Jan 162013
Sep 132012
I've been working my ass off lately, writing articles and reviews for the magazine of the Finnish Western Society, Ruudinsavu (= Gunsmoke), getting some of my future books together (been working on several projects on Finnish history and the history of misanthropic thought - not much pulpish content here), translating Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature... He's an awful writer, you know? I think there must be more, but I keep forgetting. None of these bring much money, I'm sad to say. I keep reviewing some books from time to time, but for some reason or another they always end up on the boring side - the most recent example being a new thriller by Finnish writer Max Manner, which I barely managed through.
I'll try to work up some decent blog posts in the near future.
I'll try to work up some decent blog posts in the near future.
Feb 132012
Question for the group mind: can you think and name any examples of misanthropy in crime fiction, classic, hardboiled or other? I should be writing an essay on the subject, but can't come up with enough examples, though I think Jim Thompson (especially Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me) and Patricia Highsmith (Tom Ripley!) are essentials. What about Charles Willeford? Isn't a book like The Woman Chaser misanthropic?
Someone suggested Andrew Vachss, but he seems to have an ethos that the innocent can and should be saved. There's of course lots of nihilistic neo-nah (the phrase coined by Kevin Burton Smith), but I haven't really sampled those. I'm not sure, though, whether mere nihilism is enough. Misanthropy is more of a philosophical stance, whereas nihilism seems more like a juvenile attempt to be tough and rough.
Any ideas? I'm not really sure if I can do this (the idea wasn't mine to begin with), but if there are enough examples I'm willing to try. I appreciate any thoughts on the subject. If there's a book on the subject, or even an essay, I'd really like to hear about it.
Someone suggested Andrew Vachss, but he seems to have an ethos that the innocent can and should be saved. There's of course lots of nihilistic neo-nah (the phrase coined by Kevin Burton Smith), but I haven't really sampled those. I'm not sure, though, whether mere nihilism is enough. Misanthropy is more of a philosophical stance, whereas nihilism seems more like a juvenile attempt to be tough and rough.
Any ideas? I'm not really sure if I can do this (the idea wasn't mine to begin with), but if there are enough examples I'm willing to try. I appreciate any thoughts on the subject. If there's a book on the subject, or even an essay, I'd really like to hear about it.
Dec 302011
I've been going through my stacks and boxes of paper (the memory boxes, as we say with Elina) as I'm making a donation to the county archive here in Turku, Finland. I found the first newspaper article I ever sold: it was to the magazine my father was working at, the small Leftist newspaper called Satakunnan Työ (The Satakunta Labour News or something to that effect). I was only 14 at the time and I think I pretty much ripped the piece straight out of a mechanics journal as it was about the new car models being developed at the time in the Soviet Union! There's much to laugh about this, but then again I noticed that this was almost exactly 25 years ago, as the article was published in the mid-December 1986!Later on I started writing movie reviews for the same newspaper (under the moniker Umberto D.*) and honestly I think that was better suited to me than writing about cars, since I still don't have a driver's license!
* Umberto D. being of course the famous neorealist movie by Vittorio de Sica. My dad thought I should use a pseudonym so that noe one could argue they favour relatives in any way. I must've been the last movie critic in Finland to use a pseudonym! They were pretty much in use in the fifties and in the sixties, but by the eighties they were gone - except for me. This car-related clip was published anonymously.
Dec 242011
I was going to post a nice Xmas picture my daughter did, but I just made it vanish! We are away on a Christmas trip and I can't get to the picture at the moment, so you'll just have to wait until tomorrow. Merry Christmas until then!