{"id":88009,"date":"2015-07-21T15:53:34","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T19:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=88009"},"modified":"2015-07-21T15:55:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T19:55:47","slug":"alls-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/21\/alls-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"All\u2019s Fair"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tove_Jansson_with_flower_crown_001\"<\/a>

Tove Jansson. Photo: Per Olov Jansson<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

They lived at opposite ends of a large apartment building near the harbor, and between their studios lay the attic, an impersonal no-man\u2019s land of tall corridors with locked plank doors on either side. Mari liked wandering across the attic; it drew a necessary, neutral interval between their domains. She could pause on the way to listen to the rain on the metal roof, look out across the city as it lit its lights, or just linger for the pleasure of it.<\/p>\n

They never asked, \u201cWere you able to work today?\u201d Maybe they had, twenty or thirty years earlier, but they\u2019d gradually learned not to. There are empty spaces that must be respected\u2014those often long periods when a person can\u2019t see the pictures or find the words and needs to be left alone.<\/p>\n

\u2014Tove Jansson, \u201cVideomania,\u201d Fair Play<\/em><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are not many really good books that portray functional relationships. Certainly not the relationships of artists. Well, that\u2019s not a shocker\u2014happy families, as we are told, are all alike. Fair Play<\/em>, Tove Jansson\u2019s 1982 portrait of a partnership, is an exception.<\/p>\n

Fair Play<\/em> is based on Jansson\u2019s relationship with the artist Tuulikki Pietil\u00e4, with whom she shared a life, and a home, for some forty years. If you have read Jansson\u2019s classic Summer Book<\/em>, certain things about Fair Play <\/em>will be familiar: the island setting, the spareness, the less-is-more portrait of human connection. These things will be familiar even to those who only know Jansson from her most famous works, like Finn Family Moomintroll<\/em>. (Indeed, Pietil\u00e4 was the inspiration for the competent Moomin character Too-Ticky.) <\/p>\n

Fair Play<\/em> deals with the creative process as well as anything I\u2019ve ever read, but it\u2019s not concerned with the drama of creation. Well, no more than with any other quotidian human drama: while the creative drive and the women\u2019s respect for each other as artists is a motivating factor, the book takes these for granted. Creating is what they do; it can be challenging; they deal with it.<\/p>\n

Things happen, sure\u2014storms, quarrels, passive-aggressive silences. But these pass. The pair whittles. They fish. They feed the cat. They watch a lot of videos. And this isn\u2019t to indicate that they are bored with each other and tragic and living lives of quiet desperation; they just like watching videos. That this feels quietly revolutionary is itself a comment on something.<\/p>\n

I know what you\u2019re thinking: with separate apartments and an attic between them, anyone can live in harmony. <\/em>But the fact is, when they aren\u2019t living this real-estate idyll, the two cohabit in a tiny cabin on an isolated island. If you look at images of Jansson\u2019s home on the island of Klovharu in the Pellinki archipelago, you\u2019ll see just how very small it was. And yet Fair Play<\/em> never feels claustrophobic. Here\u2019s how one tense episode between the women ends:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cMari,\u201d said Jonna, \u201csometimes you\u2019re really a little too obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think? But once in a while a person just needs to say what doesn\u2019t need to be said. Don\u2019t you think?\u201d<\/p>\n

And they went back to their reading.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  They lived at opposite ends of a large apartment building near the harbor, and between their studios lay the attic, an impersonal no-man\u2019s land of tall corridors with locked plank doors on either side. Mari liked wandering across the attic; it drew a necessary, neutral interval between their domains. She could pause on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[14764,18867,7599,747,2899,8811,11329,18868],"class_list":["post-88009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-creativity","tag-fair-play","tag-happiness","tag-novels","tag-relationships","tag-stories","tag-tove-jansson","tag-tuulikki-pietila"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn Tove Jansson\u2019s \u201cFair Play\u201d and Creative Couples<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"July 21, 2015 \u2013  They lived at opposite ends of a large apartment building near the harbor, and between their studios lay the attic, an impersonal no-man\u2019s land of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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