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)

Rave about the universities (in Finnish)

This is in Finnish, because I really can't write it in English and probably wouldn't interest anyone outside Finland. It's about the role of universities in Finland.

Suomen itsenäisyyden juhlarahasto eli SITRA julkisti toissapäivänä raportin, jonka mukaan Suomen yliopistojen pitäisi muuttua maksullisiksi. Tämä muun muassa sen takia, että kaikki muutkin tekevät niin (mikä on aina hyvä argumentti, muistuttaa hiukan leikki-ikäisten touhuja), mutta myös sen takia, että innovaattorit eivät häipyisi tästä maasta tekemään innovaatioitaan muihin maihin.

Aivan käsittämätöntä ajattelua! Ilmeisesti Sitrassa kenellekään ei ole tullut mieleen, että yliopistoissa tehdään muutakin kuin teknisiä innovaatioita, joilla voi nostaa kansantaloutta ja joiden takia voi sanoa valtiolle, että veroja pitää pienentää, jotta saamme enemmän fyrkkaa keksinnöistämme. Suurin osa yliopistojen tuottamista tutkimustuloksista on jotain aivan muuta. Mitä tekemistä jollain sosiologian aivan perustutkimuksilla on teknologisten innovaatioiden kanssa? Puhumattakaan jostain filosofiasta tai kirjallisuudentutkimuksesta (josta olen itse valmistunut). Yliopistot tuottavat itseymmärrystä eikä sellaiseen tähtäävää tutkimusta mennä tekemään ulkomaille, joissa olisi Sitran edustaman ajattelun mukaan parempia yliopistoja tai innovatiivisempaa meininkiä. Itseymmärrystä tehdään parhaiten hitaasti ja sinnikkäästi tutkimalla eikä menemällä päiväperhomaisten innovaatioiden perässä, niin kuin Sitra ilmeisesti haluaa.

Sitran kuva humanistisesta tai yhteiskuntatieteellisestä tutkimuksesta on nähtävästi syntynyt sen perusteella, että aina välillä näistä tieteistä nousee esiin - lähinnä vain hetkeksi - julkkiksia, jotka ovat alansa johtavia asiantuntijoita. Mutta Sitran ja muiden pölvästien päähän ei mahdu se, että nämäkään tutkijat (esim. Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila) eivät ole lähteneet tekemään innovaatioita, vaan perustutkimusta, jonka päälle he ovat voineet ja saaneet rauhassa tehdä pidemmälle meneviä tutkimuksia.

Sanoin Kautolle, kun luin uutista Hesarista, että valtaapitävät eivät halua tukea itseymmärrystä. Ehkä he tajuavat sen verran, että se on heille itselleen vaarallista.

Elinalle sanoin, että en tiedä, mitä teemme, jos Kautosta ei tule huippuälykästä tyyppiä, joka pääsee yliopistoon jonkin Nokia-säätiön stipendillä. Jos tulomme eivät tästä merkittävästi kasva (enkä näe syytä, että ne kasvaisivat), niin millä ihmeellä me kustannamme pojan opiskelun? Sitralaiset haluavat ilmeisesti estää tavallisen fiksujen perustyyppien korkeakouluopiskelun. Kaikki vain huipuille! Masentavaa läskipäistä ajattelua.

Tähän liittyy muuten myös se minua viime aikoina masentanut trendi, jonka toivottavasti kaikki muutkin ovat huomanneet: antihumanismin lisääntyminen ja median paijailu niitä kohtaan, jotka haukkuvat humanismia ja humanisteja. Äänekkäimmät humanismin vastustajat ovat rasittavan ylimieliset Kari Enqvist ja Esko Valtaoja. Varsinkin viimeksimainittua kavahdan pahan kerran. Onneksi Sami Pihlström pisteli Valtaojan uutta teknologiauskoista ja filosofiavihamielistä kirjaa ankarasti uusimmassa Tieteessä tapahtuu -lehdessä - mitä ei paljon tapahdu, siis että Valtaojaa kritisoitaisiin julkisesti. Ehkä Pihlströmin teksti löytyy netistä, jos ei, menkää kirjastoon.

Enqvist ja Valtaoja saavat mediassa niin paljon palstatilaa kuin vain haluavat. Nokian "menestystarina" on näköjään johtanut siihen, että vain teknologia on tärkeätä. Muu on turhaa ja hidastaa rikkaiden typerysten rikastumista.

Humanismin vastustajista median paijaama on muuten myös Pentti Linkola, joka hänkin edustaa kovia tieteitä (hänhän on lintutieteilijä eli biologi). Hänet erottaa edellämainituista sentään se, että hän kirjoittaa hyvin. Valtaojan nokkeluudet voi minusta huoletta jättää omaan arvoonsa.

Viggo Mortensen

I admitted in my previous post having been crushed on Viggo Mortensen. (I answered wrong, I realize that now, since the question was about the fictional characters, not actors. And in the books, you moron, in the books! Not films!)

But I do remember vividly that I was fascinated by his bad teeth and grinding voice when I saw Renny Harlin's first American feature, "Prison". It doesn't have a very good reputation, I know, but I thought it was pretty well-handled piece of horror. (And I just might say that it's best Renny, the man from Finland (originally Lauri Harjola), has done. With the exception of "Long Kiss Goodnight", even it has some implausibilities.)

