New book: A mammoth unparalleled

He was born on the same day as Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Vivica Bandler and Lars Huldén, he has been named to both Finland's sexiest man this year's left-handed person, he is a person who seems to bring the emotional register to life - there are those who hate him; there are those who envy him and there are those who adore him ... we are talking of course about Jörn Donner, 80 years old today.

And just in time for sense days now published his autobiographical works mammoth, mammoth - like myself have spent hours - days! - To read your way through 1128 pages:

The comments on social media after Jörn Donner was the guest of "Skavlan" on Swedish Television speaks - my God, the man has the sense of humor! -
the same week, he was the guest of Marie Lundstrom at Sveriges Radio and it was also interesting to read the comments that the program gave rise to - someone described JD as both unbearable and uncomfortable (before the hen heard the program), another wanted to be able to see the program on tv, a third told me that his mother had it together with JD in Helsinki in the 50's ...

One woman wrote that we need such as Jörn Donner: people who are outspoken and free in thought, and many seemed surprised at JD's gentle image and his self-critical look back on the year that has passed. There was hardly anything left of the arrogant, hefty, sassy, ??ironic and self-sufficient, JD, what happened?! Vafalls, Gossen Ruda has gone and become nice and cozy on old da'r!

The public persona Jörn Donner is different from the private Jörn Donner, who is described by friends as a shy, reclusive, kind and caring. The mammoth sounds JD all personality traits come to the surface - this will fit both the arrogant and cocky J, as the reclusive and melancholic J.

It may seem pretentious and presumptuous to publish a book of 1128 pages about himself - but JD is not alone in its mega projects in recent years, both the Swedish director / writer Lars Norén has published his diaries in a band on one 680 pages, the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knaus Yard has written more or less fictitious about his life in the sexdelade novel series My struggle - the entire series is given away at 3622 pages.

The main character and the self in mammoth are Jörn Donner - or J, as he calls himself - and the book consists of various types of texts: clips from earlier books, quotes from letters and diaries as J left it to a (fictional) assistant, Frederick Cook, to go through.

Thanks to this Fredrik can J create a distance from his own (real) person, and look at yourself from an outside perspective - comment (for Frederick Cook) annoying feature of the main character's personality (eg, self-absorption and hypochondria) and question some behaviors such as all those women business often been at each other ...

This play of fact and fiction makes it naturally easy for Jörn Donner slipping away and refer to the author's freedom to interpret and romance a truth that is his, and assert that J does not necessarily = Jörn Donner.

Evidence and counter-evidence: Spring 2012 J went out to the country with a garbage bag full of letters from and to about 15 women - an estimated 1,000 letters burned up in a fire liberating: "No one can ever say that my quotes were inaccurate, untruthful or distorted. The evidence found in the ashes. "

Mammoth or Jörn Donner left documents. If illamåendets history in Finland is a meandering story that basically follows a chronological order from February 1933 until today - with flashbacks, digressions, glosses and explanations to various papers and documents as assistant Frederick picked out J's voluminous archives.

The mammoth finds J to all the books he has written bears autobiographical traits, and it is clear that J used himself and his life as raw material and sounding board for both his works of fiction as the essayistic travel reportage and portraits he has written over the years (film director Ingmar Bergman , author Elmer Diktonius, Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, the father Kai Donner).

Anyone who read his Donner know in other words a lot of it as J brings out the mammoth, but in this heavyweight book makes J an attempt to see his 80-year life from a holistic perspective - both professionally and privately, how was it that he became a writer / filmmaker / politicians, what motives he had, and which bases his restlessness and rootlessness - his inability to fully connect with, and to be constantly on the lookout for something else / someone else?

Loneliness and the war did J to writers: when J was two years old his father died, philologist, ethnographer and politician Kai Donner, and J's mother Greta became a single parent with five young children to care for + family farm Ahdenkallio just outside Hyvinkää, summer instead Framnäs in Bromarv and floor on the North Quay 12 to provide for.

During the war years spent J often land in Bromarv or Hyvinkää while her mother (who for long periods was sickly) was elsewhere and the much older siblings served in the Armed Forces. During long periods of raised J primarily of maids and domestic servants.

The loneliness drove him to read (everything from Runeberg and Bertil Malmberg Stein Riverton, Biggles books, Ibsen and Gogol) and writing letters (which he signed at a young age with a cheerful "Sieg Heil") and their own newspapers.

