I have spent approximately 1-2 days lately working at the National Library. This place is amazing. It is incredibly quiet, as central as things can get, equipped with an astonishing collection of material and a café downstairs. The great thing is that you cannot take your bag in so you have to think what you need.
As I am writing this, I sit at an old wooden table with a beautiful view to the Senate Square. I ended up here by accident a couple of weeks ago. I had 1,5 hours between meetings and had forgotten my wallet home. There was no point walking to the office or taking the metro home. So I decided to give this place a try.
In the last weeks I have learned to use microfilms to look at newspapers from the 1970s or read articles on cultural policy from the 60s. The most surprising things is that this beautiful place is very very empty. As I for a long time, most people never think about it as a public place. They somehow think it belongs to the university or should only be used by researchers.
Let´s reclaim places like these. Let´s start at the library and work our way to the City Hall. We have somehow forgotten what public means. We too often end up looking at these places through the eyes of the primary user.
I mean what café in Helsinki has all Finnish newspapers from the 19th century onwards, all books published in Finland, every doctoral thesis from the University of Helsinki, all cultural magazines in handy collections and such silence. I wonder if the library people themselves even now what kind of a gem they possess. This place is perhaps the best evidence to how we get more by sharing.
Come over.
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Food Politics
I just got a delayed Christmas present in the form of books. I have been fascinated by the politicization of food for some time now and therefore this present really hit the ball straight out of the park.It´s clear that more and more people are starting to advocate for healthier and more sustainable ways of eating. Brilliant. What seems to work is what we do at Demos as well: giving people tools and tips how to act rather than beating them on the head with information and guilt.
I was actually quite surprised last week to see that TV host Ellen DeGeneres - a stay-at-home mom favourite - had author Jonathan Safran Foer in her show talking about his new book, Eating Animals. In his book Safran Foer explains his journey from a father of a new-born baby wanting to know what to feed his child to an advocate of a vegetarian diet.
If you have followed the debate - in the form of documentaries, celebrity chefs and books - there is nothing new in Safran Foer´s book. But what makes it briliant is that a celebrated bestseller novelist - you might even say a household name - decided to make a big move towards more conscious eating. In the TV interview Safran Foer was simultaneously funny, witty and still critical and factual. I think we get further with that strategy than with the Michael Moore approach.
The other book in the gift bag was journalist-writer Michael Pollan´s pamphlet-like publication Food Rules, An Eater´s Manual. It builds on his bestseller In Defense of Food but makes an excellent move toward simplifying his message. Pollan´s book is concise and something you could have in your bag when you head to do the groceries. The book has 64 tips. Here are some of my favourites:
Rule 3: Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.
Rule 6: Avoid food products that contain more than 5 ingredients.
Rule 12: Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
Rule 21: It´s not food if it´s called by the same name in every language.
Rule 22: Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
Rule 47: Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
Rule 59: Try not to eat alone.
I recommend you buy the book. It´s funny, useful and to the point. The most important contribution by Pollan to the public debate on food is: it´s not that complicated to eat healthy. Common sense gets you far.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Pursuit of Happiness
This blog has been rather quiet - or to be more honest - dead for some time now. My apologies for that. One of my New Year´s resolutions is the following: one post and one post only per week.
The new focus: things making us happier. That takes me back to the name of this blog. My favourite word in the Dutch language, kiplekker, basically means chicken licking good.
I finally made my way through economist Richard Layard´s (pic) classic Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (2005). Layard´s basic argument is that the obstacles we once had for using people´s feelings as a measure of societal success are more or less removed. Brain research today gives us enough evidence to measure happiness and well being. This provides us with an opportunity to move further from economic growth and behaviorism that have driven politics for ages now.
Layard stresses one of the things that we work with a lot at Demos Helsinki: that even if all the material things are well, we are more affluent than we have ever been, that does not result to happiness. In a way we as societies are failing the ultimate test: are we building societies where people do well? Every day greater numbers of people feel like they lack a sense of self, skills to deal with their feelings and a sense of relevance in relation to others. Layard puts special emphasis on issues such as helping the poor of the world, reducing unemployment, treating mental illnesses, finding new measuring criteria next to economic growth and supporting family life as ways to happier societies.
So the blog goal is now set for 2010: once a week a post over a phenomenon, project, advertisement, person, website, sports club that is enough reason to get excited about. There´s one more criteria.
The things covered need to answer YES to the following:
Does it create happiness?
and NO to the following:
Does it harm others?
And finally YES to the following (question taken from Charlie from Make Nubs):
Is it fresh?
More to follow.
The new focus: things making us happier. That takes me back to the name of this blog. My favourite word in the Dutch language, kiplekker, basically means chicken licking good.
I finally made my way through economist Richard Layard´s (pic) classic Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (2005). Layard´s basic argument is that the obstacles we once had for using people´s feelings as a measure of societal success are more or less removed. Brain research today gives us enough evidence to measure happiness and well being. This provides us with an opportunity to move further from economic growth and behaviorism that have driven politics for ages now.
Layard stresses one of the things that we work with a lot at Demos Helsinki: that even if all the material things are well, we are more affluent than we have ever been, that does not result to happiness. In a way we as societies are failing the ultimate test: are we building societies where people do well? Every day greater numbers of people feel like they lack a sense of self, skills to deal with their feelings and a sense of relevance in relation to others. Layard puts special emphasis on issues such as helping the poor of the world, reducing unemployment, treating mental illnesses, finding new measuring criteria next to economic growth and supporting family life as ways to happier societies.
So the blog goal is now set for 2010: once a week a post over a phenomenon, project, advertisement, person, website, sports club that is enough reason to get excited about. There´s one more criteria.
The things covered need to answer YES to the following:
Does it create happiness?
and NO to the following:
Does it harm others?
And finally YES to the following (question taken from Charlie from Make Nubs):
Is it fresh?
More to follow.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Once Were Consumers
The pamphlet Olimme kuluttajia (We Were Consumers, Tammi) published yesterday by Aleksi Neuvonen and Roope Mokka of Demos Helsinki lays out four scenarios for 2023. The book takes scarce resources and higher price of energy as matters of fact and looks at our future within this context. It quotes on one hand Hannah Arendt in advocating that true freedom is not the freedom to own but the freedom for meaningful and public action and on the other hand scientists that we have reached the climax in the amount of core resources. If we do not change our way of living, in 15 years the climate has warmed up to the extent that certain parts of China and the American East Coast are starting to be unbearable to live in. The book follows the line of thought in the public debate now that the recession could actually be an opportunity to reboot.
The theme spreading across the book is the way we tackle climate change. According to Neuvonen and Mokka, most of us wish that there will be a day when we will be told by The Leader what not to do and until then most of us continue flying and buying in the current accelerating speed - fully aware of its consequences. The reaction is the same as a child who covers his eyes and ears to avoid the bad news. According to the book we need to recognise our role in change for as long as we wait for our elected leaders to make that switch, we are somewhat doomed. Over the last few years politics has actually taken its lessons from consumerism - politics is more a service industry answering people´s wishes than about ethics, ambitions or doing the right and responsible thing. This is very clear in political rhetorics of today. Therefore that SUV will only be banned when the big middle class takes another turn in its consumption. The book is a rare but realistic call for individual responsibility together with others.
