Archive for June, 2000
Compelled to write
30 June 2000 | Authors, Interviews
Photo: Marica Rosengård
Kjell Westö (born 1961) is one of a generation of younger, urban Swedish-language writers who are at home in both Swedish and Finnish. An extract from his novel Vådan av att vara Skrake (‘The perils of being Skrake’, Söderströms, 2000), which traces the fortunes of the Helsinki family of Skrake from the 1910s to the present day. Here, Westö is interviewed by his alter ego, the discontented poet Anders Hed, editor of the cultural journal Bokassa (now sadly extinct)
Anders Hed: So, to get us going: do you write any poetry at all nowadays?
Kjell Westö: No. The last poem I wrote comes at the end of the title story in Fallet Bruus (‘The Bruus case’). And that book came out in 1992.
It’s a poem about human face and the search for ‘the Thou’, isn’t it?
Exactly. More…
Notes related to pharmacist Pemberton’s holy nectar
Extracts from the novel Vådan av att vara Skrake (‘The perils of being Skrake’, Söderström & Co.; Isän nimeen, Otava, 2000)
At the time of Werner’s stay in Cleveland Bruno and Maggie had already been divorced for some years, and in an irreconcilable manner. But they were still interested in their grown-up son, each in their own way; Maggie wrote often, and Werner replied, he wrote at length, and truthfully, for he knew that Bruno and Maggie no longer communicated; to Maggie he could admit that he hated corporate law and bookkeeping, and to her he dared to talk about the raw music he had found on the radio station WJW, he wrote to her that the music of the blacks had body and that he had found a great record store, it was called Rendezvous and was situated on Prospect Avenue and there he had also bought a ticket for a blues concert, wrote Werner, he thought that Maggie would understand. More…
Making nothing happen
30 June 2000 | Authors, Reviews
Jouko Sirola. Photo Sakari Majantie
For a first book, Sisustus (‘Interior decoration’) is unusually self-willed. It is Jouko Sirola’s first book, although his short stories have been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. Sirola’s kindred spirits are not, after all, to be find in the art of the traditional, realist, Finnish short story; instead, for Sirola (born 1963), the surface of the story is like a calm face.
The most important thing is the story behind the uneventfulness. What is spoken by muteness? And what do we dream at the moment when we meet another person in the street, when we pick our keys up from the floor, when we open our mouths to eat? What do we get when we want to buy back the days of the life we have lived? More…
The path-walker
A short story from Sisustus (‘Interior decoration’, Tammi, 2000)
I do not know where I came from. Suddenly, I was just there. I stood on my feet. They support me. I look out of my eyes. I do not see them.
Sounds arrive in my ears. Moment by moment, I distinguish them better. I see the landscape through which I am walking. I distinguish the trees from each other. The path runs between them, and I stare at them, as if staring into a twilight that, when you look more closely, splits into trees, bushes, birds. I feel the roots through the soles of my shoes. I feel the softness of the moss, the pine-cones and the little stones. More…