Diving into an autocrat’s life
Pekka Herlin’s biography was written by John Simon, a former youth worker from New York
|
|
|
By Anna-Stina Nykänen
Who is this John Simon who wrote the controversial and praised biography of Pekka Herlin (1932-2003)? Where did the man emerge, who dives easily into the anguish of the family of an alcoholic and the strategic moves of industrial deals? A man who quotes Machiavelli and Shakespeare, and who nevertheless appreciates the small details of everyday life.
One such detail is a story how, on the day of a big corporate deal, Mrs. Wallenberg of the legendary Swedish industrial family, was wearing a jacket when she came to the Herlin home, with a chain of safety pins that she had forgotten to take off.
No, Simon is clearly not just any guy from the communications department.
Tragedies of autocrats are familiar to the 65-year-old Simon. He studied literature for no less than ten years in New York, Canbridge, the Sorbonne, and York. “It was the time of the Vietnam War, and I wanted to avoid being drafted”, he admits.
Simon worked on a doctoral thesis on Samuel Beckett and maintained contact with the Nobel Literature Prize winner known for his absurd stories. He gave up the thesis when he felt a calling to improve the world.
Simon grew up in New York State. He visited Finland for the first time in the summer of 1969, at the prompting of a basketball friend. He found Hannele who became his wife, and they moved to Manhattan.
Simon worked on the streets to help young people involved in gang activities. He set up a school for them, got them housing and jobs, and answered an emergency hotline at night.
When his own children, Mikko and Elina were small, he decided to take a sabbatical. The family went to Finland.
“I was afraid that some day, maybe a thousand kids would say that John is like a father figure to me, but my own children would not know me.”
Simon came to Kone at first during his sabbatical, and permanently in 1984. Simon was enchanted by a society where even the political right wants more day care facilities and money for health care.
But why to Kone? It doesn’t sound very ideological. He found that he could not do gang work without a command of the language, and not even literary circles would have opened up without Finnish. He chose Kone, as well as sport, and it helped him get into society better.
Now Simon has the nickname Mr. Pussihukka. He has been the chairman of a basketball club by that name for 20 years. He is a die-hard Vantaa resident, has lived in Myyrmäki all the time, an has organised different events, including Back to the 60s concerts.
His task at Kone is to establish a common culture at units in different parts of the world. He is the one who knows the company’s history and its culture. In that sense, he was an insider in writing the biography.
“I knew Pekka Herlin to some extent, but not very well. I never went to the sauna with him, but we did go fishing”, Simon says.
They talked about literature.
Simon spent three years on the biography, and interviewed those who knew the man in one way or another. There were more than 100 of them.
“It was mostly pleasant”, he says. It is not too often that a person gets to sit with Max Jakobson, Tankmar Horn or Kalervo Hentilä talking about trade with the east.
What about the unpleasant things, that Herlin’s youngest son Niklas talks about when he calls his father a human monster. Were there awkward moments in the interviews?
“I never felt that the things that were told about Pekka Herlin would have been excessively rough. Critical opinions come out in the book in a fairly constructive manner, including Niko’s opinions”, Simon says.
Simon understands the family of an alcoholic and someone with mental illness, but he also understands the man himself.
“I have always thought that a person’s problems are not caused by his being mean. There has to be some kind of reason.”
Nothing in the book has been censored.
Finnish alcohol culture was a shock to Simon at first. Even in the 1980s during business trips he often wondered if he was the only sober passenger on the plane, as all businessmen were drinking already from the morning.
He is surprised that his depiction of alcoholism caused a stir, and that the Herlin biography is considered unusually open in this respect.
“If this is uniquely honest in Finland, it is important that something like this has finally been done.”
According to the biography, some Kone employees were driven to suicide under pressure from Herlin’s savage criticism. Herlin also did not exercise democracy of any kind - not in his family, in his company, or in society. How did Simon get along with such a person?
“I learned to respect Pekka”, he says.
There were so many sides to Herlin that this biography reveals both horror and beauty.
“I had tears in my eyes many times. I still am amazed at the kinds of love letters that Pekka Herlin wrote. I could never achieve the same”, Simon says.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.9.2009
More on this subject:
 Herlin built up Kone industrial empire at family’s expense
ANNA-STINA NYKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anna-stina.nykanen@hs.fi
|
|
