Authors photos

[Clarissa]

I don't know the others but the antepenultimate is Adolf Hitler.

And I think you are mistaken, even if Hitler can be considered a published author with his Mein Kampf! Don't think this poor man looks anything like him!
And being such a superior being, don't think Hitler would have been caught with glasses! Perfection has its price!

[Eric]

Very witty, Oobermensh Saliotthomas. What are you on? He hasn't even got a moustache. The word "ante-penultimate" means "third from last". I would have thought that the penultimate one, or even the last, looked more like Uncle Adolf. And in the photo with a fag that graces the cover of the Hazeu biography, he looks like a rather sly young man with a crew cut. And he liked cats:



But in that penultimate photo of the previous batch, which I'd never seen before yesterday, Vestdijk looks more down-and-out than dictatorial. Maybe it was taken during the time that Vestdijk, along with a good number of Dutch writers and intellectuals, was held hostage during WWII by the Nazi German occupying forces in Sint-Michielsgestel, a former seminary. They all thought it a bit of a joke, till two men were in fact shot. But the rest were left unscathed and they had lots of lectures and talks about literature. So except for the two unfortunates, this involuntary "university" was quite informative.

Vestdijk himself gave a series of lectures on poetry which were to form the basis of a book called "De glanzende kiemcel" (roughly: "The Shining Core", as "germ" has the wrong connotations, and "kernel" sounds military; published 1950). There were eight lectures, and the subsequent book is about 270 pages long. The eight chapter headings are:

The essence of poetry.
Rhythm and metre.
Rhyme.
The sound of a poem.
The various verse forms.
Poetic imagery.
Thought in a poem.
Writing poetry.

It seems odd to think that while such highfalutin talks were being given, armed German soldiers were marching around outside, keeping the æsthetes in their prison. A captive audience in the most literal sense of the word.

There's a good photo, which I can't find on the internet, of Vestdijk sitting in his garden listened to gramophone music with earphones. This was back in the 1950s or 1960s, long before the technology of today. Before Saliotthomas suggests that Vestdijk was an Elvis Presley fan, he tended to prefer Bruckner, Sibelius, Mahler, and similar.

And Simon Vestdijk as a young cyclist:

[Sibyl]

Originally Posted by Eric

Du Perron seems more dangerous somehow, with his pistol. His name is like that of Marsman, and Ter Braak, authors I know nothing about, but whose names I frequently come across when reading about Simon Vestdijk.

A few pictures of a less dangerous Du Perron:




Vestdijk and Du Perron:

Du Perron and André Malraux:

Ter Braak, Du Perron and Vestdijk:


If you're interested in reading something by Du Perron, I'd suggest Het land van herkomst, translated as Country of origin. It is about Du Perron's alter ago Arthur Ducroo's childhood in the Dutch Indies, the rest of his life there and in Europe (Belgium and France mostly). It is also about his life in Paris in 1933-35, represented by conversations with friends (Malraux, A. Alexejeff, Ter Braak, Greshoff) on a wide range of subjects. My mother bought it for me when I was 16 or 17, and I think I've read it at least 4 times.

[lenz]

mavis gallant.jpg
Mavis Gallant

Sorry, but I've tried everything to get a bigger picture.

[Eric]

Nice photos, Sibyl. I shall look up books by Du Perron, next time I'm in the library, maybe tomorrow. The photo you reproduce, as below, looks like a couple of American detectives or members of the Mob.

[Igu Soni]

Originally Posted by lenz

Attachment 69
Mavis Gallant

Sorry, but I've tried everything to get a bigger picture.

[lenz]

Thank you, Igu Soni!! You must be mentally divergent to have fixed that!

[Igu Soni]

Originally Posted by lenz

Thank you, Igu Soni!! You must be mentally divergent to have fixed that!

Actually, I once had the same problem myself. What you probably did was right-click on the thumbnail provided by google and clicked on copy image location. That location is that of the thumbnail; for the image, you need to folllow the link, click on 'see full size image', and copy the URL.

