All Souls’ Day by Cees Nooteboom - this is included on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, but not as good as Regency Buck, my note on the latter is at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/10/regency-buck-by-georgette-heyer-is.html together with a few hundred other reviews - 7 out of 10

 

All Souls’ Day by Cees Nooteboom - this is included on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, but not as good as Regency Buck, my note on the latter is at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/10/regency-buck-by-georgette-heyer-is.html together with a few hundred other reviews

 

7 out of 10

 

The verdict here is I did not find the gumption to move along with Arthur Daane, the Dutch hero of this novel, and we could in fact end this note here: the book was not for me, it is surely a good read for more astute readers, although it has had a rating scale ranging from "Love It", "Pretty Good", "Ok", and "Rubbish"

 

Publishers Weekly said: "Nooteboom's attempt at an intellectual novel is worthy of respect, but Arthur and his friends are frustratingly static in their habits and thoughts, their perorations inflated with hot air. More enervating than invigorating, the book fails to communicate the vitality of a life of thought” how can I disagree?

However, the start was not just promising, it felt like this is about…me, since Arthur Daane ‘had arranged his life to achieve too much free time’, which is exactly about what I did, crying like the hero of Groundhog Day https://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/groundhog-day-written-by-danny-rubin.html ‘me, me, me’

 

‘As soon as the novel got going, you might pick up a book 📖 and read about an ordinary chap called Joe Smith doing the sort of things you did yourself. The novelist still has to invent. Fantastic number novels that they've just about exhausted the possibilities of life. All of us are enacting events that have already been written about in some novel or other. Effect is very disturbing 😐 when you do tumble to it' says David Lodge

He is one of my favorite authors https://realini.blogspot.com/2023/04/nice-work-by-david-lodge-shortlisted.html and what he says is what I felt with Arthur Daane, but only for a few lines, for there is also the short story of the Javanese (flash story really) man who had earned the equivalent of a quarter, only to sit under a tree

 

Moving from this Stoic attitude – wish for what you already have – there was more to make one think the book is at least intriguing, if it also felt less credible, when the Dutch and Germans are compared – say at the crossroads, when a red light is on, but there is no car coming, the Dutch would cross, while the German wouldn’t…

Not just that, but the latter would consider the former suicidal – the Dutch ‘don’t like to be told what to do’, while the Germans like discipline’…the traffic in Amsterdam is downright dangerous – in Japan, they just passed a law that sends bicyclists on phones to jail, so there are various attitudes, but a huge difference here

 

I mean I cycle for about twenty-five kilometers every day, expect the weekends, and it most often feels like masochism, a self-inflicted psychological harm, because the drivers are most often stupid jerks, and to read that ‘a mixture of Protestantism and anarchy that produced a stubborn kind of chaos’ really, you mean that?

While for the Germans ‘rules are rules…there’s got to be Ordnung’ and it is what William Golding https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/10/lord-of-flies-by-william-goldingralph.html had in mind as the most important theme in his Magnum opus Lord of The Flies, which is what he said in an interview that I heard

 

William Golding was asked about why there were only boys in his masterpiece and he said he grew among them, and if there were girls, he would have to change the narrative, something to that effect, but what stuck with me was his insistence on ‘if you have no rules, you have nothing, and I wanted to show that’

Another thing about the Germans and order – the side of it that is compelling for somebody who has to face the risk of getting hit by a car, because the bloody idiots, replicas of Orange Jesus, about to become leader of the free world next week, alas, do not respect the order, rules, or the other human being – is in Dostoevsky…

 

In one of his magnum opera https://realini.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-brothers-karamazov-by-fyodor.html he says something like ‘the Germans do not have a policeman on every corner of any street, it is a question of responsibility, acting for order’ this is clearly not the quote, but what I kept in my mind and the need to act

It is also a precept in The Six Pillars of Self Esteem, the psychology classic by Nathaniel Branden, from which I have got that we should start the day by looking in the mirror, while naked, and stating ‘I love and accept myself completely’ and then taking attitude when something wrong, unethical, whatever takes place

 

If you are to keep yourself at a high standard, you need to act against injustice, rudeness, or else you lower the norms for yourself and eventually, there is nothing to respect in yourself left, at least this is how I remember it, if I do  https://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/six-pillars-of-self-esteem-by-nathaniel.html

It does not work at times, I use this spa downtown that I often mention in my notes, and you have all sorts there, and I try and ‘keep my self-esteem’, by, for instance, telling this Romanian American that he could not possibly vote for Orange Jesus, again, for he did it last time, and the time before, and he just avoids the issue

He claimed recently that he sees this fool is bad for us, he will terminate NATO, then there is Russia at the door, and so on, but when pressed, he said he would not vote, eventually, because he has these forms to fill in, right, so let us have the Orange Felon again…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”