Indignant Voices
Astrid considered writing a retort, but chose instead to send long, heartening letters home to her mother and father in Småland on August 23 and September 1, sharing two pieces of good news: first about her new part-time job as an editor, and second about her latest top prize in a children’s book competition, which this time had focused on detective novels:
Tomorrow I shall begin my part-time job with Rabén & Sjögren, which I’m sure I’ve written about before. I’ll be working 4 hours a day and have demanded 300 kronor per month. I haven’t got hold of the Aftonbladet yet, so I can’t show Mother the harsh telling-off I got from Professor Landquist. I haven’t responded either, and perhaps I won’t. . . . Not everybody thinks that Pippi Longstocking is uncultured and unsavory and unimaginative and everything else Landquist called it. P.S. Wouldn’t you know it, I’ve won another prize! 1,500 kronor for Bill Bergson, Master Detective.
In the slipstream of Professor Landquist’s critical attack on Pippi Longstocking in August 1946, more unsatisfied readers reared their heads in the media. And there was plenty for a grown-up to get worked up about: an impudent child who stuffed herself with cakes at morning coffee without asking permission, who didn’t listen in school, who lied constantly and even scoffed at such an august institution as the police. A child who ate poisonous mushrooms, played with fire and loaded guns, slept with her feet on the pillow, blew her nose on her clothing, and encouraged other children to spell badly and speak inelegantly. “The book is quite simply riddled with unhealthy and unnatural childishness,” said one column in the Folkskollärarnas Tidning, a teachers’ magazine, and a reader signing as “Indignant” complained in one of the country’s major dailies about the “deranged style” of the Pippi stories that were perpetually on the radio: “Isn’t there anyone who can put a stop to this depraved program? . . . What do our educationalists say? Is there anything instructive or amusing about this Pippi Longstocking’s exploits? In one instance she goes into a woman’s clothing boutique and tears the arm off a mannequin, then after being told off by the saleswoman she answers: ‘Yes, all right, take it down a notch!’”
Lindgren considered responding to her critics, but instead left the stage clear for reviewers of Pippi Longstocking Goes Aboard, which came out in October 1946. Several of them used their review to polemicize or to refute Landquist’s article: Elsa Olenius, for one, who was standing in at the Dagens Nyheter throughout the fall as Eva von Zweigbergk traveled in the United States. Elsa seized the opportunity to promote her protégée and collaborator, whose new Pippi book she knew all about: Astrid had sent her the manuscript in May, asking for her opinion and any suggested changes, as we know from a letter to Hanna and Samuel August dated May 25, 1946.
As the Dagens Nyheter’s temporary critic wrote in her review on October 26, the latest Pippi book was far more internally coherent than the first, and in the majority of chapters Lindgren kept control of her “unique style of humor, without going over the top.” Olenius concluded by advertising the play she and Astrid had adapted together, which they’d been staging successfully for more than six months: “The first book about Pippi Longstocking can now be seen in dramatized form. It is currently being performed at the City Library’s children’s theatre at Medborgarhus. The book is published by Rabén & Sjögren, and the price of a ticket to the little play is 65 öre. It’s easy to perform and amuses all children.”
One review that took a particularly wide variety of approaches to Pippi Longstocking Goes Aboard appeared in the Aftontidningen on November 16, 1946. Young Lennart Hellsing, himself an imaginative writer for children, with a knack for playing with rhyme and nonsense words, demonstrated his caliber as a reviewer by summarizing the past year’s Pippi debates, criticizing the latest Pippi book for straining after effect, and finally applauding Pippi Longstocking as the torchbearer for a new era in children’s writing. Writers such as himself, Tove Jansson, and Astrid Lindgren were among the avant-garde:
Astrid Lindgren writes fairy-tales that are no less fairy-tale-esque than folk tales, but adapted to a modern environment. Her modern fairy-tales have the advantage of being written for children and understood by children, which is far from the case with folk tales. The deep wisdom and symbolism they contain is entirely missing from Pippi Longstocking; however, one may well ask what use young children have for an old man’s insight. Isn’t it more important that they (to put it in modern terms) are allowed to live in a healthy world of sensuality? With her Pippi Longstocking books, Astrid Lindgren has knocked a hole in the wall of moralism, sentimentality, and mawkishness that has enclosed Swedish children’s literature for decades.