The scenarios see control rising as we fight for limited resources. Control is also one of the ways to make people change. Rather than listening to our neighbours through the wall, in 15 years we can follow the ecological footprint of our neighbours from a public record Wastebook. In a world of less, we will surely make sure that our neighbours will not be free riding the system. This has been happening already in some countries in smaller scale for instance by people reporting their neighbours to the authorities when they do not recycle their trash.
The book claims that have moved from Social Democratic I Need Politics to more Centre Liberal I Want Politics. We are seeing the emergence of I Can Politics but the true change happens when we make a shift to We Can. When the media, corporations and governments take a bigger role in showing us the interconnectedness, we move from rights and responsibilities to virtues and pursuing truer happiness through responsible action and more meaningful human relationships. It moves discussion from what I want to what we can do.
This liberation from consumerism and move towards citizenship is quite inspiring and Case Obama is a good example of how it functions as a rhetorical tool. But I end up thinking, after reading the book, what happens when the resources really start running out. What are the arguments for building trust? The book paints a relatively beautiful picture of collective action but I feel it slightly - maybe for the argument´s sake - downplays the conflict and difference of opinion on the tools to make the switch. Politics is about deciding on those alternatives. It is not a question of The Good vs. The Bad but different strategies maybe even towards a shared goal. Does the urgency make our political system more responsible or more vicious What kind of leaders to we get, wish and deserve?
Olimme kuluttajia makes a convincing case that we have no alternative but to change. But I recognise I am already somewhat in the inner circle of this stuff. Reading it makes me reorient my professional focus to enhancing those positive developments and using my writing skills to formulate those attractive arguments to convince ever bigger parts of the population. This requires reaching over the aisle and bringing the engineer, marketeer and politician to the same table to build that map of interconnectedness. And yes, this is terribly exciting.
The theme spreading across the book is the way we tackle climate change. According to Neuvonen and Mokka, most of us wish that there will be a day when we will be told by The Leader what not to do and until then most of us continue flying and buying in the current accelerating speed - fully aware of its consequences. The reaction is the same as a child who covers his eyes and ears to avoid the bad news. According to the book we need to recognise our role in change for as long as we wait for our elected leaders to make that switch, we are somewhat doomed. Over the last few years politics has actually taken its lessons from consumerism - politics is more a service industry answering people´s wishes than about ethics, ambitions or doing the right and responsible thing. This is very clear in political rhetorics of today. Therefore that SUV will only be banned when the big middle class takes another turn in its consumption. The book is a rare but realistic call for individual responsibility together with others.
The scenarios see control rising as we fight for limited resources. Control is also one of the ways to make people change. Rather than listening to our neighbours through the wall, in 15 years we can follow the ecological footprint of our neighbours from a public record Wastebook. In a world of less, we will surely make sure that our neighbours will not be free riding the system. This has been happening already in some countries in smaller scale for instance by people reporting their neighbours to the authorities when they do not recycle their trash.
The book claims that have moved from Social Democratic I Need Politics to more Centre Liberal I Want Politics. We are seeing the emergence of I Can Politics but the true change happens when we make a shift to We Can. When the media, corporations and governments take a bigger role in showing us the interconnectedness, we move from rights and responsibilities to virtues and pursuing truer happiness through responsible action and more meaningful human relationships. It moves discussion from what I want to what we can do.
This liberation from consumerism and move towards citizenship is quite inspiring and Case Obama is a good example of how it functions as a rhetorical tool. But I end up thinking, after reading the book, what happens when the resources really start running out. What are the arguments for building trust? The book paints a relatively beautiful picture of collective action but I feel it slightly - maybe for the argument´s sake - downplays the conflict and difference of opinion on the tools to make the switch. Politics is about deciding on those alternatives. It is not a question of The Good vs. The Bad but different strategies maybe even towards a shared goal. Does the urgency make our political system more responsible or more vicious What kind of leaders to we get, wish and deserve?
Olimme kuluttajia makes a convincing case that we have no alternative but to change. But I recognise I am already somewhat in the inner circle of this stuff. Reading it makes me reorient my professional focus to enhancing those positive developments and using my writing skills to formulate those attractive arguments to convince ever bigger parts of the population. This requires reaching over the aisle and bringing the engineer, marketeer and politician to the same table to build that map of interconnectedness. And yes, this is terribly exciting.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Art of Language
There are some things that I absolutely love in the English. One of them is the existence of people like Stephen Fry. People who remain authentic, peculiar and unconventional and still loved by the nation. Fry is one of the leading forces in the British public eye when it comes to cherishing the English language. I highly recommend his autobiography Moab Is My Washpot, which functions as a verbal aerobics class without falling into the common trap of trying to be pretentious. The book is an extraordinary caption of the peculiarities of English public schools.
My admiration for the gentle giant Fry re-emerged yesterday evening when watching Stephen Fry in America, a wonderful BBC series where the actor/writer/presenter travels through 50 American states with a black English taxi. The journey takes him from mansions of East Coast and hippy groups of the deserts to Thanksgiving celebrations in Deep South. The programme is entertaining while respecting the people who take time to show him their daily life.
His approach is something I truly love, not laughing at the common man but really making the effort to understand what drives people. So less Borat-meets-Michael-Moore and more Sir-David-Frost-meets-Oscar-Wilde. He makes fun of phenomena, not of the people and really lives up to his promise: understanding the American soul. He finds new stories of America and with his trip writes a new narrative of the great nation with a Can Do attitude.
My next Fry project will be the podcasts of him reading short stories of, indeed, Oscar Wilde.
My admiration for the gentle giant Fry re-emerged yesterday evening when watching Stephen Fry in America, a wonderful BBC series where the actor/writer/presenter travels through 50 American states with a black English taxi. The journey takes him from mansions of East Coast and hippy groups of the deserts to Thanksgiving celebrations in Deep South. The programme is entertaining while respecting the people who take time to show him their daily life.
His approach is something I truly love, not laughing at the common man but really making the effort to understand what drives people. So less Borat-meets-Michael-Moore and more Sir-David-Frost-meets-Oscar-Wilde. He makes fun of phenomena, not of the people and really lives up to his promise: understanding the American soul. He finds new stories of America and with his trip writes a new narrative of the great nation with a Can Do attitude.
My next Fry project will be the podcasts of him reading short stories of, indeed, Oscar Wilde.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Logistics of Aspiration
London always leaves a bit confused. Even when I have visited this town at least a dozen times by now, its promise remains very lucrative. In a way to me London has some of that attraction that in the case of Los Angeles James Frey describes in his book Bright Shiny Morning: that promise of anything being possible, the promise of starting over, the promise of making it. I find myself being very attracted to this city where one can already question whether the default person exists in terms of age, ethnicity or style.
