Hi Švejk, ik kan een beetje het Nederlands lezen, and I would like to keep from getting too rusty in it so maybe I should try some of Reve’s books. Can you recommend a comparatively short and simple one that would be a good choice to start off with?
Hi Annie, I’ve enjoyed Elton’s TV comedy writing and thought Gridlock sounded interesting so I might give it a try; what’s your take on it?
Me, the book I seem to have been talking about a lot lately is Christopher Beckwith’s Empires of the Silk Road, a “fundamental rethinking” (if not outright revisionism) of the history of Central Eurasia.
Beckwith’s main argument is that the inland empires were way more important in ancient and medieval history than they are given credit for. In his view, the littoral or coastal civilizations including the Roman empire, Persian empire, etc., were essentially “peripheral” in every sense of the term in Eurasian history until the development of global sea travel in the early modern period, although they dominate our modern perceptions of the past. I never realized that anybody could find so many nice things to say about Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, but actually, that’s kind of Beckwith’s point.
Some of the book is frankly cuckoo (closing chapter diatribe against the Modernist movement in art? what’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?), and some of it is not fully convincing (Central Eurasian myths and social organization leaving traces everywhere from Ireland to Japan? :dubious: ?), but all of it is highly thought-provoking.
Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky (Basically a rigorous examination of how the media control and are controlled to control political opinion in the United States, reads a bit like a textbook and backs everything up with indisputable data)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (Fantastic farce with amazing characterization and a really wild ludicrous plot that somehow still seems possible. Just laugh out loud funny all over the place.)
When I read it in high school, I thought it was the ‘deepest’ book I ever read. Many years later, I still do. Truly wonderful (it’s a book trying to explain consciousness and self-referentiality through a meandering circus of wonderful ideas and themes).
ETA: I’m glad to see someone has mentioned Mark Helprin’s wonderful books.
Hi Kimstu, I don’t know if Reve is the best author to read if you’re Dutch is not too strong, since his language is ornate and flowery. Also, his best work tends to be his older work, by which I mean work between 1946 (De Avonden) and the late 1960s. I think it is safe to say that the Dutch language has changed considerably since those days and you might find the Dutch you read in Reve to be archaic. That said, there’s five novels that stand out amongst his work:
De Avonden
Op Weg naar het Einde
Nader Tot U
Lieve Jongens
Taal der Liefde
De Avonden is Reve’s first novel, and comes closest to actually being a novel. Set in the last ten days of 1946, with a chapter for each day, it depicts a stifling post-war atmosphere in a way that I really appreciate for its black humor and its symbolism.
The other four books are from the 1960s. They are rather more autobiographical in that they are written from the point of view of the author, they are written in letter form or diary form, and deal with many actual people. In this time, Reve had come out as a homosexual but had, in an effort to wrestle himself away from his communist upbringing, converted to Catholicism, which makes for a potent mix of devout conservatism and overt homoeroticism in his books. As an example, Reve was sued for blasphemy for a passage in which God comes to Reve’s doorstep in the guise of a mousegrey donkey; the donkey compliments Reve on his writing after which Reve, in tears, gets the donkey to go up two flights of steep stairs which turns out to be quite the struggle; once upstairs, Reve twice ‘possesses the donkey in his secret passage’. I would contend that none of it would be publishable today, but Reve attained rockstar status in the 1960s, and had his own TV show for a little while. The blasphemy suit was eventually dismissed.
At any rate, this is some of the best that has come out of the Dutch language since the war, and I would recommend reading it for that reason alone. All of the novels are short, a little over 200 pages perhaps, so that might make them accessible, but since the writing is 50 years old there’s bound to be some stuff in there that will fly right past you. If you wanted to try Reve, but read some of the shorter material, he’s written some short stories as well during the 1950s (Tien Vrolijke Verhalen;* Vier Wintervertellingen*). Other things I’d recommend would be Nescio’s Uitvreter/Dichtertje/Titaantjes and Bordewijks Bint/Blokken, both of which are collections of shorter novels that came out before the war and that for that reason would be even more difficult to access than Reve’s work, but are still great testaments to Dutch literature. In more recent literature there is a lot that is presumably more readable but less memorable. I would not know what to recommend to a non-native speaker, I would have to think about it. Some of the things that are straight-forward reads usually recommend to Dutch teenagers to get them interested in literature include:
Maarten 't Hart - De Kroongetuige
Hella Haasse - Oeroeg
Jan Wolkers - Turks Fruit
Harry Mulisch - Twee Vrouwen
Boudewijn Buch - De Kleine Blonde Dood
Tim Krabbe - Het Gouden Ei
In the 1990s and 2000s writers like Joost Zwagerman (Buitenvrouw), Ronald Giphart (Giph!) and Arnon Grunberg have been successful and well read, and certainly the first two are known (and criticized) for their loose style and emphasis on including lots and lots of sex in their work. That’s not literature, people say. Actually, someone who is very influential but who is not generally counted amongst the literary canon is comedian Youp van 't Hek, who publishes a weekly column in NRC Handelsblad. Perhaps that’s a nice place to start. Let me know if this is helpful at all!
Another one here who totally recommends Collen McCulloughs Masters of Rome series, just finished rereading Antony and Cleopatra.
Also Patrick O’Briens Aubery and Maturin sea stories set in the Napoleonic Wars, and dare I say it, I don’t think that there will ever be its like again for genius.
And last but not least Terry Pratchetts DiscWorld stories.