Jan - Mar 2017: The Benelux

Sorry for the delay, I meant to have this up weeks ago, life getting in the way and all that, anyway, here we go, my first time hosting a thread here so apologies for any lack of good info and whatnot, hopefully I've not bungled it too much. ;P

Welcome to 2017's first theme! :) Since we'll be taking a Benelux tour together I figured some info/history would be good to start out with. The maps below show the area - the provinces, its location on the globe, and general map with some larger/key cities marked.


"Benelux" denotes a group of states in Western Europe, that is, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, hence: Be, Ne, Lux. The Benelux Union was officially formed in 1948, with the name originally applied to the economic pact between the three countries, the Benelux Economic Union, but it is now also used to refer to the three countries as a geopolitical entity. The goal of the union was to help rebuild the economies of the Low Countries after the devastation of World War II through the promotion of free movement of workers, capital, services, and goods between all three member states.

The Benelux countries are relatively small, with higher population densities. The three states combined have a population of about 29million, in an area of about 74,600km². These states, and the Union, played important roles in the founding and operating of the European Union. The official languages of the Benelux are Dutch and French. 83% of the inhabitants speak Dutch; of this population, 16.5 million live in the Netherlands and 6 million in Belgium. The Dutch-speaking Belgians live in Flanders. 17% of the inhabitants speak French, 4.7 million inhabitants; of these, 4.2 million live in Belgium (in Wallonia) and 0.5 million in Luxembourg. Besides French and Dutch, also spoken are: German (in Belgium and Luxembourg), Luxembourgish (in Luxembourg) and Frisian (in the province of Friesland in the Netherlands). On top of this there are many regional dialects.

In the Middle Ages the entire region formed a collective economic unit under the Valois Dukes of Burgundy and their successors after 1477, the Hapsburgs. The 17 provinces of the Low Countries, plus the Duchy of Luxembourg, subsequently formed an essential part of the empire of Hapsburg Spain, the processing plant for boatloads of silver arriving each year from the New World. Major cities like Ghent, Bruges, and Antwerp created industries and banking empires that rivaled northern Italy for the lead in the technological and economic revolution of the Renaissance.

The breakup began with the revolt of the Dutch in the late 16th century. Their golden age in the 17th century was had mostly at the expense of their southern neighbors, who continued to be ruled by Spain, and then Austria, until the 1790s. The three states were united once again at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, under the single rule of the Dutch, but this union lasted only 15 years, and the Belgians revolted against Dutch rule in 1830. A truncated Luxembourg remained attached to the Netherlands, however, until 1890, when it too became completely independent. The devastation of the two world wars, however, convinced the three states that going it alone would never secure the prosperity of all three countries. And so. Benelux! ;)

So, Dutch-language literature.

In the earliest stages of the Dutch language, a considerable degree of mutual intelligibility with most other West Germanic dialects was present, and some fragments and authors can be claimed by both Dutch and German literature. Examples include the 10th-century Wachtendonck Psalms, a West Low Franconian translation of some of the Psalms on the threshold of what is considered Dutch, and the 12th-century County of Loon poet Henric van Veldeke (1150 – after 1184). From the 13th century, literature became more didactic and developed a proto-national character. The primary audience was no longer the nobility, but the bourgeoisie. The growing importance of the Southern Low Countries resulted in most works being written in Brabant, Flanders and Limburg.

The first Dutch language writer known by name is Van Veldeke, who wrote courtly love poetry, and epics.
Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268) was the first known prose writer in the Dutch language, the author of the Seven Ways of Holy Love. The Brussels friar Jan van Ruusbroec (better known in English as the Blessed John of Ruysbroeck, 1293/4–1381) followed Beatrice in taking prose out of the economic and political realms and using it for literary purposes. He wrote sermons filled with mystic thought.

A number of the surviving Dutch language epic works, especially the courtly romances, were copies from or expansions of earlier German or French efforts, but there are examples of truly original works (such as the anonymous Karel ende Elegast) and even Dutch-language works that formed the basis for version in other languages (such as the morality play Elckerlijc that formed the basis for Everyman). Another genre popular in the Middle Ages was the fable, and the most elaborate fable produced by Dutch literature was an expanded adaptation of the Reynard the Fox tale, Vanden vos Reynaerde ("Of Reynard the Fox"), written around 1250 by a person only identified as Willem.

{ Fast-forwarding on because I'm no expert and if you're interested, you can look up the extensive Dutch-language literature and Flemish literature on Wikipedia. Lots of detail and authors/titles mentioned for various time periods. There's also the less detailed Belgian literature. }

So. There have been two Dutch literary canons compiled, one by the Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde, or Society of Dutch Literature, which in 2002 cast votes and selected the top 125 classic literary works of the Dutch language, and another of 1000 works discussed by the DBNL (the Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren, or Digital Library for Dutch Literature) and published in 2008 - though not all of which are actual Dutch works, there are lists and compilations, reference works, and early translations from other languages etc.
Both these full lists are on Wikipedia, here and here (the first 500 - through 1930s), or you can go directly to the DBNL list here (all titles, listed chronoligcally).

The Flemings were feeling a bit excluded, and therefore in 2015 the Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde in Vlaanderen (Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature in Flanders) and the Vlaams Fonds voor de Letteren (Flemish Literature Fund) came up with their own list of 51 titles of a new canon - that of Dutch literature from Flemish perspective. You can find this list here.

Obviously on these lists there are going to be some old titles (and some less old) that are not familiar to other parts of the world and not translated, but, especially with the two smaller lists, a fair amount of them are classics and available in translation.

If folks would like, I could paste the lists themselves (at least the shorter ones), but I figured it'd probably be easier to just peruse the various pages yourselves, and if you have any questions feel free to ask me or the others who are from this area. :)

Prominent Luxembourg authors/titles:

The Codex Mariendalensis - Brother Hermann von Veldenz

Antoine Meyer (1801–1857) published the very first book in Luxembourgish in 1829, a collection of poems titled E’ Schrek op de’ Lezeburger Parnassus (A Step up the Luxembourg Parnassus). The book contains six poems and three fables. It is interesting to note that while Aesop and La Fontaine built their fables around animals, Meyer often personified inanimate objects. For example, in D'Spéngel an d'Nol, the well-to-do Miss Needle tries but fails to override the Pin, reflecting the failure of the French aristocracy to prevent the French Revolution.

Michel Lentz (1820–1893), another poet, is best known for having written Ons Hémécht, Luxembourg's national anthem, which contributed much to promoting the Luxembourgish language among its inhabitants.

Edmond de la Fontaine (1823–1891), pen-name Dicks, is remembered above all for his contributions to the theatre. His comedy De Scholtschäin (1855), the first play to be performed in Luxembourgish, was followed by D'Mumm Sèiss (1855), the operetta D'Kirmesgäscht (1856) and De Ramplassang (1863). He also wrote several poems and a number of prose works about Luxembourg and its people.

Michel Rodange (1827–1876) who wrote Luxembourg's national epic, Renert odder de Fuuss am Frack an a Maansgréisst or simply Rénert the Fox. Published in 1872, the satirical work is an adaptation of the traditional Low German fox epic to a setting in Luxembourg with pertinent insights into the characteristics of the local people.

Félix Thyes (1830–1855) wrote the first Luxembourg novel in French, Marc Bruno, profil d'artiste, which was published shortly after his early death in 1855

Batty Weber (1860–1940) worked both as a journalist and as an author of short stories, novels, plays and poems, contributing much to the development of Luxembourg culture. One of his most important contributions to Luxembourg's identity was his Abreisskalender or Tear-Off Calendar, a daily column he contributed from 1913 to 1940 to the "Luxembuger Zeitung", commenting on items of local cultural interest.

Nikolaus Welter (1871–1951), who addressed Luxembourg issues in his German-language plays including Die Söhne des Öslings (1904) and as a poet in Hochofen (1913). Welter is also regarded as Luxembourg's first literary historian.

Hugo Gernsback - A Luxembourgian publisher, inventor, and writer, he is particularly known for Ralph 124C 41+ (1911) and other works of science fiction. In 1908, he founded Modern Electrics magazine. He worked as an electronics engineer and an inventor before delving into science fiction. His name was given to the Hugos (the annual World Science Fiction Convention awards).

Anise Koltz (born 1928) - poet and author whose works include L’ailleurs des mots and Landschaftsverband Rheinland. Her numerous literary honors include the Batty Weber Prize and the Servais Prize. Her early works were Luxembourgish and German-language fairy tales. She is now widely considered the country's most important contemporary author.

Roger Manderscheid (1933–2010) childhood trilogy Schacko klak, De papagei um kâschtebam and Feier a flam, published in 1988, surprisingly sold 3,000 copies. "Schacko klak" is in fact a kind of autobiography told by an outsider. The title is a play on words reminding the reader of both a top hat (from French) and a military helmet (from German) but it is simply a nickname for the author alluding to his rounded bald head. Manderscheid's book reveals the author's consciousness of language use in Luxembourg, describing comical incidents with German soldiers in the war as well as the rather artificial use of French based essentially on the language taught in the classroom. His use of Luxembourgish allows him to achieve this most effectively.