For the second year in a row, Astrid Lindgren did a roaring trade over Christmas, but she was struggling with her newfound stardom, and in her diary between Christmas and New Year 1946 she remarked: “I’ve become a teeny-weeny little bit ‘famous.’” Something of an understatement. In the world of children’s literature she was by far the year’s highest flyer, having published four major books inside twelve months. Two years after her debut, Astrid Lindgren had two Pippi books on the market, as well as two novels for girls, two plays, and a children’s detective novel; altogether they had sold 100,000 copies. She had also won four literary prizes, signed a film contract, and sold translation rights to Pippi to several countries. Unreal or not, it was time to remove the quotation marks in Astrid’s diary from the words “author” and “famous.”
The first big interview with “Pippi’s mother” was striking in terms of its contrast between the careless Pippi and her stylish, elegantly dressed author. When Vi wanted to do an interview with Astrid Lindgren in the early summer of 1947, because her new book, The Children of Noisy Village, was going to be serialized in the magazine over the summer, the journalist couldn’t hide a note of surprise at the sight of her: “A slim and graceful creature comes toward me, beautifully put together in brown and muted turquoise, with a merry twinkle in her calm, gray eyes.”
So, what was the trick to her barnstorming success? Vi’s correspondent wanted to know. How was she so marvelously in tune with her small readers? “Well, I don’t know that there’s any trick to it,” she said. “Maybe just remembering your own childhood well . . . how you felt and thought and talked when you were a child. It might sound obvious, but when your job consists of plowing through children’s book manuscripts day after day, you discover how important simplicity is. No long or complicated sentences, no theoretical arguments, no incomprehensible words, no narrow-minded moral advice!”
For the first time, a broader public got to learn about Mrs. Lindgren’s literary working methods. When she got the initial idea for a story, she explained, it was like she was in the hands of larger forces: “I prefer to write in bed, when I’ve been ill and I’m waiting to be rid of a fever, or in the evening after I’ve gone to bed. Or outside. Like Bill Bergson, Master Detective, for instance, which came into being in our rowboat in Furusund. And I work quickly, so I’m almost ashamed when I hear how lots of other people toil over their books. When I start writing I get a sort of happy feeling, like the book’s finished already and I’m just there to get it down on paper.”
Finally the journalist from Vi wanted to hear Mrs. Lindgren’s thoughts on the debates about upbringing in Sweden, which had partly focused on the educational qualities—or lack thereof—in the Pippi Longstocking books. The question gave Astrid a welcome opportunity to respond to some of her critics:
I really wish we grown-ups would learn to respect children, to truly realize that “young children are also people,” and to follow through on the consequences of that. I’d like to put in a word for freedom in children’s education. Far too many people think that freedom in education is the same as freedom from education. When children get up to their monkey tricks, you can just shake your head and mutter something about irresponsible parents and “freedom.” That’s unjustified, and it delays and hampers developments in this important area.
> Child Psychologists to Tea
Throughout her career, Astrid Lindgren carefully avoided associating herself and Pippi Longstocking with any particular school of psychology or pedagogical approach, which is not to say that she undervalued research and scholarship in those fields or was reluctant to engage with them. Quite the contrary. A few weeks before the interview in Vi’s midsummer issue in 1947, Astrid invited two Swedish child psychologists to tea at Dalagatan, along with Anne-Marie Fries and her sister Ingegerd, who had previously heard Joachim Israel and Mirjam Valentin-Israel lecture about the couple’s controversial book, There Are No Naughty Children (Det finns inga elaka barn!). Their message was that adults shouldn’t restrict children’s freedom. Instead, they should learn to understand the nature of children and their needs at various stages of development. During the lecture, the psychologists had cited Pippi Longstocking as an example of an “antiauthoritarian children’s book” that had a liberating effect on a child’s psyche.
