know whether it's been translated - it should be.

And then - sudden change of mood - I bought a hardcore sex Western novel by one John Savage. It's called "Ropes and Spurs" (1996) and it's a sadomasochistic novel set in a town somewhere in the Wild West. They find a canyon with a lost tribe that keeps its women tied all the time, just for the sake of being able to punish them all the time. Wild, huh? I just wonder if this John Savage is the same John Savage who wrote "A Shady Place to Die" for Dell in 1957. The Abebook seller says this:

"The only witness to the last of Mack Anderson was a lone coyote stalking the deserted cave. No one at the mining camp missed him. Who would have thought his deserted and abused wife would start looking for him now?"

I don't think so... Would you start writing hardcore porn after having written one novel 40 years ago? Maybe the man needed the money. There were other books of the same kind by Savage, so he must be churning these out by the dozen.

And then I got home, refreshed. It's always refreshing to buy porn paperbacks. The store was full of videos with women getting the creme on their face etc. The guy who runs it looks a bit sleazy. Your hands get tacky after a while and you have to get out. But I came out four books richer and only 12 euros poorer. That's not bad.

I've been forgetting to blog about books I've been buying. I went to a small book festival a week ago where the books cost only 2 euros each max. There was a bookseller with lots of English and American paperbacks for one euro each - but almost only writers like Margery Allingham! I managed to find these:

A.A. Fair: An Axe to Grind (these have been praised lately, so I decided to give them a try, hardboiled screwball comedy)
Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone
John D. MacDonald: One Monday We Killed Them All (I'm not very fond of JDM, as almost everyone else seems to be, but this has a catchy title)
Zane Grey: The Vanishing American (a Grey title that hasn't been translated)

Earlier I visited the book shop of Åbo Akademi, the Swedish-speaking university of Turku, where they sell the double copies of the books and books they don't need. I bought for 15 cents each:

Budd Schulberg: The Harder They Fall (the classic about boxing)
Calder Willingham: End as a Man
Gore Vidal: In a Yellow Mood (these two go for my future dissertation about noir in American literature..)
James Jones: The Thin Red Line (so does this)
Christopher Isherwood: Mr. Norris Changes Trains
James T. Farrell: Bernard Carr
Amos Tutuola: the Finnish translation of "The Palm Wine Drinkard" which is a great masterpiece, highly recommended
Alistair MacLean: Fear Is the Key (hardback, no DJ; we live in hard times when I get interested in Alistair MacLean; this one has a good title, though)
Bill Adler & Thomas Chastain: Who Killed the Robins Family? (paperback novel, written by pro Chastain from the plot made by Adler who won the publisher's contest - I don't know if there are many novels of this kind)

Enough for today... I also spent some time in Imdb looking for stuff on grade Z films. Let me get back on those after a while. And remind me that I make some remarks about reading Vathek by William Beckford.

Annoying people everywhere

I'm not neurotic or paranoid in any meaning of the word (at least I hope so; my ex-wife might have something to say about this) and I get along with most of the people, but still I often feel that there are people who annoy me a great deal and I wouldn't want to have anything to do with them and still I have to.

For some reason, these people have often something to do with magazines or other media - they are editors who always seem to know what's best and clearly and loudly announce it and just won't listen to other people. Usually they have something negative to say, more than positive. It drives me crazy. I know I'm sometimes thought to be on a high horse (or what's the phrase again?) and one of my best friends has said that when he got to know me, he was a bit afraid of me, because I was so self-confident. One of Elina's friends has said the same. But it's always these same editors who get to me, get under my skin, get me to my feet. And then they think I'm difficult. Ha!

An example of a screwy editor: I heard a pretty good book critic complain that the editor of a book column wouldn't take her writings anymore, without giving a good reason. I couldn't point anything bad about the writer's reviews and she had written for the column for years (well, at least two years, but you get the idea). It must something personal - something between the editor and the writer. Which is never a passable reason to dismiss someone's writings. I wouldn't for life of mine say to a writer that I wouldn't publish anything by him/her in Isku or Pulp just because I don't like the person.

There are other examples, but I won't go into details, so that I won't lose my jobs... Actually, at the moment, I hate writing small pieces for magazines. I'd like to quit that altogether and concentrate on my books. (And Pulp on the side.) Maybe the editors I'm talking about would sigh in a relief.

Comment change

I changed the blog's settings so that anyone can now post comments, not only those who have their own blogs. So, now I'm waiting a flood of comments from everyone! The curse of Yog-Sothoth on those who don't post comments...