[Sibyl]

Originally Posted by Eric

Nice photos, Sibyl. I shall look up books by Du Perron, next time I'm in the library, maybe tomorrow. The photo you reproduce, as below, looks like a couple of American detectives or members of the Mob.

It really is just 1930s Scheveningen.

[Eric]

Sibyl, have you seen the grotesque mini-Las Vegas that the central part of Scheveningen has been turned into? The Kurhaus, the beach, and the outskirts are all still normal. But the centre of town was, last time I was there, full of casinos and other gambling dens - and hideous architecture.

Lenz and Igu Soni, I don't think I know anything at all about Mavis Gallant. Could you tell us more about what she has written and what you have read, now that we know what she looks like?

[lenz]

Originally Posted by Eric

Sibyl, have you seen the grotesque mini-Las Vegas that the central part of Scheveningen has been turned into? The Kurhaus, the beach, and the outskirts are all still normal. But the centre of town was, last time I was there, full of casinos and other gambling dens - and hideous architecture.

Lenz and Igu Soni, I don't think I know anything at all about Mavis Gallant. Could you tell us more about what she has written and what you have read, now that we know what she looks like?

Mavis Gallant is a Canadian writer (two novels, many wonderful short stories, essays) from Montreal, who has lived in Paris for many years. She writes in English. Her short stories appear often in the New Yorker, she has received many prizes. Though her "defection" to Paris in the fifties was resented by other Canadian writers who stayed and toughed it out, she is now revered as one of the best short story writers in the world along with fellow Canadian Alice Munro. There is plenty of biographical information on the net but she is rather shy of publicity.
I admire her work tremendously - she began as a reporter and that sense of observed behaviour, with compassion arising from understanding of her characters' circumstances is retained in an understated way. Her best known collections are In Transit, The Pegnitz Junction and From the Fifteenth District.

[Sibyl]

Originally Posted by Eric

Sibyl, have you seen the grotesque mini-Las Vegas that the central part of Scheveningen has been turned into? The Kurhaus, the beach, and the outskirts are all still normal. But the centre of town was, last time I was there, full of casinos and other gambling dens - and hideous architecture.

Lenz and Igu Soni, I don't think I know anything at all about Mavis Gallant. Could you tell us more about what she has written and what you have read, now that we know what she looks like?

I have never been to Scheveningen and I don't intend to. I've built my own version of Scheveningen in my head, based on descriptions in books.

[Eric]

Scheveningen and Gallant

Gallant
I've now found things on the internet, and she does look to be an interesting writer. I'll look out for her name next time I'm near a bookshop or library.

Scheveningen
I too had a nice, if blurred and vague, half-imagined picture from the only previous time I had been to Scheveningen, which must have been in the early 1960s (i.e. a hell of a long time ago). So when, a few summers ago, some Estonian friends with a four-wheel drive offered to drive around the Netherlands (with the TomTom in Estonian!), we included Scheveningen. And I was shocked. It was as I described in my previous posting. Though we had a pleasant meal at a beach restaurant.

We also went, by way of contrast, to Laren (N.H.) which was a blissful village, although, as it is a rich one, nearly every shop there is some fancy clothing shop or boutique. However, they still have a few normal shops, plus a tiny market. And the Singer Museum, a fine art gallery built by a rich Dutchman who had emigrated to America (from the sewing machine family). So the Estonians saw something of greater tourist value than Scheveningen, anno 2007.

[Eric]

Did Dubya write novels under a pseudonym?

[Eric]

C'mon, don't you think he looks like Dubya?

[Clarissa]

Sorry Eric but no. Dubya has his brlliant intelligence written all over his face!

[learna]

Pavel Sanaev:

[saliotthomas]

Raymond Carver.
Nice jacket.

[Clarissa]

Good writer!

[lionel]

Originally Posted by Clarissa

Good writer!

Who, Raymond Carver? Or Gordon Lish? And doesn't Gordon Lish make a better carver (lower case of course intended).