Midair

 This text is about Frank Conroy's short story Midair (notice the brilliantly imaginative title of my post).

 
The story introduces its readers a few moments of Sean's life that are somehow connected to each other. All these moments take place in high places and involve similar kinds of feelings in a way that our dear dr. Siegmund Freud would have liked.
 All the strong feelings connected to heights (an unexplainably great urge to climb to a steep roof, being afraid of flights etc.) are linked to an incident that took place in Sean's childhood. What caused this life long trauma was that Sean's father, who had some kind of mental disease or disorder, used him as a human shield by clinging him outside the window of of the fifth floor so that the doctor and the nurses of the asylum wouldn't take him back there. Though the incident was lifethreatening, nobody mentioned or explained it to Sean and he forgot it completely.
 Though Sean had no clue of what had happened, the experience of being held dangerously midair  had a tremendous effect on the way he used to behave and react to situations in his adult life. When Sean hears that a child of someone he doesn't personally know has fallen from the window of the eight floor he rushes home to his own children to protect them.
 The psychoanalytic tone isn't there only to claim that an unhappy childhood ruins one's whole life. Sean has had an unbalanced father-son-relationship but it doesn't make him a bad parent: on the contrary he feels great love towards his children and wants to protect them from what he himself fears. He also feels protective and fatherly towards the young man with whom he is stuck in an elevator. He is able to calm the man down because he has faced his own fears first.

 Only when he has handled the things on which the incident in his childhood had an effect on can he clearly remember what had happened.

Whichever cat in the rain

An essay I wrote after reading Ernest Hemingway's short story "Cat in the rain". You can read the very brief short story here.

I also wrote an ending to the story. If you know Italian, maybe you could help me correct the sentence I tried to write in Italian...

The short story "Cat in the Rain" tells about an American couple on a journey in Italy and how the wife wants to rescue a cat from the rainy courtyard.

 When the American girl wants something (and she always does) she needs to get it right away. She is easily pleased but the contentment never lasts very long.

 The story doesn't let the reader know if the cat that the maid brought even was the same cat that had sat outside in the rain. It's always referred to the animal as "a cat", never "the cat".

 When the girl gets what she wants she comes up with a new idea of what she would like to own.

 She has wanted a change. She has wanted to travel to Italy. She has wanted to cut her hair short and now she wants it to grow back. She is a carpe diem hedonist and she is it in a naïve way. Her husband treats her in a bit condescending way. Her naīveté is highlighted by referring to her as a girl, not as a woman.

Ending I wrote to the story:

 "Oh how sweet it is! Look how sweet the kitty is!" the American girl said. Her face glowed. She fetched the cat and held it like it like it was a baby, rocking it.
"Sono contenta che la signora è felice" said the maid and left the room.
 George lifted his eyebrow and frowned a little but then he smiled.
 George flinched. He had fallen asleep with the book on his chest. He looked around. It was still night. The light on the dressing table was on, lighting the face of the girl. She was sitting on the windowsill with the cat on her lap. Rain was pouring down on the public garden and the war monument and against the window. She talked quietly to herself, without noticing that her husband was awake. She was staring at the rainy, dark seashore wit her big, sad doll eyes.
 "Why does it have to be raining?" she murmured. "Look, kitty. I want to go to the beach. I want it to be sunny and nice. Why does it have to be raining?"

Kunnia vai totuus?

Noin vuosi sitten kirjoittamani kirja-arvostelu. Sisältää juonipaljastuksia (no shit).