Eventually J away from the conservative patriotic ideals that characterized the bourgeois home in Kruununhaka and joined the socialist circles. Youth uncompromising desire to breakup and revolt strained relationship with the mother, something that J mourn today.

Modern hoped to the last that J would follow in his father's footsteps and pursue an academic career in the Finno-Ugric language research - J studied certainly both literary studies, political science and philosophy at the university, but had no ambitions to become researchers or academics - he wanted to be a journalist , trip out and see Europe, the world, to try to understand it, "everyone depends on everyone."

Mother Greta could die before J became Master of Arts - for a fee, and the summer of 2003 he was also a professor title in the gift of friends who paid 3,000 euros for the title.

The laziness that J repeatedly come back to as a basic element in his character is difficult to understand when you take some of his almost feverish activity in many areas - his bibliography includes more than 60 books since his debut in 1951 and his film production amounts to more than 20 films cinema and television, in addition, the J in various replays worked in radio and television, both in Finland and Sweden, he founded and published magazine Arena (1951-54), he has worked as a film critic in BLM, Daily News and Vapaa Sana, for a period He was managing director of the Swedish Film Institute (1978-82), for several decades, he wrote regularly columns for several newspapers and magazines, as a politician, he has been a member of both the Helsinki City Council (1969-76, 1985, 2005-08) and Tammisaari City Council (2001-03) who in parliament in different occasions (1987-95, 2007), he has been Consul General in Los Angeles (1995-96), MEP (1996-99) and Chairman of Helsinki Cultural and Library Board (2005 -08) - including and mm.

Laziness (imagined or actual) is one side of the coin, while energy and (according to himself) destructive versatility served the other side - in any year, J has been driven by a restless curiosity and fumbled far and wide with too many balls in the air simultaneously, Instead of focusing on one thing at a time. This is also (according to himself) contributed to much of what he has done (books, movies) become medlemåttiga products - the quantity and quality do not always go hand in hand: "I suffer from too much ambition, too meager head and excessive mediocrity "writes J eg in October 1960, and it appears that he constantly struggled with an uneasy sense of inferiority and inadequacy.

The mammoth is largely about precisely this duality and contradiction in J's life - both on a professional level and on a personal level, a conflict that has taken many forms:

For four decades, wrote J. regular columns in various newspapers and magazines (among them Ilta-Sanomat, Blue Wings, HBL), but since he voluntarily quit as a columnist in 2007, he has no longer access to the natural forum and a visible platform for their glosses or their analysis of the state of the Republic of Finland or in the world - the silence is certainly self-chosen, but he provides that no response to know what he thinks of as Middle East question, or if the planned downtown library - the only thing that interests the press seems to be his illnesses. J is i.e. afraid of being forgotten - the silence and solitude can be a burden, even if it is self-selected.

J's interest in politics and history and social and cultural issues has brought him to the corridors of power in Helsinki and Brussels - but he doubts that he managed to make a difference. The latest attempt to be elected to parliament (2011) he describes as "an unsuccessful way to excuse the general idleness" and he ensures that voters seem to see him as a used card. His relationship to power and politics is characterized by a love-hate chafing.

Again and again recurs J to diverse reasons curse: that working drug addict J throughout her life been so incredibly productive in many different areas (according to himself) have been him in the dish, and he claims to be misunderstood by critics and unseen by the cultural establishment - but no one should be led to believe that he cares.

Constantly this duality: to be or not to be part of a context, wanting or not wanting to take root, to despise and curse someone / something you also want to be seen and accepted by - get an approval and a little cred for what you have done .

Speaking of fear of being forgotten or not given place in the public sphere: in recent weeks, it has been split parameters of J both in Finland and in Sweden, and television, radio and newspapers have competed to outdo each other than with a naked Jörn, than a weight lifting Jörn front of the bookshelf in the workroom on the North Quay.

