'The Foxes Come at Night' by Cees Nooteboom (Review)

A few months ago, MacLehose Press reissued some books by Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom to coincide with his eightieth birthday, and I was lucky enough to receive copies of them.  At the time, I reviewed his debut novel, Rituals, but today's post looks at a far more recent work, allowing me to compare books from very different periods of the writer's life and career...

*****
The Foxes Come at Night (translated by Ina Rilke) is a short collection of eight stories, first published in Dutch in 2009.  The pieces are very much thematically linked, with Nooteboom using the collection as an opportunity to examine age, memory and reflections on the past, usually from the perspective of a character remembering a lost partner or friend.

A common device used is the humble photograph, and the first story, 'Gondolas', is a good example of this.  In the story, a Dutch art journalist returns to Venice to stand in the place where he took a photograph forty years earlier.  Rather than lamenting the loss of a friend, the protagonist muses about how unimportant people are to the world:

"How extraordinary that things should still be the same!  The water, the cormorant-shaped gondolas, the marble step on which he sat.  It is just us making our exit, he thought, we leave the décor of our lives behind."
'Gondolas', p.11 (MacLehose Press, 2013)

By the end of the story, the reader is unsure as to whether the main character is here to bid his friend farewell, or to be rid of her memory...

Another story which uses a photograph to kick things off is 'Heinz', the longest story in the collection, one which sees a Dutchman reminiscing about his time living in Italy, and his friendship with the titular honorary Vice-Consul.  An alcoholic businessman secluded on the Italian coast, Heinz has an aura about him, one which attracts everyone around.  Sadly though, he is destined to burn out after shining brightly, and his friend studies the photograph looking for evidence of this eventual disaster in the faded picture...

While many stories focus on those who have departed, others focus more on the fate of those left behind.  In 'Late September', an elderly woman on an out-of-season Spanish island waits for some afternoon delight in the arms of a (slightly-) younger local, an event which feels more like a transaction than real pleasure.

'Last Afternoon' also focuses on an elderly woman, this time one who is lost in bitter-sweet memories of her late partner.  Her story revolves around amorous adventures, flowers and tortoises(!), but it is really about finally letting go of unfinished business:

"It was only now, at this mysterious moment of the cypress's shadow creeping up against the garden wall, that he was dead to her.  How could you be so sure about something like that?  There had in fact been three such moments, she reflected: the moment he left, that of his dying, and the present, long-drawn-out moment of beginning to forget him, of his passing into a shadow of himself, his real death."
'Last Afternoon', p.97

Once again, the living must realise that there is no point in dwelling on the actions of the long dead.

The Foxes Come at Night is the fourth of Nooteboom's works I've read, and his deceptively light touch is instantly recognisable.  In fact,  I'm also pretty sure that a minor character in a couple of the stories, Wintrop, is the 'hero' of his debut novel, Rituals... The stories should be depressing, but in Nooteboom's skillful hands, they are imbued with a touch of sarcasm, a subtle wink rather than a mournful sob.  We are told stories of loss and grief, but the underlying message seems to be to keep our chin up :)

Most of the stories are one-sided tales of mourning the lost, but the culmination of the collection is a two-part story which has a slightly different approach.  'Paula' shares many of the features of the other stories: we have a man looking at an old photograph, remembering a lost friend, telling us about the good old days in the company of a beautiful, charismatic figure.  He remembers a shared night in bed, a holiday in Africa and the last night he saw her...

...and then she gives her side of the story.  You see, 'Paula II' allows Paula to have her say from beyond the grave, and her memories are slightly different to those of the living.  She allows us to see the events we've just heard about from her angle, and she is actually the one who feels pity for her friend:

"Take your Zen monastery - I saw it coming miles off.  Forgive me for saying this, for someone still among the living you make rather a dead impression, as though you have taken an advance on your mortality."
'Paula II', p.129

It's a chilling reminder that the living have a responsibility to keep on living - even if they would rather mourn their dead...

While I've enjoyed all the Nooteboom books I've tried, I hadn't really found one I loved until now, but The Foxes Come at Night is definitely a work I'd recommend.  This is easily my favourite of the four I've read, a beautiful collection of thought-provoking stories which fit together perfectly - an example of a crafted collection of stories, rather than a selection of tales randomly bundled into a book.  It's one I hope to reread soon, especially the stories 'Paula'/'Paula II', as I think they are pieces which need a second look to appreciate them fully.  Perhaps Nooteboom is one of those rare writers who improve with age...