Edward Morgan Forster syntyi 1879 ja kuoli 1970. Hän kirjoitti teoksen Maurice vuosina 1913-1914. Se kuitenkin julkaistiin vasta hänen kuolemansa jälkeen vuonna 1971. Teoksen on suomentanut Pirkko Talvio-Jaatinen, Gummerus julkaisi suomennoksen 1987.
 Teos käsittelee keskiluokkaisen, keskitasoisen ja keskinkertaisen Maurice Hallin elämää, ajatuksia ja tunteita. Erityisen tarkkailun alle joutuu Mauricen rakkaus hänen yliopistoaikaiseen ystäväänsä Clive Durhamiin. Teoksessa ei kuitenkaan käsitellä homoseksuaalisuuden luonnetta yleisesti vaan ihmisten suhtautumistapoja omaan seksuaalisuuteensa: joillekin se on arkipäiväinen asia, joillekin häpeän aihe joka voi johtaa nykyihmisen korvaan hullulta kuulostaviin tekoihin aikana, jolloin ikimetsien suojiin pakeneminen oli mahdollista. Teoksen pääpaino on ajallisesti Mauricen nuoruudessa, lapsuudesta kerrotaan vain pari yksittäistä tapahtumaa.
 Teos on ajoittaisesta pohdiskelevuudestaan huolimatta nopealukuinen. Se on jaettu neljään osaan, minkä vuoksi keskittyneisyys pysyy vireänä. Alle sivun pituiset luvut olisi voinut yhdistää edelliseen tai seuraavaan lukuun. Jotkut luvut, kuten Hallien luona käyvästä vieraasta kertova luku, tuntuivat asiayhteyteen kuulumattomilta eivätkä vieneet juonta eteenpäin. Osassa luvuista tapahtumat kerrotaan Cliven näkökulmasta, kaksi kertojaa suurentaa samaistumisen mahdollisuutta. Suomennos on paikoitellen ontuvaa, ilmauksia on käännetty sanatarkasti englannista tulkitsemisen sijaan.
 Mauricen yksinkertaisuus tarjoaa kaikessa epätoivoisuudessaankin lukijalle huumoria. Maurice toimii myös ajankuvauksena. Lukija saa todentuntuisen kuvan englantilaisen keskiluokan elämästä maalaiskartanossa. Yliopisto-opiskelijoiden väliset suhteet kuvataan hyvin muodollisina, vanhempia opiskelijoita on kunnioitettava. Ystävyyden osoitukset on kuitenkin sallittu; Mauricen luodessa läheisempää suhdetta Cliveen kävelemällä käsikynkkää hänen kanssaan lukijan eteen maalataan kuvaa viime vuosisadan alun yliopistoelämän sosiaalisesta puolesta.
 Mauricen kertomissa osioissa lukija pääsee seuraamaan nuoren miehen kasvua, rakastumista, katkeraa itsesyytöstä, epätoivoa, itseinhoa ja uuden mahdollisuuden saamisen tuomaa vapaudentunnetta. On kiehtovaa, ettei Mauricea kuvata sankarillisena eikä hänellä ole minkäänlaisia erityiskykyjä tai -piirteitä. Maurice kuvataan yksinkertaisena ja helposti lähestyttävänä muttei kuitenkaan mieleenpainuvana vaan virheitä tekevänä ja niitä katuvana. Clive puolestaan edustaa suhteen älyllistä puolta.
 Kirjan keskivaiheilla Clivessä tapahtuu muutos, hän huomaa, ettei enää rakasta Mauricea. Muutoksen jälkeenkään Cliveä ei kuvata vihollisena tai vääryydentekijänä. Jää lukijan itsensä päätettäväksi onko Clive tehnyt huonon vai hyvän päätöksen vai onko hän tehnyt päätöstä lainkaan. Ehkä hän on vain olosuhteiden uhri, ajan hengen velvollisuuksiinsa sitoma objekti.
 Syy, jonka vuoksi E.M. Forster ei halunnut kirjaansa julkaistavan ennen kuolemaansa ei ollut suoranaisesti sen homoseksuaalinen teema eivätkä niinkään sen rohkeat uskonnonvastaiset argumentit vaan seikka, joka tekee näistä rikollisista kuolemaantuomittuja: onnellinen loppu. Vaikka teos olisi sisältänyt eroottista ja poliittisesti ajan näkemysten vastaista materiaalia, olisi Forster voinut saada siitä julkaisukelpoisen kirjoittamalla päähenkilöt hirteen. Tästä huolimatta hän halusi nimenomaan onnellisen lopun kirjallensa, niinpä teoksen loppuosassa näyttämölle astuu uusi hahmo, Durhamien nuori ja elämänhaluinen riistanvartija Alec, jolle mikään ei ole mahdotonta. Forster halusi Mauricelleen onnellisen elämän silläkin uhalla, että kirjan julkaiseminen viivästyi lähes kuudellakymmenellä vuodella.
 1900-luvun alussa oli riskialtista kirjoittaa homoseksuaalisuudesta, mikä näkyy Mauricenkin ajattelutavassa. Hän hakeutuu lääkärille ja jopa hypnotisoijalle niinsanotun vaivansa takia ja suhtautuu varauksella vapaamielisempiin opiskelutovereihinsa. Vaikka länsimaissa seksuaalisuuden variaatioita pidetäänkin hyväksyttävinä, ei pidä unohtaa tuhansien ihmisten kärsimystä ja pelkoa rangaistuksista ja perheen arvostuksen menettämisestä.

