disappointed because of native literature :(

Well, I am not much of a patriot in reading fiction. In fact, I read what I had to at secondary school and then I moved quite swiftly to worldwide and well-known novels, usually in English (simply because of the lack of translations).
But I decided to give it a go this week. I took up the bestselling author of my nationality of 2009 and this is where it went off to the deep end :skep:
I am a Chuck Palahniuk fan (this means that you can't really surprise me), but what I read made me feel a little ashamed... I don't know what to make of a novel, whose main character is a male prostitute, indulges in intercourse with chucks of women for 200 pages, then starts taking hormones and has a baby at the end.... is this THE BEST my nation can do? :frown2:
Gosh I know there are only 6millions of us, but this is what we read the most last year... where is the core of the problem? I think I may give up on national literature once and for all :cryin:

Well it would help if we knew where you were from. There are good novels being written in almost every language, so there should be an author out there that suits your taste.

I don't know who would want to read about that. I'm from Canada and I'm not sure if there are very many horror writers here. I should try to find out. There are a couple of good writers of the past from America, and there are a few other interesting authors of that genre, but probably none from Canada.

If that is the best that your country can do however, than you should try to write something. It sounds like a depressing story for sure.

I was thinking where are all the ambitious young writers, that are so omni-present in Europe? But probably we are just too fond of watching TV :out:
I decided not to write the name of the country {not to spread infamy}... but for the record, most would probably call us eastern Europe....

Why would you judge your country & culture by what's on the best-seller list? I'd have taken a flight to a death clinic in Switzerland long before now if I did that. The soul of a country is to be found in its *best* writers not the current, trendy writers.

Join the club. In the Flemish department of Dutch literature (which is my 'native' literature) there is also not something worth reading. In fact, I'd say, there has never been anyhing properly written or worth reading. They somehow got to writing in French (a few won the Nobel Prize like Maeterlinck) or they thought they were great, but were in fact utter sh*t, the best example being Hugo Claus who was every year nominated for the Nobel Prize by the Flemish camp but of course never won it although the illusion stayed alive. Fortunately, he has died. Sorry. Seems a hard thing to say, but I read one of his works and never again. Poetry tends to be better.

They have either got stuck in 'the poor Flemish farmer oppressed by the nasty French speaking aristocrat' or in the 'poor Flemish farmer' mode, or maybe 'the nasty oppressing Catholic Church', but then badly written. The modern authors have moved away from that a little, but now they cannot put a proper sentence together. Maybe the last writer who actually surprised me, but still stayed with the small-minded agricultural Flemish story, was Ernest Claes. And he died in the 60s. One of the so-called greatest writers, Felix Timmermans (revered by many), wrote in sentences SVO, like a school child. Please, I mean, it is insufferable! Tey wouldn't even accept that in an exam above 12 years of age (at best)!

That is not to say that there is nothing great in Dutch, from the Netherlands then. But they were comfortable with their identity. People like Couperus (turn of the century), Emants (a little earlier), Mulisch (still alive), are great writers. I am not sure about really contemporary, but the Dutch were definitely better at writing.

You seem to have a kind prejudice against your native writers and what got you this is something understandable

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

Join the club. In the Flemish department of Dutch literature (which is my 'native' literature) there is also not something worth reading.

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I strongly disagree. I assume you've read Claus' magnum opus The Sorrow of Belgium? If you haven't, you haven't read Claus. If you have, however, you must see why Claus is such a terrific writer. His style is great, his plot, while not very exciting or action-packed, is very well-constructed and his characters are as round as they get. It's also quite witty at times. I mostly admire the novel for its complete panorama of Flemish life during WWII, however.

As for contemporary Flemish writers, Verhulst is excellent. I'm not a big fan of De helaasheid der dingen, but Godverdomse dagen op een godverdomse bol is a unique experience. Herman Brusselmans isn't bad either, although I find that if you've read one novel, you've read them all. Not to mention Peter Terrin.

But really, I'm at loss as to how you can dislike Louis Paul Boon and Willem Elsschot. They're both very good writers, easily on par, if not better than Emants and the likes.


I'm not too unhappy with Dutch literature. It's not quite the level of Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish or English literature, but there's enough good work being written to keep me reading.

Hugo Claus can't write for the death of him. His sentences are too short and he dwells on WWII that is already past its peak for ages in most other literatures including German. In 1983 he was still writing about WWII and collaboration when Saramago was writing more imaginative stuff in Portugal (and he is more than 80 now so he lived through WWII or under a dictatorship). Louis Paul Boon used to dwell on socialist issues 'to kick the rich conscience', but worked it into another imaginative shape every time. So did Elsschot. In the whole of Claus's work there is only depressing oppressive bourgeois small-minded Flemish concern. Way out of date.

