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Frankenstein's Notebook
E PLURIBUS UNUM: Juha K. Tapio's Frankensteinin Muistikirja


This chapter of my dissertation was published in the Journal of Finnish Studies (Volume 7, Number 1, August 2003, Pages 4 - 28).

Frankensteinin muistikirja
Juha K. Tapio's Frankensteinin muistikirja

Here I discuss how the monster becomes the embodiment of the new Europe as well as:

  • intertextuality (Mary Shelley)
  • historiographic metafiction (Gertrude Stein)
  • and the breaking down of binaries between:
  • — truth/fiction
  • — science fiction/belles lettres
  • — human/monster
  • — male/female


The beginning of my article on Frankensteinin muistikirja:

In 1995 Finland joined the European Union. The following year, Juha K. Tapio's Frankensteinin muistikirja [Frankenstein's Notebook] reawakened the monster from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) as an allegory of the new Europe. Through intertextual references to Shelley's text and to the historical figure of Gertrude Stein, Tapio uses postmodern biography to explore ontological questions about what it means to be a postmodern subject. Tapio's simulacrum of Shelley's gothic monster embodies society's changing feelings about technology and otherness and reflects a movement away from either/or distinctions--truth/fiction, science fiction/literature, human/monster, male/female, self/other--to a more fluid, postmodern system.

In the novel, a young Ernst (sic) Hemingway asks his friend Gertrud (sic) Stein to read an unusual manuscript, supposedly written by Frank M. Stein, the very same, purportedly fictional, monster that was to have died at the end of Mary Shelley's book. In Tapio's book, the monster is alive, made of flesh and blood, and quite educated and cultured. Tapio follows Frank's life, which I will show is an allegorical embodiment of Europe, from the mid 1800s through 1925. Frank tours cities including Copenhagen, Leipzig, Prague, Venice, Paris, and London and meets some of the time's most famous artists and thinkers including Friedrich Nietzsche, Mary Shelley, Freud, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Pablo Picasso. The narrative is presented through excerpts from Gertrude Stein's diary and from Frank Stein's autobiographical memoirs...


To read the rest of the article, visit your local university library or contact the Journal of Finnish Studies to purchase a copy of Volume 7, Number 1 (August 2003).

Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacres et simulation. Paris: Galiliée, 1981. "The Precessions of Sumulacra" and "The Orders of Simulacra," trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Bleitchman, in Simulations (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983).

Canetti, Elias Crowds and Power. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.

Chace, Tara. In Case of Emergency, Break Glass: Ontological Metamorphoses in Norwegian and Finnish Postmodern Literature. Diss. U of Washington. Spring 2003.

DeKoven, Marianne. A Different Language: Gertrude Stein's Experimental Writing. U of Wisconsin P: Madison, 1983.

Favret, Mary. "A Woman Writes the Fiction of Science: The Body in Frankenstein. Genders 14 (Fall 1992): 50-65.

Fifer, Elizabeth. "Is Flesh Advisable? The Interior Theater of Gertrude Stein." Signs 4.3 (Spring 1979): 472-483.

Gash, Norman. Mr. Secretary Peel: the Life of Sir Robert Peel to 1830. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1961.

Glikman, Andrew. "Frankenstein's Prosthetic Womb, his Creature, and the Cyborg: The Appropriation of (Re)production in Masculinist Discourses of Science." Communication Association National Convention. New York (Spring 1998).

Gustafsson, Lars. Tennisspelarna: en berättelse [The Tennis Players: A Story]. Trondhjem: Aktie-trykkeriet, 1991.

Haraway, Donna. "The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others." Cultural Studies. Eds. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary nelson, and Paula A. Treichler. New York: Routledge, 1992. 295-337. 22 December 2002 .

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York: Bantam Books, 1970.

Jansson, Bo. Postmodernism och metafiktion i Norden. [Postmodernism and metafiction in the Nordic countries]. Uppsala: Hallgren and Fallgren, 1996.

Ketterer, David. Frankenstein's Creation: The Book, the Monster, and Human Reality. Victoria: U of Victoria, 1979.

Marshall, Tim. Murdering to Dissect: Grave-robbing, Frankenstein and the Anatomy Literature. New York: Manchester U P, 1995.

McHale, Brian Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1987.

Montag, Warren. "'The Workshop of Filthy Creation: A Marxist Reading of Frankenstein." Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. Boston: Bedford Books, 1992. 300-311.

Neuman, Shirley and Ira B. Nadel, eds. Gertrude Stein and the Making of Literature. Boston: Northeastern U P, 1988.

Paddon, Seija. "Juha K. Tapio's Frankenstein's Notebook and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus: Whose Monster is he, Anyway?" Scandinavian-Canadian Studies/Études scandinaves au Canada. 10 (1997), 23-33.

Schmitz, Neil. "Portrait, Patriarcy, Mythos: The Revenge of Gertrude Stein." Salmagundi 40 (1978), 69-91.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. 1818. Reprinted. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism series. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. New York: Bedford Books, 1992.

Smith, Johanna M. "'Cooped Up': Feminine Domesticity in Frankenstein." Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. Boston: Bedford Books, 1992. 270-285.

Stimpson, Catharine. "The Mind, the Body and Gertrude Stein." Critical Inquiry. 3.3 (Spring 1977): 489:506.

Sukenick, Ron. "Nine Digressions on Narrative Authority." In Form: Digressions on the Act of Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P, 1985.

Veeder, William. Mary Shelley and Frankenstein: the Fate of Androgeny. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1986.

Zakharieva, Bouriana. "Frankenstein of the Nineties: The Composite Body." Canadian Review of Contemporary Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée (September 1996): 739-752.


© 2005 Tara F. Chace