05/04/2020

Garth Greenwell zag gisteren ons bericht over Georgina Verbaan en Maartje Wortel die in het cultuurprogramma Mondo het boek Wat van jou is bespraken.

I have no idea what they’re saying but this television program in the Netherlands chose What Belongs to You for their quarantine book club & the images are a little surreal.

Gelukkig geeft Martijn Huysmans een korte samenvatting:

I'll summarize. "The book came highly recommended. I heard about it on a blog, that it was poetic, and hot, about love, shame, how your youth determines how you love later in life. I read the reviews in the guardian, nytimes, New Yorker" (1)

— Martijn Huysmans (@MartijnHuysmans) April 5, 2020

"There are nice observations. But it starts a little slow. International critics may have found it daring and randy, but Dutch people are not easily shocked. We have "Turks Fruit" [a book by J. Wolkers]." (2)

— Martijn Huysmans (@MartijnHuysmans) April 5, 2020

Then they go off topic, on how to pronounce your name. The Georgina person (I think she's famous here in NL, but I'm from originally Belgium so dunno) says it should be like "smoothie" (3)

— Martijn Huysmans (@MartijnHuysmans) April 5, 2020

The second reader repeats (and sounds disappointed) that she wasn't shocked, there wasn't anything she didn't know or hadn't heard about. She didn't see the Necessity of this book, other perhaps than for struggling young gays. (4)

— Martijn Huysmans (@MartijnHuysmans) April 5, 2020

The week before they read "La Peste" by Camus, and they felt it was more layered. [What I don't understand, up to this point they're only talking about gay sex; not being expat, not the decline of Bulgaria, or any of the other themes I felt were there] (5)

— Martijn Huysmans (@MartijnHuysmans) April 5, 2020

They conclude [appallingly, in my view] by saying that in the US the book may be necessary, bc gay nurses are banned from emergency hospitals (she says) and "they like this style with a lot of adjectives and superlatives". [I read it in EN, can't comment on NL translation] (6)

— Martijn Huysmans (@MartijnHuysmans) April 5, 2020

Greenwell voelt de behoefte om de geilheid van zijn boek te verdedigen.