The Helsingin Sanomat (02/03/2013), Anna-Stina Nykänen through the interviews with födelsedagsjubilaren over the past week in Apu, Seura, Image, Suomen Kuvalehti, Yloppilaslehti and Helsingin Sanomat, and she tries to call in mammoth Jörn Donner by lifting the various key elements of Articles: how to prepare the various newspapers Jörn in words and images, the issues it focuses on (what is J afraid of? how does J on Aging • What is the meaning of life according to R), and finally calculates she up all the characterizations that she will find in the articles (my translation): studious lazy, arrogant know-it, arrogant shit boot, conscientious objectors, filmmakers, asocial person, ill-mannered brat, gäckare, tease, fucker, människoslukare, intellectual, intriguer, rebel leaders, samtalare, author, communist, cosmopolite, critic, culture mammoth, cultural personality, iconoclast, ifrågasättare, linslus, collaborators, narcissistic, actors, opportunists, deserters, traitors, polemicist, politicians, citizens, provocateur, radical, yeller, rabid radical, reporter, combat buck, troublemaker, yeller, villain, sex symbol, sivare, civilized, outsider, viewer, snob, conventional switches, Finland's sexiest man, vane, workaholic, old man, visionary, intelligent.

Our need for JD (actual, like the fictional) seems to be insatiable, and - as Jukka Petäjä notes in his interview with JD in Helsingin Sanomat 26.1.2013 - would the Finnish cultural life be much poorer without JD: if Jörn Donner did not exist, we would have to invent him.

The voluminous book has nothing personal, and according to the author is the reason to force all curious to read the entire tome to possibly find himself in it - either by naming names or implicitly.

Many example might be curious about the women in J's life - among them, the three wives Inga-Britt Wik (as J was married to 1954-62), Jeanette Bonnier (as J was married to 1974-88) and Bitte Westerlund (as J married with 1995). Long Where Gare conditions is also mentioned (Harriet Andersson, Sun Axelsson example), while other women are mentioned by name, a letter, or a simple pronoun (she).

In most cases, J decent regard to living or dead persons, while in other cases it may seem right blunt and ruthless: the relationship with the now-deceased first wife Inga-Britt seems to have been conflictual and doomed from the start, and for many years could also be in the public share of a mutual pajkastning where invektiven and accusations flew close by book pages.

Striving for honesty and sincerity in all situations but not necessarily any sympathy points.

The mammoth can eg J not fail to speak obliquely about Inga-Britt, and he feels relieved at her death (2008) because she can no longer make any demands on him.

J has six children with four different women - the two oldest sons (John and James) by Inga-Britt Wik, daughter Susanna (from a relationship with Meri Vennamo) and Otto with an unnamed woman in the book, the youngest sons (Daniel and Rudolf ) has J with his current wife Bitte.

In the TV show "Skavlan" (SVT 01/27/2013) J admitted that he was a bad father, and in the tabloids in the past week have been the eldest son witnessed a constantly absent and generally indifferent father - the inflamed relationship between J and children Mother meant that J and the oldest sons barely spent time at all until recently when the relationship has been what one might describe as "factual".

Throughout the book is J openly indifferent to the first four children, and imposing three of them "to some future loose people." He says he is certainly able to spend time with them, but do not have them in the same manner as he may lack the two youngest in their absence - in itself a natural result of that he was present and participated in the youngest sons lives in a completely different way than before, of course.

J's restlessness and constant need to rush on have thus contributed to many conditions and human relations have been put on the exception, but sometimes distance also could be a boon for a relationship, and according to J himself, he is better at making love on the distance than up close.

That J would rather hang out and confide in (a select few) women than men is a fact - but throughout life, however, he met some men who he felt kinship with, among them Harry Schein and Ingmar Bergman, whom he calls his mentor.

The mammoth searcheth J often themselves in a seemingly merciless way - he presents himself (sometimes, however, in a roundabout way through the Assistant Frederick Cook) as self-absorbed and hypochondriac, he is prone to manic depression, he is often sad and melancholic, he feels misunderstood as a writer and filmmaker, he's a lousy businessman and the only thing he can is to write - write = live.

In the preface writes Jörn that journey with the book marked by parting sadness, and that he tried to write "without regard to self-censorship or others' admonitions" - he learns not to be unchallenged, and the headlines in both Finland and Sweden will probably be filled by Donner Mania the next few weeks!

In one of his books, he quoted a few lines of poetry by Bertil Malmberg, and they can be safely on their way to summarize J. 's attitude to life:

The lines that run
and crossed in my hand
they form a chart
to the unfamiliar country.
They take what secret
my destiny set
The aim, as opportunities
in my väsendes night.
They show me the way
between the vortex and the atoll.
It's just to sail.
But in which direction?
Why worry my heart?
Why I hesitate yet?
I have my charts.
But compass, where is it?

In February broadcast YLE Teema a handful of Jörn Donner's films - more info can be found on Yle Teemas website.