Singer's ethics through the radio

An essay about a short story called "The enormous Radio" by John Cheever. You can read the whole story here.
Please read the source text before reading my interpretation.

Jim and Irene live peacefully without anything distracting their normal ways of doing things. Jim goes to work and Irene takes care of their children. Everything is just fine. Everything is average.
 First the new radio is only intriguing entertainment for Irene, but when she becomes aware of the problems in the neighbourhood she becomes anxious. A question awakes in her mind as well as in the mind of the reader: are we responsible of other people's lives?
 Is it all right not to offer your help if someone is in need of it? Does an individual who lives in a welfare country have a right to live their white bread life using the limited energy sources of the Earth? Is that kind of behaviour morally right? Is that plain laziness or a learned habit? To most of the Western population the fear of disturbing other people's privacy is automatised. One can also ask: is this just an excuse?
 Either way, Irene starts to feel uncomfortable knowing what her neighbours' lives are like. Jim tells her not to mind anyone else's business; other people's worries do not concern him. He is protecting his wife and asks why she has to care so much. The answer is simple: she is humane.
 The unhappy things still exist though we ignore them. The misery won't go away if you close your eyes and ears from it. The world doesn't either get any better if you sit at home worrying about the state of things, buit it's good to be aware of them and act wisely when it comes to any kind of choices.
 The radio and its effect gave the married couple a reason to quarrel about the things that they had kept for themselves. Once the top of the iceberg is on sight, all the rest that has been hidden underneath the surface of their seemingly safe, average life is revealed.

The Mediator in the Family

Here I'm writing about a short story called "The Writer in the Family" by Edgar Laurence Doctorow. If you can find the story somewhere, read it before reading this post.


Jonathan was asked by his aunt Frances to write letters to his grandmother, claiming that they were from his father, Jack, who had actually died. The mission was planned to pretend to the grandmother that Jack was still alive so that she wouldn't get shocked by the piece of news.
 Everything in the world changes when the time passes - even the fashion the grave stones are carved - but not the family. The old lady doesn't want anything to change. Or perhaps she wants it to change the same way everyone else wants but the aunts are too protective towards her and think even a little change might break her.
 Jonathan's mother Ruth is bitter and frustrated because their whole life has been tied to the mother-in-law's desires. She feels like an outsider in the "true family", meaning the blood relatives of the grandmother. Ruth applies for a job in the hospital where they treated Jack (which Jonathan thinks is masochistic)  because she wants to cling on the last memories of her husband, while aunt Frances wants to create a prettier picture, a suitable memory of him.
 Unlike his mother, Jonathan doesn't hate aunt Frances. He writes letters because she wants him to even though it doesn't feel the right thing to do for him. Like his father, he is like a servant; he is easy to manipulate and always does what he is asked to do. They both thought it was a question of honour to please other people, but maybe the servant-mindedness is at least partly a weakness.
 Aunt Frances tells Jonathan to tell his mother that the old lady is going to die soon. Jonathan doesn't do that because he tries to maintain (or rather create) paece between the two sides of the family who are continuously hurting each other's feelings deliberately. Ruth and the aunts started fighting when Jack got into trouble in business life. They argued whose fault it was.
 Jack had not been a very lucky man in his life and when he died, fortune continued working the same way: when he died, the stonecutters had gone on srtike so the family couldn't buy a proper headstone for his grave.
 Aunt Frances thinks it is necessary to write another lettor to grandma because she has bruised herself and is feeling depressed, so it is time for the writer in the family to help again. She tries to make Jonathan feel as if it he had a responsibility to lie to the grandmother. The lesser citizens by blood are a part of the family only when needed by the true family.
 Jonathan's brother Harold thinks that Jonathan should quit writing the faux letters from their father. The brothers discuss why it has to be only Jonathan who writes the letters, why not aunt Frances herself or her well-educated sons?
 Jack never wanted to let his relatives down when they wanted or needed something from him and now it's the same with Jonathan. Harold isn't happy with the situation, he wants Jonathan to stop trying to please aunt Frances.
 It's not only the aunts who want Jonathan to do them favours; also his mother and brother require him to do different things. Jonathan is always being steered and shepherder by others.
 Jonathan has always thought that it is right to be obedient. The letter-writing process changes him: his ethics force him to write about the death of his father in the third letter. He writes that the wrong life has killed Jack. "The wrong life" may refer to the lie they built: that instead of dying Jack travelled to Arizona. Jonathan knows that moving to a desert wasn't something his father would have done. It may also refer to the expectation everyone was making on Jack while he was still alive. Everyone was waiting something from him and thought he was someone else than he really was. Actually Jack was quite content with his life even though he wasn't wealthy. He loved his city, New York, and always discovered new things there.
 When Jonathan found out that his father had served in the Navy he felt bad because he hadn't known it earlier. Still, he knew his father maybe better than anyone else: he had an intuitive feeling that his father would have wanted to be cremated and his ashes to be scattered in the ocean. And that was before he had been told Jack had loved the ocean.