'Rituals' by Cees Nooteboom (Review)

While I've made a couple of efforts for Iris' Dutch Literature events, I can't say I've read a lot from the Netherlands.  However, one writer I have tried a couple of times (with fair results) is Cees Nooteboom.  I was very happy then to get home from work one day to discover a pile of books from MacLehose Press waiting for me, three of which were by Nooteboom.

A few hours later, I only had two left to read ;)

*****
Rituals (translated by Adrienne Dixon) was Nooteboom's first big success, and it's definitely a book which shows an accomplished writer.  The central figure is Inni Wintrop, a man about town who floats through life, sleeping around and making money through shares and art sales.  When his wife leaves him in 1963, he decides (on a whim) to hang himself - that he fails in his half-hearted suicide attempt is, as the reader will discover, strangely unsurprising.

Nooteboom then takes Inni (and the reader) ten years back in time to meet Arnold Taads, a one-eyed former Dutch downhill-skiing champion, before the story jumps to 1973, where Inni encounters Philip Taads, Arnold's son.  Despite the fact that both struggle with giving meaning to life, there isn't a lot that connects the two Taadses - except that they will both take their own lives too...

Rituals, as the name suggests, is a book about the habits and routines we develop to enable us to get through our daily life.  The writer, in his dry, idiosyncratic manner, shows us several ways of coping with our natural existential angst, perhaps posing a question as to which is the best.  We begin with Inni, and our initial stance is that his woes are wholly due to his pointless, pleasure-seeking ways:

"If he had ever had any ambition, he would have been prepared to call himself a failure, but he had none.  He regarded life as a rather odd club of which he had accidentally become a member and from which one could be expelled without reasons having to be supplied.  He had already decided to leave the club if the meetings should become all too boring."
p.19 (MacLehose Press, 2013)

However, Nooteboom is to spend the rest of the novel showing us that Inni isn't the only one struggling to make sense of it all.

The two Taadses are very different people, and despite knowing Arnold for many years, Inni never even suspects the existence of Philip until they meet.  However, their attempts to deal with life are fairly similar.  While Arnold subjugates daily life to the artificial strictures of time, allowing nothing and no one to interrupt his minutely-detailed schedule, Philip retreats into an invented world of Japanese asceticism, his interest in the culture completely divorced from its present reality.  Both believe that they can cope with life by retreating inside a bubble of their own making - both are mistaken...

Nooteboom is far from judgemental though; he is merely using his puppets to look at the different ways we while away our hours in the mortal realm.  It's easy to criticise Inni and his refusal to commit to making a lasting impression on the world, but his existence of occasional hedonism and random encounters is not the worst of the choices here.  Religion, whether Eastern or Western, doesn't appear to help any of the characters, and money, far from being a help just seems to make it more difficult to motivate yourself...

I loved the style of Rituals.  Nooteboom has a sardonic, occasionally dark, voice, one which seems to know that everything is pointless, but enjoys smirking at the futile efforts people make to convince themselves otherwise.  The sentences are very different to the elegant ones of, say, Javier Marías - they're full of jerky, confronting clauses with little flow (a very Germanic style).  The writer enjoys playing with images too, such as the idea of the sacred chalice, a kind of Holy Grail theme, one which has some rather unexpectedly gruesome consequences.  I also enjoyed his rather unusual view of a lunchtime spread:

"My God, how many ways there are to mess about with the corpses of animals.  Smoked, boiled, roasted, in aspic, blood red, black and white checkered, fatty pink, murky white, marbled, pressed, ground, sliced.  Thus death lay displayed on the blue-patterned Meissen.  Not even a whole school could have eaten all that." (p.99)

I think I'll just have some toast instead ;)

Rituals, then, is an admirable book, a seemingly slight story which makes the reader think a little harder than they might have expected to.  While it's easy to look down on Inni, and laugh at the odd habits of Arnold and Philip Taads, the truth is that we all have our rituals, and we're all just filling our time as best we can in an effort to make our stay on Earth worthwhile.  It's a book which will make each reader reflect: how do you live your life?  And (perhaps more importantly) how should you...

