Memories of Royal weddings

Thirty years ago I was invited to contribute to a British academic journal. It doesn't sound extraordinary, but at that time I was living in the Soviet Union, and if I hadn't known that I would soon move to Sweden, I would have ignored the invitation and hoped that the postal service censor wouldn't report my inappropriate correspondence. As it was, I decided that a publication in a British journal would be a good start for my new career, so I wrote the piece and asked a foreign journalist I knew to mail it for me. Some weeks later I received a postal note to collect an overseas parcel. Again, in a different situation I would have burned the note, but I went to the post office and had to pay import tax which I am sure exceded by far the value of the parcel, at least in proportion to my salary. There was a short letter from the editor: "I have been told that it would be pointless to send you a fee, so please receive this as a token of appreciation". The parcel was a tin of biscuits with a picture of the Royal couple, HRH Prince Charles and Diana.

My friends were impressed by the tin, but less by the biscuits. I didn't take the tin with me to Sweden, so I guess one of my friends kept it and may have it still. It must be worth a fortune now. 

How to be rejected

Yesterday I posted a status update on Facebook sharing the fact that an academic journal had rejected an article that they had asked me to submit. I posted it deliberately for some younger colleagues to note that being senior, established, renowned and so on is not a guarantee that everything you offer will be published, and not even that everything that is commissioned will be published. I got many responses to this post, exactly of the type I had expected, and it feels there is more to be said.

I once gave a paper at a conference where several academic journal editors were fishing for good stuff, and after my session the editor of the most prestigeous journal asked me to expand the paper into a full-scale article. Which I did, because the subject was something I thought important, and the journal prestigeous. I put a lot of work into it, and it went out to readers who very obvioulsy didn't understand what I was doing. They made some, in my eyes, irrelevant comments, enough to get the article rejected, but they didn't seem to have noticed my completely revolutionary approach! I eventually published it elsewhere and got my brilliant new ideas across, but it did hurt.

I am sure that I occasionally do the same when I am asked to read a manuscript for a journal. Fail to see the new revolutionary ideas. Hopefully, the authors publish elsewhere.

I think this is something we need to accept as academics. Sometimes we are lucky, and a good journal or essay collection will take your piece, with small revisions (no articles go to press without revisions). Sometimes, after having been rejected by high-profile journals, you publish in a less esteemed one. I have published in Swedish something that had been rejected in English. And the other way round (in fact, my first real book, Children's Literature Comes of Age, was rejected by a Swedish publisher, so I re-wrote it in English). I also have publications in Croatian and Slovenian that haven't been published anywhere else.

I still have plenty of unpublished stuff in my computer. Every now and then I go through it thinking that I ought to do something about it, such as a short and comprehensive introduction to Bakhtin, or a comparative study of illustrations to Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, or my brilliant Francelia Butler memorial lecture on bridges in children's literature (I hope some editors are reading this). But I am doing other stuff now. It's too late.

It hurts a lot when you are rejected, especially when you are convinced that you piece is good. Sometimes you submit something written half-heartedly or marginal to what you are doing or something that will be included in another piece. But when you know it's good, the only way to handle it is try again. Some of the readers' comments may actually be helpful. Even if they have completely misunderstood you, it is worth contemplating why.

And whatever happens, we need to remember that we have chosen to play this game, and every now and then we win.

Easter

Easter time is when my identity gets most confused. Russian and Western Easter do not always coincide and can be as far apart as five weeks. We always celebrated Russian Easter in Moscow, even though my family was Lutheran. When I moved to Sweden I of course started celebrating Swedish/Western Easter, but I brought my Russian customs with me. Russian customs include Russian food: the Easter saffron cake, kulich, and Easter spicy cheese, paskha. At the same time, as a child I was supposed to believe in Easter Bunny, in the good German tradition. I had to prepare a plate with some moss or pretty leaves and put it under my bed on Easter eve. In the morning the Bunny would have hidden the plate, and when I found it, it had a little kulich, a pretty egg and perhaps a little toy. No chocolate eggs. Easter was officially forbidden, so there was no commerce around it. Yet you could buy kulich in a bakery, only they called it "Spring cake". People with self respect baked their own. There were no special paints for eggs, we would use onion skins and other natural dyes. We shared family secrets.

