It is a lovely summer book: Harem, the new novel by Ronald Giphart. And for the first time in years, a good dose of sex appears in a book by the Utrecht-based writer. 'Just the other day at a reading I was announced by a librarian: "Ladies and gentlemen, here is the man who knows everything about sex!" So interview the man who knows everything about sex - or at least writes about it unabashedly.
Literature and sex
'Fuck, fuck and fuck again.' That's how a literary critic once described the work of writer Ronald Giphart. Rather exaggerated, but sex, humour and student life were of course important features of his first novels. It made the Utrecht writer wildly popular, especially among young people. After his overwhelming debut in 1992 with I love you too followed Giph, Phileine says sorry and I embrace you with a thousand arms, all of which became huge bestsellers.
With the most recent novels Comfort (2005) and Iceland (2010), as well as the short story collection The vigil (2014), Giphart showed a more serious side. But a fox does not forget his tricks. And so, in the year he turns fifty, Ronald Giphart simply publishes a new novel that harks back to his earlier novels in terms of themes - literature and sexuality - but better. After 15 years, another Giphart with sex in it - it can count on acclaim.
Not for nothing did this book feel like a debut novel, says Ronald Giphart (1965), who has settled himself in the lobby of a Utrecht hotel with a smile on his face and an espresso on the table. 'Look, once you've been deflowered, you can never be deflowered again. But the beauty of fiction is: as a writer, I am God. So if I want to debut again, I'll just debut again! I wanted to get the freshness back. The nice thing about describing a debutant is that you can also show the literary process. I not only have a fascination for young people and their zest for life, but also for writing.'
Harem
Harem is narrated by 20-year-old Liam, who is writing his debut novel: a reconstruction of the story of his father, world-famous photographer Mac Hope. Mac left Amsterdam as a young man and ended up in Stockholm. There he is initiated into photography by his teacher Jakob Sjöberg, and initiated into love by Sjöberg's wife Cilla, a voluptuous lady ten years older than Mac.
Although Mac is not keen on it, in the years that follow, it is the camera that fuels love in him: the lens shows him the beauty of women he portrays. So he gets into a love affair with the beautiful Freja, and later with his assistant Tilde. With Freja he gets son Liam, with Tilde a daughter, Ronja.
When Mac gets the chance to buy an old factory, The Milk Factory, it becomes a home for him, his wives and friends, his children. Freja's mother Carolina also comes to live there, as well as the free-spirited student Nina, Mac's third lover. Nina is to Liam what Cilla is to Mac. Although bad things also happen - Mac's best friend Hampus gets infected with HIV and eventually commits suicide - love is ultimately stronger than death, grief and jealousy.
This is the first Giphart novel with sex in it in a long time. How do you write a good sex scene?
'Yahaaa... Writing sex scenes separates the boys from the men - not everyone can do that. If I want to describe a cosy evening at the pub, I will have to come up with nice sentences to make that palpable. So if I write a sex scene where people, overcome with lust, surrender to each other, I will have to make sure that readers can imitate that feeling at least a little. There are all techniques for that, such as ''priming': creating an atmosphere by using certain words, without the reader realising it. Or evoking the feeling already in myself. If I laugh myself, hopefully the reader will too. If I get excited or horny myself, maybe a reader will experience the same.'
But it can also quickly become flat and tasteless.
'Definitely, which is why you have to constantly think from the reader's point of view. Again, it shouldn't be laughable. That is why I regularly read other people's sex scenes that I find hilarious or bad out loud to see exactly where it goes wrong. I also read my own excerpts out loud, in a silly little voice. I try to break them down. That way I see where holes can be punched.'
Literature and sexuality are important themes in your work. What do the two have to do with each other?
'Ha! I do think it's a fun game to see if we can find a commonality between the two. Imagination obviously plays a role in both. In sexuality, imagination is also very important. Surely creating an erection is something that happens mainly in your head; first there is nothing, through a process of stories and feelings and attraction something is erected, so to speak.'
He chuckles.