I grant you Louis Paul Boon and Williem Elsschot (very imagnative and original language + plot).

You talk about Verhulst and Brusselmans. Brusselmans is the single most despicable insult to literature whatsoever. And I include Dan Brown. Even he can write better than Brusselmans, and that is saying something. Brusselmans... Well, any writer who manages to write books each of the same size; any author who delivers 2 books every year has an issue as one cannot produce quality at that rate; any author who cannot write anything else but ventilate his own anger at the world without an interesting story, has an issue with himself. The reason he sells I would think is because there are so many people who feel the same: they don't dare to complain and are eaten up with rage inside.

Verhulst cannot write either, but only technically. If he would only get a good flow in his work, it would be ok. Like Verbeeke. On my yearly trip to Antwerp to the great bookfare I picked up her debut Sleep. The topic was imaginative and original, but her writing (the execution) was just crap. Sentences too short, word-use not elaborate. An author is an author. A painter whose paint peels off his paintings, is a bad painter, no matter how great his paintings look at first. An author who does not manage to produce a work with a good flow, interesting story, and proper word use is a bad author.

Leo Pleysier I used to like, but that is also the same small-minded Flemish nature. When you have read one, you have read them all. It all boils down to the same. You do not have that in German, not in French, not in English. Not in Russian. Every writer there has his issue and writes about it. Goethe writes differently than Kafka, and differently than Mann. Dumas wrote differently than Hugo, differently than Nothomb (although there seems to be an issue with Jews and psychological problems in youngsters in the 90s). English I don't need to illustrate. It starts in Flanders (before there was nothing! Everything in French!) with Conscience who writes the first work in Flemish in 1831. From then on, there is prose about the Flemish farmer: Cyriel Buysse writes about the poor Flemih farmer oppressed by the French aristocrat; Stijn Streuvels idem; Walschap has a problem with the Catholic Church and Flemish bourgeoisie who feels too posh for the poor Flemish farmer; Ernest Claes writes about the farmer; Timmermans idem. Then comes the first world war and the poor farmer whose land is destroyed and the crisis. Then comes WWII and the evil collaboration together with the colony and its independence. The result is an endless dwelling on poor Flanders that was saddled with collaborators.

I'd say Boon, Elsschot (, Daine) are the only writers of prose worth noting. Boon because his forms were original and because he was rampant socialist to the detriment of the establshment :D. Elsschot beause he got out of the 'poor Flemish farmer' mode (as the only one until the 20s). Daine because he was one of the two representatives of magic realism. Very imaginative. And properly written. List Conscience too, because he was a good romantic writer, although he could not get out of poor Flemish mode after his first work, but he had at least a reason as that was the reality. The others wrote way after that. To me, he is worth Dumas.

Fortunately, Flemish literature is slowly getting out of it, but now they can't technically write and they seem to think that a sentence is SVO only. Commas, dashes, semi-colons, do they überhaupt exist? What are they for??

Ever wondered why there are so few translations to be found of Flemish works?

While I think Claus is still a matter of taste (I like his usage of short sentences, for example. Ever since reading Cicero, I've preferred short, simple sentences in clear prose over long and elaborate sentences), I'll grant you Brusselmans. He's the Flemish equivalent of Kluun, except quite funny and without all the self-pity.

On the other hand, Verhulst's latest novel (Godverdomse dagen op een godverdomse bol) has absolutely nothing to do with Flanders. You may want to read that one, then. It's not even similar to De helaasheid der dingen, which I assume you didn't like, so it may be worthwhile to check out.

On Slaap, I agree, that was an awful novel, but I'd be hesitant to call it literature as such. It's the stuff best-selling lists are made of, to be fair.

Thing is, with literature in your native tongue is that you're exposed to ALL of it (if you live in the country where your native country, that is), not just the great works. There's bound to be plenty of mediocre Russian, French and English literature too. In a country with only 6 million native speakers of the Flemish language, the poor literature is just more prevalent. Book stores have shelves to fill.

I read Cees Nooteboom many,many years ago. I was impressed by Rituals and found it different from any other book I had read before.

As far as Eastern Europe is concerned, these countries are coming out of the Soviet influence and trying to regain identity under a very strong American influence. You can't expect much in the way of great literature when nations are so strongly influenced by other cultures that their own identity is stifled by them.

Best-seller lists rarely reflect the best any country has to offer.

All modern literature is manure. It´s not a regional problem.

Sorry, my computer refused to connect yesterday...