Viggo was very good also in "Indian Runner", a nice drama film directed by Sean Penn. And in "Reflecting Skin" by Philip Ridley (I haven't seen the latter again, BTW: does it hold up? I remember comparing it even with the films of Charles Chaplin in the review I wrote at the time!).

And then Viggo disappeared (at least, for me). Then he resurfaced in the Stallone flick where the former Rocky saves people from the tunnels (forgot the title). Viggo had had his teeth fixed and he had obviously seen some speech coach, since the grind had disappeared from his voice (well, not altogether, of course). He's very good in LoTR, but not very hot. And he was HOT in "Prison" and all the other films. I was ready to nominate him the sexiest male actor in the world (to make sure: I didn't write that kind of reviews). The tunnel film was a big let-down, I'm sorry to say.

I also mentioned Elizabeth Shue. I fell in love with her in "Leaving Las Vegas" (not Goodbye, as I wrote earlier), but she hasn't given me such thrills second time. She was very, very good-looking in "Palmetto" (by the German new-waver, Volker Schlöndorff), but not near the Las Vegas film.

Maybe that's what always happens. Love at first sight should be left at that.

pHinnWeb's blog

I should've posted the book questionnaire to Mr. pHinn who maintains a very nice blog here. His blog is an interesting mix of electro underground culture in Finland and abroad, some anxiety of his own and very nice takes on mysticism and stuff like that (James Lovelock, Jorge Luis Borges, pagan origins of Easter etc. etc.). Check it out. When I'll start my own publishing company, Verikoirakirjat/Blood Hound Press, I will put out pHinn's long essay on Charles Manson and the aftermaths of the hippie culture.

Book questions

I got his from Tero.

Book Questionnaire

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?

The Communist Manifesto. After reading the book the rebels would really know what to do instead of trying feebly to memorize the books. A bloody revolution is all they need!

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Are idolizations called crushes? Maybe Bob Morane, when I was a kid. I hoped I was more like him (which was none). Maybe some movies, with some pretty babes (Elizabeth Shue in "Goodbye Las Vegas"). And Viggo Mortensen, whom I considered for long to be very hot.

What are you currently reading?

Charlotte Armstrong's "A Dram of Poison" from 1956. It's for an article about female noir. There are some other books lying on the night table, but let's leave them out, since I haven't really touched them for a while. In the WC, there's a copy of Adam Hardy's (= Ken Bulmer) George Abercrombie Fox paperback (about Napoleon wars fought on sea: strictly pulp). I'm on page 25 or so.

Five books you would take to a deserted island?

The Lord of the Rings
The Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Yrjö Hirn's study of robinsonades, "Valtameren saari/The Sea in the Ocean" (1922; with a good bibliography on the subject)
My forth-coming book on Finnish pulp fiction (presumed it's ready when I'm in a shipwreck and find myself marooned)

Can I also mention Al Hubin's The Bibliography of Crime Fiction? On the CD side, maybe Pat Hawk's pseudonyms catalogue would be really nice. Provided I had a computer with me.

Now, that makes seven.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Oh god.. let me think. I don't know so many bloggers. James , Tosikko and Bill. James and Bill write about books and Tosikko is a dear friend.

Back to safer areas from the universe of role playing books...

I finished Dorothy Hughes's "Ride the Pink Horse" (1946) last night. It was relaxing to open up a bottle of French cider and sit down and read a book after everyone else had gone to sleep. I liked the book much more than I would've thought since I had to drop it last time I tried it. There was some overwriting and over-analyzing (especially in the end scenes in which the policeman MacIntyre starts to moralize - that could easily be left out), but the overall effect was very good and very nice in its grimness. The ending was quite nasty, even though Sailor manages to escape.

I liked this more than "In Lonely Place" which I read earlier last week. It was more over-written and with some empty scenes throughout the book. But maybe the emptiness was the whole point: there's nothing left in the world that has just gone through the World War.

I didn't like much Hughes's last novel, "The Expendable Man" (1963) which was her last and which I read in January or February. It started out promising enough when it seemed almost absurd and Kafkaesque, but then Hughes gives the point away and the book becomes a rather moralizing and predictable tale on racial prejudice.

There are two other books by Hughes in Finnish, but I trust Tapani when he says that they are not interesting. The other is her debut novel, "The So Blue Marble" and the other one, oh well, even I can't check all the things.

Interesting, though (or sad or embarrassing actually), is that the two novels I mentioned first were turned into famous films ("In Lonely Place" with Bogie being more famous than "Ride the Pink Horse" which was directed by Robert Montgomery who had just earlied trashed Chandler's "Lady in the Lake" with his camera-as-character narration) and I haven't seen either of them!

