That Robin Goudsmit. At the Boekfest, I watched in awe as she skilfully navigated her way between the writers and moved from topic to topic. Grief was the theme at the Ronda in Tivoli Vredenburg. Does writing help with grief? Lara Taveirne (Wolf) and Femme van den Berg (Day after day after day) were sitting to Goudsmit’s right. Eva Posthuma de Boer ((Because I can see you) was sitting on the left. Goudsmit pointed this out: ‘We’re not sitting in the most convenient arrangement, are we?’ For much of the time, she had her back to Posthuma de Boer, however hard Goudsmit tried to give all three writers roughly the same amount of speaking time.
I was on the edge of my seat.
In a setting like this, it seems you can’t escape a bit of competition. Although the writers don’t interrupt one another, they do try, above all, to present their own book in the most favourable light. As a member of the audience, you find yourself making comparisons. Lara Taveirne had the audience spellbound with her powerful story about her brother, who set off for the Northern Lights to end his life. She was witty. What’s more, she spoke with a Flemish accent. She herself teaches people who want to learn to write, and when they write about their own suffering, Taveirne often attributes this to a lack of imagination. She felt compelled to write the book about her brother, but imagination certainly played a part in this book too. She couldn’t do without fiction.
That’s definitely made up!
It’s still a thing. Writers don’t like to be caught writing purely autobiographical pieces. Later that day, during the section True story, yet made up Nicolien Mizee (Faxes to Ger) fought tooth and nail against the misconception that everything a columnist wrote actually happened. She turned a pedicure into a hairdresser’s appointment, and so on. Stéphanie Hoogenberk (We’re pleased about that) actually found it difficult to distort or conceal the truth. It earned her lifelong feuds.
This topic is also covered True story, yet made up, an interviewer, Iris Pronk, sat opposite three writers. With Ester Naomi Perquin (Until everything is in motion) as the third writer. Interviewer Iris Pronk had a tougher time of it than Robin Goudsmit had earlier that day. She was seeking an answer to the question of whether one was allowed to deviate from the truth when writing autofiction. ‘Should you simply call every book a ‘novel’, even if readers are so keen to read about something that actually happened?’ But writers aren’t Dutch language specialists, and in response to her questions, the writers mainly talked about how they themselves approached the matter. Just as well. I found the question of whether one is allowed to write autofiction containing demonstrable distortions and lies just as interesting as a discussion, long, long ago in a Christian setting, about whether it’s permissible to sleep together the day before you get married.
But then again, I’m no Dutch language specialist either.
Connie Palmen: A Tourist Trap
Connie Palmen wasn’t on my list. It was the tourist trap from ILFU. In the end, I found myself in the Great Hall at her time anyway, for logistical reasons. The main course at the restaurant ran over, and I fell between two stools in terms of the timetable.
There were other practical problems. I’d also been to the Boekfest at Tivoli last year, so I walked confidently towards the escalator in the central hall, only to find it blocked by a trolley. People coming for ILFU had to either navigate the baffling staircase or squeeze in with one another in the lift.
Palmen, then. There hasn’t been a newspaper or TV programme in recent weeks where Palmen hasn’t been seen or heard. I really felt for her interviewer, Andrea van Pol. What new insights could Palmen possibly offer? What did the audience actually expect?
But Van Pol stood on the main stage at ILFU, chilling with Palmen, with no ambition to come out with the quote of the century. She asked the usual questions about Palmen’s unique personality, and Palmen gave the usual answers, peppered with a few cheeky one-liners such as ‘A girl who drinks is a good start’, if, as a woman, you want to defy the expectations the world has of you.
After Palmen, I just managed to get to Passionate biographers: Niels Bokhove and Lodewijk Verduin, Or so I thought, but to get into the Pandora Foyer you really had to be someone important. Suddenly I found myself in a spacious hall filled with 60% men in suits wearing badges. Things were looking dodgy. The escalator had been cordoned off for these conference attendees. At the cloakroom, a young woman showed us the way, saying something about taking the stairs behind the toilets.
The atmosphere around interviewer Mirjam van Hengel in the small Pandora foyer was, once again, completely different. The meticulous and attentive Van Hengel used colourful cards with questions that served as a starting point for biographers Niels Bokhoven ((With big dreams behind him) and Lodewijk Verduin (So rich and all-conquering(d) to take turns, in an orderly manner, to talk about the poet and critic Halbo C. Kool and the writer Nanne Tepper respectively.
These men weren’t selling themselves, but their protagonists. There was something to be said for that.
‘After all, you’d rather lose yourself in a book without having the author on your mind,’ said my friend Ellen, an avid reader and a writer herself, over drinks in the Tivoli Vredenburg café. We’ll do it again next year. And hopefully the escalator will be free again by then.
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