All Roads Lead to Berlin

While I had a very detailed plan for German Literature Month, I am always open to suggestions, so when I received another unrequested surprise package from Maclehose Press, I was happy to take the bus on a detour.  Dutch novelist Cees Nooteboom is also a well-regarded travel writer, and his latest offering in English is very relevant to our November travels.  Looks like we're off on another trip to the capital...

*****
Roads to Berlin (translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson) is an updated version of a book Nooteboom wrote over twenty years ago.  Back in 1989, the writer received a government grant to spend a year or so in (West) Berlin while he was writing a book about Germany.  In what turned out to be excellent timing, his stay in the country (during which he wrote columns about his experiences) turned out to coincicide with one of the pivotal events of modern history - the fall of the Berlin Wall.

We read it as the writer experiences it, a series of philosophical musings, dated at the end of each section, leading up to the day in November when he returns to Berlin from a reading tour to find the city in uproar.  The borders are opening, people are streaming across from the East and the wall itself is about to be turned into one of the longest dance floors the world has ever seen.  Unknowingly, Nooteboom has been writing a countdown to history...

It's an emotional time, and the reality is yet to sink in:

"As I write these words, church bells are ringing out on all sides, as they did a few days ago when the bells of the Gedächtniskirche suddenly pealed out their bronze news about the open Wall and people knelt down and cried in the streets.  There is always something ecstatic, moving, alarming about visible history.  No-one can miss it.  And no-one knows what is going to happen."
p.72 (MacLehose Press, 2012)

However, once the initial euphoria dies down, reality kicks in, and people begin to question whether this is such a good thing after all.  The 'Wessis' worry about an influx of poor migrants and the possibility of higher taxes; the 'Ossis' wonder what exchange rate they will receive for their massively overvalued Ostmark and whether they will be able to keep their jobs in this brave new world.  And Nooteboom is there to write it all down.

Roads to Berlin is an updated version of Nooteboom's book, supplementing the original work with chapters from later visits to Berlin and various pieces of writing connected with the topic.  After the main event, the writer also branches out a little, turning his Berlin-centred story into a wider, German collection.  In trips to Munich, Regensburg, Weimar (home of Goethe) and the Teutoburger Forest (where, crossing paths with Heine's journey northward, he sees the great statue of Hermann), Nooteboom indulges in his interest in art and architecture - and, of course, history.

It's an excellent book, one I enjoyed dipping into immensely, but I do have some reservations.  For one thing, Nooteboom is a writer who appears to be writing primarily for himself, and he often takes his story in directions which may interest him a little more than his readers.  There were times, particularly when he became sidetracked by paintings and statues, where I was very tempted to skip a few pages (the reading equivalent of having a pint in the pub while your partner checks out an art gallery).

The other issue I had with the book is that it felt like exactly what it is - a slightly uncohesive collection of writings which, while tangentially connected, fail to make up an integral whole.  After the first 100 pages or so, I was never quite sure what Roads to Berlin was meant to be.  Is it a book about Berlin (or Germany)?  Is it mainly concerned with history, geography or politics?  Is it really about Germany, or more about Nooteboom himself?  I really couldn't tell you...

If you're prepared to overlook the (necessarily) messy nature of the book though, there's a lot here to like.  Nooteboom is an accomplished writer, and each of the pieces, taken separately, is of enormous interest to a reader who wants to know more about the topic.  Part of the credit here must go to Laura Watkinson as you really forget that Nooteboom is speaking to you through a third party, such is the quality of the translation.  The voice that comes through is consistent, and very similar to the one I found in a novel I read earlier this year (Lost Paradise).

One idea that comes across particularly clearly is that despite inauspicious beginnings (Nooteboom's first memory is of the Germans invading the Netherlands...), the writer is very fond of Germany, particularly Berlin, and regrets a little the fact that he is no longer a part of the history being made there:

"What happens in this city in the coming years in the coming years will continue to interest me, but when you are not there, you no longer belong.  You drop out of the ongoing conversation, the options, the constant regrouping of possibilities, memories, expectations..." p.201

It's a feeling many people share when they leave a place they have lived in for a long time.  I have similar feelings whenever I look back at my time in Germany, knowing that however much I read and watch the news, I can never quite regain the connection I once had.  In this way, Roads to Berlin, as much as being a story about the city, is just as much a book about a memory of once being a part of its story...

