Search results for "Huovinen veikko"
Panu Rajala: Hirmuinen humoristi. Veikko Huovisen satiirit ja savotat [The awesome humorist. The satires and logging sites of Veikko Huovinen]
16 May 2013 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Hirmuinen humoristi. Veikko Huovisen satiirit ja savotat
[The awesome humorist. The satires and logging sites of Veikko Huovinen]
Helsinki: WSOY, 2012. 310 p.
ISBN 978-951-0-38952-2
€38, hardback
Author Veikko Huovinen (1927–2009) became widely popular with the publication of his novel Havukka-ahon ajattelija (‘The backwoods philosopher’, 1952). Huovinen, who trained as a forest ranger, spent his life mainly in north-eastern Finland and did not like publicity; the author and theatre scholar Panu Rajala deals with Huovinen’s biography relatively briefly, focusing on a thematic analysis of Huovinen’s extensive and thematically rich output of novels and short stories. He places the the books in the context of Finnish literature, and also examines their film and television adaptations. Huovinen was an intellectually conservative, a highly original humorist; among his books are satirical biographies of Hitler and Stalin. His prose fiction, set in the natural wilds of the North, has not always won the appreciation of pro-modernist critics. Huovinen’s lively and original language is not easy to translate – for example, his only work published in English is a beautiful documentary novel Puukansan tarina (‘Tale of the forest folk’), which received a Finlandia Prize nomination in 1984.
Translated by David McDuff
Special effects
14 June 2012 | Authors, Reviews
Veikko Huovinen. Photo: Harri Nurminen
Depictions of simple country folk who live close to nature, diabolical satire of the powers that be, playful rambling tales.
The humour of Veikko Huovinen has two dimensions: it is learned, intelligent, and insightful, but it is also exuberant and folksy. Critics have made comparisons to Nikolai Gogol and Mark Twain, and not without reason.
Huovinen (1927–2009) began writing stories in 1949 and published his final work in 2007, two years before his death. This half century saw the birth of a broad and multifaceted library, including a good number of works that do not fit any genre as such – Huovinen called his works that lay in the interstices between the short story, causerie and satire ‘short specials’. More…
Veikko Huovinen (1927–2009) in memoriam
23 October 2009 | Authors, In the news
Veikko Huovinen (1927–2009). – Photo: Irmeli Jung /WSOY
Author Veikko Huovinen died on 4 October at his home in Sotkamo, in northern Finland, at the age of 82.
Huovinen was a graduate of the forest research programme at Helsinki University and worked for a period as a forest ranger. In the 1950s he began working as a full-time writer after his first novel, Havukka-ahon ajattelija (‘The thinker of Havukka-aho’, 1952), achieved great success.
Havukka-ahon ajattelija is the story of a stubbornly ruminative backwoods philosopher who ponders natural phenomena and the great political turning points that he hears about on the radio. The novel has been translated into six languages.
The soil that Huovinen’s works spring from is his northern community surrounded by deep forest, and his characters are modelled on its inhabitants: a self-sufficient business owner, a vagrant rascal, an ill-tempered hermit. They withdraw into the shelter of their homes, where the arctic winds and the evil of the world can’t reach them. Such humoresques might bring to mind Mark Twain or the early works of Nikolai Gogol. More…
Out of the body
13 January 2011 | Reviews
Veikko Huovinen. Photo: Irmeli Jung
‘Where will you be spending your eternity?’ ‘A spot of transmigration’, a short story by Veikko Huovinen (1927–2009), immediately confronts its main character, a man named Leevi Sytky, with this ultimate question.
Behind it is the sense of sin and fear of damnation typical of the religious life of northern Finland. Anyone who has made it as far as this final short story of Huovinen’s 1973 collection, Rasvamaksa (‘Fatty liver’) will, however, not make the mistake of taking the question too seriously; something diverting is clearly once again on offer.
