#(finnish is my actual language in case it wasn't clear)

[why-the-heck-not]

reading these two side by side (the og one in finnish, the other translated to french) and it's a very space-demanding reading situation

[very-grownup]

Book 51, 2023

The best thing about the version of Arto Paasilinna's "The Howling Miller" that I read, is that it wasn't translated into English from Finnish.

It was translated into English from a French translation of the original Finnish novel.

There's some decade between those, too, which is amazing. In the late 20th/early 21st century there is only one person who can translate Finnish for the rest of the world, and that's one woman in France.

This is my first experience with Finnish literature (unless we're counting Tove Jansson, but I understand the nuances of Swedes and Finns and Swedish speaking Finns are complicated) and it feels very interesting. There is, for lack of a better word, a brain I get from books translated from other languages which I'm sure is in part due to the translator themselves but I have to assume also a result of sentence structure and shared cultural touchstones. Although this is all supposition in this case, since it's based on a single book and, as mentioned above, it's a translation of a translation (still a wild thing to consider in 2023).

Reading "The Howling Miller" feels like someone smashed together early 20th century prairie literature, the grimmer Grimm's Fairytales, and the letters to the editor section of a newspaper.

The book is divided into two halves. The first half is when Huttunen, the titular howling miller, exists and is accepted as the miller in his small community. The second half is when Huttunen ceases to be the miller after he is arrested and sent to a psychiatric asylum in the city. He does escape the asylum, but he never returns to be Huttunen the Miller.

It's not a sad story, but it has a melancholy to it (because people in the Nordic countries have lost their joy organ to frostbite and/or hereditary alcoholism HEY YO). I'm finding myself at a loss for words to describe how Paasilinna treats Huttunen, because the novel is ultimately concerned with outsiderness and otherness and how much of that can be tolerated within society before it pushes into the realm of the criminal and mentally ill.

The thing is: Huttunen IS someone who won't, or can't, conduct himself in a way that is acceptable to society. "The Howling Miller" is literal; he has bouts where he spends all night howling like a wolf and keeping the other people in the village up. He breaks into people's homes in the middle of the night to ask them questions. He absolutely has a negative effect on the community he lives in and that's not something the novel interrogates. It just is. When he's committed to the asylum by the community (he has no family) it's supposedly because of war trauma, but the novel makes no bones about the fact that the commitment has nothing to do with actual concerns about Huttunen's mental health. They just want him to go away and that's the easiest way to do it when he hasn't actually done punishable harm.

Society doesn't treat Huttunen fairly and lies to itself about what it's doing, to the point where it's not clear if they remember how much of what they're saying about Huttunen in the end is made up to justify earlier decisions.

But even prior to his expulsion from the community, Huttunen doesn't really seem like he wants to exist in it, he doesn't try to correct himself. And maybe he shouldn't have to and the problem is that society, especially post-war society, doesn't offer him an alternative and doesn't want him to find one.

The fairytale element comes partially in the ending of the novel although I don't think that has to be taken literally -- while it does take on a fantastical note, I think that maybe is supposed to be reflective of the impossibility of an acceptable resolution for Huttunen's situation. But it's also part of how the characters are simply but strongly drawn, always faintly removed, and, for a reader in 2023, there's something inherently fairytaleish in the small town setting, the mill, the constant circling back to the forest that provides for Huttunen when he's in hiding.

(The early 20th century prairie literature part is, of course, in how isolated and selfish and deceitful and miserable existing seems to be for some characters.)

It's the sort of book where I think I need to read more of Paasilinna's work to better know what I think about "The Howling Miller". But it's a simple little novel that puts a lot into its pages, even if we only have it in English because of translation telephone.