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Originally Posted by Amoxcalli

While I think Claus is still a matter of taste (I like his usage of short sentences, for example. Ever since reading Cicero, I've preferred short, simple sentences in clear prose over long and elaborate sentences), I'll grant you Brusselmans. He's the Flemish equivalent of Kluun, except quite funny and without all the self-pity.

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I doubt whether Cicero wrote short sentences. At least his Orationes do not permit me to think so. He does ask a lot of kind of short questions for rhetorics' sake, but the rest of his normal sentences at least count three lines in html each (in Latin). For a normal page with normal margins that is at least 6. That said, there are sentences in Latin that take up whole pages... One can of course translate it differently, but there should normally not be any need to do so.

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Originally Posted by Amoxcalli

On the other hand, Verhulst's latest novel (Godverdomse dagen op een godverdomse bol) has absolutely nothing to do with Flanders. You may want to read that one, then. It's not even similar to De helaasheid der dingen, which I assume you didn't like, so it may be worthwhile to check out.

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I might have a look next time I am in Belgium. In germany I cannot get any Dutch, so that is out of the question. Although, I could try Amazon I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Amoxcalli

Thing is, with literature in your native tongue is that you're exposed to ALL of it (if you live in the country where your native country, that is), not just the great works. There's bound to be plenty of mediocre Russian, French and English literature too. In a country with only 6 million native speakers of the Flemish language, the poor literature is just more prevalent. Book stores have shelves to fill.

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That I agree with, yet I suppose it is a meter for how good/popular certain things are when they get translated. It is strange, but not a lot has been translated from Flemish. There are more Dutch writers proportionally who have made the international lists than Flemish (unless they wrote in French). Ever wondered why?

@Kafka's Crow: I read that too! Great book. Although I don't rmember any thing of it because I had only 2 weeks per book in uni excluding any other great big course books and things for course work. I might read it again some time. Nooteboom is Dutch too and seems to be quite popular outside of the Netherlands (looked on my cover ;)).

That said though, Flemish poetry (at least in the past) was much better than their prose ill ever be.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

I doubt whether Cicero wrote short sentences. At least his Orationes do not permit me to think so. He does ask a lot of kind of short questions for rhetorics' sake, but the rest of his normal sentences at least count three lines in html each (in Latin). For a normal page with normal margins that is at least 6. That said, there are sentences in Latin that take up whole pages... One can of course translate it differently, but there should normally not be any need to do so.

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Exactly what I meant. His sentences are so long they are a drag to read. Even in the original Latin, which is supposed to be a rather compact language, his sentences seem endless.

Not that I have dislike of long sentences in general, but I feel that a writer doesn't have to needlessly tie otherwise short sentences together to form one long sentence. I suppose it's personal taste more than anything though.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

That I agree with, yet I suppose it is a meter for how good/popular certain things are when they get translated. It is strange, but not a lot has been translated from Flemish. There are more Dutch writers proportionally who have made the international lists than Flemish (unless they wrote in French). Ever wondered why?

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Nope, and to be fair, I wasn't aware of that statistic either. I was merely saying that despite everything, Flanders does have a handful of good literary authors. Although I don't know where the OP is from exactly, I'd assume there's a handful of good authors from his/her native country as well. I simply can't imagine how a population of more than a million people can fail to produce at least one good writer.

Also, number of translations aren't a great way to measure the level of literary activity in a country. Iran and China, for example, both have a lengthy and wealthy literary tradition, but are rarely translated, mostly because they do not write the western 'novel', but instead have their own disciplines in literature. Same, to a lesser extent, can be said of Indian and Indonesian literature.

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Originally Posted by Veva

I was thinking where are all the ambitious young writers, that are so omni-present in Europe? But probably we are just too fond of watching TV :out:
I decided not to write the name of the country {not to spread infamy}... but for the record, most would probably call us eastern Europe....

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Here's the problem with what you wrote: Chuck Palahniuk is from America.... so if you're going to lie in one post and say you're from Eastern Europe, you might want to make sure you didn't give up your location in a very easily sorted out mess.

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Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow

You can't expect much in the way of great literature when nations are so strongly influenced by other cultures that their own identity is stifled by them.

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Then how do you explain Rabbie Burns and Walter Scott? You might argue that the Scots retained their own identity, but, if so, it's amazing how it wasn't stifled by the English empire at its peak...

Let's say that the Scottish identity of the kilt-wearing tough highland man was created by Scott. And the rest jumped on the waggon and made great wild romantic poems about the Highlands. Probably the Scots wondered what was the thing with it..

