“Drottninggatan
in Stockholm is a long and narrow street more or less in the city
centre. Traffic goes in an endless stream”.
It
made me smile to read this opening today when Drottninggatan is a
pedestrian street and has been for ages, but who could imagine it in
1948 when the first Ture Sventon book by Åke Holmberg appeared
(published in English by Methuen in 1965 as
Tam Sventon, Private
Detective).
I
have never been a fan of this series, even though I once won the
second prize for the best costume at one of the Children's Books
Institute unforgettable dress-up parties; I dressed up as Mr Omar,
wearing a fez, with the famous flying carpet under my arm. Still, I
don't find these books funny or thrilling, but I can see why a child
in '40s or early '50s might. Or maybe it is the special kind of
Swedish humour that aliens don't get. Perhaps they are those books
that nostalgic grandparents give their grandchildren for Christmas,
and publishers believe they are still popular and reprint. Maybe
these books were revolutionary when they came, part of the great
post-war children's book renaissance in Sweden. But today there are
so many other children's detective stories, written for today's
children, that I cannot see why a childish grown-up detective solving
idiotic crimes with the help of a flying carpet would have any
appeal.
I
had a good memory of the silly plot, but I had forgotten that Ture
Sventon (he has a lisp - that's why he is called Tam in English) had
four sidekicks, four totally flat and boring children whose role is
simply to make the book look child-friendly. For it is obviously a
parody that goes above young readers' heads.
My
library copy is a reprint from 2008, and although the cover designer
is not acknowledged, the cover image has been doctored to bring it at
least slightly closer to contemporary readers. Compare with the
original.
The
main character is the same, but the children have been given “modern”
clothes – 1960s maybe? Still stone age for today's readers.
Title font has been changed, while in the original it repeats exactly
the door sign on Ture Sventon's office on Drottninggatan. Yet we do
judge books by covers, and although everything in the text must feel
ancient, marketing people probably insisted that the cover should be
modernised.
Anyway,
re-reading Ture Sventon did not prove to be a great aesthetic
experience. Fortunately, it is a short book, as children's books were
at the time.
Åke
Holmberg's plaque is appropriately on Drottninggatan or actually not
quite; the guide says corner of Drottninggatan and Jakobsgatan, and
it took me some time to examine the two sides of each corner. The
sign is inconspicuous and at the moment obscured by scaffolding. I
had almost given up before I finally saw it.
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