Book Report

I violate my Covid silence for this interesting point from a foxnews.com op-ed piece by Michael Beckley & Hal Brands on China’s current pandemic, in my own words: In light of the deaths, the country’s one-child per family stab at population control may backfire completely.

Born in Amsterdam in 1923, Gerard Reve is considered one of the big three in Dutch post-WWII literature. Recently a copy of his first book, The Evenings, completed in 1947, reissued in 2016, came my way. The blurbs liken it to the work of Camus, Beckett, Kerouac and Salinger, so I decided to give it a shot. It is the story of a 23-year-old office worker perplexed by life. He is obsessed with time, the urge to fill the hours so as not to dwell on them. He is unnerved by silence. Although he has a full head of hair, he fears baldness, notes and mentions the follicle loss of friends. He is fascinated by the morbid, particularly how the unlucky, even children, perish, and is not reluctant to raise it in conversation. He is irritated by the habits, quirks of his parents. At times the narrative has the feel of a Seinfeld episode but is not about nothing any more than that show was. Unfortunately, it remains on a mundane, humdrum level from start to finish. Still, I kept reading despite my frequent annoyance with the protagonist. I was a psychological mess at that age too, although my façade hid it. The action takes place in late 1946 and ends on New Year’s Day. Although it is cited as a dark comedy about the human condition, I didn’t laugh at any of it. A couple of aspects were puzzling. There is barely any mention of WWII, and the young man, like Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, expresses no sexual desire. Regarding the former, the Nazis occupied The Netherlands for five years beginning in 1940, so is the reader to assume the characters simply want to forget that period, although I don’t know how anyone would be able to? As for the latter, given where my thoughts were most of the time at that age, it is hard to relate to someone who does not lust for women. In my fiction I rarely have had two characters speak in the same paragraph. This goes on throughout the book. Separating the dialogue might have doubled the 317 page count. Also, although I’m not a fan of using italics to highlight a character’s thoughts, this book may have benefited from that. 83 users at Amazon have rated The Evenings, forging to a consensus of 3.6 on a scale of five. I’ll go with three. Sam Garrett’s translation is solid. I doubt anyone but those interested in existential angst would be interested in the novel. It is my favorite theme and exists in just about all my works, to the max in the novel Vito’s Day. Reve, who passed away at 82 in 2006, wrote more than 30 books. The Evenings was adapted into a graphic novel by Dick Matena, which seems fitting. Reve’s novel The Fourth Man was adapted to the screen by Paul Verhoeven in 1983.

The floating book shop was rained out.

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