Wednesday 15 April 2009

Art, Men and Magic


This month's issue of the Finnish magazine Hiidenkivi, published by the Finnish Literature Society, has an interesting item on the life and work of the Finnish-American newspaper artist Art (Arthur) Huhta (1902-1990), who collaborated with S. L. Huntley on Wild West-inspired comic strips like Mescal Ike and Lolly Gags, and later produced the artwork for Dinky Dinkerton and Wild Rose. Born to a Finnish emigrant couple, Huhta grew up in Chicago, where in the 1920s he worked in the studio of the animator Wally Carlson, helping to make the Disney-emulating Bad Bears cartoons.

Among other literary features, this issue of the magazine also contains a survey of the new Finnish "men's poetry", a study of witches in children's literature, and an essay on Eemil Arvi Saarimaa (1888-1866), the philologist and folklorist who compiled and edited the early collected works of Aleksis Kivi and Minna Canth.

2 comments:

Jenny Schwartzberg said...

I'm curious. Is there an English translation of the article on Art Huhta? I took a look at the website, and it appears to be entirely in Finnish, which I do not read. Are there any plans to publish it in an English journal?

Yours,
Jenny Schwartzberg
Chicago, IL

David McDuff said...

Unfortunately, Hiidenkivi is published in Finnish only, and I don't know if the author has plans to publish the article in an English version - my post was really intended to draw attention to a magazine that's sometimes neglected by literary translators of Finnish.