Josy Braun (1938-2012) - Best known for his poetry collection Billersproochbiller and his novel Kreiwenkel. His plays include Requiem fir e Lompekreimer and Hexejuecht. Early in his career, he wrote D'Kromm an der Heck and other politically-themed plays. His Luxembourgish works have been translated into six languages, including English, Russian, French, and Portuguese.

Guy Rewenig (born 1947) - novelist, dramatist, children's author, and essayist, Hannert dem Atlantik (1985) broke new ground as the first novel written in the local language. His other works include Roman Mass mat drai Haren and Sibiresch Eisebunn. During the first decade of the Twenty-First Century, he was twice awarded the prestigious Prix Servais.

Georges Hausemer - author and translator, he is best known for works such as Die Tote aus Arlon (1997) and Iwwer Waasser (1998). He wrote both fiction and nonfiction works, including novels, short stories, travel essays, and literary criticism.

Jean Portante (born 1950) is a successful contemporary poet and novelist, not just in Luxembourg but in the wider French-speaking world. Brought up in an Italian immigrant family, he chose French as the language for his works. While primarily known as a poet, he has also written short stories, plays, screenplays and novels. He has also translated the works of Juan Gelman and Gonzalo Rojas into French. Jean Krier, writing poetry in German, was awarded both the German Chamisso Prise and the Luxembourg Servais Prize in 2011 for his Herzens Lust Spiele.

Among those published since 1990 are:
Frascht by Nico Helminger,
Angscht virum Groussen Tunn by Jean-Michel Treinen,
Perl oder Pica by Jhemp Hoscheit,
Iwwer Waasser by Georges Hausemer, and
a number of novels by Josy Braun including Porto fir d’Affekoten and Kréiwénkel.

Luxembourg has two major literature prizes: the Servais Prize which has been awarded annually since 1992 to a Luxembourg author for a specific work; and the Batty Weber Prize, considered to be the national literary prize, which has been awarded once every three years since 1987 to a Luxembourg author for his entire literary work.

Thanks for setting this up, .Monkey. I've got a copy of a book by Jef Geeraerts on my tbr called The Public Prosecutor, so I'm beginning with that one.

Thanks for the introduction, and getting this together so quickly. I was a bit surprised to find that I have no Dutch or Belgian literature in my TBR stacks, considering how much fiction in translation I have. I've got a second-hand copy of Het Achterhuis -- Anne Frank's diary -- in Dutch, which I picked up at a booksale and may try to slowly read, with the help of a dictionary since my level of Dutch is pretty basic. But that's about it, so I guess I'll have to hit the bookstore and/or library. I haven't decided yet which books to pick up but I'm going to aim to read at least one from each of the three countries, although for Luxembourg that will probably mean reading in French or German....it doesn't seem like much has been translated to English.

Thanks, .Monkey. - great introduction. I'm almost tempted to see if I can struggle through something in Letzeburgesch... In the meantime, I finished Contrapunt and will post a review shortly, and I've started on Het verdriet van België, which has been on my TBR for a long time. And I need to read Spijkerschrift (Kader Abdolah) which is next on the list for our book club.

Apart from that, I'm thinking about having another go at Voskuil - I ground to a halt about 200 pages into the first part of Het bureau some time ago. I'd like to read some more Couperus and I'm hoping this thread will give me some inspiration to try other writers I haven't read yet.

>4 RidgewayGirl: Amusingly enough, Jef Geeraerts was from here (Antwerpen) and just passed away in 2015, so it wound up that his library (or at least the non-special parts of it) was donated? to De Slegte (the used bookshop chain here) last year. By mere chance my husband and I happened to notice there were regular books in a spot that normally has remaindered stuff, and when checking them out saw the stamp inside, then he noticed the sign above them. So we actually have a handful of books stamped "Ex bibliotheca Jef Geeraerts," pretty cool I thought. :)

>5 Andrew_MC: Nice choice, it's a great book. We picked up a copy when we visited the Anne Frank House, so eventually I'll read the Dutch as well, not for a while though. :P

>6 thorold: Hah, I read Het verdriet... a few years ago, definitely not my favorite, but it is certainly interesting. Also I can say I'm one of the apparently few in this country who has actually read the whole book, LOL, Hubs had read something that said it's like the book that everyone here has read and no one has finished. Schools only focus on parts, or something? so no one winds up reading it all, I guess. I thought that was amusing. :P

I'll be starting with Chapel Road by Louis Paul Boon, myself. It's one I got just a couple months ago from the sale at the uni library.
Others I have that will be in the running:
A posthumous confession by Marcellus Emants
Three Novels: Soft Soap; The Leg; & Will-o'-the-Wisp by Willem Elsschot
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played by Simon Vestdijk
The house on the canal / Alienation by Frans Coenen / J. van Oudshoorn

I have previously read De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (The Lion of Flanders) by Hendrik Conscience, which I highly recommend. It was the novel that made Flemish literature a thing; previously French dominated and Dutch was seen as "low class,"but Conscience spoke both and wanted to go with Dutch. It was a huge deal. Anyhow the novel itself is great fun, it's been compared to Walter Scott's epics; the backdrop is the Franco-Flemish war, particularly the Battle of the Golden Spurs. He did consult sources so there is a fair amount of historical accuracy, but he also used some dated things as well as romanticizing some things so it is not completely accurate and things should be taken with a grain of salt. But I raced straight through it when I read it, couldn't put it down, so I strongly suggest it both in terms of historical importance as well as just a good read. :D

Also very highly recommended is Maria Dermoût's The ten thousand things. She was born in Java, Dutch East Indies, was educated in the Netherlands, moved back to Java, and then returned to the Netherlands when her husband retired, and she is one of the greats of Dutch literature. Her writing was incredibly touching and evocative, the style is not the sort of thing I usually go for - where little is happening except the world keeps going, but she just did it so amazingly well, it's so beautiful, I simply cannot recommend it enough.

I sometimes wonder if there aren't almost as many novels about the Goldberg Variations as there are records of it...

Contrapunt (2008) by Anna Enquist (Netherlands, 1945- )

  

Anna Enquist (real name Christa Broer) trained as a musician and a psychotherapist, and only took up literature relatively late in life. Since doing so, she's become very well known as a poet and novelist. The only one of her books to have been translated into English so far seems to be Het meesterstuk (The masterpiece), but most of her work is available in German or French.

Contrapunt is a novel describing, section by section, how a woman tackles the project of studying and playing through Bach's Goldberg Variations after a long absence from the piano. In parallel with her analysis of each variation and thoughts on how to approach the physical problems of technique, she reflects on her relationship with her daughter, and we gradually realise that the musical and biographical threads are being interwoven like two melodic lines in a piece of counterpoint. Just as we do when we listen to counterpoint, we can only focus on one tune at once, but each makes us hear the other in a new way.

Enquist wrote the book after the death of her grown-up daughter in a road accident, and it is clearly conceived in part as a literary way of dealing with her response to that personal tragedy, but it is far from being a sob-memoir. The episodes from the mother's shared life with her daughter are deliberately kept low-key and ordinary: things that happen in everyone's life, first days at school, holidays, graduation, parties. The purpose is not to milk the tragedy but to understand and celebrate.

The musical analysis is thorough and technical, and might be tough going for anyone who hasn't got at least some basic knowledge of music theory. Biographical speculation about Bach and Glenn Gould comes into it, but is only peripheral - it's good to see that Gould isn't mythologised in the way that he is in some other Goldberg-novels, but is soberly treated as one interpreter among the many. Enquist's pianist is more interested in working out what Bach wrote and why than in how other people have played it. I'm not a pianist, so probably not the best judge, but I found the explanation of the process of working through a complex piece very convincing, probably about the closest it's possible to get to being inside a pianist's head without actually learning to play the piano.

If you're looking for Flemish authors in translation (to a variety of languages), this website is much more helpful than Wikipedia:
http://buitenland.vfl.be/en/

I had to prowl through Flemish authors recently to appease a Belgian friend, so I've got a few of those on my list already. I bought Fire and Air by Erik Vlaminck so I'll try to read that soon. My friend's bookclub actually had him as a guest, and she skimmed through my translated copy and pronounced it worthwhile when she visited in the fall.

Also just purchased Stammered Songbook: A Mother's Book of Hours by Erwin Mortier for this.

>8 thorold: Congratulations on the first review here. Oddly I was revisiting the Goldberg Variations in December, the Glenn Gould ones, so I like the sound of this book. It is available in English, but for a ridiculous amount, but as you say, is also available in French.

>10 SassyLassy: Thanks for correcting me about the translation - I'm still away from home with only occasional chances to use a proper computer...

>7 .Monkey.: I'm finding Het verdriet interesting so far, but it is alarmingly long (about 0.8 Magic Mountains). And occasionally a struggle to make sense of the Flemicisms.