By the way, I think it's the script writer Steve Fisher who invented the idea of doing "Lady in the Lake" with camera as Marlowe. It just doesn't work and it's no wonder there aren't many feature-length films with the same idea. There are some nice moments, but it becomes irritating when you have to listen to Montgomery in voice-over all the time. Someone should be able think of the way of doing this without having to resort to voice-over. I don't know if it's possible. There are some nice films with voice-overs, but for example Kubrick's "The Killing" would be even better if there were no voice-over. The other example of camera-as-character narration is Delmer Daves's "Dark Passage" from a David Goodis novel, but it's only the first 20 minutes and hence won't get irritating.

An oddment to the previous post

After I'd written my earlier post, I'd remembered that I had tracked down a slight connection between the world of fan fiction and role playing game books (isn't that thrilling!). I had written an article about the heroes of Edgar Rice Burroughs written by other writers, with or without the consent of Burroughs's heirs, and noticed that one of them had later produced role playing game books.

So (ta-daa!) let me present you: the bibliography of Ken St. Andre:

ROLE PLAYING GAME BOOKS:

Tunnels and Trolls: The Amulet of the Salkti and Arena of Khazan
With David Steven Moskowitz. Illustrated by Josh Kirby. UK: Corgi, 1986.

Tunnels and Trolls: Naked Doom.
Illustrated by Talbot, James, Carver, Robin; Crompton, Steven. Scottsdale, AZ, U.S.A.: Flying Buffalo Incorporated, 1977.

Tunnels and Trolls: Deathtrap Equalizer
Illustrated by Danforth, Elizabeth; Talbot, James. Scottsdale, AZ, U.S.A.: Flying Buffalo Incorporated, 1977.

Tunnels and Trolls: Arena of Khazan.
Illustrated by Day, Gene; Laird, Peter. Scottsdale, AZ, U.S.A.: Flying Buffalo Computer-Conflict Simulation, Incorporated, 1979.

Stormbringer: Fantasy Role-Playing in the Young Kingdoms. Chaosium Inc. 1981. (Illustrated by Frank Brunner).

Stormbringer Companion.
With Sandy Petersen, Steve Perrin, Lynn Willis. Chaosium 1983.

Stormbringer: Fantasy Roleplaying in the World of Elric.
With Perrin, Steve; Monroe, John B. (editor), Whelan, Michael (illustrator); Brunner, Frank (illustrator). Hayward, CA, U.S.A.: Chaosium, Incorporated, 1990.

SHORT STORIES:

”Korak and the Killer Leopard”, Odwar 1964 (ERB fanzine).

(Erm.. actually it seems (I did the google search only now on Ken St. Andre) that he's written much more and designed games. But I'll have to leave it at that and hope that someone else will continue my research on this. His own website is here.)

Tolkien spin-offs

I wrote about Tolkien in my last post here and got to thinking about - what else (this guy is predictable!) than tie-ins and spin-offs? There seem to be no Tolkien spin-offs, with the exception of some role game books. Or that's what I thought at first.

As for the Tolkien role game books, I bought one at the children's library sale. It was only out of curiosity, since I've always thought that role playing is a waste of time (hey, c'mon guys, you could write about tie-ins in your blog! come out of that forest and take off your stupid helmets!). The book is called, hm, I can't find the actual title anywhere. It's perhaps "Darkest of the Dark/Thieves and Crookes" or something like that (hey, this is a double book!).

The book was designed by Margaret and Dan Henley and Matthias and Karen Brinker, whoever they are. The first story/game is set in Briimaa (what's it in English?), east of Shire, and the lead characters are men. This is pretty difficult to read if you don't want to play.

It seems that there was a role game already on the LoTR itself. Which I didn't originally know.

Heck, I don't know anything about this genre! I only wanted to say, with a slight wonder upon my face, that no one was assigned to write an abridgement of LoTR after the Jackson film. It would've sold millions. (At least I think so. Maybe that's why I wouldn't be a successful publisher.) There were some how-the-film-was-made books and some such. And where are the spin-offs? I can see the trilogy "The Further Adventures of Merri and Pippin", or "What Gandalf Did Before Getting Acquainted with Bilbo Baggins", or "Saruman the White and the Gold of Opar". Don't you the see possibilities?!

But then I got to thinking that Tolkien did the spin-offs himself. There have been dozens of collections of unfinished stories by him, even one with Sauron rising from the shadows (scary thought, that one). But then again, why doesn't someone finish his stories? They would make some serious money. I mean, millions and billions of dollars. Isn't anyone listening?

And at the same time, someone's writing these stories without getting paid. I'm talking about Tolkien fan fiction. Just check out this one. It's actually an enormous industry!

Hey, this one sounds like a pulp story: "Chingo, Princess of Mirkwood."

***

Kauto is almost talking. He's on the brink of realizing how to make meaningful sounds. He knows - we are both sure about this - what "kukka/flower" and "lintu/bird" are since he can point them out in the tapestry we have in the bedroom. I've been repeating the words for him ever since he was two weeks old.

He also says "hi"! He lifts his (usually right) hand and shouts something like: "Jjoi!" He does this even to strangers.

Time to go. Have a nice weekend! We are off to my friend Markku's dissertation party. Markku did his enormous dissertation about Norman Mailer's fan fiction - oops, spin-offs! no, it was about his tie-ins.. hmm, maybe I should go to sleep. It's about Mailer's non-fiction and it's very interesting. The book is available here. Check it out!