By the way, Scott was before the great British empire. Britain only had extensive colonies in America and had lost them in the meantime, but still held onto the all-important sugar trade from the Caribbean. They did not have their colonies in the east yet and that is what was the base of the Victorian empire. So, Scott cannot have been influenced by that great empire, because as he died, it was only emerging.

It would be interesting to ask a Scotsman what he thinks makes one Scottish. Before Scott, it is arguable there was nothing really strictly Scottish or English. Apart from a tribe culture that ventured to have the whole of Britain under its thumb. But for that, one needed loyalty of others and that needed to be bought. If anything, there was no unity, only clans. So, possibly, that identity was made romantically in the early 19th century with the highlands as its backdrop with Friederich in the back of Scott's heads.

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Originally Posted by Amoxcalli

Exactly what I meant. His sentences are so long they are a drag to read. Even in the original Latin, which is supposed to be a rather compact language, his sentences seem endless.

Not that I have dislike of long sentences in general, but I feel that a writer doesn't have to needlessly tie otherwise short sentences together to form one long sentence. I suppose it's personal taste more than anything though.

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Three lines is not endless. Have you read Dumas or Hugo? Even Sarmago does better (and he is modern). Now, sometimes that is long and needless (even critics used to complain about Dumas in his day), yet that is mastery. At some sentences you cannot help wondering how fantatically they are put together. One good modern author who writes admirable sentences is Jeroen Brouwers, for example. He sometimes works twenty days on one paragraph because he is not satisfied.

The thing is not to write short or long, the thing is to write with a flow. That can be done with short sentences too. It is not a matter of where the full stop is, it is a matter of how the language interlocks. Then the full stop does nt matter. Cicero does not seem to drag on. Even in Latin. If anything, he is quite simple and straight to the point. Yet Claus stops and starts. It drives me up the wall!

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Originally Posted by Amoxcalli

Nope, and to be fair, I wasn't aware of that statistic either. I was merely saying that despite everything, Flanders does have a handful of good literary authors. Although I don't know where the OP is from exactly, I'd assume there's a handful of good authors from his/her native country as well. I simply can't imagine how a population of more than a million people can fail to produce at least one good writer.

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Look through history and compare. Only comparing the Dutch amount is enough. Though, it might be that the problem is that most of the intellectual class wrote in French. However, it cannot be denied that that phase was over by the late 19th century, though maybe the market was a little poor for a writer to make his bread from writing in Dutch.

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Originally Posted by Amoxcalli

Also, number of translations aren't a great way to measure the level of literary activity in a country. Iran and China, for example, both have a lengthy and wealthy literary tradition, but are rarely translated, mostly because they do not write the western 'novel', but instead have their own disciplines in literature. Same, to a lesser extent, can be said of Indian and Indonesian literature.

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They have a disadvantage of culture. Sadly, no-one seems to be interested, although Chinese literature seems to do well for some publishers, like De Geus. But one must be able to understand their culture in order to understand their 'novel' (their symbols; conventions etc). That is not straightforward and it already shows in Russian, f.e., which requires some history classes and some general info on what they tought of certain things and what happened in certain eras, because it is so different from the society our ancestors used to live in. But... Flanders does not have that excuse. We are no different than the French or the Germans, we do not have a very different culture, yet, we have practically no great writers translated all over the world. One can count them on one hand (three I believe no on Wikiedia).

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

Three lines is not endless. Have you read Dumas or Hugo? Even Sarmago does better (and he is modern). Now, sometimes that is long and needless (even critics used to complain about Dumas in his day), yet that is mastery.

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I've had the fortune to read Hugo (I haven't read Dumas) in my native tongue, while I struggled for hours on Cicero's jungle of words in Latin, so maybe that has something to do with it. Either way, long and needless sentences aren't mastery.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

The thing is not to write short or long, the thing is to write with a flow. That can be done with short sentences too. It is not a matter of where the full stop is, it is a matter of how the language interlocks. Then the full stop doesn't matter.

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That is mastery. Thanks for wording it perfectly!

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

They have a disadvantage of culture. Sadly, no-one seems to be interested, although Chinese literature seems to do well for some publishers, like De Geus. But one must be able to understand their culture in order to understand their 'novel' (their symbols; conventions etc). That is not straightforward and it already shows in Russian, f.e., which requires some history classes and some general info on what they tought of certain things and what happened in certain eras, because it is so different from the society our ancestors used to live in. But... Flanders does not have that excuse. We are no different than the French or the Germans, we do not have a very different culture, yet, we have practically no great writers translated all over the world. One can count them on one hand (three I believe no on Wikipedia).