Work-related news

The Dostoyevsky Reel: I finished polishing off the Joe Novak novel. It turned out to be longer than I mentioned earlier, with 38 000 words. Still not very long. I did a quick layout on Pagemaker: 144 slim paperback pages. It would make a very nice PBO. Sent this to Tapani who promised to say something about it. Still don't know what to do about the book: the Finnish publishers won't touch it, I know that for sure.

The Blood Orgy of the Void God: Still something to do about this. I decided to take off some characters. The poets John Milton and William Blake were there, but I couldn't do anything funny with them, so I decided to kill them. (Well, actually that sounds funny: I could send them to battle the anti-Christ (it's not actually anti-Christ who they are dealing with) and get them shot off in the beginning. But, nah, I think I'll pass... still...)

White Heat: The publisher sent me drafts and I began to read them with a pen. It's goddam 429 pages long (plus the index)!

The horror reference book: Wrote entries for Lafcadio Hearn and Peter Ackroyd. Googled for Iain Sinclair and his poem "Lud Heat" (1975) that served as an inspiration for Ackroyd's "Hawksmoor". Must go to London some day, just to see those Hawksmoor churches. The guy was a Satan worshipper and designed churches in the middle of London! At least, that's what Sinclair and Ackroyd (and Alan Moore in "From Hell") tell me. Added some stuff for August Derleth.

Pulp 2/05: Got these from the press yesterday. The pains of a small press publisher: I took them home in the back of my bike! The foreword had a headline from the previous issue, so I'll have to dabble with that before I send them on. It's an excellent issue, albeit a small one, with only 20 pages. James Reasoner is in it, with an article about the attempt to publish the German Jerry Cotton series in the US. Jukka Murtosaari writes about Bertil Hegland etc.

Cthulhu scam

As I was writing my (very unfunny) response to Bill's congrats below, I remembered this. It's a very funny anti-scam posting that includes also Cthulhu.. roaming free somewhere in Nigeria. Check it out.

Raisin Hell

We were having afternoon coffee and tea (I don't drink coffee) and couldn't have find anything else to eat except for some dried fruit and nuts. As we ate and Kauto picked up some raisins (with his own hands!), I said: "Imagine this place that sells only dried fruit, raisins, figs, dates, pineapples and such. It's a huge place, almost a mall and nothing else than those fruit. It's called Raisin Hell."

Flea markets on tour

We went on a flea market tour with Tero and Susanna last weekend. Elina, Kauto and I took a train to Tampere on a Friday morning and met Tero and Susanna there and headed for Ikaalinen, Parkano and Kankaanpää, pretty small places in the Northern Satakunta, with population somewhere around 5000-10 000 (I'm not so sure about Kankaanpää, it could be bigger than that). It was a nice trip, even though Kauto wasn't so happy about it. As we don't have a car (and can't even drive one), he was pretty unaccustomed to just sit there and do nothing and not be able to move. He slept almost all the way back to Turku, luckily.

We thought that the flea markets in such small and pretty remote towns would be full of vintage stuff that no one had ever thought of buying, but would be ripped screaming out of hands in big cities. But, alas, no. The flea markets were all very neat and well kept and there were no exciting piles of clothes and ephemeral stuff we so much like. Tero and Susanna took some marvellous pictures, though, and I think this proved to be a worthy trip.

On Saturday, we went to Piikkiö and Paimio, two small towns close to Turku, with one or two flea markets. I found Patrick Hamilton's "Hangover Square" (1941) in a Penguin edition with a J.B. Priestley foreword. It's a British noir novel, set in the late 1800's and the lead man is a composer who thinks he should kill his girlfriend. And apparently, he does, but the poor guy doesn't remember a thing. John Brahm made this (rather freely, I must say) into a marvellous B picture in 1945, with only 65 minutes. Laird Cregar was in it and he was always a brilliant overactor when he did lunatics.

We also found a very funny early seventies toy LP player from Fisher-Price with the records intact, but the seller asked 20 euros for it, so we are still thinking. It's just so cute: check this out (scroll down to TY-o72). (There's other pictures of it in the web: just google with "Fisher-Price record player".) We are definitely thinking...

Birthday

In the midst of all the ruckus, I forgot to write about my birthday. Elina gave me two nice presents, even though I felt like I was some geek or at least a nerd: I got the extended DVD box of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and a plush Cthulhu! Especially the latter is wonderful. Check him out here.

And this is also very nice: a phototale of a plush Cthulhu taking over!

