Book review | Read and write! Rowing machines in gyms are a slave ship

Novel

Arsi Alenius: Let's look at the phones too. Cosmos. 137 pp.

“Literature is of all forms of art the one that offers the best tools – language – for criticism, self-understanding. (…) Still, it is increasingly reluctant to say anything.”

The snippet is Arsi Alenius from another novel Let's look at phones too. It itself has no problem with criticism. The tip is aimed at contemporary writers and readers.

In recent years, the literary field has been ventilated Antti Hurskainen Withering-in the novel and Miki Liukkonen In guest mode – both high-level monologue and essay-like works. Alenius also has something to say and he knows the rhythm of an outburst-like soliloquy. You could see the same intensity Marjo Niemen In the mother of all lossesalso a good monologue novel.

Alenius debut novel Villa Alpha criticized the economy of stories and attention, the latest, among other things, auto fiction:

“There was no complete certainty as to whether the book would become a collection of essays or a novel. (…) The only thing that was certain was the degree of personality of the work: great.” In the talk show, the author talks about his “physicality, his genitals and his slightly unusual intestine”.

The book also ironizes or self-ironizes “difficult” writers: “Be on your guard. All these hooks and techniques, I know what I'm doing, this is my job. I'm a writer. A swindler. (…) I will beat you.”

Menacing writers are a danger only to themselves: “The angrier the writers, the more loki.”

Readers, on the other hand, should not be rewarded for being able to read even one book to the end. “Instead of nurturing, today's reader needs intervention.” Alenius himself maintains perhaps the best literary blog in Finland Opus Veitawhere reading is seen as an effort.

A literary novel whistles, of course, intertexts, most obviously the title of the work. It refers by Horace McCoy to the 1935 novel Let's shoot horses too, in which the poor humiliate themselves during the Depression. Today's recession is characterized by illiteracy and unwillingness to read. Alenius hits a burning problem. The worst thing about the work is the title itself, which is a one-time joke.

Reading and writing are seen in the novel as a social activity.

The narrator hates that low-paid and non-academic people have abandoned “the ethos of self-development, self-education as a form of class struggle.” People feel more comfortable on the rowing machines in gyms, which remind one of a slave ship.

It can be considered an allegory of capitalism. Criticism of capitalism has been done before, but now it has a new twist.

The novel does not however, don't just be an attacking preacher. The narrator is too whimsical to be taken completely seriously. He might be crazy. The narrator forgets and repeats things. The language breaks down:

“They have nothing to do with work here, work, work, work, nights, nights.”

It is unclear which is the narrator's own speech and which is usurped. You can at least recognize the mass by Robert Frost, André Gide and Shakespeare's.

The narrator takes on different roles, one of which is a galley slave, the other a Marxist firebrand. There is also a narrator Let's look at phones too – the author of the work Arsi Alenius. The novel questions the idea that the identity of the author or narrator essentially determines the book.

To the reader leave room for interpretation, i.e. he has to make a little effort. This is one reason why Let's look at phones too are the best domestic fiction books of the year.

I also appreciate the high degree of aggression and well-chosen opponents.

We want to trust the power of the author, the work says. “No one can accept something that lacks strength.” It can be found in Alenius's novel.