What a larfer you are, as they say in Cockney. Sadly, although I am of course exaggerating to enhance the stylistic effect of my subtle and low-key humour, their is a sackful of truth in what I say. Talking of subtlety, I imagine you have intuited a number of things about they way Dutch people often pronounce English. To be fair, the Dutch, like the Swedes, often have a pretty good conversational knowledge of the English language.
But part of the reason that some Dutch writers get promoted is the lasting guilt about collaboration with the enemy during the German Nazi occupation during WWII. So efforts to promote the youngish Jewish gay writer Arnon Grunberg, now living in New York, as I believe, achieves three goals: a) showing that the Dutch love Jews; b) showing that the Dutch love gays; c) showing that the Dutch love America. Whether this love-in is skin-deep or profound is hard to tell.
A chap I met in the pub yesterday, a Peruvian exile, summed up the Dutch using a short phrase I have now forgotten but was something like "friendly arrogance" or similar. The tragedy about Dutch literature, as I have grumbled about on many occasions, is that its promotion reflects a kind of mercantile mentality, i.e. it must be sold as a product. And most foreign readers don't want to have books pushed down their throats by national propagandists who "know" they are right. One of Thomas Mann's figures of fun was just such a bumptious knowall, Mijnheer Peeperkorn in "Magic Mountain". But deep down, the Dutch are highly insecure about the quality of their literature and agonise about the tedium of Protestant church domination, which then swings to the other extreme with people writing mildly, or not so mildly, pornographic novels.
So personally, I mostly prefer Flemish literature, i.e. Belgian literature written in Dutch. The French language as neighbour has had a mellowing effect. The Flemings are more sluggish and sleepy than the Dutch - so the mentalities never fully gel with one another. There is always an element of love-hate between Flemings and the Dutch. This is all reflected in their literature. Sadly, the real geniuses of Dutch literature rarely get an airing in the English-speaking countries.
But part of the reason that some Dutch writers get promoted is the lasting guilt about collaboration with the enemy during the German Nazi occupation during WWII. So efforts to promote the youngish Jewish gay writer Arnon Grunberg, now living in New York, as I believe, achieves three goals: a) showing that the Dutch love Jews; b) showing that the Dutch love gays; c) showing that the Dutch love America. Whether this love-in is skin-deep or profound is hard to tell.
A chap I met in the pub yesterday, a Peruvian exile, summed up the Dutch using a short phrase I have now forgotten but was something like "friendly arrogance" or similar. The tragedy about Dutch literature, as I have grumbled about on many occasions, is that its promotion reflects a kind of mercantile mentality, i.e. it must be sold as a product. And most foreign readers don't want to have books pushed down their throats by national propagandists who "know" they are right. One of Thomas Mann's figures of fun was just such a bumptious knowall, Mijnheer Peeperkorn in "Magic Mountain". But deep down, the Dutch are highly insecure about the quality of their literature and agonise about the tedium of Protestant church domination, which then swings to the other extreme with people writing mildly, or not so mildly, pornographic novels.
So personally, I mostly prefer Flemish literature, i.e. Belgian literature written in Dutch. The French language as neighbour has had a mellowing effect. The Flemings are more sluggish and sleepy than the Dutch - so the mentalities never fully gel with one another. There is always an element of love-hate between Flemings and the Dutch. This is all reflected in their literature. Sadly, the real geniuses of Dutch literature rarely get an airing in the English-speaking countries.