Roger Buck Hill?

It seems I have a busy day at the blog office. Well, I have nothing to do and things I'd have to do I don't really feel like doing, such as take a shower and go to get some food...

I checked the copyright records for a Roger Hill at the US copyright website. It was stated there that the Roger Hill who wrote the three Knight Rider tie-in paperbacks in the eighties is the same Roger Hill who's been playing jazz saxophone for nearly fifty decades, under the alias Buck Hill. Can this be? How reliable these copyright records are? It seems pretty unbelievable or at least implausible that a jazz veteran would start writing pulp in his old days.

But here's his copyright records anyway:

ITEM 1. PAu-1-386-116: Jazz ballad / Roger "Buck" Hill. CLNA: Barney Music
ITEM 2. PAu-1-858-878: Mitzi. CLNA: Barney Music
ITEM 3. PAu-1-858-879: Lullaby of Loosdrecht. CLNA: Barney Music
ITEM 4. PAu-1-858-880: Blues in five for four or more. CLNA: Barney Music
ITEM 5. PAu-1-858-881: Bossa for sax. CLNA: Barney Music
ITEM 6. PAu-2-282-644: Griots groove / Buck Hill. CLNA: acBlack Entertainment Television ITEM 7. TX-1-249-952: Knight rider / Glen A. Larson and Roger Hill. CLNA: M C A Publishing, a division of M C A Communications, Inc.
ITEM 8. TX-1-295-156: Trust doesn't rust / Glen A. Larson and Roger Hill. CLNA: M C A Publishing, a division of M C A Communications, Inc.
ITEM 9. TX-1-344-337: Hearts of stone / Glen A. Larson and Roger Hill. CLNA: M C A Publishing, a division of M C A Communications, Inc.
ITEM 10. TX-1-376-245: Clear de road : a Virgin Islands history textbook / written by Roger Hill ; illustrated by El'Roy Simmonds. CLNA: Government of the United States Virgin Islands, Bureau of Libraries, Museums & Archaeological Services

The last one is a book and can be found on WorldCat through Abebooks.

Still on Finnish tie-ins

I wrote (in February) about tie-ins and said this:

"Finland has been pretty slow to produce its own novelizations. There are some, though. Katri Manninen who has later gained some fame for her fitness books started out writing books on the Salatut Elämät (Secret Lives) soap series. My pal Tapani Bagge wrote his first novel (after many pseudo- and anonymous paperbacks) on a TV series called Pelastajat (it's about fire men). But this was in the nineties and I can't think of any previous examples."

I should've mentioned the paperback Markku Selin published when his and his buddy Renny Harlin's first film, "Born American/Jäätävä polte" was out. The book was written by Hyeena Hämäläinen, who's a pretty prolific Finnish mystery writer (and former surf guitarist). The publisher was actually Kustannus 21, and the film is called "Arctic Heat". But clearly this was Selin's idea of publishing a real American-style tie-in paperback. I don't think the book sold very well, but would love to hear corrections.

Kustannus 21 published also humour column books by Jammu and Veikko Ennala.

The film, by the way, seems to stir up controversy and conflicting thoughts even now. Check out the IMDb comments site here. One of them says:

"This film makes me want to stay home and thank God every day that I live in such a wonderful country. Even the good guy turned out to be a bad guy in "Born American". Shook me to my foundations."

How to get a flat stomach in just one day

I've been translating, as I've noted here before, Jason Starr's excellent novel "Nothing Personal". One of the lead characters, Leslie Sussman, is having anorectic attacks and vomits everything she eats, telling everyone she's got some sort of virus. She loses weight and his husband, advertising prick called David Sussman, notices that Leslie is indeed looking better and thinks: maybe this virus is not such a bad thing after all. In the mean time he's having an affair from hell with a young woman called Amy Lee.

And, yes, I just found out that throwing everything up works miracles. I got, maybe from yoghurt I ate last Monday night, stomach complaint and threw up everything I ate. And we had to go to Helsinki to talk about our talkkuna book (it was the Day of Books and Roses and there was this huge book carneval). I said to Elina that I can't come. They left without me and after lying down a while I decided that I'll take the next train. Everything went alright, until I got back on the train. I vomited five times during the two-hour trip back to Turku (actually the first half of it). It was embarrassing to go to the toilet again and again, especially when the car was full of people. They must've been thinking I've got hangover.

