Eric de Kuyper

[Eric]

Eric de Kuyper (born 1942) is a Belgian author pur sang in that he is pretty well bilingual Dutch-French. De Kuyper studied film and indeed became an experimental filmmaker, and later lecturer in film at the Dutch University of Nijmegen. He has written many articles about film, opera, and dance.

However, since 1988, he has also written a series of evocative books of reminiscences, often reaching back to his childhood and examining the atmosphere of places, especially on the coast. The sea especially holds a fascination for him.

Aan zee (At the Seaside; 1988) and its sequel Met zicht op zee (With a Sea View; 1997) both deal with the 1940s, when de Kuyper was a child in a Brussels family that continued the old tradition of summer in Ostend. At the turn of the 20th century, Ostend was chic and quite a few writers visited it, including, Joyce and Proust. By the 1940s it had faded somewhat, but de Kuyper evokes its atmosphere, blending the realities of the resort with his own forays into fiction and film as he grew up. The sequel returns to Ostend, forty years after the author's childhood. A third book on the theme of Ostend is Villa Zeelucht (Villa Sea Air; 2004) where he describes the tradition of the Grand Hôtel, and other architectural monuments.

Some of his autobiographical books deal with his native Brussels, such as the one I'm reading now Bruxelles, here I come (idem; 1993) and De hoed van tante Jeannot (Aunt Jeannot's Hat; 1990).

Two of de Kuyper's non-fiction books are Een vis verdrinken (Drowning a Fish; 2001) which examines what it is like for a foreigner, a Fleming in this instance, to live in the neighbouring Netherlands, where the language is the same, but attitudes different. The second book is called Met gemengde gevoelens (With Mixed Feelings; 2000) which is a series of essays about identity and national culture.

[peter_d]

I had never heard of this man. Een Vis Verdrinken seems of particular interest to me. Are his books easily available?

[Eric]

I could have made Eric de Kuyper up, of course. Not least because his first name coincides with mine, including the spelling. But in 1996 we had a translators' workshop in Amsterdam and Antwerp. If I remember rightly, Kristien Hemmerechts came to the Amsterdam session, while in Antwerp it was Eric de Kuyper.

His books are more or less all published by SUN publishers in Nijmegen, certainly all the works I have described. I bought four books by him from the now almost defunct bookshop Wout Vuyk in Hilversum, and one more at Frans Melk's second-hand bookshop in that same town last Saturday (6th February 2010), on my way to our regular Baltic Afternoon (sic!). So his books may be out of print, but certainly not unavailable. I decided rather spontaneously, to buy several of his books as they were going cheap, so I can savour them at ease over the next few years.

I've not read what it's like to be a fish in the Netherlands. I am a different kind of fish, being an Englishman. I presumed at first that de Kuyper was making a pun on the expression, which has surely to be the same in Dutch or French: "a fish out of water". But de Kuyper neatly explains the expression, which is indeed French - noyer le poisson - and means originally the peculiar practice by anglers of dipping a caught fish in water, then hauling him out, in order to make its transition from water to air, life to death, easier. Funny idea, but it suits de Kuyper's tale of a Fleming in the Netherlands. As an expression or saying, it means trying to distract the attention of one's opponent from things that are essential for his wellbeing and survival.

I'll have a further look at that book and report back. But I like his style.

[Eric]

Flicking through the book Een vis verdrinken, I get the feeling that it complements, for instance, Geert van Istendael's books on the love-hate relationship between the Netherlands and Flanders, with regard to mentality. As de Kuyper is a very cultured person, it isn't just the usual crude clichés. I think Peter D would get a lot out of this book.