(Is there Norman Mailer fan fiction? The sequel to "The Naked and the Dead", written by Neena79?)

Bicycles; Tolkien

I've now finally become a city person.

I was a bit busy today and all things seemed hazy. I had to go here and there and attend a meeting or two. I was leaving home to attend the businesses and had a thought: maybe I should take out my bicycle. I hadn't been cycling since I put the bicycle away for Winter (of course at the gym, but that's not the same thing). I could make the trip twice as fast as walking.

But the idea wore me out. I got to thinking that I'd arrive breathing heavily, hot, sweaty, tired, face all red. No no. That's not me.

And I decided to walk. It turned out to be a good idea, since I had just plenty of time (well, I skipped one of the meetings, which made some two good hours more).

But it was somewhat odd to me: why didn't I want to ride a bike? I was once a heavy supporter of cycling. We even had great ideas of becoming great bicycle cultivators, my friend Arttu and I. At one point we had some 30 vintage bicycles (well, some of them were so called projects, with parts missing and all). I ride an old bicycle even now, but I no longer think of collecting them. I even hate messing with the brakes and tyres and stuff - instead I'm thinking of getting the damn junk to the real repairman. I don't want to get my hands on grease.

And this is why I'm now finally a city person. Walking is what one does in the city, not riding a bike and not driving a car. Well, maybe buses and trolleys are for city persons, too, but if one wants to be cheap, one walks. (And there are no trolleys in Turku. Or subways.)

***

I watched Ralph Bakshi's animated version of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" (1979) the other night. It was a very disappointing experience, even though my memory of it wasn't very good in the first place. I had seen the film some 15-16 years back and hadn't liked it, but I liked it even less now. It was clear that Bakshi's backers had lost their faith during the filming process and everything gets more hasty when the end approaches. It was badly narrated, badly edited, odd-looking film that felt like no one really knew what it really should be. Someone (maybe Bakshi) felt it should be very artsy (just look at those colours and lines and odd shapes in the scenes with the ring wraiths), but someone also felt it should be very easy to look at and cutesy (Frodo Baggins especially with his large eyes and cuddly hair which make him almost ghastly).

And why on Earth did they use the technique of photographing the men first and then drawing on them and colouring them, when it was used only on orchs (and some men and elves when they are running)? Why isn't on all the time? And why are there so few orchs? It looks like they are having some sort of gang war, not the War of the Ring!

A friend said that Bakshi's version is better than Peter Jackson's hyperdrive version. I couldn't agree less. Bakshi's version is maybe more artful, but Jackson at least brings the happenings and the people to life. And it's entertaining, while Bakshi is almost torture.

Well, two points for trying. If it was another book, I'd give it only one (or one and a half).

I remember reading that Bernardo Bertolucci and Stanley Kubrick also dreamt of filming "The Lord of the Rings". Is this true? Or am I mixing this with something else? (Did they plan to film Hammett's "Red Harvest" and I was reading about this at the same time when I was reading about the film versions of Tolkien?) Certainly John Boorman meant to film Tolkien, but instead he made "Excalibur". He would've been better at drama of Tolkien than Jackson, who is more at home with action. (Action Jackson!)

Well, it seems it's time to go to bed...

Midwood Doubles

I was right about Midwood having done doubles. Here's an incomplete list of what they did in the sixties - these are all cheap sleaze, i.e. sex, paperbacks and maybe not very intriguing. There's more than this - Abebooks shows six whole pages for this! There were perhaps other sex doubles. Only my fearless research will tell.

The Other Woman - the Quiet Type - A Midwood Double Novel #34-696
Corgan, Grant ; Henry, Mike
Book Description: NY: Midwood, 1966. Mass Market Paperback.

THE ADDED ATTRACTION & CAUGHT IN THE ACT
STANTON & HAMLAND
Book Description: midwood double, (ORIGINAL 1967),

Peeping Tom / Temptation
West, Virginia / James, Tammy
Book Description: New York: Midwood, 1967.

WIVES PLAY TOO / NEW WOMAN AROUND
Malloy, Dirk / Cassel, Lucas J.
Book Description: Canada: Midwood Double 34-723, 1966.

THESE WARM NIGHTS and ALL THE TRIMMINGS
BALMER & GREGORY
Book Description: midwood double, (ORIGINAL 1966), ed. 34-710,good sex adventure novel,

COMING OF AGE and HANDLE WITH CARE
KRAMER & BROOKS
Book Description: midwood double, (ORIGINAL 1965), ed. 34-532,

Bundle of Joy & Girls on the Loose
Norman A King & Linda Michaels
Book Description: A Midwood Double Novel, 1966. Paperback.

Black Satin//White Thighs
Nortic, Max//Conroy, Jim
Book Description: New York: Midwood Book, 1969. Paperback.

Two-Timer (Bound with Frank Harris--Mate Exchange.)
Nelson, Connie (Bound with Frank Harris.)Book Description: Midwood. [34-476] 1965. (Double paperback)

Easy Come, Easy Go
(Bound with Joseph Tell--from Bed to Worse.)
Nelson, Connie (Bound with Joseph Tell.)
Book Description: Midwood. [34-583] 1966. (Double paperback)

Swinging Secretary
Henry, Mike
Book Description: New York: Midwood Enterprises, 1967. Paperback.Very Good. First Edition. Midwood Double Novel, bound with"Office Party" by Connie Nelson.