After the lecture, Ingegerd approached the speakers, introduced herself, and asked whether they could be persuaded to write a blurb for the Pippi book. They agreed, and ended up having tea one June evening at Astrid Lindgren’s apartment. She was so pleased with the couple’s blurb, which could also be used to promote Pippi overseas, that in May 1947 she sent Hanna and Samuel August an extensive quotation from it:
From a child psychologist at the Erica Foundation I’ve received the following recommendation: that Pippi “is among the best children’s books published in the Swedish language. Unlike the majority of children’s books, it’s refreshingly free of any kind of finger-pointing or moralizing ‘edification.’ Its value, in my opinion, lies in its potential effect as a kind of safety valve for children who have been trammeled by the judgmental and punitive kind of upbringing so often practiced. Children can identify with Pippi, who is allowed to do everything they would like to do themselves but either cannot or may not. This offers them a socially acceptable outlet for the aggression all children feel toward their parents, and which often manifests in problem children in the form of various maladjustments and behavioral disorders. For this reason I consider both books to be of great value for mental health.” What do you say to that! I had no idea I was doing a good deed for mental health when I wrote Pippi. The man, whose name is Israel, is an assistant at the Erica Foundation’s department for remedial teaching, where they look after problem children.
Subsequent letters to her parents in Småland tell us that their chat over tea on June 2, 1947, ended up revolving—unsurprisingly—around children’s education, Pippi, and There Are No Naughty Children, a copy of which the couple gave to their hostess with the dedication “To Pippi Longstocking’s mother, with thanks from the authors.”
Karin Nyman recalls the Israels’ book making a strong impression on her mother, and they frequently discussed it at home. After her encounter with the psychologists in June 1947, it was as though Astrid Lindgren felt emboldened to express her opinions about child-rearing and the impact of childhood in the media. She did so several times in 1947 and 1948, in a series of articles about education and upbringing in the weekly magazine Husmodern (The Housewife), where Astrid repeated what she had said in her interview with Vi the year before and emphasized parental responsibility even more strongly: “Freedom in education doesn’t preclude stability. Nor does it preclude children feeling affection and respect for their parents. Most important of all, it means that parents also have respect for their children.”
One chapter of There Are No Naughty Children may have especially interested Astrid Lindgren: the final one, “Education for Democracy,” in which Joachim Israel and Mirjam Valentin-Israel put child-rearing in a broader, more universal human context: “Through sensible upbringing we must create a person who can safeguard the democratic society we hope will emerge—safeguard it against falling back into the barbarism of recent years.”
It was this civilizing perspective on upbringing that Astrid Lindgren would utilize many times later in life, most clearly in her acceptance speech in 1978, when she was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. First, however, she drew on it in the year she met the Israels and read their book. It was the fall of 1947, and Astrid was again featured in Vi, this time answering the question, “What is there in this era, in this world, that gives cause for optimism and hope?” Her positive answer—perhaps the most optimistic one Astrid Lindgren ever gave to this oft-repeated question—was as follows:
We need happier people to create a world that’s fit to live in. Although there may be many good reasons to be discouraged about the future, I, at least, can’t help feeling a surge of optimism when I look at the people of tomorrow: the children and teenagers who are currently growing up. They’re merry and breezy and secure in a way no previous generation has been. Taking a broad view, I think I can venture to say that they’re also happier. This gives us cause to hope that a more humane and generous generation is developing, people who don’t begrudge each other life. The sulky naysayers, the pig-headed, the privileged and the selfish—are they not the cause of all evil, both great and small? Their stunted souls have no room for generosity or human compassion. And if it’s true that every single individual is the product of his or her childhood, then I think we can let ourselves look forward with a certain optimism. A reasonable degree of ill-will must surely disappear from the world when those who are now children and teenagers finally begin sorting out the mess our aged planet’s in.