Ohh yeah I think my husband mentioned that, with the Flemish. If there's anything you're stumped on you can try checking with me (to relay it to him, lol), he's picked up on a lot since living here and we also have a couple books of Flemish/Antwerps dialect/idiom kinda stuff. It is indeed interesting, but it gets ...odder, as you get more into it. XD

>11 thorold: - Being Flemish, I'm happy to help you out with the Flemish. I'll certainly understand because Claus is from my part of Flanders and he does use "Flemicisms" as you describe them to add to the "couleur locale". See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish

I had posted a list of books on Darryl's (Kidzdoc) thread that I gave a 4 or 5-star-rating and that have been translated into English. It might be a good idea to post it here:

Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill by Dimitri Verhulst (2006)
A short novel that you might like if you like thoughtful, fragile, subtle books, like Philippe Claudel's books.

The Misfortunates by Dimitri Verhulst (2007)
Another book by the same author, but completely different from the first one. So if you don't like the first one, you might like the other one, or v.v. I liked both. This is a social-realistic novel about the dysfunctional family of the author. Amazing read.

War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans (2013)
A very intense, beautiful book that really grabbed me, about World War I and family-history. Memorable read.

While the Gods Were Sleeping by Erwin Mortier (2008)
Another book on World War I but so much more. Beautiful prose which I hope will be translated well, because it's part of the enchantment of book.

The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs (2005)
A very special novel that might interest you, given your medical background, about human cloning and its ethical implications.

Chapel Road by Louis Paul Boon (1953)
A Flemish classic with a social theme.

In all fairness, I added some of my Dutch favourites too because I found them very good or special:
- A posthumous confession by Marcellus Emants (1894)
- Bonita Avenue door Peter Buwalda (2010)
- The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker (2006)

Not all books will be to everybody's taste, but these are my favourites. I know Hugo Claus is always proclaimed as The Flemish Author, but I never read anything by him that I even came close to me liking it. So my advice would be to stay away from his books. And Harry Mulisch for that matter might be a bit too inscrutable for everybody's taste, although I can safely recommend The Assault.

>13 Trifolia: Monica, thanks for the reminder that War and Turpentine is Dutch. I heard an interview with the author that has me eager to read the book.

edited to add: and a copy is being transferred to the local library branch near me.

Hi. I've just found this thread. Am approaching the reading for this quarter with some trepidation, as a good friend of mine who is Dutch has assured me that Dutch writing is almost entirely gloomy. As a person who does not go along with Kafka's declaration that we should only read books which devastate us I'm hoping to find some light in the gloom.

Thanks to .Monkey and others for the background and suggestions.

Hmm, not too much on my bookshelf for this topic, but I'll be reading the thread avidly to see what recommendations people have.
First up on my list is Charles de Coster's version of the Ulenspiegel folk tales. I started this some time ago but never finished. It's an interesting historicizing reworking of the stories that reminds me a bit of Candide with its combination of folkloric (i.e. unrealistic and generally optimistic) material and at-times quite brutal depictions of violence.

I see Marguerite Yourcenar is listed as Belgian, so it might be time to check out her Memoirs of Hadrian, which has been on my to-read list for some time.

I read Harry Mulisch's Discovery of Heaven several years ago and have to admit I don't remember much about it except that I liked it. But the length is a bit intimidating; I might go for The Procedure instead.

Like thorold, I'm rather tempted to make a go at something in Luxembourgisch, just to see how far I get, but I'd probably be smarter choosing an author who writes in German; will have to research this a bit more.

>15 Oandthegang: I just came across an interesting article on contemporary Flemish writers: https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/august-2016-flemish-literature-featu...
It includes a comment that "Flemish literature at its best is linguistically pyrotechnic, daring, and original (...) Literature from the Netherlands, on the other hand, tends to be more sober, realist, and less imaginative: still-lives, as it were, with great attention to detail." So perhaps Belgian literature is a better choice if you're looking for something less gloomy?

>13 Trifolia: Thanks for some extra titles, and also glad to know two of mine are among those you view highly! :D
I can understand your view on Claus, though I'd have to read more by him to fully share it, but based on the one alone, yeah, I get it. Lol. But Mulisch is one my husband really loves.

>15 Oandthegang: Never listen to anyone who says nonsense like that. As a reader, you should know better!! Lol.

If anyone is looking for fantasy fiction for this challenge, there exist in English (among other languages? not sure) The Dedalus Book of Flemish Fantasy and The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy (sorry, Luxembourg, none for you).

>18 mabith: The Dedalus anthologies are usually great! Lots of stuff that would not otherwise be available in English, although occasionally there's a bit too much excerpting from longer works for my taste.
There's also another anthology of Dutch and Flemish fantasy called New Worlds from the Lowlands which I read years ago.

There are a surprising (to me) number of books written in Dutch on the 1001 list, some of which have already been mentioned above:

Camera Obscura by Hildebrand
Max Havelaar by Multatuli
The Quest by Frederik van Eeden
Eline Vere by Louis Couperus
Pallieter by Felix Timmermans (Belgian)
The Forbidden Realm by J. Slauerhoff
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played by Simon Vestdijk
The Deadbeats by Ward Ruyslinck (Belgian)
Back to Oegstgeest by Jan Wolkers
Rituals by Cees Nooteboom
Smell of Sadness by Alfred Kossmann
Gimmick! by Joost Zwagerman
The Laws by Connie Palmen
The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch
The Twins by Tessa de Loo
Forever a Stranger by Hella Haasse (Dutch East Indies?)
All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom

Oddly, about half the writers I have listed as "Belgian" seem to be associated with other countries -- Victor Serge (Belgium/Russia), Marguerite Yourcenar (Belgium/France), Amélie Nothomb (Belgium/Japan -- this last one is probably my misconception, since I know some of her childhood was spent in Japan and I have only read her Fear and Trembling).

I hope to read either Eline Vere or Memoirs of Hadrian.

Ohh damn I forgot to single out Max Havelaar, hugely important Dutch classic! It's a bit irritating to read, particularly early on - the one character who is a parody/satire of a certain breed of person is taken rather far, it's intentional but oh my goddddd he is so frustrating! Fortunately his role diminishes and he only appears sporadically after that, so you're able to more laugh/groan at him than wanting to throttle him. The book is certainly a worthwhile (and mostly enjoyable) read, just fair warning that if you pick it up & get irritated by him, just keep slogging through and soon you will be at the good stuff! ;)

>14 RidgewayGirl: - War and Turpentine is Belgian, written in Dutch (Flemish). I loved it and I wonder if an international audience will feel the same vibes. Excellent choice if you decide to read this book.

>16 spiphany: - Tijl Uilenspiegel is indeed one of our best-loved fictional characters. He's believed to be the typical Fleming (or at least many Flemings like to believe he is and they resemble him).
I quite agree with the quote from Words without border, actually. There is a difference between Dutch and Flemish literature as there is a difference between Flemings and Dutch people too. Religion is mentioned as one of the main reasons for that difference (the Dutch are mainly protestant while the Flemish are mainly catholic) which lead to a different "national character" and caused some stereotyping: the Dutch are economical while the Flemish are hearty, that sort of thing. But of course, it's a stereotype and there are many exceptions to the rule. I wonder if non-natives will notice the difference?

>17 .Monkey.: - Never listen to anyone who says nonsense like that. As a reader, you should know better! ... but as a Fleming, I do agree with the quote. I find it flattering for once :-)))

>18 mabith: - >19 spiphany: - I don't know if anyone's mentioned it before, but some Flemish authors are also known for their magical realism: The Coming of Joachim Stiller by Hubert Lampo is a good example and one that's been translated,

>20 ELiz_M: - Marguerite Yourcenar and Amélie Nothomb are definitely Belgian, but they both wrote/write in French and emigrated. I can recommend them both, although they are very different writers.

Let me add a semi-random recommendation: Een liefde by Lodewijk van Deyssel. Called naturalistic at the time (caused a scandal and everything, Frederik van Eeden did not like it, the old grump), it's comparable in many ways to The Portrait of a Lady. According to some it's worth more attention than Max Havelaar and I suspect D.H. Lawrence might've shared that opinion had he read it. So yeah, if you speak Dutch give it a go; if not I'm afraid you're out of luck. :-)

>16 spiphany:
I just finished Memoirs d'Hadrien last month. I loved and hated it, but the hate contributes to my appreciation of how well-crafted it is. In my notebook I wrote "tout dans ce livre était magnifique!" but Antinoüs this, Antinoüs that… maddening! The center is a chore.

I'm still reading a couple of books I got from the notes at the back. Fascinating stuff.

>22 Trifolia:
You're not aware the NYT chose War and Turpentine as one of their books of the year? :-)

>23 Frenzie: - Yes I am. Imagine that :-)

>24 Trifolia:
Guess I'll have to read it someday. :-P The name Stefan Hertmans doesn't bring up good associations, but I can't remember why. I reckon I must've read something by him I didn't like.