  

                                   

Lepakon sydän voi lyödä 20 kertaa sekunnissa (arvostelu Sofi Oksasen romaanista Baby Jane)

"Piki oli ehdottomasti kaupungin coolein lepakko". Sofi Oksasen toisessa romaanissa Baby Janessa minäkertoja rakastuu Pikiin. Suhteen alku on onnellista aikaa, vilkasta baarielämää ja haaveilua pienistä yhteisistä asioista, Linnanmäestä ja hattaroista, vastasataneesta lumesta. Eikä ihminen muuta tarvitsekaan kuin rakkautta ja haaveita. Ja tietenkin rahaa. Rahaa naiset hankkivat postittamalla asiakkailleen alusvaatteita, joita kertoja ensin käyttää. Mitäpä ei tekisi rahan ja rakkauden eteen, hän ajattelee.

Molemmilla naisilla on mielenterveysongelmia, mutta ne ovat vain yksi osa arkea - ainakin kertoja kuvittelee niin. Pikin paniikkihäiriö kuitenkin pahenee, ja hän poistuu asunnostaan yhä harvemmin ja harvemmin. Käytännön asiat, kaupassakäynnin ja pyykinpesun, hoitaa Pikin entinen naisystävä Bossa. Järjestely tuntuu toimivan, mutta kertojassa se herättää mustasukkaisuutta: Miksen minä vaan Bossa? Lopulta tilanne kärjistyy niin, että Piki eristäytyy täysin asuntoonsa.

"Minä olin väsynyt. Piki oli väsynyt. Bossa oli väsynyt. Me olimme kaikki niin kovin väsyneitä. Niin väsyneitä, että tiesin Bossan voivan jättää Pikin ja kissat ruoatta vaikka kuukaudeksi eikä Piki silti liikkuisi kotiovensa ulkopuolelle mennäkseen kauppaan."

Yhdeksi teoksen teemoista voisikin mainita ihmisten väliset riippuvuussuhteet. Vaikka Oksanen kirjoittaa homoseksuaalisuudesta ja mielenterveyshäiriöistä ja -sairauksista, ne eivät ole teoksen varsinainen teema vaan aiheita joiden kautta teemoja, muun muassa yhteiskunnan prioriteetteja, käsitellään. Näistä pääaiheista Oksanen kirjoittaa näennäisen asiantuntevasti viljellen tekstissään niin tautiluokituksia ja diagnooseja kuin homobaarien nimiäkin. Asiantunteva sävy toiminee sellaisten lukijoiden kohdalla, jotka eivät tunne kyseisiä aihepiirejä, muutoin sävy saattaa ärsyttää lukijaa liialla yleistävyydellään.

Vaikka teos käsittelee rankkoja aiheita, se on kevytlukuinen lyhyiden lukujensa ja onnistuneen tauottamisen ansiosta. Kirja on jaettu viiteen osaan. Kerronta ei etene kronologisesti vaan osa luvuista kertoo päähenkilön myöhemmästä elämästä Joonatanin kanssa. Tämä elämä tuntuu hänestä vääränlaiselta mutta silti helpommalta kuin Pikin kanssa: pirteä ja tehokas täytyy olla vain Joonatanin läsnäollessa, miehen lähdettyä töihin kertoja saa polttaa tupakkaa ketjussa ja lojua kylvyssä tuntikausia tuntien veden hyväilevän ihoaan kuin nainen.