ANGEL FACE and HOUSE PET
BROOKS & BALMER
Book Description: midwood double, (ORIGINAL 1966), ed. 34-581,

ONE LONG WEEKEND and FREE FOR ALL
LANSING & HOLBROOK
Book Description: midwood double, (ORIGINAL 1966), ed. 34-647,vg,

CALL ME KITTEN and FAIR EXCHANGE
MALLORD & ROOTE
Book Description: midwood double, (ORIGINAL 1966), ed. 34-637,vg, sex adventure novel,

SUBURBAN FLING and SOPHISTICATED PARTY
CONROY & DENBY
Book Description: midwood double, (ORIGINAL 1966), ed. 34-740,

WIVES PLAY TOO and NEW WOMAN AROUND
MALLOY & CASSELBook Description: midwood double, (ORIGINAL 1966), ed. 34-723,

Sugar And Space
Ellis, Joan
Book Description: Midwood Double 34-562 1965. (b/w: Not SoInnocent by William Moore).

Southern Belle//Teen-Age Mischief
Comstock, J. C.//Terry Shaffer
Book Description: New York: Midwood Book, 1966. Paperback. VeryGood. First Edition. 34-739. A Midwood double novel.

The Sex Game//Young and Hot
Scott, Arjay//Phillips, AryBook Description: New York: Midwood Book, 1968. Paperback.Midwood Double Novel.

One Too many/ Stay Until Morning
John Balmer/ Cynthia Sydney
Book Description: NY: A Midwood Book, 1966. Soft Cover. MassMarket Paperback. (A Midwood Double Novel - # 34-649 FirstPrinting Anywhere.)

LADY OF LEISURE and NEVER LET ME GO
NELSON & STEVENS
Book Description: midwood double, (ORIGINAL 1965),

French Leave/ Night Games
King, Norman anderson/ Dana Pitman
Book Description: Canada: MIdwood 34-784, 1967. a Midwood double.

SMALL TOWN SINNER AND THRILL HUNGRY.
Woods, Merry and Brian O'Bannon.Book Description: Midwood, 34-477 1965. Vintage erotic paperback.Double edition.

Shadow Dance / After Hours
Brooks, Barbara / McAndrews, Robbie
Book Description: New York: Midwood # S300 1st Edition 1963. A Midwood Double.

Executive Sweet / The Soft Sell
Ellis, Joan / Nelson, Connie
Book Description: NY: Midwood, 1965. Midwood Double 34-457.

A Girl a Night / Sex and Me
Reading, Mark and Harmon, Lee
Book Description: New York: Midwood Book, 1969. 2 complete novels, first edition.

Double books

I mentioned the so-called Ace Doubles in my previous message and started to think about the whole "invention". The Ace Doubles had two front covers and two novels - hence you could get two books at the same price and decide afterwards which one you want to read. I don't really know if it's a good idea - all the Ace Doubles I've seen have too small a font and the marginals are too narrow. And if it was a good idea, I think it would've been more popular with other paperback houses.

I don't know if there were any other publishers doing Doubles. I think I've seen (in the net) some sleaze/sex paperback Doubles, from cheapo houses like Midwood, but I'm not sure. Gryphon Books has done some Doubles, but I think they are pamphlet-sized, with 40-60 pages.

This never caught on in Finland. I don't know why. There were some reprint doubles, but no original novels published thus. And I don't think I've ever seen an original Finnish paperback double. There were some "triples", but they had only one cover (it would be hard to imagine what it would be like if all the books had their own front cover! Stephen Hawking might be able to figure it out). The Finnish Doubles and Triples were mainly Westerns (Walt Slades and such) or Hank Jasons.

So, well, maybe when and if and possibly and perhaps my idea for Blood Hound Press ever becomes true, it could be possible that I might think of doing some paperback doubles. Emphasis on "maybe". It could be fun, you know.

Backlash

A new entry in our on-going series "Confessions of a Non-Fiction Writer": another publisher just announced they are not interested in the book Elina and I proposed for them, about the Finnish pasta culture (actually "macaroni", but I don't actually know what precise meaning that word has in English). I tried not to smash the windows for couple of seconds, then I sent the memo we made to another publisher.

The Finnish pasta culture is very much its own and has nothing to do with the original Italian pasta (or Chinese noodles). The Finnish macaroni is short and doesn't always contain durum wheat at all and there are recipes that go like this:

Cook macaronis for half an hour. Cool them and leave them be. Cut them in thick slices and dip them in eggs and roll them over in wheat flour. Fry them on a pan.

It's called "macaroni steaks" and is to be eaten with meat. I don't know if anyone really does this anymore, since we've been taught to eat "real" Italian pasta with tomato sauce and garlic and herbs and stuff like that (and I do think that it tastes better), but this is cultural history that should be preserved.

We've heard some new recipes, though, that have nothing do with "pasta". One guy was reported eating his macaronis with liver pate: he just minced the liver pate in with the cooked macaroni.