And then there is the London that you only see when you spend time with people who live here. It is those wonderful cafes, those phenomenal people in those lunch parties, its that ambition you catch when you talk to people about their future. Its drinking that last gin tonic at that upstairs bar too late in the evening and biting into that home-made pakora at that cosy kitchen table. Its those discussions ranging from religion in public life to the differences between X Box and Playstation.
And as a journalist this still is the heaven for me in terms of reading. Walking to that newsstand and with only a few pounds accessing the best writing of today. I always come back with lists of books to buy and clippings of superb articles.
And then, yes, then there is the transport. Its that Jubilee Line stopping between stations for 25 minutes, the Circle Line terminating two stations too early, that bus taking ages in crossing the Thames, sweating through those stinking and boiling hot transfer tunnels and that smell of urine from your fellow passenger. Living in Amsterdam I guess makes you into a spoiled brat but spending 90 minutes underground in reaching your destination is not really something that I would see myself doing every morning. It gives you time to read books though.
Now time for bed, tomorrow we are releasing some good thinking.
And then there is the London that you only see when you spend time with people who live here. It is those wonderful cafes, those phenomenal people in those lunch parties, its that ambition you catch when you talk to people about their future. Its drinking that last gin tonic at that upstairs bar too late in the evening and biting into that home-made pakora at that cosy kitchen table. Its those discussions ranging from religion in public life to the differences between X Box and Playstation.
And as a journalist this still is the heaven for me in terms of reading. Walking to that newsstand and with only a few pounds accessing the best writing of today. I always come back with lists of books to buy and clippings of superb articles.
And then, yes, then there is the transport. Its that Jubilee Line stopping between stations for 25 minutes, the Circle Line terminating two stations too early, that bus taking ages in crossing the Thames, sweating through those stinking and boiling hot transfer tunnels and that smell of urine from your fellow passenger. Living in Amsterdam I guess makes you into a spoiled brat but spending 90 minutes underground in reaching your destination is not really something that I would see myself doing every morning. It gives you time to read books though.
Now time for bed, tomorrow we are releasing some good thinking.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Switch
I was asked to speak to our board tonight with the title: what does Europe mean for young people? This is what I said.
---
During my summer holiday I read a great book by a Finnish young philosopher called Tommi Uschanov. The pamphlet by this quite peculiar character is called What is the matter with the Left. In this book that he had apparently been working on for more than six years he wondered why the European left is doing so badly when most of us buy their values of solidarity and compassion nearly to the full. What Uschanov wrote about the Left’s thinking I feel links well to the subject of this intervention. Uschanov claimed that an overall problem of European social democracy has been to tell people that their understanding of themselves and their priorities is wrong and that only if they would understand that they live on false premises, the society would function better. This was very visible in the 1970s idea in the Nordic countries that there is a Social Democrat in all of us.
In my work with young people – once again I wish to stress that I am not part of this group – I meet engaged and worried young people. These people are busy with a million things at the same time on a personal and local scale. The young video makers and fashion designers I meet also seem to be extremely allergic to fake things. If I was asked to describe the generation just shortly, I would dare to state that their jargon tolerance is the lowest of all generations I know. I see people driven by real emotions, real actions and real skills, not by big ideas, great achievements and global movements.
I think this is where it somewhat goes wrong for Europe. When a generation of personal action is coupled with ambitious ideologies, they detach from each other quickly like oil and water. The message being pushed is about big things such as peace and prosperity where people want a role, they want a genuine feeling and they want an emotion. The question I hear is: what should I do with Europe and what does Europe expect me to do? I really don’t have a compelling answer based on the current paradigms.
In the videos I see online on our projects but also on platforms like YouTube, the majority of the videos are not making explicit statements about the state of the world. They are more saying “this is how I think I am feeling today” or “this is what I think matters to me today”. As a research commissioned by the ECF around the StrangerFestival points out, young people use video for deliberation and they very seldom make their work for a specific audience. Video is in most cases a public tool for self exploration.
A superstructure like Europe is not an issue tackled often when it is nothing you can touch, nothing you can strive for and nothing you can influence in your daily practice. Just as an example we can take last year when the European Union celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. The message put forward was 50 years of peace. A lot of references were made also to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the progress Europe have made since then. I could not help wondering what this all should mean for an 18-year-old today who was minus 32 when the treaty of Rome was signed and just about born when the wall was hammered down. 50 years of peace and now what? When Europe seems to be a deteriorating mega project, it is very difficult to get excited.
Coming back to Uschanov, I feel we need a switch in our thinking. Young people are not stupid and don’t buy Europe when you attach a popstar to it. Europe needs to be demystified and it needs to start from people’s realities. What this video culture offers us, is this pool of deliberations for us to dive into. Now what we are mostly doing is asking them to adjust their reality to a supersystem without no practical implications.
So what could be done? I would have two suggestions:
1. Provide access for more young people. If we want to see a Europe that goes to the skin and feels like something, we need to make sure that more people are involved. With this I mean work that we do for instance with theoneminutesjr by providing access to culture, supporting self-esteem to enter the public sphere and in that sense tackling the symbolic inequality in the public sphere created mostly by white heterosexual men. But we need to allow people to decide what matters to them, which brings me to my second point.
2. And this is more difficult: We need to support connections and curation and help people – both young and old – to make sense and find their place. We need to build links between strangers but on matters that matter to them. This does not mean that people need to agree but we need to work towards exposing commonalities in interest. We need to allow people – young and old - to test, modify and attach rather than buy a message about a superproject. When you start from something that matters to the people, you are already more than half way there. And when these millions of expressive people with millions of aspirations happen to be in Lisbon, Pieksämäki and Cluj, I bet there is a feeling of being part of something bigger than our own village. I really think free self-expression is the key: if I matter to Europe, Europe could matter to me.
---
During my summer holiday I read a great book by a Finnish young philosopher called Tommi Uschanov. The pamphlet by this quite peculiar character is called What is the matter with the Left. In this book that he had apparently been working on for more than six years he wondered why the European left is doing so badly when most of us buy their values of solidarity and compassion nearly to the full. What Uschanov wrote about the Left’s thinking I feel links well to the subject of this intervention. Uschanov claimed that an overall problem of European social democracy has been to tell people that their understanding of themselves and their priorities is wrong and that only if they would understand that they live on false premises, the society would function better. This was very visible in the 1970s idea in the Nordic countries that there is a Social Democrat in all of us.
In my work with young people – once again I wish to stress that I am not part of this group – I meet engaged and worried young people. These people are busy with a million things at the same time on a personal and local scale. The young video makers and fashion designers I meet also seem to be extremely allergic to fake things. If I was asked to describe the generation just shortly, I would dare to state that their jargon tolerance is the lowest of all generations I know. I see people driven by real emotions, real actions and real skills, not by big ideas, great achievements and global movements.
I think this is where it somewhat goes wrong for Europe. When a generation of personal action is coupled with ambitious ideologies, they detach from each other quickly like oil and water. The message being pushed is about big things such as peace and prosperity where people want a role, they want a genuine feeling and they want an emotion. The question I hear is: what should I do with Europe and what does Europe expect me to do? I really don’t have a compelling answer based on the current paradigms.