Juonen aukot pitävät lukijan kiinnostuneena ja saavat haluamaan tietää, mitä kertojalle ja Pikille lopulta kävi. Rakenteeseen tuo oman lisänsä sinne tänne ripotellut laulunsanat. Osien alussa ne tuovat teokseen sopivan mausteen (erityisesti Courtney Love -lainausten intermediaalisuus toimii), mutta keskellä tekstiä ne tuntuvat korneilta.

Baby Jane on synkkä kirja synkistä aiheista, joita käsitellään kaunistelemattoman avoimesti, jopa provosoivan kantaaottavasti.

"---mietin, että mikä olis paras ja varmin keino. Se kuulostaa aika varmalta että syö kaikki lääkkeet mitä löytyy, pistää muovipussin päähän ja teippaa sen roudarinteipillä niin, että varmasti tukehtuu omaan oksennukseensa. Ei tässä oikein ole vaihtoehtoja, on hankala saada apua. Aikuinen lapsi. Nuori vanhus. Liikkuva neliraajahalvaantunut."

The Fly

(This is an essay about Katherine Mansfield's short story The Fly. I recommend you to read the story BEFORE you read my essay. You can read it here: You can read it here.)

The story introduces us different kinds of mourning. Mr Woodifield has dealed with the fact that his son is dead, has accepted it and is now able to talk about it in a common way in daily conversations. With the boss it is different. He is devastated when he hears the name of his son mentioned. It feels like he had seen the dead body of his son. He needs peace and feels a need to cry but he can't do it. After the war the boss cried and wept but now that six years has passed from his son's death he can't show his feelings anymore.
 He doesn't want to go to Belgium to see the grave of his son. Apparently it is not a question of money - he has recently had his office done, electric heating and everything - he just doesn't want or can't go there.
 The fly in the story may represent a person in the middle of a grieving process. After being soaked with ink the fly took its time and cleaned its wings carefully over and over again. It did not even know the reason why the ink was dropped: the same way people have to learn to carry on even if there is no concrete reason for their grief. Innocent people die, children get sick, life is unfair, sometimes one person has to deal with an unfair amount of desperate things in their lives. The suffering in life isn't divided evenly among people. But like it became clear in the end of the story, you have to have enough time to recover from your latest grief so that you can bear the next one.

A different kind of blindness

(This is an essay about Raymond Carver's short story Cathedral. Please read the great short story before reading my text so that you can make yor own visualisations and observations: Cathedral)

In the short story "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver a blind man, a friend of the narrator's wife, comes to stay in the narrator's home. The blind man's wife has died. The narrator is unconsciously jealous because the strange man is so close with his wife; they met years ago and have been recording their thoughts and feelings and kept sending the tapes to each other. The relationship between the main character and his wife may not be very close. They are married and with most probability they are used to each other's company but it seems that they don't have very much trust to each other. If they had, the husband wouldn't be so suspicious about the guest.
They eat dinner, drink and use some cannabis. The wife and the blind man are naturally relaxed when they are together, but the protagonist acts uncomfortably when the blind man is around. He has strongly rooted predictions about the blind and when the guest doesn't fill his expectations he's amazed and irritated. He has thought the blind always wear black glasses and carry a cane. And how come a blind man has a beard? He is stuck in his own little bubble where everything has its precise place. If something doesn't fit his schemes it's concidered weird or even hostile.
In addition to the literal blindness, the short story also deals with a different kind of blindness, the blindness that most people suffer from. This blindness is called the fear of the unknown. Being afraid of new things makes us build stereotypes which help us to outline our own world but when it comes to real situations with real people the stereotypes work as a brick wall. This brick wall between us and the rest of the world makes us unreachable for new experiences.
Later at night the wife falls asleep while the blind man asks the storyteller to describe him a cathedral. He has started to feel more familiar with the blind man so he accepts to do it. He starts to draw, the blind man draws with him and finally he closes his eyes, still drawing. At this part of the story the atmosphere is very intense: when the wife wakes up and asks what's going on, her husband shows no response. It seems as if he has found something out.
When the drawing is complete instead of opening his eyes the narrator opens his mind and really starts to see.