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On the other hand, Flanders has a population of just over 6 million. Far less than Russia (145 million), the United States (307 million), the United Kingdom (61 million), France (62 million), Italy (58 million), Spain (46 million), the Netherlands (16 million) and even Greece (10 million). How many contemporary Greek authors could you name? I doubt it'll be more than a handful.

I'm not saying Flemish literature is great, but misunderstood or anything like that, I'm merely saying that they've got a perfectly healthy literary community that, while not producing the greatest works, does quite alright when the population is taking into account.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

They have a disadvantage of culture. Sadly, no-one seems to be interested, although Chinese literature seems to do well for some publishers, like De Geus. But one must be able to understand their culture in order to understand their 'novel' (their symbols; conventions etc). That is not straightforward and it already shows in Russian, f.e., which requires some history classes and some general info on what they tought of certain things and what happened in certain eras, because it is so different from the society our ancestors used to live in. But... Flanders does not have that excuse. We are no different than the French or the Germans, we do not have a very different culture, yet, we have practically no great writers translated all over the world. One can count them on one hand (three I believe no on Wikiedia).

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There is actually a lot of good publication, with fantastic scholarly introduction and annotation by American sinologists available widely, in thick volumes - anything from Contemporary Chinese Literature to Taiwanese Novels and Poetry, to Ancient Drama and Essays, and even now a larger focus on translations of female writers. To say that it is particularly difficult is not so true as to say there just isn't that much of an interest on major presses - Russian lit, because of Dostoevsky and to a lesser extent Tolstoy seems absorbed into American imagination, Chinese however is, as a literary culture (mind the Orientalism in this passage) only beginning to be absorbed, with the crumbling of the concept of "Red China" (which was pretty much a myth to begin with anyway), and the emergence of China as a field, in the sense that Japanese was a "field" after WW2. Korea too is beginning to get much focus, not particularly from Americans, so I am told, but Oxford and Cambridge are tossing huge amounts of cash into their programs to bring up a stronger tradition of "Korean Studies".

It is actually, surprisingly, strange why such texts aren't read. The new annotated unabridged edition of Three Kingdoms, for instance, reads much more easily than Cervantes, and certainly is like Hemingway in comparison to Dante. It's all just ethnic bias, I don't think it has much to do with distance.


Ok, some poetry doesn't translate well, I'll agree with that, but prose translates as easily as anything, and the bulk of poetry translates just fine. Beyond that too, places like Universite de Paris in France are great publishers and scholars on subjects like Daoism, and in Holland now they have a very strong area of scholarship on contemporary Chinese fiction, including much translation work done. It just all depends really on where one looks.

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Originally Posted by heethar73

Here's the problem with what you wrote: Chuck Palahniuk is from America.... so if you're going to lie in one post and say you're from Eastern Europe, you might want to make sure you didn't give up your location in a very easily sorted out mess.

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You probably didn't get me right, I said that I liked Chuck to give evidence that I am not easily shocked by a novel.... He has nothing to do with my country...

@JBI:

I meant of course the popular press is not interested. Although they are slowly coming away from that, maybe because of the great interest in Chinese studies as 'the laguage of the future', and by extention the rest of the Oriental world. I am not saying it is particularly difficult to read it, but still, you'll admit that reading a French book like Les Misérables, even without detailed knowledge of the French Revolution and the aftermath, is culturally easier than a Russian one at first sight. Or maybe it is because I had classes in Fench Revolution and almost nothing on Russia until the Communist Revolution of 1917. Still, to know what they write about is what they know and in that their own culture and what they think/thought is important, as important as for reading other cultures.

Of course it's all just bias when publishers think it is not worth it to put money into it 'because we will not make any'. So we do not even get the chance to try.

Of course there are in the academic world good edition (one would hope so), but in the popular domain? Let's say one has to look hard.

@Amexcalli:

I was just saying, and I am still of the opinion, that proportionally, Flanders should have had more good writers than it has had.


One of the leading writers of contemporary lit in Flanders (Tom Lanoye) made a compilation of the Kings' Dramas of Shakespeare, a piece oF12 hours. Firstly, to me, it speaks of great if not incredible arrogance to attempt to make the work of an auhtor better; certainly if one is talking about Shakespeare. Secondly, he made one Edward (I have forgotten which because I was so apalled; it might be Edward V) swear every two words with '****ing'. No joke. May I ask why he did that to Shakespeare. If he had done it in English, he would have been lynched. Nothing against reworkings of Shakespeare, within bouderies, but a play of 12 hours is not a play, and certainly not if one is going to disgrace one of the great. Thankfully this has not happened any more after it.

But I suppose I have made my opinion clear. Let's not hog this thread 'cause otherwise I also go and on and on and on. ;)

So anyone else disappointed in one's own lit?