In the videos I see online on our projects but also on platforms like YouTube, the majority of the videos are not making explicit statements about the state of the world. They are more saying “this is how I think I am feeling today” or “this is what I think matters to me today”. As a research commissioned by the ECF around the StrangerFestival points out, young people use video for deliberation and they very seldom make their work for a specific audience. Video is in most cases a public tool for self exploration.
A superstructure like Europe is not an issue tackled often when it is nothing you can touch, nothing you can strive for and nothing you can influence in your daily practice. Just as an example we can take last year when the European Union celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. The message put forward was 50 years of peace. A lot of references were made also to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the progress Europe have made since then. I could not help wondering what this all should mean for an 18-year-old today who was minus 32 when the treaty of Rome was signed and just about born when the wall was hammered down. 50 years of peace and now what? When Europe seems to be a deteriorating mega project, it is very difficult to get excited.
Coming back to Uschanov, I feel we need a switch in our thinking. Young people are not stupid and don’t buy Europe when you attach a popstar to it. Europe needs to be demystified and it needs to start from people’s realities. What this video culture offers us, is this pool of deliberations for us to dive into. Now what we are mostly doing is asking them to adjust their reality to a supersystem without no practical implications.
So what could be done? I would have two suggestions:
1. Provide access for more young people. If we want to see a Europe that goes to the skin and feels like something, we need to make sure that more people are involved. With this I mean work that we do for instance with theoneminutesjr by providing access to culture, supporting self-esteem to enter the public sphere and in that sense tackling the symbolic inequality in the public sphere created mostly by white heterosexual men. But we need to allow people to decide what matters to them, which brings me to my second point.
2. And this is more difficult: We need to support connections and curation and help people – both young and old – to make sense and find their place. We need to build links between strangers but on matters that matter to them. This does not mean that people need to agree but we need to work towards exposing commonalities in interest. We need to allow people – young and old - to test, modify and attach rather than buy a message about a superproject. When you start from something that matters to the people, you are already more than half way there. And when these millions of expressive people with millions of aspirations happen to be in Lisbon, Pieksämäki and Cluj, I bet there is a feeling of being part of something bigger than our own village. I really think free self-expression is the key: if I matter to Europe, Europe could matter to me.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
How Do You Do, Dear?
I have never felt a particular need to hide my enthusiasm over Britain. I mean of course they have their own complexes (and lack of cuisine of their own) but at the same time it is the home of the English language, one of the political systems most strongly founded on the power of verbal argumentation and it still runs some of the best publications in the world. At a recent event on European culture I remember an Italian curator confessing that he actually thinks today's best literature comes from the US and Britain.
There are very few newspapers that would compete in quality with The Observer, the Guardian's weekend edition. I have made it into a habit to buy it on Sundays (even if they really rip you off by charging over four euros for it) and spending around 2 hours going it through. Such a delight especially on a sunny cafe terrace.
Yesterday I also discovered the Guardian's podcasts. They remind me how poor my English still is. I am a novice compared to the journalists now doing their word acrobatics also on my iPod. The podcasts also remind you how our Euro-English is mostly just English for Dummies. Or to be more on the mark, I think English for Robots Understanding Clear and Simple Sentences.
My favourites by now are Jason Solomon's film podcast and the Book Review podcast. Youngish Solomon has this amusingly posh English accent with an ADHD-ish enthusiasm competing with CNN's Richard Quest. In the latest episode his wordplay showed the true Clash of Civilisations of today when he interviewed the Michael Moore v. 2.0, Morgan "Supersize Me" Spurlock. Oxford met Wal-Mart. I do however hope that Solomon would at times give room to his colleague, one of best film critics alive, Mr Philip French. I want to hear his voice.
Regarding voice, some people surprise you. The book podcas's interview with novelist Hanif Kureishi surprised me. I did not expect him to sound so much like Jeremy Irons. Very compelling indeed.
There are very few newspapers that would compete in quality with The Observer, the Guardian's weekend edition. I have made it into a habit to buy it on Sundays (even if they really rip you off by charging over four euros for it) and spending around 2 hours going it through. Such a delight especially on a sunny cafe terrace.
Yesterday I also discovered the Guardian's podcasts. They remind me how poor my English still is. I am a novice compared to the journalists now doing their word acrobatics also on my iPod. The podcasts also remind you how our Euro-English is mostly just English for Dummies. Or to be more on the mark, I think English for Robots Understanding Clear and Simple Sentences.
My favourites by now are Jason Solomon's film podcast and the Book Review podcast. Youngish Solomon has this amusingly posh English accent with an ADHD-ish enthusiasm competing with CNN's Richard Quest. In the latest episode his wordplay showed the true Clash of Civilisations of today when he interviewed the Michael Moore v. 2.0, Morgan "Supersize Me" Spurlock. Oxford met Wal-Mart. I do however hope that Solomon would at times give room to his colleague, one of best film critics alive, Mr Philip French. I want to hear his voice.
Regarding voice, some people surprise you. The book podcas's interview with novelist Hanif Kureishi surprised me. I did not expect him to sound so much like Jeremy Irons. Very compelling indeed.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Optimism Is An Obligation
I just got back from Andrew Keen's lecture at Felix Meritis. Keen has made a fortune during the last year's by writing a bestseller called The Cult of the Amateur where he attacks the Web 2.0 phenomenon. According to Keen, we are not witnessing growing democracy but public masturbation of narcissists and a race to the bottom. As Keen puts it:"Most of us aren't talented. Most of us have nothing to say." According to Andrew Keen true democracy is not handing people the tools for self-expression, it is providing articles of professional journalists globally to everyone. "One learns about the world by listening to experts", he points out.
People like Keen frustrate me. He has found a segment in the market and hit it by simplifying his arguments to a cynical provocation piece. Personally I find it so sad when I witness professional writers choosing full pessimism as their final resting place. According to Keen, Web 2.0 is not about Wisdom of the Crowd, he thinks it is the Rule of the Mob lead by oligarchs such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Page of Google.
I am right on the hit list of Keen's attack. We launched today a new version of www.strangerfestival.com which links videos by those vicious amateurs thematically and allows just everyone to even comment on them. Already now the thematic map shows fascinating aspects such as the amount of violence compared to religion. Come and have a look.
I get annoyed by attacks such as Keen's which blame user-generated culture for everything from drop in CD sales to falling subsciption rates of newspapers. Keen consciously forgets that at the same time as the Internet fosters blogs which are all about Me-Me-Me, it also creates opportunities for more people to reach quality and share quality. It allows people to gain recognition and creates a sense of belonging. Borrowing an idea of Karen Spaink from today: the goal of videos like the ones in StrangerFestival is not to prove that amateurs are as good as journalists and artists, not at all. We are talking of a new culture which creates its own narratives, frameworks and rules. Sometimes the goal is to change the world, sometimes it is just to share a feeling with friends of like-minded. Sometimes you reveal systematic torture by governments, sometimes you tell about struggling sleepless nights with a newborn, at times you want to show your holiday pictures to your loved ones and sometimes you tell about losing your legs in a bomb in Iraq.