Soon Leevi Sytky takes his leave of life in slightly sinful circumstances, but in the hereafter it turns out that these are not looked upon with disapproval. More…
At the sand pit
30 September 1985 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Antti Tuuri. Photo: Jouni Harala
‘After nearly 40 years of observing the Ostrobothnians, I am convinced that they have certain characteristics which explain the historical events that took place there and which also shed light on the region today. I do not know how these characteristics develop, but it appears that heredity, economic factors and even the landscape form the nature of people. Everywhere people who live in the plains are different from those who dwell in the mountains, and from those who fish the archipelagos,’ writes the author Antti Tuuri, himself an Ostrobothnian.
Antti Tuuri’s Pohjanmaa (‘Ostrobothnia’, 1982), which last January was awarded the Nordic Prize for Literature, has now been translated into each language of the Nordic countries. Tuuri’s novel describes the events of one summer day in Ostrobothnia, on the west coast of Finland, where a farming family, the Hakalas, has gathered for the reading of the will of a grandfather who emigrated to the United States in the 1920s.
The inheritance itself is insignificant, but it has brought together the four grandsons, with their wives and children. The story is narrated from the point of view of one of the brothers. The women of the family remain inside while the men take out an automatic pistol which has been kept hidden away since one of them smuggled it home from the Continuation War. The men go off to a sand pit to do some shooting and to drink some illegal home brew. There they meet their former schoolteacher, who joins in with their drinking and shooting. Some surprising events take place as the day’s action unfolds, and Tuuri’s narrator views them in an unsentimental way, describing them matter-of-factly and at times with ironic humour. The men recall the violent history of Ostrobothnia, the years of the Civil War and the right-wing Lapua movement of the 1930s.
The Nordic Prize jury commented that the novel ‘portrays the breaking up of the old society, and conflicts between generations as well as between men and women.’ Tuuri has constructed his novel on conflicts, and the result is a highly dramatic narrative.
An extract from Pohjanmaa (‘Ostrobothnia’)
A Finnish hound dog came out of the woods just beyond the sandpit, stopped at the edge of the pit and started to bark at us. The boys quickly began putting the weapon together. Veikko yelled that you were allowed to shoot a dog running loose in the woods out of hunting season. He kept asking me for cartridges; he’d shoot the dog right away, before it could tear to pieces the young game birds that couldn’t fly yet. I told him to shut up. Seppo finished putting the automatic pistol together and gave it to me. I ran to the car, put the gun down on the floor in front of the back seat and tossed a blanket over it.
When I got back, I saw the teacher coming out of the woods over by the pit. He snapped a leash on the dog and started towards us through the pine grove. The boys sat down around the campfire and began taking swigs of home brew from their cups. More…
Funny in favour (again)
8 June 2012 | In the news
The May list of best-selling Finnish fiction titles, compiled by the Finnish Booksellers’ Association, still features two novels about a grumpy old man (see In the news) by Tuomas Kyrö (a grumpy young man): Mielensäpahoittaja ja ruskeakastike (‘Taking offence and the brown sauce’) and Mielensäpahoittaja (‘Taking offence’, both WSOY) were number one and two.
Number three was a work by a classic humorist: Veikko Huovinen (1927–2009) was a highly original and versatile writer whose career lasted almost for 60 years. A selection of his short prose from 1950 to 2001, previously unpublished or published in various magazines, appeared in May: Luonnonkierto (‘Nature’s cycle’, Siltala) immediately shot up to the third place on the month’s list. (You’ll find one of these texts coming up next on this site!)
As summer was approaching at last, the non-fiction list featured several books on birds, grilling and cooking – as well as aphorisms and other food for thought, traditionally bought for young people graduating from school.
