Stories of America: The Rise of the "Indian Book" in Sweden 1862-1895
2003; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 75; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2163-8195
Autores Tópico(s)Media, Communication, and Education
ResumoIN 1959, with the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation poised to introduce its viewers to TV Westerns, the head of television, Nils Erik Baehrendtz, tried to persuade his audience to rune in to Gunsmoke. Using the corporation's programming magazine to accomplish that goal, Baehrendtz wrote a column making the argument that cowboy entertainment on TV was nothing new. On the contrary, it was part of a long tradition that included motion pictures in theaters, songs with a Western theme, and so-called indianbocker [Indian books (1)] (see Baehrendtz). The latter did indeed have a long tradition in Sweden: more than seventy years before Baehrendtz's attempt at persuasion, a book reviewer for the newspaper Goteborgs Handels-och Sjofartstidning had looked back with nostalgia at these stories and the role they had played in his own childhood some twenty to thirty years earlier: Indianbocker? Nar vi voro pojkar, betydde ju det ordet for oss en sammanfattning af basta tankbara lektyr (Julbocker I) [Indian books? When we were boys, those words to us were a summary of the best reading matter imaginable]. Given the long-standing popularity of tales of the American West in Sweden, this study examines the rise of the Indian book in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This period is of particular interest because it was a time when images of America were still forming in the Swedish popular consciousness and were relatively fresh; audiences of the late 1800s did not, for instance, have the familiarity with Western narratives that television viewers of the 1950S had. Although they enjoyed a popularity that lasted from the 1860s to the 1970s in Sweden, Indian books have not received a great deal of attention beyond short bibliographies. While Gote Klingberg's history of children's books is valuable in providing an overall view of the genre's origins, its discussion is general in nature and at times reads like an annotated bibliography. Part of the purpose of this article is thus to offer a sense of the scope of the Indian-book genre in its heyday and discuss the various reactions to it. As will be shown in the following, those reactions foreshadowed concerns about American mass culture that would surface repeatedly in the twentieth century. (2) To study the phenomenon of the early Indian books, the books themselves as well as library catalogs, book lists, and, above all, reviews in newspapers were examined. The reviews drawn from six different newspapers cover a period of thirty years, from the early 1860s to the mid-1890s. They provide a means of gleaning information not only about the titles and authors of this branch of literature, but also about readers and perceived effects. (3) Before discussing these aspects, however, the origins of the genre must be considered. Among Swedish book critics of the nineteenth century, there was little doubt as to who had produced the first fictional accounts of the American frontier. America's James Fenimore Cooper was, declared Stockholms Dagblad in 1888, den ursprunglige skaparen af'indianbrckerna' (Literart. Bocker 5) [the original creator of 'Indian books'] labeling him de utffrende rrdskinnens odrdlige diktare [the immortal poet of the vanishing redskins]. (4) Swedish translations of Cooper's works had first appeared in the i8zos, in most cases only a few years after their American publication. The preface to one of them, Susquehannas kallor, eller Nybyggarne [The Pioneers] published in 1827, indicates why publisher Georg Scheutz thought the American author's tales appealed so strongly to Swedish readers: Det ar mindre on Roman, an en teckning af Nordamerikanska kolonisternas belagenhet, lefnadssatt, kynne och seder, samt af Nordamerikanska naturscener; all kopieradt efter verkligheten, med beundranvard noggrannhet och sanning, enligt hvad sakkunnige forsakra. Utom det tidsfordrif, som utvecklingen af genom det hela lopande romantiska foreningstraden erbjuder lasaren, har man defore i detta arbete en fullstandigare skildring ofver atskilliqa intressanta detaljer af samhallslifvet hos ett bland samtidens markvardigaste folkslag, an blott en reseskildring skulle forma att lemna. …
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