Pessimism like Keen's is easy but not helpful. As Karen Spaink asked smartly:"So should we just tell people to shut up?" Maybe it my studies in political science but according to me this does not sound like spreading democracy, Mr Keen.
People like Keen frustrate me. He has found a segment in the market and hit it by simplifying his arguments to a cynical provocation piece. Personally I find it so sad when I witness professional writers choosing full pessimism as their final resting place. According to Keen, Web 2.0 is not about Wisdom of the Crowd, he thinks it is the Rule of the Mob lead by oligarchs such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Page of Google.
I am right on the hit list of Keen's attack. We launched today a new version of www.strangerfestival.com which links videos by those vicious amateurs thematically and allows just everyone to even comment on them. Already now the thematic map shows fascinating aspects such as the amount of violence compared to religion. Come and have a look.
I get annoyed by attacks such as Keen's which blame user-generated culture for everything from drop in CD sales to falling subsciption rates of newspapers. Keen consciously forgets that at the same time as the Internet fosters blogs which are all about Me-Me-Me, it also creates opportunities for more people to reach quality and share quality. It allows people to gain recognition and creates a sense of belonging. Borrowing an idea of Karen Spaink from today: the goal of videos like the ones in StrangerFestival is not to prove that amateurs are as good as journalists and artists, not at all. We are talking of a new culture which creates its own narratives, frameworks and rules. Sometimes the goal is to change the world, sometimes it is just to share a feeling with friends of like-minded. Sometimes you reveal systematic torture by governments, sometimes you tell about struggling sleepless nights with a newborn, at times you want to show your holiday pictures to your loved ones and sometimes you tell about losing your legs in a bomb in Iraq.
Pessimism like Keen's is easy but not helpful. As Karen Spaink asked smartly:"So should we just tell people to shut up?" Maybe it my studies in political science but according to me this does not sound like spreading democracy, Mr Keen.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Class Dismissed
Today over lunch at work we had a heated discussion on diversity. It was pointed out that very often people make assumptions on your background purely based on your nationality or looks and it seems to be widely shared notion that we all have a middle class background. Also I have heard several times the comment:"Oh you would not understand, you come from Finland." This usually refers to me not understanding hardships or conflicts or social struggle. These are often people who have never been to Finland and who easily mix Finland with for instance Sweden which has not had a war in centuries. A colleague of mine mentioned wisely today:"I mean we spend eight hours together every day and you know nothing about my family but you make a lot of assumptions."
Last weekend I read with great pleasure my friend Laura Kolbe's book on social classes in Finland. The goal of Professor of European History Kolbe and Cultural Anthropologist Katriina Järvinen was to break the silence on socio-economic backgrounds in Finland and shed light on the fact that we all do not belong to the middle class and that social mobility works both ways. The book is based on interviews and addresses issues of shame, humiliation and joy in a fresh and rare manner. Kolbe and Järvinen encourage us all to talk openly about class.
They pick on a highly important issue. Finland is not a flat society where everyone has the same chances. Although the social mobility in general has been rapidly upwards over the last few decades, only between 2003-2007 more than 100.000 new people were classified as poor in Finland. Finland had last year 650.000 people earning less than 750 euros per month (from a population of 5 million). Accidentally, in the project that I run, the researchers of Demos were last week in Finland interviewing young people and it was heartwarming to hear from them that the Finnish teenagers are concerned about the growing difference between the haves and the have nots.
To join Kolbe's and Järvinen's movement, I could say that I have belonged to the middle class all my life, maybe even upper middle class. My parents are part of the generation that experienced the fast urbanisation of Finland and who still believe passionately on the empowering role of education. We were never swimming in money but we never lacked a single thing. The economic recession of Finland in the 90s did not influence me in the same way as it did my friends from Eastern or Northern Finland. I remember one of my best friends telling how she saw it all through her mother working as a social worker and her father running his own company.
I am part of the generation Kolbe describes as the generation from the suburbs with detachment to the nation state and not a strong sense of community to the physical surroundings. Me and my friends belong to subscenes in Finland which can also be found from other European countries. My relationship with the countryside could well be described as awkward.
But I am conscious of my background. My mother comes from a big family which experienced the high price Finland paid after the Second World War. My grandmother had to abandon her home within a few hours and they were settled to a new part of Finland. On my father's side our family brings together Swedish-speaking bourgeois and Finnish-speaking working class. My uncle was a worker's son who was exceptionally allowed to play on the tennis court of the better people. Even our last name is part of the story of a birth of a nation: Lindstedt was changed into Laitio as part of the patriotic dream of an independent Finland.
I am grateful for the opportunities Finland has given me but I don't think it is all of my own doing. In my work I see constantly that we do not start from an even playing field. Class still matters in the same way as gender or ethnicity. Only for raising your own class consciousness, I recommend reading the book.
Last weekend I read with great pleasure my friend Laura Kolbe's book on social classes in Finland. The goal of Professor of European History Kolbe and Cultural Anthropologist Katriina Järvinen was to break the silence on socio-economic backgrounds in Finland and shed light on the fact that we all do not belong to the middle class and that social mobility works both ways. The book is based on interviews and addresses issues of shame, humiliation and joy in a fresh and rare manner. Kolbe and Järvinen encourage us all to talk openly about class.
They pick on a highly important issue. Finland is not a flat society where everyone has the same chances. Although the social mobility in general has been rapidly upwards over the last few decades, only between 2003-2007 more than 100.000 new people were classified as poor in Finland. Finland had last year 650.000 people earning less than 750 euros per month (from a population of 5 million). Accidentally, in the project that I run, the researchers of Demos were last week in Finland interviewing young people and it was heartwarming to hear from them that the Finnish teenagers are concerned about the growing difference between the haves and the have nots.
To join Kolbe's and Järvinen's movement, I could say that I have belonged to the middle class all my life, maybe even upper middle class. My parents are part of the generation that experienced the fast urbanisation of Finland and who still believe passionately on the empowering role of education. We were never swimming in money but we never lacked a single thing. The economic recession of Finland in the 90s did not influence me in the same way as it did my friends from Eastern or Northern Finland. I remember one of my best friends telling how she saw it all through her mother working as a social worker and her father running his own company.
I am part of the generation Kolbe describes as the generation from the suburbs with detachment to the nation state and not a strong sense of community to the physical surroundings. Me and my friends belong to subscenes in Finland which can also be found from other European countries. My relationship with the countryside could well be described as awkward.
But I am conscious of my background. My mother comes from a big family which experienced the high price Finland paid after the Second World War. My grandmother had to abandon her home within a few hours and they were settled to a new part of Finland. On my father's side our family brings together Swedish-speaking bourgeois and Finnish-speaking working class. My uncle was a worker's son who was exceptionally allowed to play on the tennis court of the better people. Even our last name is part of the story of a birth of a nation: Lindstedt was changed into Laitio as part of the patriotic dream of an independent Finland.