Taking a short break from Het verdriet van België, here's a book from Luxemburg - not in Letzeburgesch, unfortunately - I came across whilst browsing the Kobo store:

(BTW: for anyone who doesn't have enough with the list in >3 .Monkey.: the Luxemburg Ministry of Culture sponsors a very nice web database of authors searchable by name, date, genre, and period: http://www.autorenlexikon.lu/online/www/menuHeader/home/DEU/index.html)

Planet Luxemburg: und andere komische Geschichten (2012, expanded edition 2016) by Francis Kirps (Luxemburg, 1971 - )

 

Francis Kirps is a Luxemburg poet (especially on the poetry slam scene) and journalist who writes in German. He has recently published his first novel; the short comic prose pieces in this collection were mostly written for his column in the taz.

Slightly disappointingly, only three of the pieces here are actually about Luxemburg - but perhaps that's just as well, as it would be rather unwise to rely on anything he tells you about the country. Maps of Luxemburg - you will be disappointed to learn - are not necessarily printed to a scale of 1:1 as Kirps asserts in the opening mock-guidebook piece. But I did enjoy the notion that the forests of the north are noted for their nano-fauna... Later in the book we get a Luxemburg version of Animal Farm (in which I missed most of the jokes) and a wonderful Saramagoesque fantasy in which the entire Grand Duchy blasts off into space.

As well as Mr Juncker, who is mentioned (unfavourably) in several pieces, the other two currently famous Luxemburgers, the Schlenk brothers, make a guest appearance in a piece that reveals how zombies have taken over the Tour de France. Elsewhere he chronicles other sporting scandals: the use of identity theft for match-fixing purposes in boxing, the incidence of collective clinical depression in football. Music features with a history of Luxemburg's shortest-lived Viking death metal band (apparently this is a real genre - having listened to a couple of tracks on Spotify, I can see why it would make a good subject for satire, even if nobody's heard of it). We also get revelations about the colour-bar in country music, and even weirder flights of fancy in which an octopus predicts the outcome of football matches and an elderly Bavarian becomes Pope and travels to Turkey - no, wait a minute...

While browsing my list of podcasts I hadn't listened to (essentially, all the podcasts I subscribe to...) I noticed that there was a BBC Radio "Open Book" show from last October including a segment on Flemish and Dutch literature, with an interview with Tommy Wieringa and an excerpt from his Boekenweek novella A beautiful young wife (Een mooie jonge vrouw): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07x1rcw

Referring back to >23 Frenzie:, I just finished Un milliardaire antique: Hérode Atticus et sa famille by Paul Graindor, a Belgian born in Liège in 1877 (source). I hope I didn't pick up too much outdated information, but after a cursory glance I decided to read pretty much the entire thing.

The idea of reading something in Lëtzebuergesch attracts me, although I'm not sure whether I can spare the time. A nice summary of some of its linguistic features can be found on Marcel Plaatsman's blog.

Having just finished Gezelle vertaald (review), I'll drop off my recommendations for reading Gezelle in translation. For a quick introduction to Gezelle, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_Gezelle

• Claes, Paul and Christine D’haen.The Evening and the Rose. Poems translated from the Flemish by by Paul Claes and Christine D’haen, Antwerpen: Guido Gezellegenootschap, 1989. – 115 + I p., 22 x 13 cm.


• Decroos, J. Guido Gezelle. Ausgewählte Gedichte. Paderborn: Verlag der Bonifacius-Druckerei, 1938.


• Wouters, Liliane. Guido Gezelle. Un compagnon pour toutes les saisons. Choix, préface et traductions: Liliane Wouters. Editions Autres Temps & Liliane Wouters, 1999.

>21 .Monkey.: good to know - I have had Max Havelaar on my TBR for several years!

The Assault by Harry Mulisch



This brilliant novel opens in the Dutch city of Haarlem in early 1945, during the Hongerwinter, the famine that afflicted millions of residents of the German-occupied western portion of the Netherlands due to a blockage of food and fuel by the Nazis. Anton Steenwijk, a 12 year old boy, and his parents and older brother were spending a quiet evening at home, huddled around a lantern to keep warm and trying to keep hunger out of their minds. Their peace was broken by the sound of nearby gunshots, and when they looked outside they noticed the body of a man lying in front of their next door neighbors' house. Those neighbors then moved the body to the front of the Steenwijk's house, and they saw that the dead man was the local Inspector of Police, a notorious collaborator who was reviled and feared for his cruelty towards his fellow citizens. The family panicked, and after German soldiers arrive the Steenwijks are falsely accused of the murder. Anton is separated from the rest of his family, taken briefly to a local prison for the night, and later he learns of their fate.

Anton is sent to live with his well to do uncle and aunt in Amsterdam, where he studies and establishes himself in a notable profession. He is haunted by the events of that fateful evening, and although his future is a bright one with a beautiful young wife and child his view is to the past, as he desires to learn what happened to his parents and brother, and to find out more about the events that led up to the Inspector's shooting. He eventually meets key people who were involved with or were observers of the episode, and those encounters, along with fragments of his memory that he is able to uncover, permit him to piece together the full story of that night in Haarlem.

The Assault is a powerful and unforgettable novel about memory, responsibiiity, and one's past history and how it affects, and sometimes mars, the future, which is relevant not only to survivors of war and personal strife, but to anyone who has experienced a difficult or eventful past life. The book was the source of a movie of the same name, which won won the 1986 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film that same year. Harry Mulisch is considered to be one of the Great Three Dutch postwar writers, along with Willem Frederik Hermans and Gerard Reve, and this outstanding novel makes it easy to see why this is the case.

>27 thorold: Funny you should mention the BBC and Wieringa. Here is an interview with him on CBC which aired this past Saturday.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany/tommy-wieringa-on-the-real-life-inspir...

Eleanor Wachtel is one of the best reviewers of authors around. Have a look at some of her other interviewees too.

Note that if you wish to read more background information (in Dutch) about a book you like, a very good place to start is:

A.G.H. Anbeek van der Meijden e.a. (red), 1989–…, Lexicon van literaire werken, Wolters-Noordhoff: Groningen.

It contains information about how the novel was written, a summary, and an interpretation of the themes and styles, plus a list of secondary literature. You can check whether your book is in there on a decent library website (*cough, cough*, four years and counting) so you don't have to go in person fruitlessly, but unfortunately there is no electronic access to this resource.

Fire and Air by Erik Vlaminck, translated by Paul Vincent

The book follows three generations of women, a daughter, her mother, and her grandmother. The grandmother is from the Netherlands and her husband is a Flemish Belgian. They meet as immigrants in Canada and quickly marry. The father works for a local asylum but his real passion is for pigeons. The marriage is not a happy one and one year the father does not return from his annual trip to Belgium. Their child, Elly, goes to Belgium to attempt to find her father when she's 18 or so. She discovers a few truths about his life and returns to Canada pregnant after a brief affair there.

It's not an awful book, but the relationships between the three women didn't feel true to me, or at least don't develop in a rational way. Humans are rational blah blah blah, but we demand higher things of authors than the people we know in real life. It felt mostly like Vlaminck wanted to end in a certain place and didn't worry about whether than made sense or whether or not he was showing enough of the time in-between (the books skips between specific years) to feel right. Probably needed at least 75 more pages to feel developed enough. The writing was good, though quite sparse.

I just came across another Paul Vincent translation:

Herman Gorter: Poems of 1890, A Selection

Contrary to the translations I mentioned in >29 Frenzie:, you can download this open-access work and leaf through to get an impression.

Edit: correction, there's actually a brand new translation of Gezelle by Paul Vincent, also in open access:

Poems of Guido Gezelle: A Bilingual Anthology

It contains a neat Scottish translation of Het schrijverke, namely The Watter-Scriever. Worth a look.

Oh I think I saw Paul Vincent was who had translated another of Boon's works several years ago, cool.

Chapel Road!
Rather interesting, and was quite original in style when it was written (which later got copied a lot once it got into translation, heh). I enjoyed it, and just a few minutes ago I was feeling like Oh I need to get back to Chapel Road (the place, not the book), see what everyone is up to now! ...and then I realized, oh wait, I finished it, no one is up to anything anymore ...until I get the sequel (Summer in Termuren) at least, lol.
I liked the way the various storylines interweaved with each other, it gave a good balance to things and they complemented each other nicely - you didn't get too much heaviness from the friend-heroes, or from Ondineke either. Somehow the breaking up of both parts, and the Reynard interludes, just works, it flows properly. The stories, well, both deal with socialism, in two different times; one is semi-autobiographical and has Boon and his friend-heroes talking and thinking, about life, essentially. And the other main story is Ondineke's, his character in the Chapel Road book, about a poor ignorant willful girl and her notions about life and the world around her. And then there's his reworked Reynard, which frankly I didn't quite understand all the ...allusions? that he was making with it, sometimes it was just odd stories that I only got a partial bit of the meaning behind, but, those were small parts, so eh.
Do note, this is not the most cheery book (though there were parts that made me chuckle, and it's not like morbid or anything just, you know, people struggling), and it's not for the, er, prude >.>, either. As Frenzie likes to put it, "I know Boon for being a dirty old man." But I definitely recommend it, if for nothing else than for its uniqueness, but I think it's got more going for it than that, too. :)

Over the years Boon collected a "fenomenale feminateek" (phenomenal femibrary/library of women) of over 22,000 photographs. The "female human animal" was sorted into all kinds of categories, like whether they were wearing socks or photographed in nature, as well as more obvious ones like race and girth. He also wrote silly commentaries.