Pop song lyrics
A ‘short special’: a previously unpublished text (written in the 1960s) from Luonnonkierto (‘Nature’s circle’, Siltala, 2012). Introduction by Jarmo Papinniemi
The pop song is a wide, mysterious world. It is like an ocean. Like a snow-covered desert. Like a rose garden. Like a perfume factory. The pop song is as mysterious as spring. The pop song is as whimsical as the restroom of the city hotel in Samarkand. The pop song is as coarse as your father’s eldest brother. Pop songs snag everyone, especially the young and the old. The best pop songs are foreign, because the words make no sense. Pop stars rise into the sky. Lovely young women step into the arena smelling of perfume and sing about love or tell playful stories about animals or nursery rooms. And then on the other end of life the stars go out and start to look for a place to be buried. But before dying they drone on in their gruff voices about the temptations of the big city, and love, which in a certain sense tortured and wore out those concerned…
Up here in Finland, we write and set pop songs to music as well. But I have to say that they aren’t any good. We also translate and water down a lot of foreign hits as well. Well, of course they’re all popular and people hum them in parishes in the city and in the country, but from a critical perspective they stink. Usually the weak point of a pop song is its execrable lyrics. More…
The edge of wordlessness
1 March 2012 | Authors, Reviews
Harri Nordell. Photo: Veikko Somerpuro
The poems of Harri Nordell are a mystery to me. Each time I open one of his books, my reading begins afresh. I have analysed and translated his poems, but the texts have still not become familiar. I have not begun to comprehend them. They always speak to me as if for the first time.
I could not wish for a greater gift from a poem. These poems create a special state of being; I could call it not-knowing or marvelling. I feel I am involved in an unfolding event.
Nordell’s poems open me up, but I am unable to prise them open. I do not want to interpret cryptic expressions, or seek out more explicit meanings for them. I would not wish to write on top of these poems, to mute silence with superfluous words. More…
On the Trans-Siberian express
3 October 2011 | Authors, Reviews
Rosa Liksom. Photo: Veikko Somerpuro
A Finnish girl studying archaeology in Moscow finds herself sharing a train compartment with a Russian man on the long journey from Moscow through Siberia to Ulan Bator. The girl travels for weeks to see the region’s ancient rock-paintings; the man’s destination is a big building site. The drama of the enclosed space is built of two people and two worlds that cannot escape one another.
The story, in Hytti no 6 (‘Compartment number 6’) by Rosa Liksom, develops through small stories and reminiscences as the backgrounds of the girl and the man open up. At the places where the train stops, other people from the steppe and cities of Russia become intertwined with the narrative.
The career of the Lapp writer Rosa Liksom spans more than 25 years and demonstrates a rare ability to master various fields of both writing and the visual arts. In the history of contemporary Finnish prose, her novels and collections of short prose are a fantastic chapter of originally developed Nordic localism and post-modernist world citizenship. Liksom’s first book, short prose, was published in 1985; her work has been translated into 14 languages. More…
The price of success
31 December 2007 | Authors, Reviews
Tuomas Kyrö. Photo: Veikko Somerpuro/WSOY
A Finnish novel – or any fictitious work – that contains inaccurate historical facts can evoke bafflement in its readers, and public disapproval can follow from these ‘errors’. Finnish readers are unaccustomed to postmodernist stylistic devices. The details connected with Finnish wars, in particular, are examined under a magnifying lens.
The fourth novel by Tuomas Kyrö (born 1974), Benjamin Kivi (WSOY, 2007), stretches the boundaries of realism with its tale of a 100-year-old adventurer, written in the style of a memoir. It encompasses changing identities, periods of societal crisis, and war, which protagonist Benjamin Kivi calls simply ‘the killing’. In Finland we’re accustomed to regarding the Winter War (1939–40) and the Continuation War (1941–44) as honourable efforts to defend the country from the Soviet Union. More…
Getting by
18 May 2012 | Non-fiction, Reviews
To school: children on the march – no buses or taxis in the Finnish countryside after the war. Photo: the cover of Kauaksi kotoa
Kauaksi kotoa. Muutoksen sukupolvi kertoo
[Far from home. Stories of the change generation]
Toim. [Ed. by] Anja Salokannel & Kaija Valkonen
Helsinki: Kirjapaja, 2012. 320 p.