I am grateful for the opportunities Finland has given me but I don't think it is all of my own doing. In my work I see constantly that we do not start from an even playing field. Class still matters in the same way as gender or ethnicity. Only for raising your own class consciousness, I recommend reading the book.
Friday, October 26, 2007
We are still here
Article published in Turkish in Bant magazine (issue 35)
A stunningly beautiful woman in a bright-coloured dress carrying a water canister on her head in the tormenting heat of a desert. A group of wide-eyed children with bloated stomachs staring straight into the camera with flies on their faces. A corpse of a black man pecked by vultures. Thousands and thousands of tents, thousands of people waiting in line for fresh water.
We’ve all seen these images over and over again. As time goes by, the killings of dozens and hundreds of people in Darfur or starvation in Ethiopia stop being breaking news and we turn for new catastrophes and new imagery. Dave Eggers’ latest novel What is the What (Hamish Hamilton 2006) follows the path of Valentino Achak Deng from the Sudanese village of Marial Bai to a suburb of Atlanta. The biography is a powerful slap on the Western face. We cannot dare to forget.
Eggers’ first novel, autobiography A Heartbreaking Work of A Staggering Genius was a bestseller worldwide. The tale of a young man in a somewhat late puberty bringing up his brother alone was praised for the extraordinary combination of wit and intimacy. The novelist’s involvement in supporting young writers through his publishing house McSweeney’s and founding of creative writing schools into American suburbs turned him quickly into a young star and a pet of the media. Although he has published a novel and short stories during the last years, What is the What is Eggers’ strongest and most passionate work since the autobiography. Valentino Achak Deng’s story is an extremely unsettling take on the human suffering behing the newsfeed. Through Valentino the common images of the conflict and famine suddenly get a human face.
Stylistically What is the What continues on the familiar path from Eggers’ previous novels. He has the patience for details whether when describing how Valentino buries his friend on the walk through the Sudanese desert or how it feels when burglars drop a phonebook right on your face. Eggers has told in the numerous interviews on the novel that he spent nearly two years with Valentino including a trip to Sudan. The intimate contact between the author and the protagonist grabs the reader firmly from the first page. Dave Eggers as a white New Yorker amazes with his skill to get skin-deep on how life is in a refugee camp or a Sudanese village. Eggers’ eye for absurdity and humour carries the book through the rough incidents for instance by describing the way the often naïve Western and Japanese aid workers are perceived by the refugees.
One cannot complete the novel without being moved and shaken. What is the What is a masterpiece in showing parallel the inequality of the American health care system and the hatred and complexity feeding the conflict in Sudan. Valentino Achak Deng’s life reminds the reader that refugees like him are not ignorant bystanders but people with dreams, anger, families and joys. During his life by now Deng has already gone through things no human being ought to experience. Teenager boys should not be seeing their friends losing the will to live or witnessing senseless killing. ”The unknown boys ran toward her”, he describes the violence feeding violence in Sudan. “Achor Achor stayed with me. When they were twenty feet from her, the woman turned, lifted a gun from the grass, and with her eyes full of white, she shot the taller boy through the heart. I could see the bullet leaving his back. His body kneeled and then fell on its side, his head landing before his shoulder.”
What is the What shows the ambitions of the thousands of Sudanese refugees in the United States without patronising them or denying their dignity. It also demonstrates to European readers how the American society simultaneously as a system treats the weakest like dirt but on the individual level opens their homes out of the sincere desire to help. Valentino Achak Deng’s journey from Eastern Africa to the Land of Hope and Glory depicts the frustration when you are denied from stability and forced to keep on running. ”I ran past villages that had been and were no more, ran past buses that were burned from the inside out, hands and faces pressed to the glass. Damn you all. Damn the living, damn the dead.”
The benefits from the book are donated to a foundation supporting Valentino’s education and the overall situation of the so-called Sudanese Lost Boys in the United States. Even if that alone would be reason enough to purchase the book, the best reason for giving your time for Valentino’s struggle is to be reminded of our privileged situation and therefore our responsibility to help.
Tommi Laitio
Eggers, Dave (2006): What is the What. Hamish Hamilton.
(Illustration by Hayal Pozanti)
A stunningly beautiful woman in a bright-coloured dress carrying a water canister on her head in the tormenting heat of a desert. A group of wide-eyed children with bloated stomachs staring straight into the camera with flies on their faces. A corpse of a black man pecked by vultures. Thousands and thousands of tents, thousands of people waiting in line for fresh water.
We’ve all seen these images over and over again. As time goes by, the killings of dozens and hundreds of people in Darfur or starvation in Ethiopia stop being breaking news and we turn for new catastrophes and new imagery. Dave Eggers’ latest novel What is the What (Hamish Hamilton 2006) follows the path of Valentino Achak Deng from the Sudanese village of Marial Bai to a suburb of Atlanta. The biography is a powerful slap on the Western face. We cannot dare to forget.
Eggers’ first novel, autobiography A Heartbreaking Work of A Staggering Genius was a bestseller worldwide. The tale of a young man in a somewhat late puberty bringing up his brother alone was praised for the extraordinary combination of wit and intimacy. The novelist’s involvement in supporting young writers through his publishing house McSweeney’s and founding of creative writing schools into American suburbs turned him quickly into a young star and a pet of the media. Although he has published a novel and short stories during the last years, What is the What is Eggers’ strongest and most passionate work since the autobiography. Valentino Achak Deng’s story is an extremely unsettling take on the human suffering behing the newsfeed. Through Valentino the common images of the conflict and famine suddenly get a human face.
Stylistically What is the What continues on the familiar path from Eggers’ previous novels. He has the patience for details whether when describing how Valentino buries his friend on the walk through the Sudanese desert or how it feels when burglars drop a phonebook right on your face. Eggers has told in the numerous interviews on the novel that he spent nearly two years with Valentino including a trip to Sudan. The intimate contact between the author and the protagonist grabs the reader firmly from the first page. Dave Eggers as a white New Yorker amazes with his skill to get skin-deep on how life is in a refugee camp or a Sudanese village. Eggers’ eye for absurdity and humour carries the book through the rough incidents for instance by describing the way the often naïve Western and Japanese aid workers are perceived by the refugees.
One cannot complete the novel without being moved and shaken. What is the What is a masterpiece in showing parallel the inequality of the American health care system and the hatred and complexity feeding the conflict in Sudan. Valentino Achak Deng’s life reminds the reader that refugees like him are not ignorant bystanders but people with dreams, anger, families and joys. During his life by now Deng has already gone through things no human being ought to experience. Teenager boys should not be seeing their friends losing the will to live or witnessing senseless killing. ”The unknown boys ran toward her”, he describes the violence feeding violence in Sudan. “Achor Achor stayed with me. When they were twenty feet from her, the woman turned, lifted a gun from the grass, and with her eyes full of white, she shot the taller boy through the heart. I could see the bullet leaving his back. His body kneeled and then fell on its side, his head landing before his shoulder.”
