March 22, 2008
Last week I promised that I would produce an accessible version of the 1919 Louis Couperus hit novel Old People and the Things that Pass if I were asked to. Somebody requested an HTML version, which you can now find at the Internet Archive: www.archive.org/details/oldpeoplethings1919.
The Dutch Book Week, which wraps up today, had a motto this year—Of Old People…—that was derived from the title of this psychological drama.
Tags: accessibility, novels, psychology
March 15, 2008
When weight-loss icon Sonja Bakker touches something, it turns to gold. FEM/Business reports that brands that were recommended by Bakker had an increase in turn-over of 62 million euro last year. The old-fashioned, but typically Dutch beschuit—a crispy round dry biscuit served at breakfast with sweet sprinklings or strawberries—saw an increase in sales last year after a thirty year downward spiral. Bakker has also sold 2.2 million copies of her four books, almost overtaking J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame, and grossing 28 million euro.
(Illustration by Serassot, distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2.)
Tags: books, dieting, Sonja Bakker
March 12, 2008
Today marks the start of the Boekenweek, the Dutch week to promote books. This year’s motto is “Of old people…,” after Louis Couperus’ classic 1906 psychological novel Of Old People and Things That Pass… The theme focuses on old age, both in people and books, and has already been criticised by those who feel that youngsters should be encouraged to read books, not discouraged.
More interesting for 24 Oranges readers may be that Alexander Teixeira de Mattos’ classic translation of Couperus’ masterpiece has recently become available in many formats at the Internet Archive. If anyone would like a version that is more accessible (plain text, HTML, PDF), let me know and I’ll try and post one here. The Dutch version is available from DBNL.org.
Of Old People follows a couple of murderers in their old age, and their children and grand children, and shows how one gruesome act committed many years ago is felt in the family today.
(Picture: Louis Couperus)
Tags: Louis Couperus, promoting, translations
December 4, 2007
Comedian/singer Martine Bijl decided to clean house last summer and chose to get rid of the remains of an abandoned hobby: many antique picture books she had collected over the years. She contacted Amsterdam auction house De Eland, who promised to take care of everything. Wondering what had happened to the cheque, she contacted the house after a couple of months only to find out that she wouldn’t get any money. The auction house had decided to throw away the 13 boxes of books after a cursory glance in some of them had revealed that they were not worth anything.
According to the print version of newspaper Het Parool, some of the books had an estimated value of hundreds of euro each. By British artist Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), Bijl owned De Ring van de Neveling (1911, 1912; text by Wagner/Kloos), Britsche Balladen (Verwey), and Midzomernachtsdroom (Shakespeare, Burgersdijk). By French artists J.J. Granville (1803-1847) Bijl owned the rare Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux (1853). It’s the auction’s house standard policy to throw away any lot that it expects will not net more than 25 euro, which a box of regular books rarely would.
Tags: antique, auction, martine bijl, picture book, shakespeare, wagner
November 11, 2007
Librivox is a project that produces public domain audiobooks. It has its volunteers record their readings of books that are in the public domain. Currently, the project is looking for new volunteers that want to participate in recording Nicolaas Beets’ Camera Obscura, a collection of short stories and essays in Dutch. To help out you need little more than a relatively modern computer, recording software (the free, cross-platform Audacity will do just fine) and a fast internet connection (to upload the result). The only piece of equipment that you may not have is good microphone. A good microphone almost certainly means an active USB mike, either a condenser mike or a dynamic one. You can use the cheaper microphones that typically come with your PC, but these often produce too much noise for the signal they provide.
See also at 24 Oranges: Dutch audiobooks at Librivox. Disclaimer: I am a volunteer of both Librivox and Project Gutenberg, the organization that provides Librivox with most of its source texts.
November 9, 2007
Literature opens doors, and eyes, and windows on the soul, some people say. But who is going to close all these entrances again? For instance, in the new Zone 5300 Maaike Hartjes reports from Japan that one of the most popular forms of manga for women there is gay manga for girls, including gay manga for girls set in Lord of the Ring’s Middle Earth and illustrated with a drawing of a smooching Aragorn as portrayed by Viggo Mortensen. How am I ever going to unknow that?!
Or what about this: the heyday of Holocaust porn? Let me rephrase that. What about this: Holocaust porn? Apparently quite popular in Israel during the Eichmann trial. Zone writes about tall blonde nazi women in tight leather skull adorned uniforms brandishing whips and presumably about to suck the life juices out of camp prisoners. The 2007 documentary Stalag by Ari Libsker explores the phenomenon.
At this point I am too jaded to get worked up over the fate of Virgil Mankiewicz, a man from Nebraska who got sentenced to death because his Siamese twin brother Homer got sentenced to death.