I recall watching or reading an interview with probably his granddaughter a few years back, in which she talked about how when she was a little girl and they went to the beach, he always went into some little tobacco store to browse through their latest collection of pornographic postcards.

In 2008, some local Christian nuts kept the Fotomuseum from displaying a selection from Boon's Feminateek. That's probably when I read or saw the above.

So this was outside my usual reading wheelhouse. This is a Belgian political thriller about The Public Prosecutor, a corrupt functionary who is targeted by an even more corrupt shadowy Catholic organization called Opus Dei. Savelkoul is not a sympathetic guy, what with his mistress kept in a property given to him by a development company in exchange for a ruling, and the pleasure he takes in the "gifts" he receives. His wife has taken refuge in religion and in obtaining titles for her two sons. Opus Dei is out to bleed as much money from the family, taking advantage of the wife's religious fervor and Savelkoul's easy ability to fall prey to blackmail.

It's basically a bunch of people double-dealing and lying as they try to grab the advantage for themselves. They eat in very nice restaurants and drink a lot of wine and then plot for ways to destroy Savelkoul or, in Savelkoul's case, try to maneuver around the traps while finding a way to get laid. Belgium, Jef Geeraerts tells us, is a aristocracy-obsessed kleptocracy, although he does make the point that corruption is present everywhere. Also, the Opus Dei are weirdos.

All in all, it was interesting, but still not my thing.

Stammered Songbook: A Mother's Book of Hours by Erwin Mortier, translated by Paul Vincent

This was absolutely beautiful, it is the book about Alzheimers that I've been looking for. Mortier is a novelist and poet, and this memoir is made up of mostly short (one page or less) bits of writing. Short statements about a particular moment or issue as time goes on. It's extremely effective and Mortier is just a beautiful writer. In the beginning he used "self-conscious" in a way that didn't seem quite right, and I wonder if that's a translation issue or not, or just the usual conceit that language=self-awareness.

This passage in particular sums up many of the themes:
“I don't want to see her wasting away (and somehow I do, somehow I want to confront the proof of her disappearance). I don't want to see her all skin and bone twitching and trembling in her final bed (and I do want to see it), I don't want to have to think: this body that is shot through with attacks and spasms is no longer my mother (I'm prepared to think it if I have to). And I don't want to have to think too often: this trembling skeleton, this wreck, is still my mother (and I'm prepared to do that too). Why can't I say: she's no longer with us, without feeling a stab of pain in my ribcage? Why can't I say either: there is still something of her in her, without feeling pain too? And apart from that, if we decide that it's worthwhile to go on treating her for all kinds of things, for whom is it worthwhile? And if we were to decide that it's gradually become enough, for whom are we deciding that: for her or for us?”

And this passage I just like a lot:
Others who have died have strengthened me in all kinds of strange ways. With their lips that had fallen silent, before the earth covered them for ever, they quickly spelled out to me what probably matters most as long as we're breathing: that love is attention. That they are two words for the same thing. That it isn't necessary to try to clear up every typo and obscure passage that we come across when we read the other person attentively—that a human being is difficult poetry, which you must be able to listen to without always demanding clarification, and that the best thing that can happen to us is the absolution that a loved one grants us for the unjustifiable fact that we exist and drag along with us a self that has been marked and shaped by so many others.

Oh! I read a novel for this theme and forgot to post it. Click the picture for a different review:



Eline Vere by Louis Couperus, pub. 1889
Published by Archipelago books in 2010, translated by Ina Rilke.

Eline Vere is a moderately wealthy young woman. She and her sister were raised by an aunt after the death of their parents. Betsy, the older sister, has married a wealthy aristocrat and after the death of their aunt invites Eline to live with her in The Hague. At first, the novel seems very Austen-esque -- the opening chapters are a series of parties, dinners, and balls with a milieu of young aristocrats in the various stages of courtship or unhappiness in love. But in Austen, the unhappiness is typically external -- a difference in social/financial circumstances between the lovers, whereas Eline's unhappiness is internal -- a sensitive nature and imagination that prevents her from fully fitting into the more sensible Dutch culture.

The novel was originally published serially in a newspaper, which perhaps accounts for the structure -- many short chapters and not quite a smooth continuous story arc. Eline disappears from the narrative for a while and the story shifts focus to the many love stories of her contemporaries.

Couperus published this book at the age of 26 and it was quite successful; it has not been out of print since. He was influenced by Anna Karenina, Ibsen's Ghosts, and the novels of Emile Zola, apparently taking the typical "novel of The Hague" and adding a more naturalistic style. The novel, fairly long at 500 pages, encompasses so many characters and several years. I enjoyed the slow revelation of the characters' complexity and that Eline's story did not always go where expected. A very charming read.

Apparently the Catholics were a bit too preoccupied with some supposedly explicit sexual content in order to notice the brilliant construction of Louis Paul Boon's psychological, allegorical novel Menuet (see, e.g., here). Although formally inspired by John Dos Passos' U.S.A., you can't accuse Boon of playing copycat. The subject matter and function of the form are completely different.

Available in English translation as Minuet. Give it a go; it's only a 150 pages.

I forgot to star this so am really behind. Monkey, that intro was perfect for me. I really know little about the history of this area (tho knew the conflict with Spain), and next to nothing about the literature. So that first post was really interesting to me. Not sure where to start, but I'll go back and catch up a bit.

What I do know about Benelex literature is children's stories, esp by Hans Christian Andersen. I read a very interesting bio of him a while back - hard to get Danny Kaye out of my head as I was reading about this very difficult man with a genius for story telling. Any suggestion for a good translation of his works, and or his life?

ETA oh yeah, he's from Denmark. Boy I am out of my element here. Going back to the top, looks like there is much to explore here!

I'm still sawing away at Het verdriet van België on and off, but it got put aside this weekend for a book I couldn't very well get out of reading, having proposed it as a book-club choice about six months ago.

Although I didn't pick it up with that thought in mind, it also turns out to be a particularly relevant book in the light of what's going on in the world at present...

Spijkerschrift (2000; My father's notebook) by Kader Abdolah (Iran, Netherlands, 1954 - )

 

Rich and entertaining as the Dutch language is, it has the great weakness that it's perfectly possible to live for many years in the Netherlands without ever getting beyond the basics you need for politeness. It's difficult to imagine an outsider wanting or needing to become a Dutch writer - quite a few well-known Dutch writers over the years have been able to switch to writing in other languages as well, but it's almost inconceivable that someone whose mother-tongue is a major literary language with a thousand-year-old poetic tradition (and five times as many speakers as Dutch) should spontaneously decide to adopt the Dutch language. But that's exactly what Kader Abdolah did when he settled in the Netherlands in 1988 as a political refugee from the Islamic revolution. In the meantime, he's established himself as a leading newspaper columnist and written a series of major novels that have been translated into many other languages.

(Incidentally - it occurs to me that I came to live in the Netherlands in 1988 as well, although by a rather less traumatic route. My Dutch is reasonably good, but I don't see myself writing a novel in it for quite some time yet...)

Spijkerschrift, Abdolah's second novel, is more-or-less autobiographical in theme. The narrator, a refugee living in the Netherlands, examines his relationship with his father, the deaf-and-dumb carpet repairer Aga Akbar, living in a village in the north-east of Iran, against the background of 20th century Iranian history. Aga Akbar's disability is central to the way the novel develops - it gives Abdolah a way to explore the way that language defines your perception of the world, since Aga Akbar can normally communicate only in a private sign-language developed within the family and the village. His eccentric uncle, the poet Kazem Gan, has encouraged him to write his thoughts down, but since Kazem Gan can't be bothered to teach him how to write in Persian, he ends up developing his own private and personal writing system, inspired by a cuneiform inscription from the time of Cyrus the Great on the wall of a local cave. And of course he still can't read, so he remains dependent for his knowledge of the wider world on what the people around him are able to translate into sign language. Now the narrator, sitting in his attic in the Flevopolder, is trying to reconstruct what his father must have written in the notebook, without any means to decode the cuneiform other than his memory of his father's life, and of course realising how little we can know of what goes on inside someone else's head unless they have an effective way of communicating it.

Another big theme of the book is the odd way in which having a disabled parent introduces a partial role-reversal into the parent-child relationship, giving the narrator an unusually intimate relationship with his father - and an unusually heavy load of the usual filial guilt when he becomes involved in the underground resistance to the Shah, and later to the clerics, and is forced to separate himself from his parents to avoid implicating them in his political activities.

The book ticks most of the boxes you would expect from the "refugee novel" genre - there is more local colour than you can shake a stick at, there are attractive descriptions of the idyllic-but-tough life-before-the-political-horror, there are arrests, beatings, and disappearances, there is the wear-and-tear of being constantly on the lookout for the secret police. But what makes it special and uniquely attractive is the charming, modest, but sure-footed way Abdolah navigates between the two cultures and picks up echoes in their ways of imagining the world in poetic terms (even the idea of deciphering the notebook gets tied into the framing narrative of the Dutch classic Max Havelaar).