We played the egg game at breakfast, knocking egg against egg to break it. But one year when we were visiting some German relatives in Northern Caucasus, they took us to the churchyard to roll eggs on graves, which was utterly perplexing. Many years later, I saw remains of hardboiled eggs in Russian churchyards in Moscow. Visiting graves on Easter Day was not part of my family customs. Later, the authorities in Moscow organised shuttle buses from undeground stations to nearest churchyards on Easter Day, to avoid chaos. Still they didn't admit it was Easter.

In Sweden, when the kids were small - and actually when they were grown-up - we filled cardboard eggs with sweets and hid for them to hunt for. A big cultural clash happened during my first Easter in Sweden, when I had carefully prepared the food, painted eggs, set the table on the eve, and in the morning Staffan started boiling eggs for breakfast. On the other hand, he expected me to make a leg of lamb for Easter dinner, and I thought it was barbarian. Eventually, we reconciled it all, taking the best of everything.

In my youth, we would go to Easter vigil, which was forbidden. To discourage young people from attending Easter services, attractive American films and shows were broadcast on television well beyond the normal broadcast time. Around the few remaining churches in Moscow, police and volunteers from Young Communists made human chains, but were instructed to let the believers in. Which implied old women in headscarves, but if you went past with determined steps they'd let you in. The church was overcrowded (in Russian Orthodox churches there are no pews, you stand), it was unbearably hot from hundreds of candles. Once you've squeezed in, you couldn't get out, and the service went on for hours. Sometimes we stayed outside and watched the priests come out to call: "Christ is risen". I knew very little of the implications, but it was a celebration we shared and valued. The Russian custom was to carry a burning candle all the way home. Luckily, I lived just next to a church, so I managed. Sometimes we would go to a different church, and the game was to bring it home in a taxi (it didn't work). Once I attended a service as a guest of honour, allowed to stand with the choir. I received a blessed egg from the priest. People said that blessed eggs didn't rot, you could save them for years.

In Stockholm I used to go to the Russian church for Easter vigil, even when I didn't otherwise go regularly, and in San Diego I managed to find a tiny Russian church. When the Russian and Western Easter did not coincide, I would celebrate first with the family, at home, and then with Russian friends, in church. I would make Easter food twice. Occasionally I would go to a Swedish Easter service. In Sweden, Good Friday (strange name for a day when God is murdered) is a holiday. In the US and here, in the UK, it isn't. You get out of phase. Add all your Jewish friends and friends of other confessions and atheist friends... Yet much like Christmas, Easter for me is mostly about the family. We could never get the whole family together for Christmas Eve, but they all came for Easter brunch.

This year, Julia made Russian Easter food and invited her little brother. I don't think she realises how happy she made me. Somehow this multicultural, confused tradition is carried on.

I am not on study leave any more

As the new term starts next week, I suppose my study leave is over. Supervisions, a business lunch and mountains of paperwork today, a meeting tomorrow. Yes, I know it's Easter week. It doesn't count. We are getting three bank holidays on top of each other next week and the week after.

Paradoxically, I have just come into a good writing mood and managed to finish the most challenging piece I have ever written. (Except maybe my very first article - that was tough too). I have a definite feeling that I have wasted my study leave on zillions of small tasks when I should have been writing my Book. That's what I said I would do in my study leave application. Well, I haven't written much on my Book, it's sufficient to look at the dates of the most recent versions of my files. December? So what have I been doing since?

Perhaps it's inevitable, and perhaps my book project has in fact benefitted from a break. I have written several related papers, I have done a lot of reading. I have also done a lot of thinking. The latter is very hard to put into a report.

My first encounter with trash

Susan's blog post reminded me of a weird experience many years ago. I was a voracious reader and was brought up with high quality literature, and besides there wasn't a lot of what you call "mass-market" literature in my country at that time. Since we were not exposed to it, we didn't really know the difference, and we would read Arthur Hailey alongside John Updike. I read a lot in English, and English paperbacks were hard to get hold of, so you read what was available, what privileged friends brought from abroad, what you could occasionally buy in second-hand book shops. A used paperback cost 4-5 roubles, and my salary was 100. Don't ask me how I managed.