Today I've been slightly better. Nothing has come up since the trip and I slept for at least ten hours, but I'm still weak and wouldn't want to do anything. (Except that I had to write down the results of my students' exams. It would've been boring even if had been healthy.) But I just noticed that I've now got a flat stomach. I just wonder what I have to do keep it that way...

Seriously, I can't imagine how anorectic people can throw up everything they eat. They must feel dizzy and drowsy all the time. And what their breath must be like... Maybe you get used to it. And what price awaits those who are patient! A flat stomach. Now, I can't really think of anything more important!

Isku # 2

The new issue of Isku came just out of printers last Wednesday and has hopefully reached at least some of the subscribers. It's an excellent issue, with a vintage story from 1960 by Seppo Tuisku, who has been a prominent figure in the Finnish pulp fiction from the late fifties on. He edited mags like Jerry Cotton and FinnWest and taught many writers the craft of fiction. One of them is Tapani Bagge, who also has a story in the new Isku. There's also a translation of a Molly Brown story - she's a rising author from Great Britain (although I just heard that she was born in the US).

Other writers are Petri Salin, Helena Numminen, Hannu Väisänen and me. Also the Isku stalwart Petri Hirvonen is there with a punching story from Chile in 1983! My story is a Joe Novak story, "The Case of the Walking Sticks". There isn't as much parody as in my other Novaks, it's a rather classical hardboiled PI story. This is maybe explained by the fact that the first draft was written in 1987! I remember scribbling it with a pen in a notebook. Even after several rewrites I wasn't sure whether it really would merit a publication, but then Tapani read it and said: go ahead. (If it turns out turgid after all, please don't accuse Tapani.)

So, this is my third short story in print!

Thanks also to Lotta for the excellent translation of Molly Brown's story!

Parties; Usual Suspects; August Derleth

We had a birthday party last night (I'll be 33 next Tuesday) and ended up having some 15 guests at our place. We had a wonderful time and had lots of booze and food (I made excellent warm noodle salad with plenty of hot curry sauce and sweet chili in it) and I even ended up dancing wildly to the sounds of raw nothern soul at the local club with Niko-Matti. There were some British DJ's visiting and they made the place rock. Or rather, funk.

Of course the morning wasn't so deligthful. Elina now has spent her first Mother's Day in a hangover!

***

I wrote earlier about Christopher McQuarrie's disappointing "Way of the Gun". I watched "Usual Suspects", Bryan Singer's tour de force film, last Friday night. I couldn't help thinking that it must be Singer who made the picture click. (With of course the actors. Excellent team work from everyone. And there's no sign of Tarantino-like showing off with one's actors: the men in Singer's film are almost nameless and faceless, yet very efficient and very much there, with a commanding presence.) McQuarrie wasn't able to deliver the goods alone, as "Way of the Gun" demonstrates.

I just wonder what went wrong with Singer. The Stephen King film "Apt Pupil" is confused at best and I just can't get myself interested in his X-Men films (that's partly due to the fact that I'm not very much into super heroes). I was wondering if it has something to do with the realization that you can't make a successful career in the New Hollywood with small-scale crime pictures, such as "Usual Suspects". I think the same happened with Tarantino. I wish he'd continued in the line of "Reservoir Dogs" and "Jackie Brown", but instead he made a pastiche party of cliches with "Kill Bill" (whose first part I just detested) and is going to redo a seventies Italian war film. And same has happened with other directors: John Dahl, whose attempts at SF were a disaster, Gary Fleder, who jumped to big serial killer movies...

There are some directors who don't seem to want to leave the genre, such as James Gray, whose "Little Odessa" was one of the best Hollywood films of the nineties. But he has almost faded to oblivion and obscurity after that. I have yet to see his "The Yards" (hey, Tapani, where's the tape?), but I don't think he'll rise again. I'll keep my fingers crossed, though.

There's also George Hickenlooper, whose films I've heard being praised, but whose "Persons Unknown" I saw with Joe Mantegna and Naomi Watts was rather messy, with the actors not really looking what they were supposed to look like (i.e. a drunk policeman or drug fiends). I don't really know what John McNaughton is doing at the moment, but his "Wild Things" is underrated, very fifties, very paperback original like film. And his "Normal Life" from 1996 went unnoticed by almost everyone even though it was an excellent little crime flick.

***

I was writing an entry for August Derleth, the horror and regional writer and the founder of Arkham House. When he was 30, he had already published sixteen books and tons of short stories in the pulps. Here I'm at almost 33 and have published eight books and three short stories.

Which, by the way, reminds me of the new issue of Isku that came out of the presses couple days back. I'll have to write about that later on.