Just saw this article in simone2's Club Read thread and am reposting the link to it here.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/jan/17/dutch-literature-lost-to...

Finished it yesterday! But I haven't quite done with the alpha-males of the Benelux yet - I picked up a Harry Mulisch from my TBR pile...

Het verdriet van België (1983; The sorrow of Belgium) by Hugo Claus (Belgium, 1929-2008)

 

I'm struggling a bit to review this, as there are so many different sides to it - this isn't necessarily my last attempt...

Hugo Claus clearly saw himself as the alpha-male of Flemish writers for much of the post-war period: an alpha-male with a robust, Flemish sense of humour, evidently, but still very much the boss.

Het verdriet van België is Claus's great, sprawling, historical, autobiographical, satirical, send-up of what his neighbours and relatives did in the Second World War. It's a divisive book - as you would expect when it paints a largely one-sided picture of a country where it's rare for political questions to have as few as five or six sides - but it seems to have established itself as the definitive novel about Belgium during the occupation.

The title makes you expect a lamentation of the hardships and abuses the Belgian people were subjected to at the hands of the Germans. The opening chapters, where the 10-year-old narrator, Louis, is at a convent boarding school in the spring and summer of 1939, keep up this anticipation of gloom to come, but it soon turns out to be fraudulent in several ways.

For one thing, the Germans only appear in very minor offstage roles: the actual horrors (and there are plenty of these, don't worry) are all perpetrated by Belgians who have been drawn into collaboration with the Nazis either by personal greed and ambition or by distorted ideals of Flemish nationalism that make them see the Nazis as their natural allies against the hated French. Plus a fair bit of damage "accidentally" done to Belgium by the countries that are fighting to liberate it.

For another thing, the amoral viewpoint character Louis and the narrator, who increasingly identifies with him as the book goes on, clearly take a great, Rabelaisian pleasure in watching the theatre of moral deformation and physical destruction that is growing up around them as people get the chance to do something about the petty jealousies and envies they have been harbouring for decades. There's no shortage of corruption based on church, family and party connections; denunciations, slander, incest, murder, and simple theft.

Although Claus frequently makes fun of the Flemish nationalists' tendency to relate everything to their nation's glory days five or six centuries ago, there is a lot in this book that reminds you of one of those very busy early renaissance Flemish paintings. It is a very messy sort of book, with dozens of storylines appearing and disappearing at will, more characters than your average Dickens novel, and a narrative that has a disconcerting habit of hopping about between realistic and dream sequences without warning. The language takes some getting used to, as well, as it's relentlessly Flemish (if you're used to standard Dutch, then the experience is a bit like reading a novel that's written in Scots when you're used to standard English - you can make most of it out, but it takes a moment or two, and sometimes you have to go back a bit and read it aloud...). Claus is clearly determined not to "clean up" the way his characters talk any more than he would clean up their politics or their morals, and he wants to emphasise that all his characters have their roots in the Flemish mud. And it's very egotistical - the book stops abruptly, directly Louis achieves literary glory for the first time, without any consideration for fates of the the dozens of characters whose plots have not been resolved yet. All over Flanders, wives are still missing husbands, prisoners are still awaiting verdicts, lovers ununited, children unborn, dinners half-cooked, diseases uncured, and we'll never know how they came out.

I found that this was a book that I only really started to enjoy about 3/4 of the way through, when the penny dropped that the humour was not just incidental, it is the real point of the book. Claus seems to be arguing that most people - at least in Flanders - are not involved in great struggles of good and evil, but are trying to find a way to reconcile their material self-interest with their desire to look good in the eyes of their neighbours. From time to time the compromises they reach have truly great or truly horrifying effects, and perhaps the only way we can come to terms with the horrible banality of this is to find a way to laugh about it.

(I wonder about how the same book can have the cover above in Dutch and the one below in Polish, which is not as attractive, but 100% better match to the story. Some Catholic countries are obviously more alike than others...)

Several NY Review books were on sale at my local indie, including The Ten Thousand Things I think that counts....

008. Koning Cophetua en het bedelmeisje
Finished reading: 25 January 2017



Prior to publication of Knielen op een bed violen in 2005, Jan Siebelink was an author in the margin, whose novels were perhaps technically well-written but of very little interest. The short story collection Koning Cophetua en het bedelmeisje, published in 1983 belongs that that early period.

The eight stories in the collection seem to be connected as the same protagonist(s) seem to appear, at least in some of the stories. These central characters are a writer, or someone who wants to become a writer and a young woman, both apparently students in a big city, perhaps Amsterdam. The stories can be clearly situated in the early 80s as references are made to the protest culture of that time. Otherwise, the stories are all rather vague.

The title story of the collection, The King and the Beggar-maid hints at the theme of the stories, which could be described as the Cophetua complex, i.e. the main character's sexual desire for the girl is driven by a feeling of mental superiority. Perhaps the author wants to parody the sense that some, even unsuccessful authors or artists seem to have a sense of superiority vis-a-vis other people.



Other books I have read by Jan Siebelink:
Vera
Knielen op een bed violen
Engelen van het duister

The other "always just about to win the Nobel" writer from the Benelux:

Siegfried: een zwarte idylle (2001) by Harry Mulisch (Netherlands, 1927-2010)

 

Mulisch was about the same age as Hugo Claus, published his big-novel-about-the-occupation at about the same time (De Aanslag, 1982), and also had a father who had sympathised with the Nazis and was a collaborator during the war. (Although his situation was a good deal more complex than that of Claus, since his mother was Jewish...)

The novel Siegfried is a short, dark meditation on Hitler, written towards the end of Mulisch's life. The distinguished, seventy-year-old Dutch writer Rudolf Herter is on a trip to Vienna as guest of the Dutch embassy to promote his thousand-page millennium-novel The invention of love (...is this starting to sound like anyone we know?) when he bumps into an elderly couple who turn out to have been employed as personal servants at the Berghof in Obersalzberg during and immediately before the war, and are in possession of a terrible secret they unaccountably want to share with a random passing novelist before they die... Mulisch uses this as the hook for a partly historical, partly metaphysical, and partly fantastic exploration of who Hitler was and why we have so much difficulty pinning him down psychologically and philosophically. Probably mostly nonsense, but very elegant and erudite nonsense, and eminently readable.

013. Kort Amerikaans
Finished reading: 2 February 2017



Particularly in the Netherlands, Jan Wolkers is named as one of "The Great Three" authors, meaning Jan Wolkers, Harry Mulisch and Gerard Reve. They were all similar in age, and wit their novels dominated the literary scene in the Netherlands for nearly six decades. Many of their novels are inspired by the Second World War.

Kort Amerikaans (1962) is Jan Wolkers's first novel, although he had published some short stories and a play before that. The title of the novel refers to the hair cut of American soldiers, known as the "crew cut".

Jan Wolkers originally trained as a painter, but is mostly known for his writing. A striking feature of his writing are unablushed references to sexuality, and Wolkers can be easily described as the Dutch Henry Miller. The erotic element in his work was emphasised by the filming of many of his novels featuring the Dutch actress Monique van de Ven, who appeared in the filming of several of Wolkers's novels in the 70s besides filming of novels of Mulisch and Reve during the same period. Written in the 1960s - 70s and filmed during those same years, many of these movies are very explicit about sexuality.

Kort Amerikaans is set in the final year of the Second World War. As the war had upset regular life, twisting human relations into secrecy, suspicion and hiding, various characters' love and sexual lives are twisted and hampered in a similar fashion. The frustration of daily life is echoed in sexual frustration. Not only can Eric not find nude models, for his painting, he also cannot achieve the sexual act. The threads connecting Eric to various characters in the novel are often snapped. Love and death and entwined in various morbid ways. The novel features various peculiar characters, charicatures of Dutch people. The main character's name "Van Poelgeest" suggests dark, murky waters. Thus, in the final pages, as the Eric knows light will penetrate his dark secret, he embraces freedom by welcoming death.



Other books I have read by Jan Wolkers:
Mattekeesjes of de zielenreiniging van de Nederlandse klamboemaatschappij
Serpentina's petticoat
Dagboek 1972
Ach, Wim, wat is een vrouw?
Dagboek 1969 - 1971
Wolkers, Jan Dagboek 1974

015. De helleveeg. De Tandeloze Tijd. Deel 5
Finished reading: 2 February 2017



As time itself is an important theme in the novel cycle De Tandeloze Tijd by Dutch author A.F.Th. van der Heijden , the publication of De helleveeg as volume 5 in the series in 2013, 17 years since the publication of volume 3 (with volume 4 being published in 1990) is a really late serving. Compared with the other volumes in the series, De helleveeg. De Tandeloze Tijd. Deel 5 is oddly short, and while the other volumes were mainly coherent and fascinating, De helleveeg is a fragmented, unclear story. Many of the figures that appeared in the previous volumes make a short appearence in the story, but without clear connections of purpose.

