ONLY RABBITS AND WRITERS

Yesterday I completed one quite small but on the other hand quite sweet task. I wrote a book review. To be broadcasted on the radio. I hope I did it successfully. Well, I will get my feedback sooner or later. Nevertheless this little task makes me proud. Yeah, right, I give a fuck if I am overdoing it. As a dramaturge, I have already written some book reviews, whereas those were all books on performing arts. More or less my field. I have also written theatre and dance reviews; loads of them. Writing on stuff which has to do with performing arts is nothing but my profession.

However, the review I wrote yesterday is not on performing arts. It was on a novel. Pure literature. Perhaps I should give the title here: Dedu za petami - Searching for Grandpa - Isoisää etsimässä by Arto Paasilinna. Fresh Slovenian translation. Okay, the original seems Finnish. And so it is. Just please do not think I went totally nuts and crazy since I am writing something about the mentioned land again. I have always been a freak; but this is actually not the case in this post. Back to the book now. I happen to like Paasilinna. As many other readers do. I was even trying to read him in Finnish. Reader-friendly by all means (and in both languages): simple stories, interesting and so nicely odd characters, lots of humor and irony. As well as this traces of melancholy he includes. Decent entertainment indeed. After I have spent at least some small amount of time in Finland, I dare to say I have got slightly better insight into Finnish society and the landscapes Paasilinna writes about. It is special tunnelma in his writing. The atmosphere one cannot even tell about; one just has to feel it.

Sure it was fun to write this review. Oh, you might have started to wonder about the discussed book. Quite okay, yet not that okay as those most famous works of Arto Paasilinna. Not that good as Zajčje leto-The Year of the Hare-Jäniksen vuosi, for instance. Perhaps it also needs to be marked here that Searching for Grandpa is actually not one of the latest Paasilinna's books; it was written back in 1977.

Some time ago I have had this crisis. Like that I did not feel as writing any kind of reviews. I mean, in a way I felt kind of empty, without proper ideas and especially without some theoretical backup. Fuck this artistic apathy, I said, be more active; it's all about this special laziness. Of course I am capable of writing several different thingies; if I only decide to tackle them properly. I just have to give myself a slight push, I have to wait for the silence of the night, then I have to sit down and start writing...