There’s also a short interview with Raoul Deleo, one of the two makers of De eenzame snelweg (The Lonely Motorway), a book describing the trip the authors took along the same route that Jack Kerouac describes in On The Road. Kerouac typed out his book on scrolls, and in true “method drawing” fashion Deleo copied that idea by constructing a case with a built-in scroll to draw on while on the road (see illustration).
Furthermore, there is a look at the fantastic work of Chuck Groenink (for instance: teabags hanging from a ceiling, dripping like corpses in a slaughterhouse), comics by Merel Barends and Jakob Klemencic, an excellent episode of Fool’s Gold (which I reported about earlier), and Wasco’s interpretation of Dick Bruna’s Zwarte Beertjes book covers (see illustration).
Tags: Chuck Groenink, Dutch comics, Fool's Gold, Maaike Hartjes, Zone 5300
October 17, 2007
Librivox is fairly new project (recently turned two) where volunteers produce public domain audiobooks based on classic e-texts from Project Gutenberg. Today it has published Louis Couperus’ Van oude menschen, de dingen, die voorbij gaan (translated in English as “Old People and the Things that Pass”), only the second full Dutch book published by the project, and read in its entirety by Carola Janssen. The first was Majoor Frans (Major Frank) by A.L.G. Bosboom-Toussaint.
Couperus psychological novels to which “Old souls …” belongs were translated into English during the author’s lifetime, and were apparently very popular. Wikipedia even states “Couperus’ books sold better abroad than in the narrow-minded calvinistic Netherlands of his days.”
Currently Librivox is working on two other Dutch books, Max Havelaar by Multatuli and Onder Moeders Vleugels (Little Women) by L.M. Alcott. Disclaimer: I am a Project Gutenberg and Librivox volunteer myself, and am one of the readers of Onder Moeders Vleugels. Several of Couperus works are available in English in scanned form at the Internet Archive.
Thanks, Carola.
Tags: Dutch audiobooks, Librivox
June 11, 2007
In a riff on the book ‘French Women Don’t Get Fat’, a book that explains how French women manage to avoid the treadmill of the gym by skipping along merrily from marché to marché carrying delightful baskets full of good wholesome food, (Dutch! female!) psychologist Ellen de Bruin has published a book called ‘Dutch Women Don’t Get Depressed’. The review in the International Herald Tribune seems to be toggling between the ideas that on the one hand the book is a parody, on the other, a serious work.
So why don’t Dutch women get depressed? The review hints at many a contorted explanation, dragging in several stereotypical views of Dutch society. Gay marriage gets a look in (suggesting the Dutch desire for family building) as does the Amsterdam Red Light District (suggesting sexual freedom). And an important element seems to be that Dutch women don’t feel the stress of the need to seduce, and instead dress in lumpy, gender-blurring clothes that are ideal for biking along windy canals.
Meanwhile English (female!) columnist Sarah Sands first discards the suggestion that an English version should be called ‘Why English Women Don’t Get Laid’, then gets bitter:
This is also a country that embraces euthanasia. All those elderly parents in old people’s homes must feel nervous about family visits. And if we have discovered the correct social conditions for human happiness, they are fragile. The cultural clash between Islam and the secular West has been fought ferociously on Dutch soil.
The main problem with this book is that it does not have the obvious appeal of French Women… Many of us would like to be French, at least on the outside. With respect, how many of us wish to be Dutch?
You tell ’em, fatty! ‘Ere, have some Belgian chocolate.
Tags: English, French, statistics, traits, women
May 15, 2007
The Amsterdam Literary Festival (ALF) is an annual event, held each May, which aims to put the charming Dutch capital on the world literary map – especially in the lead-up to 2008 when Amsterdam is UNESCO World Book Capital. This year’s edition will run from 15-20 May 2007.
Past guests at ALF have included the BBC’s Kate Adie OBE, award-winning novelist Sarah Waters and one of the UK’s most exciting writers, David Mitchell.
This year’s programme features performances, poetry, lectures and rummages through books at local book markets. And there’s the closing event: World Cuisine Buffet on an old steamship!
(Link: ALF)
April 23, 2007
Christian daily Trouw (translates to ‘loyal’) has an interview with Flemish writer Tom Lanoye where they have him respond to the ten commandments. About “thou shalt not steal” he says:
In my profession theft is a tribute. A good writer is the best thief. A bad writer steals from the wrong people, or not at all. A bad writer thinks he knows it all already. You have to keep rolling around in all sorts of literary beds. Carnivorous, omnivorous, vegetarian, anything! Everything can be an inspiration.
(Link: interview in Dutch. Via Eamelje, Dutch. Photo by Frank C. Müller, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Germany.)
Tags: copyright, flemish, inspiration, plagiarism, Tom Lanoye, writing
