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Richard
Rayner (b. 1955) is a British-born journalist, nowadays resident in Los
Angeles. He contributes to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harper's
Bazaar and Granta. Los Angeles Without a Map (1988) was Rayner's
debut novel, which the Finnish film director Mika Kaurismäki used
as the basis for a film with the same title. The premiere was held in
Helsinki in August 1999. Rayner has also written a set of memoirs entitled
The Blue Suit and three other novels, the most recent of which
The Cloud Sketcher (2000) is due to appear in Finnish in autumn
2001. After all, the main character in the book is a Finn, Esko Väänänen.
Esko is a successful architect who designs ever higher and showier skyscrapers
in the New York of the 1920s. His childhood was spent in a remote Finnish
village, surrounded by forests. His left eye was blinded in a fire, which
his mother had lit when she committed suicide. The work examines the various
phases and ideological trends of new-born Finnish independence; the apolitical
Esko and his Bolshevik father fight in the Finnish Civil War on opposite
sides. Love for a Russian girl called Katerina finally lures Esko across
the Atlantic to New York. There he encounters bootleggers, gangsters,
daredevil construction workers and jazz musicians. According to the critics,
The Cloud Sketcher captures superbly not only the vaunting spirit
of the skyscrapers but also the melancholy that is part and parcel of
the Finnish mentality. As a consequence of the main protagonist's origins,
the dark coniferous forests also sigh in heaven-bent New York, lending
the novel an interesting tension. The book is also to appear in German,
French, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, Greek and Czech. Alan Parker is directing
a film based on it, with Brad Pitt playing the part of Esko Väänänen.
Photo : Jerry Bauer |