De helleveeg. De Tandeloze Tijd. Deel 5 is a very disappointing book, that, appearing with a delay of 17 years, had perhaps better not appeared at all.



Other books I have read by A.F.Th. van der Heijden:
Het Schervengericht. Een transatlantische tragedie
Tonio. Een requiemroman
Asbestemming: Een requiem
Uitdorsten. Klein requiem voor mama, mam, ma
Doodverf
De gazellejongen. Het verzameld werk van Patrizio Canaponi
De draaideur
Een gondel in de Herengracht en andere verhalen
Gentse lente
Voetstampwijnen zijn tandknarswijnen
Kruis en kraai. De romankunst na James Joyce
Drijfzand koloniseren
MIM, of De doorstoken globe
Het leven uit een dag
Hier viel Van Gogh flauw
Ik heb je nog veel te melden. De briefwisseling tussen Jean-Paul Franssens en A.F.Th. van der Heijden
Gevouwen woorden
Engelenplaque
De Movo tapes. Een carriere als ander
De sandwich
Advocaat van de hanen. De Tandeloze Tijd. Deel 4
Onder het plaveisel het moeras. De Tandeloze Tijd. Deel 3, Tweede boek
Het hof van barmhartigheid. De Tandeloze Tijd. Deel 3, Eerste Boek
Weerborstels. De Tandeloze Tijd. Een intermezzo
De gevarendriehoek. De Tandeloze Tijd. Deel 2
Vallende ouders. De Tandeloze Tijd. Deel 1
De slag om de Blauwbrug. De Tandeloze Tijd. Proloog
Een gondel in de Herengracht en andere verhalen

016. Het verdriet van België
Finished reading: 3 February 2017



In his essay collection Familiearchief : notities over voorouders, tijdgenoten en mijzelf the Dutch historian E.H. Kossmann describes how in the Netherlands the culture of writing about the war has resulted in the paradigm that a number of people were collaborators, and therefore "black" or bad, a number of people was in the resistance, and therefore "white" or good, while most of the population was "grey", and therefore "suspicious. While the Black/White view can be explained and accepted, categorizing the rest of the population as suspicious is rather peculiar. Kossmann suggests that as long as people did not eagerly collaborate, while collaboration was limited for the necessity of one's personal survival, the general population should be considered good. In Dutch novels about the Second World War, this division is almost always very clear.

However, in reality, of course, things were not so clear, and although it would perhaps be too strong to use the word "suspicious" any form of "limited collaboration" is extremely flexible and can be interpreted in very many ways. Likewise, the justification of personal survival, possibly extended to family members is very pliable.

That is just what Hugo Claus's novel Het verdriet van België is about. Describing the lives of a number of ordinary Belgium people, from shortly before the war and throughout the war years, there are no obvious collaborators. Neither does Claus focus on the resistance. The characters in his novel belong to the general population, and how they deal with the occupation on a day-to-day basis.



Other books I have read by Hugo Claus:
Onvoltooid verleden
De geruchten
De zwaardvis
De koele minnaar
De dans van de reiger
Een bruid in de morgen

...and another foray South of the Border, but going back half a century further:

Kaas (1933; Cheese) by Willem Elsschot (Belgium, 1882 - 1960)

 

The Flemish writer Willem Elsschot (real name Alfons de Ridder), mentioned briefly in >7 .Monkey.: above, worked for most of his life in the advertising business in Antwerp - he's best known for a series of novellas written in the early thirties (of which this is one), and for his early realistic novel set in a Paris lodging-house, Villa des Roses (1913).

In the novella Kaas, the long-serving office-worker Frans Laarmans suddenly gets the chance to set up in business on his own account as a cheese importer. He's essentially a Flemish Mr Pooter, a kindly, mild-mannered husband and father who achieved his maximum promotion level in the shipyard office many years ago, but who can't resist this one last chance to bite off more than he can chew. Laarmans has a lot of fun picking a name for his business, ordering headed notepaper and setting up an office, but then the first batch of twenty tons of Edammer arrives and it becomes all too clear that he is not psychologically equipped to go into grocers' shops and persuade them to order his cheese, even after a session with an expert motivator.

A gentle little social comedy, no real fireworks, but an engaging central character and a lot of charming period detail about commercial life in the thirties.

>45 thorold: >51 edwinbcn: - we seem to have found almost opposite things in Het verdriet van België!

On reflection, I think both our readings must have come out of the way Claus doesn't start out from the hindsight position of "bad Nazis, good everyone else" that you see in most WWII novels, but lets us see things from the point of view of characters for whom politics and patriotism are normally not the main drivers in what they choose to do.

>50 edwinbcn: I've still got several parts of De Tandeloze Tijd on my shelf, but never got beyond De slag om de Blauwbrug. Something else I ought to have a go at...

>50 edwinbcn:
Heh, I read De Movo tapes back when it came out in '03. I thought it was alright. Not sure if or how much else I've read by the man.

I think "De Tandeloze Tijd" is a much better novel series than the "Homo Duplex" series. Of course, i read De Movo tapes and Het Schervengericht but although they are indisputably good novels, they are too big, and too vague, and too cerebral.

I must admit that I did not like Het verdriet van Belgie very much and did not read it very carefully. Although I have read several novels, plays and short story collections by Hugo Claus, I do not like his work.

De Tandeloze Tijd is a very good novel series; Most people really enjoy De advocaat van de hanen. I think Vallende ouders was great, and De gevarendriehoek was wonderful, and I think you should read them. Unless you have the stamina to plough through Part 3, I suggest you skip Part 3, which was published in two volumes of each 800+ pages, Het hof van barmhartigheid. De Tandeloze Tijd. Deel 3, Eerste Boek & Onder het plaveisel het moeras. De Tandeloze Tijd. Deel 3, Tweede boek. I read both and enjoyed both, but it was a big thing to read. On my next visit to Holland I will probably still buy Kwaadschiks, if it becomes available in a commercial edition.

As you can see, i have read almost everything by A.F.Th. van der Heijden, although I have not liked most of his work published after 2000, perhaps with an exception of Tonio.

The Guardian has an excerpt from a newly translated novel by Jan Vantoortelboom, Meester Mitraillette (His name is David) in its "Translation Tuesday" series: https://www.theguardian.com/books/translation-tuesdays-by-asymptote-journal/2017...

Inspired by others who have read books from this author I picked up a book by Hugo Claus more or less at random.
I found Onvoltooid verleden (the French title was Le passé décomposé) to be a strinking book, with a very particular style.
It is the detailed interrogation of a man by a police officer, being told in the first person by the man, with the police officer jumping in here or there to ask for details or clarifications, or make observations. It soon appears that the man is somewhat mentally deficient, which echoes, in a much darker way, Flowers for Algernon. I don't want to tell too much about the storyline, which unfolds little by little and is much more involved than it initially appears.
The book is grim, depicting people who struggle in various ways in life, but many of whom feel cheated in general by people who have education.

Though I felt the end left too many things unresolved, I was highly impressed by this book and am very glad I discovered this author. I heartily recommend it, and as it is quite short it is an easy way to discover this author;

(touchstones seem to be working erratically, sorry about that)

Last year I read The dinner by Herman Koch (Netherlands) and was stricken by it, though I thought it had many flaws.
For this theme I therefore decided to pick another book by this author, and chose Summer house with swimming pool.

This is about a doctor, a GP, developing links with one of his patient, and the two families spend some vacation time in the same summer house. The story is told both from the perspective of the present time, where it soon becomes apparent that the doctor let his patient die from a fatal disease, and probably withheld information from him so he would not pursue adequate care, and from the past where this vacation took place and where decisive events took place.

I fount his book to have interesting aspects but globally it was a disappointment .

Apparently there's a new translation of Turks fruit coming out: don't read the review if sexually explicit language bothers you, though ...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/mar/03/jan-wolkers-turkish-deli...

NETHERLANDS



A Posthumous Confession by Marcellus Emants translated from the Dutch by J M Coetzee
first published in 1894 as Een nagelaten bekentensis

Thirty-five year old Willem Termeer is the narrator of this confession. He tells the reader right away on the first page that he has just murdered his wife. The rest of his "confession" is his decidedly one-sided summation of his life, for Willem assumes his auditor will be "...interested in the course of my development", that he will "...understand how different I seem to myself from the vast majority of people."

He then gives a self-serving account of his life from his entry into grade school forward. At times coloured by self loathing, at other times by empty bravado, Termeer shows himself as one of those weak whingeing creatures whom every bully recognizes on sight, and as the one no work team or social group would choose for a member. Throughout his life, he has done nothing but disappoint, often deliberately. He persists in seeing himself as a victim of circumstance, doing nothing to try to alter those circumstances.

Why read such a self analysis then? Well as J M Coetzee tells us in his introduction, Marcellus Emants was interested in psychology, in analyzing "the new sciences of heredity and psychopathology to explain human motivation". Coetzee sees Termeer's confession "...as a monument to himself, thereby turning a worthless life into art". No matter how despicable Termeer may have been as a person, no matter how disinclined the reader may be to empathize, Emants has done an excellent job of making the reader feel so strongly about such an odious and inconsequential person, and of having that person reveal himself so convincingly, and it is his writing that is the reward.

