The Howling Miller by Arto Paasalinna is a wonderful book. Huttunen, the howling miller, is a man with a patchy history and great carpentry skills, blessed with an artless optimism as well as cursed with bouts of manic-depression. He has an uncanny ability at imitating both animals and men, and has no patience for hypocrisy or social niceties; he is socially backward but self-sufficient enough not to notice the loneliness occasioned by his failings. When a beautiful virgin appears, hawking the virtues of vegetables, he becomes smitten. So begins his journey to find happiness in a society that demands certain rules be followed, delineated roles played, and defined paths taken. Huttunen marches to his own drummer and a few follow him, other free thinkers like his beautiful gardener, the local police officer, and the postman/alcoholic/still-operator.
The underdog fable set forth by Arto Paasalinna is moving and provoking and original. Huttunen is not a good man; he has an anger management problem and is stubborn and opinionated. But he is a decent man and the unfairness of his situation is painful: “just because his mind worked differently to other people’s, he was beyond the pale, he had to be banished from the social order.” The reader is on Huttunen’s side as he battles against bureaucrats and lazy half-wits and conniving provincials seeking a piece of the pie without any baking. Huttunen is a builder and a baker, a hunter and fisherman; he is a survivalist. And he is an honest and determined man, seeking joy and fulfillment through work and love.
We are given only hints of Huttunen’s past, some tragic and others a familiar pattern of soldier and loner. Yet he shares with the reader so freely his emotions and dreams and desires that I became fully engaged with Huttunen. He is a friend I suffered with during his period of incarceration and through his months as a hermit, and with whom I felt the joy of the brief moments of love he shares with the loyal gardener. I was reminded of the lack of connection I felt to the protagonist in The Love Song of Monkey: there I had no insight into character, no sharing of thoughts, and so I did not care about him. Although he was also incarcerated and forced to suffer through an imposed hermit-hood, his character did not inspire me to pull for him or to hope for him. His problems was purely intellectual: how will he regain consciousness and life on earth? With Huttunen, my connection was both intellectual and of the heart: how will he escape the persecution of the small-minded villagers and finally get some peace? Only in a manner I never dreamed of, although looking back through the chapters, all the hints were there.
This lovely story is told simply, with time taken to get the details right and to feel the seasons and time of day and the rhythms of life in a small town in Lapland during the mid-twentieth century. It is not only a fable of one man fighting oppression, a David against Goliath; it is also a love story, a story of friendship, and a religious parable (complete with an appearance by Jesus) about the sufferings of modern man. Good news for all: the human spirit wins out against the daunting odds of social pressure and stigma. All you need to do is feel it and believe it, as we feel it and believe it in The Howling Miller.
The Howling Miller was translated by Will Hobson.
