This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders: https://martijnbenders.substack.com/p/de-schrijver-als-pistekenpaal-voor
The Writer as a Marker Pole for the Cynical Bureaucrats of Information Management
Early in the morning, hard at work. I have now put my entire site in Italian. My resolution to no longer publish in Dutch thus takes concrete shape: although I initially meant it in book form, I see no reason why I should still make an effort in Dutch outside this Substack.
No, I believe I have come up with a very strong publication concept, but for now, I will keep the true details to myself.
A leftist writer who is even respected by Situationists, writes Bolaño on page 132 of his novel 2666. This remark made me laugh. My prize performances, which were a form of Situationism—the creation of situations as artworks—made me the greatest Situationist in the Netherlands. Bolaño understood how difficult it is to earn the respect of a Situationist. Why? Well, this movement rejected any form of established order and convention and was critical of recognition that could lead to co-option by the capitalist system. Respect from a Situationist implies that the work is authentically subversive and not easily absorbed into the system.
One could put it this way: the Situationist is only interested in recognition if it in itself creates a situation. Imagine: a Situationist creating a scenario where he is respected by other Situationists, only to then sabotage that scenario by writing a bestseller about how he created the situation—complete with a foreword by a leftist writer who takes himself too seriously.
Back to Robert Krudzlo
During my trial, when the pedantic official was suddenly replaced by a slick American named Jackson—who seemed directly modeled after Agent Smith—I knew enough: the men of information management were at it again.
That other American, Robert Krudzlo, orchestrates things from Spain, where he operates an exhibition space dedicated to mocking Dutch writers on a permanent basis.
It does not surprise me that Krudzlo completely ignored my letter. Or no, to put it better: as a response to my letter, he posted an exceptionally strange drawing of Joost de Vries, the figurehead of co-opted leftism, on Neerlandistiek.nl.
I beg you, study that drawing closely. The man in the picture looks like a bizarre cross between a Furby and the Pope from Francis Bacon’s screaming nightmare portrait. What is Krudzlo trying to say with this? Is this his reply to my letter? He himself adds this cryptic text:
Joost de Vries is a book writer and an ardent editorial staffer with fluctuating expressions: both dressed up and beaten down. Not a single expression on his face remains the same throughout the morning, afternoon, or evening. Biologically, physically, he adapts to the -political- environment. With taut physiognomies, he rises above—just as a blackbird sings higher notes when city noise increases—and that is also visible in this drawing. These are three De Vrieses in one face. Or more?
Why do the Americans portray co-opted leftists in this manner? And what does it have to do with my letter?
I asked Krudzlo for a portrait of Keikes himself, the celebrated drawing prodigy of tzum.nl, known for this breathtaking portrait of Lieke Marsman.
What is the purpose of such portraits? Could it perhaps be a form of black magic?
What is Krudzlo really doing here? Why Joost de Vries when I asked for Keikes?
Joost de Vries relishes visiting the Letterenfonds to assess books that he himself avoided reviewing in the newspaper. Might is Right—such is the formula. And the Letterenfonds adores it.
But that cannot be the reason the Americans mock him. No, this form of writer exploitation, which I also touch upon in De Eeuwige Ontgroening, is part of a hidden deal: you get to play the celebrity, but then we get to mock you behind the scenes. It comes with the territory.
Joost de Vries also wrote one of those typical Winkler Prins reviews that spend the first seven paragraphs listing fun facts:
https://www.groene.nl/artikel/lopen-op-het-niets
The genre-labeling of the sections sounds learned but is actually banal and reductive. Bolaño does not use genres to honor them, but to detonate them. This superficial allocation of literary templates ignores precisely the subversion that 2666 enacts: the college novel implodes into obsession and sexual violence, hard-boiled journalism fails to grasp reality, Amalfitano’s stream of consciousness is not a stylistic exercise but a psychotic process of disintegration. What Bolaño does is sabotage the genres, not merely use them.
The review gets tangled up in retelling anecdotes and plots: about Bolaño’s life, the sections of the book, and secondary trivia such as which character acts as which stereotype. But nowhere does De Vries probe into the deeper literary mechanisms of the book: the use of emptiness, silence, repetition, disruption, or the radical destabilization of subjectivity. The result is a superficial commentary on a dizzying book.
Then comes the fourth section, which is nothing less than an assault on the reader.
This statement completely misses the political and poetic intent of part IV. It is not an attack, but an ethical experiment in attention, empathy, and exhaustion. The section mimics bureaucratic indifference precisely to make that indifference palpable. Those who see monotony or challenge here as mere stylistic devices fail to recognize the full irony and ethics of Bolaño’s method. The remark betrays a Hollywood reflex: if something is repetitive, then it must be a provocation.
That didn’t matter to Bolaño…
As he lets Amalfitano say…
He flees further and further from his readers…
These assertions are textbook biographism—the mistake of conflating author, character, and narrator. De Vries writes about Bolaño as if he is a character in his own novel. Amalfitano’s words become Bolaño’s credo, Archimboldi’s silence his writerly stance. This is lazy, as it circumvents the complex narrative structure of the work, in which narrators are unreliable, realities fluid, and motifs disruptive. The review simplifies a text that is precisely about the impossibility of definitive interpretation.
Rarely has pure horror been so encased in book form. That is the power of Bolaño’s prose: it is terrifying and alive, and you cannot take your eyes off it.
A clumsy sentence. A closing remark that sounds like the trailer for a Netflix horror film. It places 2666 in the realm of creepy yet addictive, as if it is merely a grisly yet well-written novel. Nothing about the existential, historical, and metaphysical dimensions of Bolaño’s horror, which is not about shock value but an attempt at testimony—a confrontation with a form of structural violence that even undermines narration itself.
And as a Situationist, I observe: this maneuver by Krudzlo—the ridicule of the very left they have purchased—is part of the eternal initiation ritual.
I bet that in his exhibition space, Krudzlo has never sat down with a book by Bolaño, nor by this Joost de Vries. You spend your years in information management among oil-ball-munching Dutchmen on the Costa Brava, shooting sidelong glances at the riffraff descending with Bolaño from the dirty mountain.
This is not criticism. This is disenchantment. The novelist as influencer. The critic as lifestyle translator. The reader as customer.
The writer as a marker pole for the cynical bureaucrats of information management.