ISBN 978-952-247-291-5
€32.90, hardback
The post-war period in Finland was a time of hope and reconstruction, of procreation and tough, grey heroism. Finland picked itself up by the bootstraps, as fathers who had been ‘driven mad in the war’, who took to drink or spat blood because they had shrapnel in their lungs, built veterans’ houses around the small towns and cleared fields in the backwoods. More than 83,000 men were killed in the wars (Winter War 1939–1940, Continuation War 1941–1944).
Mothers worked like men. The baby boomers – the demographic peak which consists of those born between the war years and 1950 (in 1946–1949 more than 100,000 babies were born each year, compared to some 60,000 in 2011) – had to be fed and clothed and educated for a better and more prosperous future.
Now the baby boomers have started to retire. Editors Anja Salokannel and Kaija Valkonen (baby boomers themselves) have compiled the book Kauaksi kotoa. Muutoksen sukupolvi kertoo (‘A long way from home. Stories of the change generation’), in which 21 men and women talk about their lives during the decades of change. More…
Science book of the year
13 January 2011 | In the news
A book on Islamic cuisine and food culture by Helena Hallenberg and Irmeli Perho has won the prize for the Finnish science book of the year (Vuoden tiedekirja), worth €10,000. The prize is awarded by the Suomen Tiedekustantajien Seura, Finnish Science Publishers’ Association, and Tieteellisten seurain valtuuskunta, Federation of Finnish Learned Societies.
Ruokakulttuuri islamin maissa (‘Food culture in Islamic countries’, Gaudeamus) explores both cultural and culinary history in the Near East and other Islamic countries since the sixth century, from the Prophet Muhammad to this day – and yes, the book also contains recipes. Both the authors are academics: Hallenberg is a scholar of Islamic saints and Chinese Muslims’ ideas of health, while Perho specialises in Islamic history of ideas and society.
Cimex lectularius: the bedbug. Photo: Wikipedia
And a honorary mention, worth €2,500, was awarded to a large work, with excellent illustrations, on Heteroptera, an extensive family of bugs, one of which is the bedbug – luckily unknown to most of us. The vast majority of people have no idea, either, of the fact that there are 22 endangered species of these bugs in Finland, the home of 507 different representatives of the Heteroptera family. So, Suomen luteet – johdatus luteiden mielenkiintoiseen maailmaan by Teemu Rintala and Veikko Rinne (‘The bugs of Finland – an introduction to the interesting world of the Heteroptera’, Tibiale) is a lively proof of the amazing biodiversity of Finland.
On Daniel Katz
31 December 1980 | Archives online, Authors
Daniel Katz. Photo: Veikko Somerpuro/WSOY.
Daniel Katz (born 1938) is a member of Finland’s small Jewish community and the first Finnish writer to emerge from that background. The publication of his first book coincided roughly with the appearance in America of a wealth of Jewish literature. Katz has much in common with American Jewish writers, particularly in his parodies of conventional religious practices, but the Jewish community he writes about relates to the general social environment in a very different way. Writers like Philip Roth are concerned with a social group that is tightly hemmed in by its own claustrophobic boundaries, whereas Katz’s Jews, living alongside the reserved and at times withdrawn Finns, stand out as exceptionally extroverted and sociable beings; their Jewishness is not a fetter but their innate key to freedom. More…
New from the archives
5 February 2015 | This 'n' that
Eeva Kilpi. Kuva: Veikko Somerpuro
When we first published this piece, evacuation in Europe was a distant memory. The violent events that were to take place in what was then still Yugoslavia – Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Kosovo – were still to come.
Reading Kilpi’s description of her departure from eastern Karelia as an 11-year-old girl in 1939 with these more recent events in mind makes her evocation of the as-yet-unshattered familiarity of everyday life, the fragility of her prayers that everything will be all right, all the more poignant.
Kilpi (born 1927) is a poet, short-story writer and novelist who shot to international fame with her experimental, erotic novel Tamara (1972; English translation Tamara). She won the Runeberg Prize in 1990 for Talvisodan aika (‘The time of the winter war’), from which this extract is taken.
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