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Old Traditions and New Experiments: The Year in Finland

2016; University of Hawaii Press; Volume: 39; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/bio.2016.0071

1529-1456

Maarit Leskelä‐Kärki,

Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

Old Traditions and New ExperimentsThe Year in Finland Maarit Leskelä-Kärki (bio) In 2015, the nonfiction bestseller in Finland was the autobiography of the football player Jari Litmanen entitled Litmanen 10, and third on the list was the biography of ice hockey player Jarkko Ruutu. In September 2016, the bestseller was journalist Maarit Tyrkkö’s autobiographical memoir Presidentti ja toimittaja, a book about her close relationship with President Kekkonen during the 1970s and early 80s. The first volume of this memoir, Tyttö ja nauhuri, was published two years earlier. In September 2016, three books in the field of life writing were among the country’s six bestsellers. Biography seems to be a genre that consistently interests readers, and these texts are often the most discussed books within Finnish literary discourse. The genres of life writing are, however, varied: for example, the autobiography on Litmanen, and the books by Tyrkkö represent very different genres and literary audiences. Litmanen is named as the author of his autobiography, but it came into being as a result of a documentary project as is told in an article by Jouni Kemppainen. Litmanen told his life story on tape, after which a group of assistants (who remain unnamed) transcribed the recordings into a coherent story, in a mutually agreed order. Maarit Tyrkkö’s book is based on hundreds of tapes she made with the president, as well as other research and memoir materials from the 1970s and 80s. Despite their differences, these books do reveal the everlasting love that the Finnish reading audience has for the field of life writing: not a year goes by without books about athletes (particularly football and ice hockey players) or statesmen, particularly former presidents. In this essay, I shall give a fairly short and focused overview on what has been written in Finland in the area of life writing. I mostly concentrate on books written by Finnish authors, but I also make some connections with the other Nordic countries. I have gone through the catalogues of the biggest and [End Page 598] most important publishing houses in Finland, some reviews, particularly in the open websites of Agricola, and another literary forum, Kiiltomato, which publishes reviews on fiction and nonfiction literature. My review covers the publications roughly from spring 2015 through autumn 2016. It is by no means comprehensive, but attempts to provide an overview of the apparent trends in Finland. I am interested in the gender of life writing, particularly when investigating who writes their memoirs and about whom they write. I am also interested in the genres of life writing and whether these books reveal something new about life writing genres in Finland or whether they are merely repeating the established conventions of biography and memoir. Finland is a small country and language area, and as it is a bilingual country; books are published both in Finnish and in Swedish. For the Swedish-speaking Finns, and those who regard the Nordic connection as important, many discussions and publications from Sweden are important as well. Since we are discussing life writing in the context of the Nordic countries, we cannot overlook the huge impact of the Norwegian autofictional book series by Karl-Ove Knausgård, titled Min Kamp 1–6, which was translated into Finnish as Taisteluni. Part six came out in Finnish in summer 2016, and during the past year, Knausgård has been on the lips of almost every literary enthusiast. So far, his book series has already changed the way we think about autobiographical writing and the concepts of authenticity, biofiction, and remembrance. As Finnish writer and psychiatrist Claes Andersson recently stated in an essay for Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, Knausgård’s book “represents self-confession in a way that extends all the boundaries of autobiography as it turns into an infinite manifest of the power of the Word in an almost biblical sense.” He compares Knausgård to writers such as Proust, Musil, or Sebald. BIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS OF AUTHORS Memoirs and autobiographies, as well as biographies of authors, are important and enduring genres in the field of Finnish life writing. In 2015 and 2016, several of these texts were published. One of the...