Boys we were, but reading boys

How to get young people to read again (or more)? Writer Bas Steman (49) succeeded in getting a group of adolescents to really like it. 'Our lives and friendships have become much deeper through reading books together.'

Me Jan Cremer

'Really, what a cool style that Jan Cremer has.' Sem looks at his friends, who have just eaten a delicious plate of lasagne and are now sitting with a pile of books in front of them. It is Sunday evening, and today the boys from reading club Nescio are studying Cobra, The Fifties, Me Jan Cremer and Alone with the gods by Alex Boogers. Nescio's work is on the table anyway, of course - The bummer, Titans and Poet are among their favourite books. Sem waves with Me Jan Cremer, a book that rocked Dutch literature in the 1960s and became an international bestseller. 'Cremer gives no fuck about what others think of him, which I think is cool. He is SO different from everyone I know.'

'I actually found him rather blunt,' Jip responds, 'and the book rather superficial.'

'How can you say he's not an interesting character?' exclaims Sem.

'I didn't say that,' says Jip, 'but he's just describing what he's all about with women and stuff. I had hoped for more depth.'

Bas Steman, Jip's father, nods. 'No, Cremer is not one for deep contemplation. Nor will he go down in literary history as the greatest stylist.'

Book week for young people

Youth Book Week, which will have its last day tomorrow, aims to show young people how fun and enriching reading is. The boys of reading club Nescio have known this for years now. When Bas Steman's son Jip said in the fourth grade of secondary school that he did not like to read at all, but especially did not know how to read a novel, Steman suggested starting a reading club with his friends from Zutphen.

Jip was not immediately enthusiastic. A reading club? You mean it? None of his friends read. That's why, Steman thought, reading together makes it more fun. OK, Jip thought, but it does sound silly, a reading club. Nevertheless, he appended his 'squad'. Sem, Alan, Daan, Timo, Wouter and Sam (who joined later) weren't too keen on the idea either. But they did want a good mark for their oral exam. With fresh reluctance, they were persuaded.

Steman had them We by Elvis Peeters, a hard-hitting story about young people who engage in increasingly perverse experiments out of boredom. The book left no one unmoved. 'And it instantly did away with the stigma that literature is boring,' laughs Wouter. While Jip's father told each meeting about the cultural and historical backgrounds and asked clever questions about the book's content, the boys talked to each other about the characters' lives and behaviour and about their own wishes, desires and dreams for the future.

The 'miracle' happened: they actually started to enjoy analysing a novel. Boys we were, but áárdige boys... - Nescio's legendary stories in particular made a deep impression. These questioned exactly what their own lives were about: how, as a young adult, do you deal with the friction between what you want and what society demands of you? How do you want to live your life?

Cobra

Tonight, Steman leads the boys from the avant-garde art movement Cobra and the poems of Lucebert through Nescio and The evenings By Gerard Reve to Me Jan Cremer. 'What is the greatest frustration of Reve's protagonist Frits van Egters?' Alan knows the answer: 'That he was stuck in the patterns of society.' Steman nods. 'The book is about the bourgeois nature of the Netherlands. Cremer pounds right through that bourgeoisness. Such a scheming novel as Me Jan Cremer could not have been written before the war. Cremer tried to make something of his life despite his environment and everything he had been through. He lives like a beast and paints like a barbarian.'

And hup, there's a jump to Alone with the gods. 'This too is SO different from the world we are used to, as white spoilt boys, so to speak,' Wouter thinks. 'Aaron Bachman grows up in a pauper neighbourhood, and Boogers has described very well what that is like.'

Timo nods: 'Aaron goes into boxing for a reason. He has to fight for his existence.'

Sam: 'That Aaron's mother told her son he would have been better off not being there - wow, really fucked up. It makes you think about your own relationship with your parents.'

Jip: 'It's an autobiographical story, so I really have a lot of respect for Alex Boogers. And this book did broaden my view of society a lot. I don't normally come into contact with this world.'

Steman nods: 'This is also the Netherlands. And poverty among certain sections of the population has certainly not improved in recent years.'

Tasty little book!

Boys they were, but reading boys. And that did not go unnoticed. After four years, they are no longer adolescents but students of 19 and 20, who have fanned out across the country for their studies, but Nescio brings them back together once every two months. Meanwhile, they have become protagonists themselves, in Nice bookie! the book Steman wrote about their reading club to inspire other young people, parents and teachers. However much their opinions on a novel may sometimes differ, the boys are in firm agreement on one thing: reading has greatly changed their lives for the better. Daan: 'We have become much better friends, because we have had much deeper conversations and shared our opinions and feelings with each other.'

Wouter nods. 'The conversations we have with each other, I have with few others. It's about something. Reading has stimulated me to think a lot more about myself and life, about the choices I make. That self-reflection has made me grow enormously as a person.'

Good to know

Bas Steman, Nice bookie!, New Amsterdam, €20