One summer a friend and I went on holiday to Latvia, and although we had brought plenty of books, we ran out of them. We found a second-hand book shop in the capital, and they had a small shelf with English paperbacks. We chose a book each, in the standard way: judging by the cover. I don't remember the title or the author of course, but it was about a family on holiday in the mountains who find a stranger almost frosen to death, and they save him, and the daughter falls in love with him. Half way through the book I started wondering. I expected something to happen. That the stranger turns out ot be a spy, or a former lover tries to claim her back, or something. I was used to books having a plot, a complication, a moral dilemma. But the book just went on with this happy romance. I was puzzled because I had never before met a book that was so profoundly bad. Twilight is a masterpiece in comparison.

Requiem

We met for the first time in their tiny bed-and-sitter in a Moscow suburb. Natasha, his wife, was my first husband's former fellow student. I was heavily pregnant, their daughter some months old. Later we would babysit for each other.

Volodya and Natasha were refuseniks, denied permit to emigrate. In such situations, people no longer cared about the authorities. They constantly had foreign journalists in their home. Volodya went on hunger strikes. I helped translate petitions into English.

Then suddenly they were granted exit and the limbo was over. We all helped to pack and clean and throw away. There was a huge farewell party, with mixed feelings of joy and sorrow. At that time, we knew for sure that we would never see each other again. I remember my husband was away at his archaeological excavations, but came to Moscow just in time to say goodbye at the airport. We received bits of information; first they were in Italy, then moved to Sweden, as they had intended.

Seven years later I moved to Sweden and found them in the phone book. Natasha said: “Come over this very moment”. We have been close ever since. We went to Volodya's exhibitions, we saw him change styles. He gave a print to each of my children. He wasn't hugely famous, but many people loved and bought his paintings and watercolours.

Then one day we became professional partners. We did two picturebooks together, and Volodya did the cover for one of my novels. The publishers didn't appreciate his illustrations, saying they were too elegant. Swedish children didn't like beautiful pictures.

We didn't meet often, but we were always glad to see each other. Volodya and I always pretended we had been lovers, which wasn't true, just a game. He played the same game with dozens of other women. He swore marvellously.

Staffan and I repeatedly talked about asking Volodya to paint a portrait of me. Now it is too late.

Final report from Norway

What can I add to my students' witty reports? What did I take with me home? I think this was the first conference ever which I attended exclusively as a shepherd... umh, mentor. I was at a late stage asked to moderate sessions and be on the final panel, but that's not why I was there. I wasn't there to see old friends - although it was really wonderful to catch up with some of them whom I hadn't seen for a long time. It was absolutely wonderful to listen to Svein Nyhus whom I admire so much, and to see a glimpse of a sketch he drew of me four months ago at the PhD defence in Oslo. I don't think he had his old sketchbook with him by accident. But he didn't let me have the sketch.

I was there to support my students, and - let me admit it - show off. I am so endlessly privileged to have them, and it is so gratifying to hear compliments from colleagues, some with a touch of envy. Allow me the pleasure, I think I have deserved it.

The conference was inspiring, but not without glitches. A female participant from an Arab country talked about images of nature in some Arabic picturebooks. We asked what "Arabic" meant, and whether there was such a thing as "Arabic" children's literature. My student from Kuwait said there wasn't. No more than there is a "European" children's literature, which another paper focused on. Then there was a male participant who talked about Islamic children's literature, with many illuminating examples. It was quite frightening and reminded me of the worst Soviet propaganda. The female Muslim speaker protested but was dismissed by the male colleague. We didn't know what to make of it. Later, my student from Kuwait made a brief comment from which it became clear that the male speaker was in actual fact critical of what he was talking about. The audience perceived it as exactly the opposite of what he meant. Cultural clash? Language barrier? Suppose I didn't have a student who could clarify this total misunderstanding?