This article is based on this Dutch article of Martijn Benders
I present: The Gitane Hollandaise:
Veronique thinks Houellebecq is like a male bouqette novel author. She returned the book after reading about thirty pages. I kept reading, and from the middle to the end, you have to wade through an endless series of musings about rifles and pistols—perhaps the only moment you think, hmm, could this be due to serotonin? That he lingers a bit longer on his magnificent pistol?
Don’t get me wrong, the reason I even picked up this book wasn’t Houellebecq, but my great respect and interest in serotonin, a magical substance that every human is equipped with, but always in such a way that they just slightly lack it, resulting in the dissatisfied boomer-human form on which Houellebecq is based. I had hoped (after all, we are dealing with an infamous author here) to find intriguing observations about this substance in the book. None of that— it is mentioned only in passing to hang a story on, and that story isn’t serotonic at all, so it brings up the thought that Houellebecq isn’t familiar with the substance at all.
An entire book of boucquette novel-sex and pistols, and to hang that on an antidepressant pill? Houellebecq briefly mentions LSD, but even from that, you can tell he never dared to use it for even a moment. No, this is a narc-writer, one who solely relies on smoke and mirrors, and a bit of alcohol here and there, but even that mainly in a bourgeois manner. The bureaucrat he describes is obviously himself.
I’ve started a quest to find Dutch writers who have taken on the Gitane cigarette. To my surprise, no one. Reve smoked Zware Van Nelle, and Mulisch expensive Cuban cigars. Hermans? Of course, a Gauloise smoker. No, the thick, filthy Gitane art cigarette didn’t catch on with any writer in this country. It was too French as a cigarette, pure napalm-tobacco followed by a strip of raw meat in the restaurant.
The Dutch Gitane turns out to be a square cigarette sold as a round extension of the mind…
Houellebecq must have had a lot of faith in the judiciary to file no less than two cases against Kirac, both of which he lost. In that faith, you also see an essential optimism: if he had really been the pessimistic projection he constantly playfully flirts with, he would have had to overcome an immense resistance just to participate in something like that, let alone file two lawsuits about it. Interestingly, the Dutch judges in these cases both decided that there was no convincing evidence that the publication of the images would constitute an unlawful infringement of Houellebecq’s rights. They considered that the images were not such that they would cause irreparable harm to Houellebecq’s reputation or privacy.
I find that alone a great artistic achievement: after such a Houellebecq calls the Dutch a nation of whores, you make an artistic porn film with the man, and he loses two lawsuits in the Netherlands where the judges actually indicate that the reputation of this writer wasn’t salvageable anyway.
Ironically, because Dutch law is largely also French law. These French influences mainly date from the time of the French domination of the Netherlands under Napoleon Bonaparte, which began in 1795 and ended in 1813. During this period, much French legislation was introduced and adapted to the Dutch context. Eighteen years. Napoleon heralded the end of the Holy Roman Empire, a political construct that was established in the Middle Ages and considered itself a continuation of the Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire consisted of a complex network of mainly German states. In 1806, Napoleon forced the last emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Franz II, to lay down the crown and formally dissolve the Holy Roman Empire. This marked the end of a political entity that had existed since the early Middle Ages.
I was in Paris on July 14, the day they celebrate the storming of the Bastille. Revolution is, in itself, a rather French concept. The continuous programmatic shift to the right that seems to have Europe in an iron grip failed in France, a country that once freed us from the Holy Romans and is responsible for a significant part of our legislation.
Whether that was really a victory is still the question. The day before yesterday, the Christian Ursula von der Leyen won another five years at the helm in a ‘secret vote,’ and she was also ‘the only candidate.’ Yesterday, it suddenly became apparent that all our airports and hospitals are controlled from a company in Austin, Texas, founded by the FBI. And we had no idea; how do you manage that? Only by not wanting to listen to the tech geeks, I think.
Secrets still dominate the public discourse, also at the Literature Fund. After much secrecy, they came up with a confidential document in which the names were blacked out because… literary criticism appears to be extremely dangerous. The document featured an angry voice expressing that he ‘did not want to see this writer at the Literature Fund anymore.’ And all of this caused by a mourning collection, I find it an achievement that artistically is on par with that of Kirac, but the judicial decision is still pending.
Yesterday, I watched a documentary about Willem Oltmans, who managed to prove that the Dutch state had opposed him for 40 years. He was awarded a compensation of 8 million guilders. I still think Oltmans should get a very nice statue somewhere because thanks to him, an entire war with Indonesia was prevented, and it is exactly the people who prevent wars who should get the beautiful statues in our country.
Martinus 20-07-2024