***

I gave my usual Wednesday lecture on cinema history yesterday at the Tampere university. Elina and Kauto met me afterwards at the railway station and we went to see a new-born son of my old friend Arttu. It was so small and fragile! It's difficult to think that Kauto was once so small, as he walks (well, almost) and talks (well, almost).

We walked over the beautiful Pyynikinharju in the way to town and dropped by some second hand stores and flea markets. Nothing spectacular, but it's always entertaining to go through some musty old piles.

As for my lecture: I talked about the animated movies. I mentioned that I just might deliver a whole series of lectures about animations and one guy came up and said that he would be interested. Now, just go to work! I've been playing with the idea of doing a short book on the subject, since the last history of animated movies in Finnish is, what, almost thirty years old.

***

I went through today the rest of my first novel (well, that's what I like to think). It's called "The Blood Orgy of the Void God" and it's a genre hybrid of hardboiled police procedural, splatter horror and religious fantasy and satire. I don't know if it works. Some small publishers have been mildly interested in it (the other one went down, though), but I have a vague feeling that time has passed this kind of work. (I'd be almost willing to give it away free, but don't tell this to the publishers... I've been writing this for ages, starting actually from 1988, when my first (and for years, only) short story was published in Tähtivaeltaja. There are even some same characters.)

I also started going through a private eye novel about Joe Novak, who's been in one short story in Isku (and in another one in a forth-coming issue). The novel is called "The Dostoyevsky Reel" and is about the last days of Hollywood's B-film system and the drive-in movies and stuff like that. It's very short, only about 35 000 words, and should make a good Ace Double. Who would write the other half?

I wrote "The Dostoyevsky Reel" in 1999, when my daughter Ottilia was born. I read it last Christmas and thought it worked quite well, but I don't know if the Finnish publishers would be interested in it, since it's situated in the US in the late fifties. There are of course the vanity presses, but I've come to a conclusion that I could even make some money out of it, if I made some 100-150 copies with my own money and sell them under the counter, since I don't think the Finnish vanity presses would be able to sell more copies. And I would certainly know what the book should look like!

There's just that the English title is much more better than the translated one. ("Kela Dostojevskia"? "Dostojevski-rulla"? "Raina ja rangaistus"? Any suggestions for the Finnish title? Anyone?)

Masters of the Universe

Another foray into the tie-in genre, another hour of endless joy and effortless research!

I found a stupid looking Masters of the Universe (you know, He-Man and all that stuff) children's tie-in at a thrift store the other day and couldn't help buying it. Today it occurred to me that there might be others, especially after the (very great) Dolph Lundgren movie. But, alas, no! It seems that the publishers didn't really care about the animation series and the (very great) movie. A quick look on Abebooks reveals that there are these and perhaps some others. The only tie-in that looks like a novel is the one by R.L. Stine. Some of these could very well be "only" comic versions of the animation series.

THE TRAP (MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE SERIES)
Dubay, W. B.
Book Description: Racine, Wisconsin Golden Press Warner Publishing 1983. Good. Paperback; large format paperback graphic book. Illustrated by Dan Spiegel.

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE ICONS OF EVIL TRAP JAW #1
Book Description: MVCREATIONS.

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE ICONS OF EVIL MER MAN #1
Book Description: MVCREATIONS. [Are these two some kind of dolls? - JN]

Masters of the Universe: Skeletor's Flower of Power
Knoor, Bryce
Book Description: Golden Press. A fine oversized pictur cover hardcover. Cover: Fred playing croquet. [?] Copyright 1985 Mattel.

Masters of the Universe Annual 1987
Anonymous.
Book Description: Manchester: World Distributors, 1986. Hard Cover. Very Good/No Jacket. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.

Masters of the Universe he Man and the Lost Dragon
John Grant, Illustrated by Robin Davies
Book Description: Loughborough: Ladybird, 1986. Hardback. 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall.

Masters of the Universe he Man and the Asteroid of Doom
John Grant, Illustrated by Robin Davies Book Description: Loughborough: Ladybird, 1986. Hardback. 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall.

Masters of the Universe HE-MAN and the Memory Stone
Jason Kingsley
Book Description: Loughborough: Ladybird, 1985. First Edition. Hardback. 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall.

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: Demons of the Deep
R.L. Stine, Illustrated by Fred Carrillo
Book Description: Western Publishing, 1985. Hardcover. A Golden Book -glossy hardback.

(I really don't know whether anyone got here... and whether anyone would be interested at all. But that's what blogs are for: to share information no one is interested in. I couldn't see myself putting this into a magazine or even writing it to an article. This will do. It just will have to do.)

Kekkonen; The Green Berets; Schlock

Ha! Just yesterday I was having depression and thinking that I'll never have work again and just today, two hours ago, I received an e-mail from a publisher saying they might be interested in the how-to-dress-according-to-president-Kekkonen book! We haven't settled anything yet, but the book is already forming up in my head!