The Wings Of An Angel

Last year, I never got around to participating in Dutch Lit Month, run by Iris of Iris On Books, so I was determined to take part this time.  Sadly, with one thing or another, June has turned out to be rather busy, so I'm afraid that all I have to offer is this one almost belated effort.  Still, it's the thought that counts, right?

*****
Cees Nooteboom is the one name which keeps coming up when people talk about Dutch literature, so I looked him up on my local library database and was lucky enough to reserve a copy of a recent novella, Lost Paradise (translated by Susan Massotty).  It's a slight work, running to 150 sparsely-filled pages, with two main strands, connected late in the book by a surprising reunion - and by the writer's insistence on putting himself in the story...

In the first part, we meet Alma, a young Brazilian woman full of an insuperable sadness.  After a traumatic event back in São Paulo, she and her best friend Almuta decide that it's time to go off on their long-awaited travels around the world, ending up in the place they have always dreamed of visiting - Australia.  A chance encounter with an Aboriginal artist helps Alma to finally rid herself of the shadow which has haunted her for so long, and a chance part-time job over in Perth gives her the opportunity to become the one thing she is obsessed with - an angel...

Meanwhile, over in the Netherlands, literary critic Erik Zondag, a grumpy middle-aged scribbler, is off to an Austrian health farm to detox, hoping to shed not only a few kilos, but also some of the anger and frustration he feels.  In a high-class institution in the mountains, far from the eyes of the outside world, Erik begins to relax and let out the pent-up emotions he has been keeping inside - and then one morning...

...well, that would be telling ;)

When I started reading Lost Paradise, I had my doubts.  The first, introductory, section really grated: the narrator was pompous, the language stilted, the behaviour slightly arrogant and sexist... and it's meant to be.  It's actually the writer himself, introducing his main character personally (literally!).  Once we get into Alma's story, the tone changes, swapping the irreverent tone for an excellent lyrical stretch of writing.  My favourite part of the book was the seventy-five pages that made up this section, a tale which probably could - and should - have been a (longish) short story in its own right.

The idea behind the book is a simple one, and the title, as you would expect, gives the reader a clue to this.  It is the idea of a yearning for something else, a simpler time, an escape from modern life - and a deliberate reference to Milton's Paradise Lost (a book which is both seen and quoted from in Nooteboom's work).  Both Alma and Erik are looking for something that isn't really there; Erik tries to alleviate his ennui in the isolated Austrian mountains, and Alma wants to leave her Weltschmerz behind in the ancient Australian Outback.  As a man Alma meets remarks, this is something that many people are desperate to do:

"For people coming from a place of chaos and confusion, it's quite tempting.  Especially since it has been destroyed, or almost.  That is what everyone has always been looking for, isn't it?  A lost paradise?" p.51, Harvill Secker (2007)

It is a yearning for simplicity, for simpler times, that leads us to run away, looking for our own lost paradise...

There's a lot to like in Lost Paradise, but there are also plenty of things which don't quite work.  As an Australia (of sorts), I'm a little uneasy with the way the writer has used the Aboriginal people and ideas in the novella, playing with this idea of mysticism and exoticism.  He never attempts to really portray the culture beyond the surface clichés, and while this may be deliberate, it often feels... well, just wrong.

I'm also less than convinced by the meta-fictional elements, with the writer lusting after, and eventually speaking to, his young female creation.  Zondag's story also suffers from this, with many a nod and a wink to Nooteboom's fellow Dutch writers.  At one point, as Erik's girlfriend condemns his over-savage critiques of certain works, he says:

"There was no question of making love after that.  Dutch authors had a lot to answer for." p.84 

In fact, if you had no idea of any Dutch authors, a couple of hours in the company of Lost Paradise would be a great place to start learning more ;)

In the end, I was left with the feeling that while Nooteboom is a talented writer, Lost Paradise is a slight, experimental, flawed work.  I've heard that he has written some good short-story collections, and this book almost feels like a couple of short stories extended and blended into something which doesn't quite come off.  I love the writing (for the most part), and I think Susan Massotty's translation is excellent; it's certainly very easy to see the different styles the writer originally used in the different sections.  However, if you're looking for a masterpiece of Dutch literature, I think you would be best advised to try something a little more substantial.

Possibly by the same writer ;)