of cupcakes, literature and black metal

The title of this post should be sung to Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself”

So basically, I love love love Tove Jansson’s novel The True Deceiver so much, that I’m going to do a book club with myself. Because I’m bad at maintaining book clubs. So, I’m going to take The New York Review of Book’s reading group guide for the book, and try and think of answers to the questions. If you haven’t read the book, DO IT NOW! It seriously was the best thing I read in 2009. The questions will spoil major plot points of the novel, but if you know you’re never going to read it, or that wouldn’t ruin things for you, then keep reading! Otherwise, read the book and come back here.

Okay, I’m so glad you’re still here, reading with me.

Just to help you out in case you haven’t read it, here’s a quick plot summary from the reading group guide [my notes in these bracket-y things]:

“It is the dead of Scandinavian winter [Yeah! Black Metal!], in the kind of sleepy village where everyone has an acute knowledge (Accompanied by a keen sense of judgment) about everyone else’s affairs. By and large, the villagers like and respect Anna Aemelin, a reclusive elderly children’s-book illustrator who lives alone in her parents’ old home at the top of the hill. [The house is shaped like a bunny. I totally kid you not.] Katri Kling, an out- cast in the town because of her strange looks [She has yellow eyes! Like Hobbes, my cat!] and blunt personality, is not so lucky: the townsfolk gossip about her, and their children cry “Witch!” when they see Katri in the street.

The novel takes shape when Katri begins to do little favors for Anna—at first, she is just bringing Anna’s mail and groceries [Bloody liver! Gross!], but before long, Katri and her simpleminded brother Mats have moved into Anna’s big, empty house. From there, the two women’s lives become intertwined in increasingly unpredictable ways, building a relationship from which neither will emerge unscathed [Emotionally. There are no fisticuffs.]“

Other important things to mention: Anna Amelin is famous for painting lush forest scenes with little bunnies with floral fur in them. She receives lots of mail from her fans, which she answers individually. Katri wants most in the world to make her brother happy. You get the sense from the novel that he’s perhaps mentally handicapped, very slightly. He can work, but his social dealings indicate something else is going on, and Katri is compelled to care for him as if he were a child, even though he’s legally an adult. What Mats wants most is a boat. And Katri wants most to make him happy, so she thinks Anna is a means to get the boat, since she’s loaded and doesn’t do anything with her money. Also, Katri is often accompanied throughout the novel with her German Shepherd dog, who is like her daemon or shadow, he’s always at her side, or always waiting around for her right outside the door. Mmmkay, on to questions:

Hold on, I’m reading them…

Hmm…

Okay, no offense NYRB (because I know they’re all smarter than me, and they’re writing these for people who don’t read literature very carefully), but these questions are boring. So I’m only going to answer the cool ones.

flickr user kanelstrand

Boats probably mean something for Tove since they’re so omnipresent in her work. But Mats is such a simple, steady guy, it’s hard to think it’s anything deeper than just a way for him to get away from the village that teases him and his sister. A place where he can feel free and relax on the ocean.

I haven’t read the book since December, though, so maybe it says something explicitly in the text.

10. Why does Katri’s dog go mad? Is it Anna’s fault, for causing it to no longer obey Katri? Why does Anna tell Katri, “He isn’t coming back. He wants to get away from you” [p. 170]? Is this unnecessarily cruel?

When Anna first encounters the dog, she’s sort of repulsed by it. She doesn’t really like dogs, and this one is creepy. It’s creepily obedient to Katri. Katri and the dog are basically the same thing. I think, in an effort to try to like the dog or to get the dog to be nicer, Anna starts to spoil it by giving it treats and the like, and she finds Katri too harsh (herself, and on the dog) so Anna feels that if she spoils the dog, he’ll be happier, in having a break from Katri’s sternness. So trying to free the dog from Katri is easier than freeing Katri from herself, because she’s a stone wall, that one. So maybe Anna thinks the dog never liked Anna to begin with, and that’s why she says what she does. But I think the dog itself goes mad because his consistent, clockwork life has been overturned.

11.Just before the spring, Anna made her first visit to the woods. Afterwards she “was gripped by a terrible anxiety” [p. 147]. What gives rise to this anxiety? Is Anna experiencing artist’s block? Where does it come from?

The forest is her, and she is in upheaval. See next question.

13. At the novel’s end, why doesn’t Anna want to add rabbits to the forest floor anymore?

I have a theory on this based on some literary criticism I’ve read of Tove Jansson. It is thought that landscapes when depicted by Tove (she was a painter as well as an illustrator and author) are self-portraits. So in the end, when Anna sits down to crank out another bunny book, she starts as she always does, with this lush, detailed landscape that is some deep, unspoken part of herself. Like, her true, authentic vision…close to the earth. And when she’s about to add the first bunny, she’s basically stating that she doesn’t need to adorn herself anymore to make people like her, or to make herself more profitable, or to tame the wildness within her. She simply lets the landscape be, instead of adding fussy fakeness, as she did before. (But in the scene referenced in the previous question, she hasn’t come full circle yet, and is anxious about all she’s having to deal with about herself. Do I care if my fans like me? Why do I make the art that I do? What’s it all for?)

I’m also going to make up three new questions:

1. Which Moomin character would Mats, Katri and Anna be?

Mats would be Toft. He’s gentle and sad in a way, but finds things to occupy him, and in the end (of Moominland in November) a boat makes him happy.

Katri would be … the police inspector? Maybe a Hemulen? She’s kind of obsessive, and shrewd, and a bit opportunistic. Maybe she’d be Sniff? She’s not that goofy, though…

Anna would be Moomintroll: sweet, gentle, and always wants everyone happy.

2. Which black metal song best exemplifies Katri?

Burzum – A Lost Forgotten Sad Spirit (I would toss, like, eight commas into that title)

3. What kind of cupcake would Anna’s books be?

from flickr user Belinda (miscdebris)

Black forest.

Thanks for reading! What book should I do next?