My reflections on Fair Play, Tove Jansson’s “happy tales about two women”

“Fair Play is often an excellent handbook of advice and rules for the workings of art – but it’s never just about aesthetic wisdom. It’s also very much about emotional wisdom.”
– Ali Smith¹

Fair Play cannot easily be categorised. Is it perhaps a novella? At 127 pages in length, including the Introduction, it could be so described. I’m aware the author referred to it as a novel (and it says as much on the title page), though the inner nitpicker in me least favours this classification. It is certainly a series of vaguely linked episodes presented as autobiographical fiction. So maybe a short story collection would be more accurate. Then again, does it matter?

The question I suppose I should ask is: does this author’s work require definition? Do we, for instance, gain anything as readers by knowing it contains a plot-light narrative? Possibly, but I would far rather term it Tovian² and leave it there – for surely, this author merits a minimalist category all to herself. Nevertheless, for reasons of clarity and with due consideration for those less familiar with the adult writings of Tove Jansson, I will settle on labelling this narrow volume an assemblage of vignettes.

“Fair Play could in fact be called a novel of friendship, of rather happy tales about two women who share a life of work, delight and consternation. They are very unlike each other, but perhaps that is why they manage to play the game successfully, with patience and, of course, a great deal of love.”
– Tove Jansson³

Written in the third person and drawing heavily on Jansson’s later years with her life-partner Tuulikki Pietilä, each of its seventeen titled chapters (fragments, if you will) recall a conversation or episode in the lives of Mari and Jonna – the former a writer and illustrator, the latter an artist and filmmaker – permitting us to eavesdrop as they mull over projects and bounce ideas off each other over a cup of coffee.

The women live in a double apartment close to Helsinki harbour in which they have separate studios with an adjoining attic passageway. They fill their home with art, have a pet cat, watch videos in the evening (Fassbinder films and Westerns being particular favourites), travel together, spend their summers on a remote island and talk. Always talk. And of course, they make things.

Each stand-alone piece in Fair Play focuses on the creative process, yet its central subject is human nature. All portray an intimate female bond, two distinct artists at work with a deep respect for each other’s personal boundaries. At times they quarrel or engage in passive-aggressive silences, but the moods quickly pass. And like all Jansson’s writings, it is humane, witty and slightly odd.

At the age of seventy-four, in one of the last letters⁴ she wrote to her Swedish editor Åke Runnquist, Tove admitted that it was “good for [her] to be able to work slowly, without a deadline”. Then, referring to an earlier phone conversation⁵ with him, she expressed delight that he had “liked [her] idea” for what she described as “conceivably another book”, or “the stirrings of an idea …” She was unsure how it would “turn out” but felt it might be similar in some ways to The Summer Book. At any rate, she would have “something to aim for”. The book, which she assured Åke would be “happy and bright”,⁶ was eventually published in 1989 as Rent Spel.

“What mattered most to Tove Jansson, she explained in her eighties, was work and love, a sentiment she echoes in this tender and original novel.⁷”

I recently came across a splendid description of this title in an article⁸ published some years ago about the author’s adult books. It bears repeating: “[…] perhaps more than any other of Jansson’s novels, Fair Play conveys the years of life behind it. Given a few moments in her characters’ lives, Jansson’s reader experiences a fullness, a complexity of relations and emotions that are pointed to by the text, but not contained within it.”

While Fair Play wasn’t Tove’s final work, it is often seen as a culmination of her themes, and it stands as a poignant and mature expression of her artistic and personal philosophy. It is, I feel, delightfully Tovian.

****************************

I read Fair Play on my Kindle quite some time ago but naturally coveted a physical copy for the trove. My softback edition, which was purchased in recent months from Blackwell’s, was published in 2007 by Sort of Books and translated into the English by Thomas Teal.⁹ The eerie cover is the work of Alf Lidman. The black and white portrait of a youthful Jansson at work on a painting (back inner flap, not visible here) was taken by Swedish photographer Beata Bergström. The cover was designed by Peter Dyer.

****************************

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki on 9th August 1914, the daughter of a Swedish-Finnish father who worked as a sculptor and a mother who was a graphic designer. She first trained as an artist and made a name for herself in her homeland as a painter and cartoonist. She became internationally famous after creating the Moomins. She later went on to write novels and short fiction for adults. She worked in her Helsinki studio, moving to a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland during the summer months with her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä. She died on 27th June 2001 at the age of 86.

“…over the years, she’d learned not to interfere with Jonna’s plans and their mysterious blend of perfectionism and nonchalance, a mix not everyone can properly appreciate. Some people just shouldn’t be disturbed in their inclinations, whether large or small. A reminder can instantly turn enthusiasm into aversion and spoil everything.”
– ‘Changing Pictures’

****************************

REFERENCE LIST

1. From Ali Smith’s Introduction to Fair Play, 2007.
2. Tovian (adjective) relating to or characteristic of the Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson or her oeuvre (‘the text is Tovian in tone’). In which case, the word Tovian might also be used as a noun to describe an admirer, imitator or student of Tove Jansson. Plural noun: Tovians (‘essays or articles by Tovians’). Synonym: Tovianesque.
3. From the original cover copy by Tove Jansson, 1989.
4. From a letter to her editor, Åke Runnquist of Bonniers publishing house in Stockholm, 15 June 1988, page 474, Letters From Tove, edited by Boel Westin.
5. Selected quotes from a letter to Åke Runnquist, 10 April 1987, page 485, Letters From Tove, edited by Boel Westin.
6. From a letter to Åke Runnquist, 15 June 1988, page 486, Letters From Tove, edited by Boel Westin.
7. From the Tove Jansson website, ‘Timeline: Books: Fair Play‘.
8. From ‘A Little Piece of a Life: Tove Jansson’s Fiction for Adults’, Madeleine LaRue, Los Angeles Review of Books, 21 Dec. 2014.
9. Winner of the 2009 Bernard Shaw Prize for translating Rent spel from the Swedish language into English.

****************************

Images of Tove Jansson © Moomin Characters™

Categories: LGB, Tove Jansson, Translated Literature

Tags: #ToveTrove, Ali Smith, Art, Åke Runnquist, Finland, Finnish Literature, Helsinki, Nordic Literature, Sort of Books, Swedish Language, Thomas Teal, Tove Jansson, Tove Trove, Tovian, Tuulikki Pietilä