'Until now I have believed that it is only mosquitoes that whine,' the writer Kari Hotakainen once remarked. 'But hypocrites do exactly the same. Hypocrites always make believe that in the old days people didn't seek publicity for no reason, and that the books, too, were better.'      True enough: it is not long since the times when it would not have been safe to exhibit the average Finnish writer to the public even in a cage, and it would have been in vain to expect any eloquent explanations of his work.      These noble savages of literature represented the primal energy of the forest-dweller and genuine Finnish honesty in the salons of mendacious intellectuals. Even a couple of years ago they were still criticising sexy, media-savvy young poets and keeping magnificent silence during marketing engagements organised by their publishers.      Taciturnity was the secret of their own media-savviness.      No longer does the noble savage skulk at cocktail parties. He makes fluent statements from the conveyor-belt and poses, full of primitive power, for the photographers. He has finally understood how to exploit publicity for himself and market his books effectively.      Of course, there is nothing wrong with that.      'Publicity is a drink whose health hazards could be debated forever, but there are few indeed who are teetotal,' Hotakainen writes of his relationship with the media. 'A novel by Juha Seppälä is not good because he does not appear in public; it is good because of its vision, perception and language. And its value is not an iota less if Seppälä goes on television to describe the background to what he does.'      In his defence of the celebrity writer, Hotakainen argues that the struggle for publicity does not influence the content of literature. Perhaps he has failed to notice that contemporary writers deliberately build hooks for the media into their work.      Novels are increasingly bound to topical events: they feature celebrities or other recognisable characters of whom no one will remember anything in ten years' time.      For the sake of parody, of course.      At the same time as magazine writers seek a more literary style and tell stories about real people, many writers are taking up the febrile habits of columnists and writers for gossip newspapers. What is developing, it seems, is a kind of tabloid literature whose link with earlier literature is primarily in its colourful covers. The nation's memory? I don't think so.      Jyrki Kiiskinen      Editor-in-chief Top of page