I’m rereading Venedikt Erofeev’s immortal Moskva-Petushki, and at one point he refers to “четвертый позвонок” [the fourth vertebra], which turns out to be the name of a novel by the Finnish writer Martti Larni. He’s not in any of my reference books, but of course the internet knows of him, and he has his own Wikipedia article. I was more struck, though, by this brief paragraph about him in A History of Finnish Literature by Jaakko Ahokas (American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1973):
Martti Larni (b. 1909), who has worked for newspapers and publishers, lived a few years after World War II in Wisconsin. He wrote a satire on contemporary life, especially in the United States, Neljäs nikama (‘The Fourth Vertebra,’ 1957), which, although unremarkable, was noticed by the Russians, who translated it and adapted it for the stage. It was a huge success in the Soviet Union, which the author did not expect. Like Talvi, Larni has written a number of uninteresting works.
“Like Talvi, Larni has written a number of uninteresting works” — ouch! And Larni was still alive to see that contemptuous summary. As for the novel, there’s a brief account here:
The protagonist is Jeremias Suomalainen, a teacher and journalist, who becomes in the United States the assistant of the chiropractic Isaac Rivers and later “Professor” Jerry Finn, a citizen of the world. Rivers has a theory: all backaches come from the fourth vertebra. Larni mocks quick marriages and quick divorces, miracle doctors, Hollywood, self-contentedness, ignorance of other cultures, and advertising. In one scene Jerry peddles books; he has an abridged edition – 102 pages – of Anatole France’s collected works.
Sounds kind of like Babbitt.
…are you sure?
I’m less surprised – not much other information about the US, that distant land of fascination and the class enemy, was available.
Woops, I copied out the Google Books author line without even reading it! Corrected to eliminate the repeated author and the editor.
I’m less surprised – not much other information about the US, that distant land of fascination and the class enemy, was available.
Not so; by 1959, when the Russian translation appeared, there was quite a bit known, and Russians had actually had a chance to meet the class enemy in person. See the account of the 1957 World Youth Festival in this post.
The attitudes here sound like perhaps Ahokas saw the Russians as picking up this work as a vehicle to show the Americans’ Babbittry, and Ahokas didn’t care for the Russians?
I read it when I was learning Finnish.
Pretty funny book actually.
Remember a scene where Jerry Finn was stopped by a female anti-war protester in New York – “Do you know that every minute a million Americans dies in Korea?”
He gets in trouble for suggesting that maybe US losses in Korea are a little less than that.
Plus ça change