On the same day and Jeroen Brouwers and Henk Groot dead, God once again has no mercy. The downside – and not the only thing – of getting old is that there is so much going on around you. Can’t even stop that? Yes, you can, very well, but only if you have to stop it yourself.
In an unguarded moment I rummage through things that I should have cleaned up a long time ago because they belong to times long past. I keep putting it off, for I know that a selection will provoke too much useless melancholy.
Look, there’s a December 1983 issue of the then (inexorable word) literary magazine devoted to George Orwell Bzzlletin, published by the foundation Bzztôh. On the back is an announcement of literary gatherings organized by Bzztôh. On Monday 6 February 1984, JMA Biesheuvel will read stories in the HOT Theater in The Hague and Willem Otterspeer will have a conversation with Karel van het Reve. On Monday 19 March, in the same theater about the novel The sorrow of Belgium by Hugo Claus, together with the writer himself and Frans Boenders, Freddy de Vree and Graa Boomsma. On 17 February, De Wijnkelder will host a literary salon with Inez van Dullemen and Maurits Mok.
Biesheuvel, Karel van het Reve, Claus, De Vree, Van Dullemen, Mok – they still existed. You could just walk into a theater in The Hague to listen to them. Maybe you didn’t, maybe you’d rather play football (Henk Groot!) – but it was possible.
The editors of Bzzlletin consisted of Johan Diepstraten and Phil Muysson, both devoted literature lovers, who have since passed away. Diepstraten interviewed writers, Muysson directed Bzztôh. It was always difficult to talk about Brouwers with Diepstraten. I liked to read Brouwers, although I eventually had trouble with his tendency to pathos, but Diepstraten was one of the many supporting actors in the literature business whom Brouwers greatly disliked.
Brouwers paid little attention to the usefulness of such enthusiasts. Who a bundle like Hammer Pieces van Brouwers, you will come across all his scapegoats – he called them ‘literature lice’. He has written furious pamphlets against them, sometimes to the point, sometimes exaggerated.
In the 1970s, Brouwers had great influence with these polemics. I worked in the art department of in 1978 de Volkskrant when Brouwers attacked the literary editors of that newspaper, and in particular the critic Pierre Spaninks, harshly. That didn’t sit well with that department, but it did not prevent columnist Jan Blokker, who shortly afterwards became deputy editor-in-chief, asked Brouwers to become an employee; Blokker agreed with Brouwers’ criticism.
Still, Brouwers must have made many enemies in those years. Did he never receive the PC Hooft Prize as a result, even though he certainly deserved it with his broad oeuvre? But why did he get all those other literary prizes? Well, maybe it didn’t bother him. He compared the presentation of the PC Hooft Prize to Harry Mulisch in 1977 with ‘the level of the HBS boys’ party’, with the accompanying ‘blatant chatter and giggles’. Brouwers did not like that, light-heartedness was foreign to him, literature was a matter of holy seriousness.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 13, 2022