____________
crossposted from my Club Read 2017 thread

A short one for Sunday evening, as I haven't read anything for this thread for a while:

Zomerhitte (Boekenweek gift 2005) by Jan Wolkers (Netherlands, 1925–2007)

 

For more on Wolkers, see >49 edwinbcn: above. This was his last work of prose fiction, a novella written as the gift-book for the Dutch book promotion week (Boekenweek) in 2005. It's a curious mixture of bird-spotting, hardcore porn, and organised crime, set among the sand-dunes of the Dutch island of Texel where Wolkers lived for many years. There are some bits of quite inspired writing in the sex-scenes, but they seem to be written with a firm conviction that it's still 1970 and women's liberation is all about the right to take your clothes off on the beach. The crime story is clumsily cobbled together, apparently as an afterthought when the author realised that the love-story couldn't be made to fill enough pages - he has the narrator describe the key scene no fewer than five times, in slightly different situations. Perhaps it would have been kinder to leave Wolkers to enjoy his retirement in peace.

>62 thorold: I just noticed that the 2017 Boekenweek starts tomorrow, 25 March. If you spend at least EUR 12.50 on Dutch books during the week, you get a copy of this year's gift, a novella by Herman Koch. Anyone with a copy of the gift book also gets free travel on Dutch trains on Sunday 2 April. Probably not enough to tempt you to cross the Atlantic for the weekend, but it could give some of us a nudge to read one more Dutch-language book before the end of Q1...

Meanwhile, to get away from all those macho types for a bit, I've been dipping into the Dutch poet Gerrit Komrij:

Verwoest Arcadië (1980) by Gerrit Komrij (Netherlands, 1944-2012)
Er is geen vrijheid in de zandwoestijn (2009) by Gerrit Komrij, selected and introduced by Victor Schiferli

   

Verwoest Arcadië ("Destroyed Arcadia") is an autobiographical novel in which Komrij takes a charming, funny, and perceptive look back at his childhood in the small town of Winterswijk and his student days in Amsterdam. Much as he does in his poems, he uses jokes and paradoxes to lead himself and the reader up to some quite difficult and painful truths about growing up, self-awareness and the consciousness of mortality. But he mostly talks about his lust for books and beautiful boys (like most of us, he seems to have found it easier to feed the first than the second of these, they take up space in the ratio of about ten to one in the text). He talks a bit about the problems of hindsight in autobiography, and he warns us not to take his fictional alter ego, Jacob, as historically reliable, which then gives him the excuse to make critical judgements about the books Jacob was reading which are clearly not Jacob's views but those of the mature narrator, but which are very funny and perceptive anyway. The sort of book that makes you wish you could have had a chance to meet the author in real life.

Er is geen vrijheid in de zandwoestijn was compiled as a Festschrift for Komrij's 65th birthday, bringing together a selection of 65 poems from different moments in his career with an essay celebrating his work by Victor Schiferli. I haven't read much Dutch poetry, but if you had asked me to list the attributes of a typical modern Dutch poem, I think I would have come up with something like what Komrij does: metrical, rhymed, and set in a strict form, very ironic, relying a lot on jokes, paradoxes and puns especially when dealing with serious subject-matter. So it's a bit of a surprise to be told how radical Komrij's metrical clowning was considered to be when he first started doing it in the free-verse, stream-of-consciousness early sixties. It's obviously had a lot of influence since then!

It is striking, though, to see how far he takes this formalism: all the poems in this selection are either sonnets or 12-liners with one of two or three possible variants of rhyme-schemes. Maybe that's just Schiferli trying to keep the collection harmonious, but it does make you wonder if Komrij did ever write anything that wasn't either 12 or 14 lines long?

It does look in one or two of the poems in this collection as though Komrij sometimes got a bit worried about it: in "Noli me tangere", for instance, he talks about putting "a landmine in the last line" that destroys the poem (or perhaps just the tensions it's built up) when the reader gets that far - "a poem must be complete in order not to exist".

---

Reading Verwoest Arcadië made me realise that I scarcely know Winterswijk and the Achterhoek region at all - it's the opposite side of the Netherlands to where I live. Since I had a free day I wanted to use for walking in the country anyway, I thought "why not go and have a look at the Achterhoek?". So I hopped on a train and spent most of today walking in what turns out to be very pleasant countryside indeed. Not a literary pilgrimage, since Komrij doesn't really go in for topographical detail, but fun, anyway!

War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans

I am not quite sure how I rate this book. It is the story of the author's grandfather, who was a WWI war hero and a painter, from a very working class, Catholic family. I read the book thinking it was novel, and was a bit annoyed at how wonderfully heroic and good the grandfather always was. But now that I know that the grandfather was a real person, well, that seems sweet, and Hertman's exploration of his grandfathers life and loves, and the effect that the war had on him, is very tender and compassionate.

So here it is, the Boekenweek gift, hot off the presses (actually, I see 28 people added it to LT before me, and Simone2 has already reviewed it in her CR thread...):

Makkelijk leven (2017) by Herman Koch (Netherlands, 1953- )

 

(The bookmark showing Herman Koch unconvincingly masquerading as a train conductor came with the book to promote the NS free travel offer)

Herman Koch is the author of a string of very successful unreliable-narrator novels, already mentioned above a couple of times, including Het diner and Zomerhuis met zwembad. Just for a change, this is a novella with an unlikeable and obviously unreliable middle-aged male narrator. In this case, the narrator is a successful self-help author, who has sold more than 40 million copies of a book that advises its readers never to do today what they can postpone until tomorrow and not to try to change anyone, least of all yourself. Naturally, he completely fails to follow his own advice, and equally naturally, the result is a family disaster. The book isn't quite as obvious as this summary might suggest, and it's fairly witty, in a blokey sort of way, in its detailed observation of some of the absurdities of modern life, but I didn't really feel myself engaging with the narrator or any of the other characters.

Maybe this will be my last Dutch book for Q1? Anyway, we shouldn't close the thread without at least something by the remaining member of the "big three" mentioned by Darryl and Edwin above in connection with Wolkers and Mulisch.

Gerard Reve was the first modern Dutch writer I came across when I came to live in the Netherlands - rather absurdly, I saw a translation of one of his books in the gay section of the American Book Centre and bought it not realising that the original was in Dutch - and I've since read quite a few of his books, but this is one of those I haven't got around to yet:

Op weg naar het einde (1963) by Gerard Reve (Netherlands, 1923-2006)

  

Reve's most-read work is probably still his 1947 "generation gap" novel De Avonden (recently translated into English), which fits into the Catcher in the Rye/Bonjour Tristesse/Nada/Loneliness of the long-distance runner (etc.) slot in the Dutch canon, and is thus more often on than off the syllabus. But he's best known in literary terms for his later work, where he takes a kind of Thomas Bernhard role in provoking the norms of Dutch society from the position of the one sane and reasonable voice rising above the dull-wittedness around him. As the Dutch are a lot harder to provoke than the Austrians, you have to be quite extreme to shock them, but Reve managed to get himself condemned by church, state and his fellow writers on numerous occasions.

Op weg naar het einde often gets cited as Reve's breakthrough work, where he first found the combination of style and subject matter that suited him best. Like most of his later works, it's at an indeterminate point on the borderline between memoir and fiction - the narrator is the Dutch writer Gerard R from the city of A, but there's so much irony about that we can't be absolutely sure at any point that he's speaking for the author.

The book consists of six "travel diaries" (or letters) written in different places, but forming a kind of continuous narrative anchored on specific dates in 1962-63. The narrator attends a PEN conference in Edinburgh (Angus Wilson, Norman Mailer, Mary McCarthy, Muriel Spark and many other prominent writers of the time have walk-on parts); he returns to Amsterdam and has to cope with his partner Wim having run off with a plumber from Essex; he goes to London to attempt a reconciliation with Wim; he spends time with his friend P in the Essex countryside; he travels to Spain to try to reduce his living expenses. In between describing his adventures, there are many reflections on sex, religion, literature, death, and alcohol, often combined in unexpected ways (there's a magnificent passage where during Mass in an Amsterdam Catholic church, he has a sexual fantasy about a young man sitting opposite him). He fulminates entertainingly against the stupidity of his fellow-writers and the meanness of the reading public, who are not prepared to shell out a measly few guilders for a book.

The language itself is ironic: he writes about the most secular subject-matter in a style that recalls the religious writing of a few centuries earlier; he insists on quaint alternative spellings to add to the strangeness of what he's writing and force the reader to pay attention to the actual words (there seems to be some sort of etymological system to this, but obviously the main point is Verfremdung).

It's a funny, shocking and beautifully written book, and it comes with a good deal of period detail which sets my nostalgia engine working as well. There are some glorious moments in the text - when he stands up against Hugh MacDiarmid's homophobic comments at the PEN conference, for instance, or his diatribe in support of the Dutch writers' strike of 1962 when he goes on for page after page discussing the subsidy writers should get per page...