Alien Resurrection

I said I'd write something about "Alien Resurrection", the fourth film in the Alien cycle, directed by the French Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I liked all the previous Alien films, even the James Cameron one, who gets usually dismissed by serious critics. David Fincher's Alien3 was, almost through the film, also an original piece of work. But the Jeunet film - what can I say? There are some nice moments. One that sticks in the mind is the one where aliens swim. It's a moment of true horror. The plot demise was original, at least for a Hollywood science fiction.

But the end of the film was awful. Stupid. Hilariously bad. There's a new generation of aliens, born out of the *womb* of the queen mother that has been bred with some genetic help from Lt. Ripley. And the f***ing new monster looks just ugly, a mix of a human skull and alien's neck bones. It dies in a very stupid and implausible way. The original aliens are very beautiful creations in comparison. You can see H.R. Giger was nowhere near the sets.

There's also a ridiculous scene in which Ripley, now the mother, meets her new-born baby. It recognizes her immediately. They start to touch each other. This is supposed to be a touching scene, mother and baby and all that. But it seems that their mutual touches are erotic, not the ones with which mother caresses her baby. This makes the confused movie look even more confused about its attitude towards sexuality and motherhood (themes that the feminist critics say are at the core of the all Alien films; well, maybe not "Alien vs. Predator").

Jeunet had made earlier some nice odd-ball pictures like "Delicatessen" that are full of gimmicks and black humour. I haven't seen them since they were in premiere, so I can't really give an objective (or a very good subjective) review of those. But to be honest, I hated "Amelie" that made him famous. It was supposed to wonderful fairy-tale of Paris and lovers and a loving pastice of old French films, but I thought it was neurotic and very absorbing, and not in a good sense. I couldn't understand why everyone said the film made them feel good. How come? The bitch in the lead only harassed other people.

***

I promised to say a word about Christopher McQuarrie's "Way of the Gun". Now, there's a promising project: a Peckinpahesque, hardboiled crime film about two losers kidnapping a young woman who's having a child for the rich couple who can't have their own. McQuarrie scripted "Usual Suspects" for Bryan Singer, the film I very much liked. But, no, no way. I don't think I will bother to check the whole film. I watched some twenty minutes of if after "Alien Resurrection", but had to give up. I didn't for a moment realize what the guys were actually doing and why. They were just louse-ups and that's that. No background, no explanation or motives for their action. In the post-Tarantino world, the film makers seem too easily to forget the rules of the classical cinema: always tell what the people are after.

(I know: it's the rule that the European new-wavers sought out to destroy, but then again there was a political agenda behind that and all the Brecht-derived theory about the alienating effect. It doesn't really seem to be the case with Mr. McQuarrie here.)

I asked my friend why I keep watching these films. Why don't I watch Anthony Mann, Yasujiro Ozu, Vsevolod Pudovkin..? Why torment myself? My friend didn't really know the answer.

Another poem (in Finnish)

I wrote one or two poems this morning, too, and the first of them turned out pretty fine.

Käsitteistö ei ole selvä:
linnut ovat vielä valtaamatta,
pesimäpaikat ovat spektaakkeli,
yhteiskunta vaatii meiltä sen mitä emme voi antaa,
itsemme, minämme, sen mikä meissä on meitä,
varjot laskeutuvat hitaasti,
se oli mennyttä kesää,
silloin en voinut vielä tietää mikä olisi osani tulevaisuudessa,
tiedänkö sen nyt,

kysyn sitä sinulta,
koska oletan että tiedät,
minut on siitetty drive-in –teatterin valossa
elokuvien keskellä,
huonojen sellaisten,

se on ulkomaiden taikaa,
Suomessa ei ole perinteisesti ollut drive-in –teattereita,
andalusialainen koira ja sen sellaiset,
mrs. miniver ja hänen kaikki tuskansa,
kuka sen läpäisee, kuka sen voi voittaa,
kaadettuamme meidän on jälleen nostettava,
mitä,
lelut tietysti,
pienet muoviset numerot ja työkalut.

Tomorrow I'll say something about "Alien Resurrection" and "Way of the Gun" by Christopher McQuarrie.

Back from the universities

I bet everyone was bored reading my rant about universities. Let's get back to the Real World. My job and my writing are much more interesting issues... (Nah, just kidding.)

