Sun City – how Tove Jansson’s trip to the United States resulted in her third adult novel
Tove Jansson and her life partner, Tuulikki Pietilä went on an eight-month round-the-world trip in 1971-1972, which took them from London and Amsterdam via Japan and Hawaii to the United States and Mexico. While Tuulikki was busy filming, Tove was inspired by the surroundings and the people they met along the way, which resulted in the novel Sun City.
Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä spent several months of their trip in the United States. They started in Hawaii, where they visited several of the islands, and then continued through the US, where they visited about ten places, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Arizona, New Orleans, Florida, Niagara Falls, and New York. In Japan, Tuulikki had bought a Konica super 8 mm film camera, which she eagerly used to film the rest of the trip.
Tove Jansson swimming in a lagoon and dancing on Kona Island in Hawaii, 1972.
The visit to Florida resulted in the novel Sun City
One of the stops in Florida was the small town of St Petersburg. They had gone there to see the ship from the movie Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), which had come out a decade earlier, starring Marlon Brando. The plan was to stay in the city for a few days, but the visit became longer. Inspired by this “sun city”, a city of sunshine, silence, and rest for elderly people, Tove started writing a short story that grew into her third adult novel Sun City (1974), which has recently been published in the US by New York Review of Books.
The cover of the newly published US edition of Sun City on the left and the cover of the original Swedish edition of Solstaden from 1974 on the right.The novel begins with a quote from a local brochure (it is unclear whether it is taken directly from an actual brochure Tove found on the trip or whether she took literary liberties): “wonderful, peaceful towns, where we guarantee perpetual sunshine, paradise on earth, as refreshing as old wine…”
The novel Sun City is about a bunch of more or less eccentric elderly people at the Butler Arms retirement home in St. Petersburg, Florida, as well as the younger Linda, who works at the home, and her boyfriend, Bounty Joe. The hotel Tove and Tuulikki stayed at in St. Petersburg was called Butler Arms and the character Bounty Joe in the novel works on the tourist ship Bounty, so it’s clear that some experiences on the trip directly inspired the novel. In a letter written by Tove Jansson for the first English edition of the novel, which is included in the new US edition, she shares her own experience of the city that inspired the novel:
“I traveled through America, through Florida, and came one night to a city that was completely silent. The next morning it was just as quiet and empty. The open porches rested in their greenery with long rows of rocking chairs, all turned to the street. The stillness was almost awful. And then I understood the city was one of the sun cities, the cities of the elderly where sun is guaranteed year-round. Everything is set up for rest and senescence, inexorable and ideal.…. The whole city, as I experienced it, is a sort of last beach for departure and arrival, an open possibility headed anywhere. The sun city is a lovable, horrible, and very alive city.”
An old postcard from the Butler Arms hotel that inspired the name of the retirement home in the novel Sun City.Tove and Tuulikki visit the ship that was used in the film Mutiny on the Bounty.
A visit to the ship by the character Mrs Morris is described like this in the book: “Mrs. Morris walked on. She looked at the totem pole and the outrigger canoe, which had spiny deep-water seashells glued to its bottom, and stopped in front of See Yourself in the South Pacific, a Lifesize Mr. and Mrs. Tahiti. They were plywood cutouts. He was wearing a blue uniform and she had on a grass skirt, and neither one of them had a head. For fifty cents you could give them your own head ad have a picture taken.”
“They were plywood cutouts. He was wearing a blue uniform and she had on a grass skirt, and neither one of them had a head.”
The novel deals with the end of life and the decay that inexorably affects both body and mind. Tove had written about aging both in her last Moomin book Moominvalley in November (1970) in the form of the character Grandpa Grumble and in the beloved novel The Summer Book (1972) through the grandmother character. She would turn 60 a few years after the trip, so she was between the older and younger characters in Sun City in terms of age when she wrote the book. Her own mother Signe “Ham” Hammarsten Jansson had died just a few years before, which no doubt also influenced the choice of subject.
“We could die at any moment, and it doesn’t make that much difference.”
“Yes of course’ said Mrs. Morris angrily. ‘We could die at any moment, and it doesn’t make that much difference.’ Her guest began to snivel. ‘Please, Miss Peabody, I beg you, don’t. When I say it doesn’t matter very much, why, that’s the truth. It simply ends, and old as we are, it probably won’t take that long.” Excerpt from Sun City
The trip continued with baby goat feeding and strolls in the city
The stay in Florida not only included observing the elderly and the quiet life that surrounded them, but it also included everything from feeding baby goats with a bottle to visiting the Music of Yesterday amusement park.
Tove feeds baby goats and tries out a “stone age car” in Florida.
The trip in the United States was a mixture of city and desert, inland and sea, and it ended with a boat trip from New York across the Atlantic to France. The trip was a clear inspiration for Tove’s future writing, which was reflected in the short stories Resa med Konica (“Journey with Konica”) and Meddelande (“Message”), among others.
In New Orleans, Tove and Tuulikki enjoyed city life.
You can buy the new edition of Tove Jansson’s novel Sun City here!