***

I saw John Wayne's "The Green Berets" (1968) last night and, oh boy, oh boy, was it a bore! I mean, how could they manage to do such a slow-moving and unappealing movie? Politics is what it is, but it was just so disjointed that it never achieved any dramatical impact. None whatsoever. The beginning is boring and you never really get to know the characters. The battle in the middle starts almost out of the blue and ends with a plane coming out of nowhere and shooting all the Charlies with two machine guns! They die, just like that, like snapping your fingers. The same with the kidnapping of the Viet Cong general in the second part - even though it was better acted and edited than the first half of the movie (maybe John himself directed the first part and Ray Kellogg did the second or the other way around).

And there was no unintentional humour anywhere! The movie was made with enough money to guarantee they didn't have to use much archive footage or something like that. The dialogue gave the best laughs - and John Wayne running. It wasn't shown much, though.

One thing left me wondering though: no one mentioned communism or communists. Why was that? Were they afraid what the Soviet Union might say? Or were they uncertain about what ideology Viet Cong had? Or did they really think that the US went to Vietnam just because Viet Cong (or "VC", as they say in the movie) was so cruel to other Vietnamese? Heck, that was the reason they went to Iraq!

***

I also saw John Landis's first feature film last week. It was called "Schlock" and it's from 1971 - pretty amateurish and largely unfunny parody of ape films. I said to Elina that I'm not sure whether I'd've given any money to Landis to make more films after this. There was a big gap between this and "Kentucky Fried Movie" which came in 1977, IIRC. It's much better movie than "Schlock", but it's also overrated. As are many of Landis's subsequent films. I don't find much to laugh at even in "Blues Brothers".

It was nice to see, though, that not all American films from the early seventies share the qualities and ideologies of the celebrated Hollywood New Wave (Penn, Altman etc.). The film histories tend to leave films like this out.

Depression

I was suddenly struck by depression earlier today. I was checking up messages from an e-mail address where I asked people to post if they were willing to do an interview for an article I've been assigned to write. No answers. In the website I sent my original query some stupid jerks had begun to make some lame-ass remarks. No one had replied in order to answer my query.

Of course the first thing that occurred to me was that now I can't get story made. The next thing was that I can't make any other story. And then it occurred to me that my days as a freelance writer are over and I have to crawl back to my mother's or something like that.

Similar thoughts occurred when Elina found out that someone had already made a book we were asked to do couple months back - a new kind of book about a newborn baby, with blank pages to fill with memoirs and pictures and stuff like that.

I also read somewhere that there are already enough books about Kekkonen, the long-running president of Finland. I was going to make - when I would've had the time (which is maybe never) - the how-to-dress book according to Kekkonen, since I've always thought he was a very smart dresser. (Just check this out. The picture's quality is not very good, but he's one cool mother in that. I think it's from the mid-seventies when Kekkonen still reigned supreme. Damn, what a man!)

There are so many books that you'd have to do first thing in the morning after you get the idea: short, snappy non-fiction books with fun trivia and nice pictures. Don't wait. Do them. That would be writer's almanac, if I had one. Instead I keep scanning obscure paperbacks for Pulp and write long and boring articles about forgotten writers... (I started to dream yesterday about a radio program (which I would make, of course) that would deal with forgotten authors. I was talking to a friend on a phone and suggested Elizabeth Taylor. Who's read her? No one? I haven't, but once she was a respected and read writer. And this was in the 1950's, not 1870's or anything like that. And no, I'm not talking about the actor. My friend suggested Gwen Bristow. Anyone? I know the name only from the legion of her books that fill the thrift stores.)

Ah well, must get back to writing about the fifties noir lit by female writers. Let me tell you, Elizabeth Sanxay Holding is a very good writer. Read her "The Blank Wall" (1947). It's outstanding. The bright prose and short sentences take you away.

As for the depression.. well, it comes and goes. I scanned the cover illo for the coming issue of Isku (it's great, once again, by Jukka Murtosaari) and started to write the noir article. Now, this is me doing what I can.

NoMeansNo

I've been listening to Canada's hardcore heroes NoMeansNo lately. It was one of my all-time favourites when I was in lukio (pretty close to high school, years 15-19) and the first two or three years in the university. Then there was a break, of almost ten years, when I didn't spend time listening to the band. I don't really know why, because I got their collection from the library the other day and it blew me out! Wow! The men (they were fifty fifteen years ago, at the time I got to know the band!) really show that rock can be intelligent and noisy at the same time. No question about that. (And also funky - some of their songs could be big disco hits. If only I were a DJ...)

It's just that the liner notes in the collection make me wonder whether I really understood the band when I was a teenager. My favourite record by NoMeansNo has always been "Wrong", but in the liner notes it's said to be the poorest selling and the lousiest record they ever made. No way, man! Just check out "Big Dick" or "Rags and Bones" and all the great tunes! But, um, well, maybe I'm wrong. "Now" that starts the collection at hand (BTW, it's called "The People's Choice", from Wrong Records) and it's one of the best rock'n'roll songs I've ever known (it's originally from "0 + 2 = 1", 1991) and "I Can't Stop Talking" (from "The Dance of the Headless Bourgeoisie", 1998) shows some very quirky and funky guitar riffing!