What is the What shows the ambitions of the thousands of Sudanese refugees in the United States without patronising them or denying their dignity. It also demonstrates to European readers how the American society simultaneously as a system treats the weakest like dirt but on the individual level opens their homes out of the sincere desire to help. Valentino Achak Deng’s journey from Eastern Africa to the Land of Hope and Glory depicts the frustration when you are denied from stability and forced to keep on running. ”I ran past villages that had been and were no more, ran past buses that were burned from the inside out, hands and faces pressed to the glass. Damn you all. Damn the living, damn the dead.”
The benefits from the book are donated to a foundation supporting Valentino’s education and the overall situation of the so-called Sudanese Lost Boys in the United States. Even if that alone would be reason enough to purchase the book, the best reason for giving your time for Valentino’s struggle is to be reminded of our privileged situation and therefore our responsibility to help.
Tommi Laitio
Eggers, Dave (2006): What is the What. Hamish Hamilton.
(Illustration by Hayal Pozanti)
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Red cottage and a potato field
Been on autumn holiday now for more or less a week. Started in Helsinki, went to Rautalampi in central Finland for a weekend, stopped in Tampere, back to Helsinki and currently in Tallinn for work. I have opened my work email only twice during this holiday which I think is a new record.
It was a splendid idea to start the trip by going to our summer house for the weekend with my parents and my uncle. If I would have just stayed in Helsinki, I would not have been able to drop my tempo from the working one to a holiday one. I would have kept going from a meeting to another like in Amsterdam. Now I had good food, slept late, went to the sauna twice and finished a book, Haruki Murakami's strange but fascinating Kafka on the Shore. Big ass feng shui.
They say every Finn's dream is a house in the countryside, by a lake and growing one's own potatoes. Not mine even if I support policies that keep the rural areas alive and do not turn them into one big resort. Even if I absolutely love going to the country house for a weekend or even for some weeks, I need people around me. The suburban boy has turned into a city boy and not turning back. But as living with constant background noise, it is amazing being in a place where you stand outside around midnight, it is completely dark and fully silent. It's like charging up.
It was a splendid idea to start the trip by going to our summer house for the weekend with my parents and my uncle. If I would have just stayed in Helsinki, I would not have been able to drop my tempo from the working one to a holiday one. I would have kept going from a meeting to another like in Amsterdam. Now I had good food, slept late, went to the sauna twice and finished a book, Haruki Murakami's strange but fascinating Kafka on the Shore. Big ass feng shui.
They say every Finn's dream is a house in the countryside, by a lake and growing one's own potatoes. Not mine even if I support policies that keep the rural areas alive and do not turn them into one big resort. Even if I absolutely love going to the country house for a weekend or even for some weeks, I need people around me. The suburban boy has turned into a city boy and not turning back. But as living with constant background noise, it is amazing being in a place where you stand outside around midnight, it is completely dark and fully silent. It's like charging up.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
We seem to need a ´them´ for us to be ´us´
A week ago I attended the 50th birthday party of a dear friend of mine in Helsinki. Many of the speakers emphasised how Helsinki is a European metropole - a true mix of cultures. All the speakers in that event were historians and therefore they looked things from a perspective of a century pointing out - rightly so - that in the beginning of the 1900s one could easily hear Finnish, Russian and Swedish on the streets of the city.
As living in Amsterdam in a neigbourhood with more than 50 % of the population with a non-European descent, Helsinki is still extremely homogenous. Helsinki is still far from being a city where white man would not be the default option. The level of multiculturalism can be explained by analysing the Finnish multiculturalism debate - in Finland the discussion dwells still around tolerance and anti-discrimination rather than inclusion, coexistence, joint rules and reciprocity.
When one looks at Helsinki and Finland on a scale of 20 years and from a personal perspective of a once migrant, the picture turns out to be somewhat different. My Finnish friend Umayya Abu-Hanna's new book Sinut is a moving and honest take on the way the small nation in the North deals with the world. Or in many cases, on the way that it doesn't.
Quote:
"I have never encountered that the taste of mämmi or sauna would cause problems. The basic problem is losing yourself, the attempt to recognise oneself in this individual who functions in Finland. Here I get back to the point that quantity matters. In big cities where one has lots of people who have arrived from different cultures and people who are outsiders even in those cultures, there is a greater probability at least at times to be heard as oneself. In a place like this also the majority culture has learned to interpret and see differing ways to be and live." (translation from Finnish by me)
In her book she goes through incidents of pure racism and xenophobia, often practised by highly educated people (like employers) and often without the people realising themselves the fu**ed up value structures they are communicating. She cleverly breaks and builds again the notion of identity. The book brought me into tears with its frankness for instance when Umayya writes about feeling scared in a Finnish hospital. What really made me love the book was the lively way she describes also incidents when she has fallen short or just given in but also when Finns have opened their hearts and homes for her.
Finland still has a long way to go in order to be sinut (Finnish word for being comfortable with yourself and the title of Umayya's book) with a mixture of cultures, habits and customs. We still simplify other cultures while demanding specificity when people deal with us.
Umayya's compassion and love for Finland is obvious throughout the book. I am confident that many readers will be irritated by her criticism. But by seeing her as one of us rather than as an outsider the criticism is only welcome - we all bitch every now and then about our loved ones but will get on barricades if we would hear the same things from outsiders. 20 years should be more than enough to claim one's experiences as Finnish. The best thing in Umayya's book, however, is the optimistic underlying tone - we are still far but we have travelled far in 20 years.
"When one has lived her entire adult life in this culture and feels being part of it, it is impossible to work if everything you do is seen from another angle. Every journalist feels that it is necessary and is expected that one is building the community with the observations, conclusions and stories. One criticises injustice. From my perspective my position is Finnish. Here is the biggest contradiction: when I see myself participating as myself in a discourse and building of my society, in the eyes of some I break an unwritten or maybe written rule which states that Finnishness is a clear definition which I do not fit in to."
As living in Amsterdam in a neigbourhood with more than 50 % of the population with a non-European descent, Helsinki is still extremely homogenous. Helsinki is still far from being a city where white man would not be the default option. The level of multiculturalism can be explained by analysing the Finnish multiculturalism debate - in Finland the discussion dwells still around tolerance and anti-discrimination rather than inclusion, coexistence, joint rules and reciprocity.
When one looks at Helsinki and Finland on a scale of 20 years and from a personal perspective of a once migrant, the picture turns out to be somewhat different. My Finnish friend Umayya Abu-Hanna's new book Sinut is a moving and honest take on the way the small nation in the North deals with the world. Or in many cases, on the way that it doesn't.
Quote:
"I have never encountered that the taste of mämmi or sauna would cause problems. The basic problem is losing yourself, the attempt to recognise oneself in this individual who functions in Finland. Here I get back to the point that quantity matters. In big cities where one has lots of people who have arrived from different cultures and people who are outsiders even in those cultures, there is a greater probability at least at times to be heard as oneself. In a place like this also the majority culture has learned to interpret and see differing ways to be and live." (translation from Finnish by me)
In her book she goes through incidents of pure racism and xenophobia, often practised by highly educated people (like employers) and often without the people realising themselves the fu**ed up value structures they are communicating. She cleverly breaks and builds again the notion of identity. The book brought me into tears with its frankness for instance when Umayya writes about feeling scared in a Finnish hospital. What really made me love the book was the lively way she describes also incidents when she has fallen short or just given in but also when Finns have opened their hearts and homes for her.
