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190 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2017

And finally: the chanterelle is one of those mysterious mushrooms which has never been cultivated. It grows only in the wild. This stubborn mushroom has refused to come out of the woods, although for some more than a hundred years it has been told that life in the fields is so much better than life in the forest. Some parts of nature simply cannot be civilized, try as much as you like.
In this sense, the chanterelle is an Estonian.
"Tsivileeritud inimene kuulab muusikat. Eestlane kuulab mustikat - et siis sünesteet või nii..." (The civilized person listens to music, the Estonian listens to blueberries, so a synesthete of sorts...)
From the Estonian writer Valdur Mikita comes a beloved and much praised book called Kukeseene kuulamise kunst. Läänemeresoome elutunnet otsimas about our small country on the east coast of the Baltic Sea. A philosophical nonfiction book, Kukeseene kuulamise kunst, or The Art of Listening to the Chanterelle if translated into English, muses on different aspects that make up what it is to be Estonian, though it only addresses a certain group of people, leaving others left wanting.
I was recommended to read this book by a friend and I am glad she did, otherwise I would never have picked it up myself. And that is because I never really gravitate towards Estonian books due to a certain bias of mine that I am fully aware of that I will talk about in a bit. Putting that aside for now, my experience of reading Kukeseene kuulamise kunst started out very positively. I got hooked from the first page as the author managed to really tune into so many little things that make up the lived experience of so many Estonians. I truly felt Seen (hehe) and it made me feel closer to my Estonian roots overall. Even made me want to pick up more books by other Estonian authors.
Moreover, Mikita has long been praised for his imaginative use of language, and I must attest it is in fact true. His choice of words in many places is very unusual yet compelling. It gives an overall impression of playfulness with language that was very refreshing. And I have to say that this will be the extent of the good I have to say about this book. At some point the author’s ideas started repeating and then from about 1/3 of the book onward he didn’t seem to have any new substantial ideas, for he kept talking about the same things just in other words over and over again. Sadly, that also made the second half of the book a bit of a slog to get through.
Not only did the text get repetitive, it also proved my negative bias against (most) Estonian authors to be true once again. The biggest gripe I have with this book of his is that when he means to address Estonians as a whole, he only seems to capture what it means to be Estonian for a handful of us. A certain one kind of us. Making jokes on behalf of mentally ill people, disabilities, and ethnic minority groups is something I have come to, sadly, expect from Estonian authors and I am so fucking disappointed that my expectations were proven right once again. I so badly wanted to praise this book to the heavens and enjoy it but I had to draw the line at some of the things he says and thus condones in this work.
Even though to the average Joe, or really the average Estonian, little “jokes” and comments here and there about the aforementioned people might seem like a small thing, it actually further alienates groups of people who are already marginalized in our society. At some point in the book Mikita talks about how one of the most important things for a person is to be good but how can his words be taken seriously if letting these kinds of “jokes” and little “jabs” get printed into a book is no big deal for him. From this we can infer that he does not expect “those kinds of people” to read his works, who to him are only worthy of being made fun of.
Just for the sake of exemplifying what I mean I am going to include some of the parts that infuriated me the most.
“Mujal maailmas prevaleerib juba pikemat aega ameerikapärane vabakasvatus, mis võib küll koolis teha lapsed õnnelikumaks, kuid ilmselt mitte targemaks. [...] Seega võib öelda ka märksa lihtsamalt: traditsiooniline peremudel kasvatab suurema tõenäosusega ka targemaid lapsi.”(pages 99-100)
“Eesti on Euroopa riikide hulgas justkui erivajadustega laps, natsionaalne Aspergeri sündroom. Veidi autistlik ja veidra käitumisega, kuid siiski andekas.” (page 100)
“Meenub ühe vana kooli õpetaja mõttearendus, mis on meie hariduses paarikümne aastaga muutunud. “Vanasti,” ütles ta, “olid klassis kas targad või lollid õpilased. Targad on samaks jäänud, kuid erinevus endiste aegadega on selles, et lollid on asendunud hulludega. Ma tean, et nii ei tohiks öelda, aga vahel on tunne, nagu oleksin sattunud mitte kooli, vaid hullumajja. Raske on leida kedagi, kes poleks autistlik, stressis, hüperaktiivne, depressiivne, söömishäirete või sotsiaalfoobia all kannatav. Normaalne laps on tänapäeval suur haruldus.”” (pages 47-48)
It’s dumb that it hurts me this much. And I know that so many people would respond to my complaints and criticism by saying something like “oh, you’re just overreacting and wanting to find a problem where there is no need for one”. But when something intrinsic to me and so many other people is constantly mocked in the literature of my native tongue and land then of course I am going to get upset. It would hurt literally no one to think of marginalized people as people. It would do only good. And we can’t just sit by and turn a blind eye (or squeeze one eye shut, as Estonians would say) to these kinds of things until the end of time, endlessly giving the authors who perpetuate these awful ideas and show that it’s okay to act this way towards certain people, the benefit of the doubt.
Distinguished authors, like Mikita, have had decades of writing experience and have been alive for far longer than I have. One would think that with all that time he, and others like him, would have learned how to be a decent fucking person. The bar is literally on the ground. It is ludicrous to not stay up to date with how language is evolving and what is no longer considered to be an acceptable way to speak, especially for him as someone who writes for a living. Not that it was ever really okay to talk shit about Native American people, disabled people, or any of the groups that he humiliates with his writing.
To conclude, Valdur Mikita’s Kukeseene kuulamise kunst. Läänemeresoome elutunnet otsimas is very playfully written and manages to capture a lot of minute details about Estonians that often go unnoticed even by ourselves. However, his archaic use of offensive language and less than favorable view of different groups of marginalized people, all of which he masterfully manages to combine into one text, leaves much to be desired indeed. All of this combined made a lot of what he was saying seem too preachy and pretentious. I will most likely not want to pick up any of his other works.