In February 2006, four years after the murder of politician Pim Fortuyn and two years after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, Joost Zwagerman asked himself in his Frans Kellendonk lecture wonder why Dutch writers paid so little attention to the zeitgeist. Many people liked it, including literary critic Elsbeth Etty who a few months later in NRC Handelsblad discussed a novel – according to her mediocre – about the Bijlmer disaster, while viciously remarking that it ‘perhaps it was better too’ that Dutch writers were hardly inspired by current events. For that matter, Zwagerman was neither the first nor the last to be surprised at the lack of novels inspired by social current events.
This week there was another plea for more social engagement by Dutch writers. This time, the blame for their absence from the social debate was not placed with the writers themselves, but with the media, who prefer to have current affairs commented on by celebrities, influencers and other scum than by writers. Michaël Stoker, director of the ILFU, the International Literature Festival Utrecht, still shudders after the Boekenbal: ‘On the red carpet I saw countless people who made me think: what are they doing here?’
On Tuesday, his ILFU launched a new, national platform ‘for fiction that responds to current events’. To keep the platform up and running for a year, at least a thousand members are needed who are willing to pay 45 euros per year. The idea arose a year and a half ago, when the literature festival was canceled due to corona. Stoker invested the financial contribution from the government in fifty stories by writers who would normally have come to Utrecht. ‘We sent them by e-mail to our supporters and we noticed that they were well read. Then I thought: let’s create a place where you can go for stories all year round.’
And not just any stories, but stories with a certain topical value. Stoker: ‘I think there are a lot of writers who are very committed and incorporate that into their oeuvre; you just don’t see any of that in the debate. In any case, television is notoriously blind to what is happening in literature, but there is hardly any room for fiction in other media either.’ And that’s a shame, says Stoker: ‘Because literature can do something that journalism cannot: get inside a character’s head.’ The first stories are now up ilfu.comby Joost Oomen, among others, who goes wild on Sywert and a cherry tree† Fiction with facts: nice.