Kauto woke us up at six. Elina stayed in bed, but I rose and ate breakfast and Kauto played for an hour and then he went back to sleep. (They slept up till 9.30.) I cannot go back to sleep when I'm already awake and had breakfast, so I opened the computer and went to work. It turned out to be a pretty productive day. I finished a self-assigned typing job (more about that later: it's a business secret) and translated over five pages of Jason Starr's "Nothing Personal". Let me tell you: it's a great novel. One of the Great American Novels of the 1990's. I certainly hope that my translation will find a home. If not, I'll publish it myself. Then I dabbled with "The Dostoyevsky Reel". There was a ill-written scene with which I tampered for quite a while. I'm not very good at writing scenes with much happening and going on, people going in, sitting down, putting things into motion. But I hope it got better.

I also made a research on the fourties and fifties B films because the scene was situated in a drive-in. There's a double bill with Devil Bat's Daughter and The Magnetic Monster. My book takes place in 1957, so these are pretty old films, but then again the drive-in is a shabby place where there are no premieres (with the exception of the ones that the bad guy in the book produces). I've tried to base all the films mentioned in the ms. in reality, so that they really exist.

But this research took time, as I dwelved into the mysteries of IMDb. It's a fascinating world, the universe of forgotten B films and their makers. Who are they? Did they really care about the art, the cinema, misé-en-scene? It's also quite sad to read about people like Frank Wisbar who made only lousy B pictures after emigrating from Germany in the thirties. (Well, I know that some people are enthusiastic about this. I haven't seen it myself.)

Then I edited some texts for the forth-coming horror reference book (Diane Guest, Peter Straub and James Herbert) and sent them to Jukkahoo. Then I read my e-mail and then I wrote an interview with Vicki Hendricks, the queen of noir (or noirotica, since there are many erotic elements in her novels). At the moment I should be doing finishing touches on the female noir article I've been doing.

I also wrote poetry. I did it first thing in the morning. I've been writing poems on and off for some seven or eight years now, while earlier I wrote so many that I even published my own poetry mag, Blinkity Blank (1988-1997).

Here are the results (in Finnish, I'll try to translate one of them into English):

Kadulla tulevat vastaan
hiljaiset liituraidat,
poikittaiset sanat,
meille on varattu taivaspaikka
kuka minnekin,
minä menen yhdeksännelle piirille,
se on ansaitsemani rangaistus,
kuka tietää, mihin itse kuuluu,
paikat on varattu jo vuosia etukäteen,
ellei vuosituhansia.
Se on meemien valta,
se on yhteiskunnan tahto,
kuka astuu ovesta sisään,
kuka jää kynnykselle,
meidän ei kannata sanoa vastaan,
liituraitojen sanoma.

***

Lintu askeltaa minun kirjainteni ylitse:
se on tämän ajan vaade,
kirjeitse ilmoitettu ajatuksen katko,
valheelliset uutisoinnit
asioista jotka eivät ole ikinä tapahtuneet
eivätkä tapahdu,
eivätkä tule tapahtumaan,
kuka tämän tietää,
ilmoittautukoon.

***

Tai vaietkoon iäksi:
se on tuntuma yhteiskuntaan.

***

Onko jollakulla vielä mahdollisuus
olla kadonnut, kadonnut löytyi kuolleena,
kieli vai ajatukset,
kumpi tulee ensin,
minä varaan mahdollisuuden erehtyä.

***

Hiljaiset liituraidat,
pakottakaa meidät ansaitsemaan,
saakaa meidät puhumaan,
itsemme pussiin, itseni ansaan:
tähän kieleen ovat muutkin langenneet.

***

Väkisin ansaittua rahaa,
leijailkaa kaduilla vastaan,
tuokaa meille ansaitsemamme skonssit:
jälkiruokien aatelit,
kuka vielä muistaa vuosien takaiset juhlat,
kuka vielä voi muistaa miltä tuntui olla osa yhteiskuntaa,
kuka vielä tietää, kuka voi tietää:
tästä on mentävä, ali tai yli,
ympäri käyden kohtaa oman turmionsa,
katsoo sitä suoraan silmistä sisään,
astuu sisään ikiomaan tuhoonsa,
vanhat autokauppojen interiöörit,
muinaiset sotilaiden univormut,
uudet, käsittelyaineelta haisevat ihmiset,
meille ei ole löytynyt tilaa enää vuosiin.

***

Now in English:

A bird steps over my letters:
it's a prerequisite for this age,
letterized rapture in thoughts,
unreliable news about things that have never taken place,
that don't take place,
that will never take place,
who knows anything about this,
come forward.

(Transl. by JN)