Joel Chandler Harris; Pope; flea market finds

I made a mistake: it's Joel Chandler Harris, not Joel Harris Chandler who wrote the stories on which the Disney movie "Song of the South" was based on. The stories have been translated into Finnish, but the books go usually under the name of Anni Swan, who was the translator (and maybe a heavy-handed modifier, too) and one of the most famous Finnish children's authors. Harris is mentioned somewhere at the bottom of the page in tiny fonts.

Here's something I dug out about Harris who seemed to be some kind of America's answer to brothers Grimm:

Well in advance of the twentieth-century development of folklore studies and cultural anthropology as academic disciplines, Joel Chandler Harris gathered the dialect tales he had heard in his childhood told by slaves. He placed them within a narrati ve context that made them available to a large white audience, sharpening the effects of their regional details and the age-old wisdom by which the enslaved secretly outwit their masters.

Through his work with the Uncle Remus tales, he would introduce Ame ricans to the basic patterns and rhythms of southern African-American speech. Because of Harris' accomplishments, American mainstrean literature featured a memorable new character, Uncle Remus, as well as a new literary tradition.

The way had been hard for Harris as a child in Georgia. His day-laborer father deserted his mother just before his birth. Helped by the local people of Putnam County, the mother and the child made do until young Harris went to work for a newspaper at fourteen. Harris soon contributed humorous pieces to several Georgia papers, and he quickly gained a reputation in the newspaper world. In 1876 he joined the Atlanta Constitution in the city that became his permanent home. During this perio d Harris divided his time between editorial writing (urging southerners to "reconstruct" their habits and to rise above the conflicts of their past) and the dialect tales, which began to appear in print under the guise of Uncle Remus, the old slave.

His first collection of folk poems and proverbs was published in 1881 as Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings. Further collections included Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), and Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (1905). As the titles suggest, relationships are important; they develop between the wide-eyed audience (likened to a little white boy from the main plantation household) and the narrator who acts as "best friend"-whiling away the hours w ith a seemingly endless supply of tales. The lasting impression of the Remus stories on readers of all ages and from many countries (there were translations into twenty-seven languages) stems from the force of their slave lore.

Harris insisted that his sources were genuine and that his documentation of the plot and dialect was accurate. In this way, Uncle Remus goes back in time to African models, as well as to the animal tales of Aesop and Chaucer. Harris helped inspir e other writers in the vernacular through his adroit use of narrative forms, his excellent ear for the subtleties of dialect, and his ability to emphasize the universal nature of these classic standoffs between the weak and the powerful.

***

The pope is dead. I think he should've died sooner - he seemed so sick and fragile. I just don't get why it is so big news. He was old and bound to die. And the church should've let him rest.

Someone should extinguish the Catholic Church. The papal institution is weird: one guy, who's willing to let unwanted babies born by the thousands or even millions, can decide what's good for millions of people! And as Elina pointed out, the pope is elected by the authorities of the church, yet he's claimed to be the spokesman of God on Earth. Why doesn't God tell us who's the next pope? That way we all could be sure He really exists.

I've always wondered why God isn't more open about Himself and His ways. Why is He lurking? It's self-deception to just say: He moves in mysterious ways. That way he ensures people don't take Him seriously. Some good old burning bushes and stuff - that's all He needs.

***

Good day at the flea market today. We went for a walk (Spring has finally arrived!) and checked in at the near-by self-service flea market. We made quite a many finds - I even found two Finnish sex paperbacks from the late seventies that I was missing! I also bought an old Finnish adventure novel by "Brent Morea", really Olavi Linnus who also wrote as Gil Dennic and Rex Davis and some other pseudonyms. The Amazon novel called "Viidakkoväylän jäljillä/Route through the Jungle" (Paletti 1948) starts off quite snappily:

"Then I started to think that Dick Spider wasn't worth a mention anymore. You see, those who meet my fists are not very charming afterwards."

I also bought an Israeli paperback by Andrew Sugar, a sex/crime paperback by "Brad Latham", who I've been told is really the famous horror writer David J. Schow, Norwegian or Danish western paperback by one Ed Edson, an old Finnish romance paperback by Maja Kai and a historical adventure novel by Stanley Weyman, who is nowadays almost forgotten writer from the age of great storytellers (= late 19th century and early 20th century). I've developed an interest towards old adventure fiction lately, but more about that later.

Helsinki

I went to Helsinki yesterday and took part in giving a critics' reward to a young composer called Taito Hoffrén. We had a wonderful dinner at Kosmos after the ceremony and when I left I was pretty much drunk. It didn't amount to much, because I started to feel dizzy and pretty tired in the train and even I made a date with Niko-Matti to go to sauna with him and drink few more ciders or beers, I couldn't make it after I'd been home for two hours. I was just too tired. Old age doesn't come alone...

I even made it to TV. They showed a two-minute bit on Taito Hoffrén on Yle 1's Culture News and there I was, giving the reward to Taito. He sang his thanks in the ancient Kalevala style! It was great.

However, I made it briefly to Akademic Bookshop and bought "Interface" by Joe Gores and "Deadfolk" by Charlie Williams. Both have been praised highly and "Interface" has been called a true classic. But no Hard Case Crime or Point Blank Press books. Sometimes Finland is still a hick town.