The Danish Connection
The first five years of Astrid Lindgren’s career as an author were an explosion of artistic and commercial success. Three trilogies were launched: Pippi Longstocking, The Children of Noisy Village, and Bill Bergson, Master Detective. Counting the three short plays and two picture books she also found the time to write, Astrid Lindgren’s publications numbered sixteen by 1949. Meanwhile, nine of her books had been sold for publication in Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, and the United States, and many more such agreements were in the pipeline.
The majority of these foreign contacts in the 1940s were made through a literary agent in Denmark, Jens Sigsgaard, who had approached Astrid Lindgren in the spring of 1946, when the rumor that the world’s strongest girl was Swedish made it across Øresund. Sigsgaard, who had a degree in psychology, was headmaster of the Fröbel Training College in Copenhagen, a hardworking author of children’s books, and owner of the International Agency of Children’s Books (IAC), which he had founded at the end of the war. He not only functioned as Astrid Lindgren’s international outpost in the 1940s and early 1950s, a time when the European publishing industry had been blasted to smithereens and there was scarcely paper to print on, but proved an inspirational colleague and an exceptionally good friend. Correspondence spanning nearly fifty years testifies to their close relationship; today, their letters can be found at the national libraries in Copenhagen and Stockholm.
By the time they met, Sigsgaard was the author of several distinctive rhyme and picture books, including Palle Alone in the World (Palle alene i verden, 1942), which became a huge international success and ended up on Astrid’s bookshelf at Dalagatan. In Palle we meet a boy whose internal life in many ways resembles that of his contemporary Pippi Longstocking. One day he finds himself dreaming that he’s the only person left on earth. Palle can do whatever he wants, so he eats candy by the bucketload, drives a sports car, empties a bank, drives a fire engine with the sirens blaring, and takes a solo plane trip. But Palle also learns that the world is a dull place if you’re all alone, and the boy’s unrestricted freedom becomes a prison.
Illustrative of the mutually inspirational collaboration between Lindgren and Sigsgaard was an exchange of opinion in the fall of 1946, occasioned by his recommendation of Gyldendal’s offer to buy Confidences of Britt-Mari. On September 26, the author responded: “Of course I’ll accept Gyldendal’s offer, with pleasure and gratitude. . . . What are the chances of placing Pippi in America? Perhaps the book would
n’t suit them there.”
Agent Sigsgaard in Copenhagen replied promptly: “Pippi Longstocking is in good hands in the USA with our new representative, Louise Seaman Bechtel. I’ve also just sent a copy of it to South Africa.”
At the beginning of her writing career, Astrid Lindgren drew heavily on Sigsgaard’s experience, frequently asking him for advice—in the fall of 1947, for instance, when she’d had several film offers for the Pippi Longstocking books. Sigsgaard replied on November 7 that sales of film rights were something every author should consider carefully. It was crucial to maintain control of the characters they had created: “When it comes to an important question like a film adaptation of the book, I think you ought to take your time and not just accept the first offer that comes along. There’s no doubt the book will become a classic, so it’ll be filmed at some point.”
Sigsgaard never did manage to sell Pippi on the American market. It was Elsa Olenius who made that coup, when she visited the United States in 1947. The news was immediately passed on to the Danish agent: “I’m afraid it’s my sad duty to inform you that a good friend of mine who’s been in America for a few months has sold Pippi to Viking Press. It was Mrs. Elsa Olenius, who’d been given a bursary to study children’s theater there. It seems that America has a dearth of plays for children, so she recommended the Pippi piece (a little dramatization I wrote), and hey presto, Viking came along and bought the book. . . . Write a few lines and tell me you’re not too crushed that I sold Pippi myself.”
Sigsgaard was neither crushed nor bitter. He congratulated Astrid on the sale, adding a few words that in many ways epitomized the productive interaction between the literary agent and many Scandinavian children’s book authors of the 1940s and 1950s, Astrid Lindgren chief among them: “I have previously emphasized that IAC’s mission is not primarily business-oriented. Our main purpose is to make good children’s books more widely known, and since Pippi is my favorite child, I’m pleased with her success.”