Pessimism in Happy Times: A Global Economy of Guilt, Shame, and Happiness in Miika Nousiainen's Novels

"All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden.

—Voltaire, Candide¹

Happy Together

Junior Vice President of Forest Giant, Inc., Pasi Kauppi, reflects on the ambivalent arc of his life in Finnish author Miika Nousiainen's novel Metsäjätti (2011; Forest Giant). He is repelled by the identity he inherited as the son of an alcoholic family living in a factory town, Törmälä, but also by the identity he has forged through business success in the forest industry. Pasi left Törmälä for the Helsinki School of Economics, married an upper-class Finland-Swede, Emilia, embarked on a lucrative career, and is now seeking to build on his success while beginning a family. Yet although Pasi left his hometown at age 18, he also wants to return and be recognized. Perhaps, fantasizes Pasi, he can save the old plywood factory with his business skills. Previously, Törmälä had only been known for the plywood plant and, more comically in local lore, for the appearance of a local man Rintala in a crowd shot at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, waving the sign "Tervesiä Törmälä!" (Nousiainen 2011, 51) [Helo (sic) Törmälä!].² So when Pasi is offered the opportunity to return to Törmälä to represent Forest Giant in negotiating a reorganization of the plant, including many prospective layoffs, Pasi takes the assignment and seeks to work out his ambivalent feelings.

Pasi at first appears to succeed, mitigating the workers' cynicism by pursuing several ways to save jobs. He seems to minimize the layoffs. At the end of the novel, however, it is revealed that Pasi's work has actually contributed to a larger corporate strategy. Forest Giant has been seeking to make the Törmälä plant appear to be a valuable asset so the corporation's leadership can use the plant as a pawn in merger negotiations with a larger multinational forestry corporation. The Forest Giant Corporation is ultimately acquired, becoming part of Consolidated Forest Giants. The Törmälä Plywood Plant is shut down, and everybody loses their jobs. Pasi resigns and devotes himself to caring for his newborn daughter.

This narrative allows Metsäjätti to explore the intersectionality of globalization, as Pasi's personal story intersects with the economic forces and conflicts of globalization, both of which reverberate with identity discourse related to gender, nation, locality, and the emotions—in particular, happiness. This article suggests that analyzing representations of the emotions as they relate to economic and political change in times of globalization adds an important dimension to analysis of class, gender, and national dimensions in Metsäjätti and Nousiainen's other novels. Scholars writing about his novels have tended to emphasize analysis of nation, gender, and class. Analysis of the representation of emotions adds to such scholarship and may also raise helpful questions more generally about the cultural politics of the emotions in Finnish and Nordic literature and culture.

Pasi's decision to return to Törmälä is comically bad, but it provides a fruitful means to line up and explore the layers of Pasi's conflicted feelings about his past and present. He is rich and married, and his wife is expecting a child at home in Helsinki. He believes he is happy. This story forms one strand of the novel. Pasi's encounter with his childhood friend Janne Kettunen during his first visit to Törmälä evokes painful but also cherished memories and enhances Pasi's sense of ambivalence about his life. It also gives him a mission—to save Janne and the town's jobs. This is another strand of the novel. In alternating first-person narration, Pasi and Janne tell what happens, weaving the strands together. For the sake of analytical clarity, the emphasis here falls on discussion of Pasi as protagonist, and his relationship with Emilia, although Janne's perspective will figure in the discussion occasionally.

Pasi's idealistic intervention puts him in the middle of...