Finland still has a long way to go in order to be sinut (Finnish word for being comfortable with yourself and the title of Umayya's book) with a mixture of cultures, habits and customs. We still simplify other cultures while demanding specificity when people deal with us.
Umayya's compassion and love for Finland is obvious throughout the book. I am confident that many readers will be irritated by her criticism. But by seeing her as one of us rather than as an outsider the criticism is only welcome - we all bitch every now and then about our loved ones but will get on barricades if we would hear the same things from outsiders. 20 years should be more than enough to claim one's experiences as Finnish. The best thing in Umayya's book, however, is the optimistic underlying tone - we are still far but we have travelled far in 20 years.
"When one has lived her entire adult life in this culture and feels being part of it, it is impossible to work if everything you do is seen from another angle. Every journalist feels that it is necessary and is expected that one is building the community with the observations, conclusions and stories. One criticises injustice. From my perspective my position is Finnish. Here is the biggest contradiction: when I see myself participating as myself in a discourse and building of my society, in the eyes of some I break an unwritten or maybe written rule which states that Finnishness is a clear definition which I do not fit in to."
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Getting under her skin
Coming back from holiday, getting back to work - never an easy combination. Moving in 24 hours from a nice cafe in Montmartre in Paris to the exciting world of quarterly budget monitoring takes some time to get used to. Getting there now, after three days.
Good literature helped the blow though. Ian McEwan's latest, On Chesil Beach, was next on my list after Austen. Expectations were set high after Amsterdam and Saturday where he proves his amazing talent of getting under the skin of people in highly different fields of life than his own. Especially the way he captures the mindset of Saturday's main character, a talented surgeon and a family man, is just out of this world. I forced my parents to read the book as I was convinced that it would impress them. I still remember my father's and mother's reactions:"How can someone, in another country and in another language, describe so well my way of thinking and reacting to problems?"
Look at the picture - that is Ian McEwan. He is a balding, white, middle-aged English man. Somehow it is easier for me to understand how he can write from a point of view of a middle-aged newspaper editor (Amsterdam), a middle-aged composer (Amsterdam) or a middle-aged surgeon (Saturday). But in On Chesil Beach he moves far away from that. His main character is a daughter of a good Oxford family in her early 20s. On Chesil Beach tells a tragic story of the conditions people married each other in the early 1960s, before flower power and free sex. It depicts the fear of intimacy and the pressure of performing right which destroys all possibilities for true affection. It is a sad, sad book - crying guaranteed for everyone capable for compassion.
On Chesil Beach is guaranteed McEwan. It is heart-warming, heart-breaking and very detailed. McEwan's description of places, clothing and people's professions shows the level of background research without the feeling that he would be showing off. I highly recommend the novel - it is of utmost beauty.
Good literature helped the blow though. Ian McEwan's latest, On Chesil Beach, was next on my list after Austen. Expectations were set high after Amsterdam and Saturday where he proves his amazing talent of getting under the skin of people in highly different fields of life than his own. Especially the way he captures the mindset of Saturday's main character, a talented surgeon and a family man, is just out of this world. I forced my parents to read the book as I was convinced that it would impress them. I still remember my father's and mother's reactions:"How can someone, in another country and in another language, describe so well my way of thinking and reacting to problems?"
Look at the picture - that is Ian McEwan. He is a balding, white, middle-aged English man. Somehow it is easier for me to understand how he can write from a point of view of a middle-aged newspaper editor (Amsterdam), a middle-aged composer (Amsterdam) or a middle-aged surgeon (Saturday). But in On Chesil Beach he moves far away from that. His main character is a daughter of a good Oxford family in her early 20s. On Chesil Beach tells a tragic story of the conditions people married each other in the early 1960s, before flower power and free sex. It depicts the fear of intimacy and the pressure of performing right which destroys all possibilities for true affection. It is a sad, sad book - crying guaranteed for everyone capable for compassion.
On Chesil Beach is guaranteed McEwan. It is heart-warming, heart-breaking and very detailed. McEwan's description of places, clothing and people's professions shows the level of background research without the feeling that he would be showing off. I highly recommend the novel - it is of utmost beauty.
Monday, July 02, 2007
On the superbness of Austen
A week of holiday in a village without an Internet connection is a splendid thing. For the first time in I think in a year I actually left home without my laptop and filled the laptop pocket of my backbag with books. The first one on my list was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - often praised for its language, made into a classic BBC production boosting the sex appeal of Colin Firth and mentioned as one of his favourite novels by my flatmate. So reasons enough to grab it.
There's been research that men usually read books by men and women read books by men and women. I also admit that most of my favourite novelists are actually men although I read in a balanced manner - even taking notice of it. Austen - maybe do to the dramatisations (especially the one with the annoying grin of Keira Knightley) - is often branded as a women's novelist. I feel that it does not do justice to her talent. If she had been a man (well, first of all she would not have written books like Pride and Prejudice), I am 100 % certain she would be even more famoous than she is.
Austen's characters are astounding. She builds them up with wit and dialogue and not by focusing on describing their looks that much. At least Pride and Prejudice is a book of dialogue, a perfect novel for someone passionate for language and wit. Especially her female characters stand out from the novels of her time as women with opinions and self-esteem. By comparing Elizabeth Bennet to her marriage-obsessed mother, Austen shows how women like Elizabeth - without the safety of a rich family - paved way for feminism and by risking a lot showed that women can take other roles than obedience.
Pride and Prejudice made its way to my Top 10 of novels. I feel it is a book that I will be returning to when I once again wish to sharpen up my English and make it livelier, funnier and richer.
There's been research that men usually read books by men and women read books by men and women. I also admit that most of my favourite novelists are actually men although I read in a balanced manner - even taking notice of it. Austen - maybe do to the dramatisations (especially the one with the annoying grin of Keira Knightley) - is often branded as a women's novelist. I feel that it does not do justice to her talent. If she had been a man (well, first of all she would not have written books like Pride and Prejudice), I am 100 % certain she would be even more famoous than she is.
Austen's characters are astounding. She builds them up with wit and dialogue and not by focusing on describing their looks that much. At least Pride and Prejudice is a book of dialogue, a perfect novel for someone passionate for language and wit. Especially her female characters stand out from the novels of her time as women with opinions and self-esteem. By comparing Elizabeth Bennet to her marriage-obsessed mother, Austen shows how women like Elizabeth - without the safety of a rich family - paved way for feminism and by risking a lot showed that women can take other roles than obedience.
Pride and Prejudice made its way to my Top 10 of novels. I feel it is a book that I will be returning to when I once again wish to sharpen up my English and make it livelier, funnier and richer.
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