'It also has to do with a certain surrender; the moment when you lose yourself. Gerard Reve used to say that he masturbated before writing, as a way of stepping outside the box beforehand. Well, I think that if you were to conduct a small anonymous survey among writers as to whether they also use that technique, the results would still surprise you. Ms Hemmerechts, tell me, do you ever masturbate before writing? Sadly, Hella Haasse is no longer among us.'
Have you ever used that technique yourself?
'Yes, sure. Definitely, definitely. I think every writer does that sometimes, especially when writing a sex scene.'
And? Did it help?
'Of course! Sure. My own fantasies and ideas are fuelled by masturbation. Not that I always jerk off before writing, but it can help.'
He looks at me cheerfully. 'I haven't admitted this in an interview before, mind you! I just hope it doesn't become the headline of the article.'
The book is about whether you can love several people at once. The characters do run into jealousy, but manage to rise above it. Is that how you would want people to treat each other?
'Well, I don't want to be a preacher saying how other people should live their lives, but I find it remarkable that unimportant things often have a relatively huge impact. I wanted with Harem show that it must be possible for love to triumph over negativity, jealousy or narrow-mindedness.
A fortnight ago, I was at a student union, and we talked about changing social norms and values. About cheating, for example. I asked: for which of you would cheating be a reason to end your relationship immediately? Well, for almost the entire room, that is. I find that remarkable.
Now of course you have different degrees of cheating - if someone is in a long-term relationship alongside their own, there is something to it. But if someone did some tongue-twisting on a drunken night... well, that's not how the Lord intended, but to end a relationship for that... Then you let your whole life be determined by those ten minutes when the one you love had his or her tongue in someone else's mouth. How insignificant is that? Not that people should listen to me or anything, but I do try to create a world in my books that challenges people to think about such things.'
How do they think about you? Do people have a prejudice against you because you write quite openly about sexuality?
'Definitely! Just the other day, I was announced at a reading by a librarian: "Ladies and gentlemen, here is the man who knows all about sex." I have often experienced people having an opinion about me without having read any of my books. Well, if that's how you want to be in life, do your best. I don't confront myself with that anymore.
As a writer, you must be thick-skinned about what people think of you. I often get the question: aren't you afraid that your children will read that and what they will think then? But if you start thinking about what your children will think of you, then you especially shouldn't start writing. Besides: before my children, my wife and I slept together. They will just have to accept that. Even for the people reading this article, their parents have done very dirty things.'
He chuckles and takes another sip of his drink.
'My parents were children of the sexual revolution. They didn't bother about nudity, porn or sexuality. A friend's breasts hung on our wall as plexiglass artwork. We read the 'Sexstant'. There was no fuss about fucking in our home.
It's fun to hold up a mirror to people. I notice that there has been a certain preoccupation in society in recent years, including among students. Many young people don't like it when sex appears in books. Love and sexuality as a subject are less and less easily discussed. I notice it with reading aloud. Young people are becoming more prudish, I also hear that from teachers.'
So they sit with red ears listening to you.
'Yes. But I censor a bit, because I am not out to shock people. I used to read an excerpt from I embrace you with a thousand arms In which two boys together hit on one girl. Now that is shocking. The passages I used to read at schools I now read to students, and the pieces I used to read at student unions I can now only recite to adults. Immigrant youngsters don't want to hear it at all. So then I read other passages. Literature is an article of use and grows with the times. The texts I wrote in the nineties may no longer fully meet the needs of young people today.'
Mismatch
There follows a detailed and animated explanation of how humans are biologically structured, and how we are still much more primarily driven by our instincts than we would have ourselves believe. He explains that men still think hierarchically, and are focused on exchanging information, while women communicate much more in a social context. According to Giphart, this also explains, for example, why men read mostly non-fiction. It is a subject that fascinates him, and one he is going to write a book on together with evolutionary psychologist Marc van Vugt of the Free University: Mismatch.
'Only 12 thousand years ago came agriculture and with that everything changed. That we are sitting here now in a restaurant, that you have a pen in your hands, something like that has only existed for a few thousand years, at best. Genetically and biologically, we are not yet geared up for the life we lead now. That means there is huge mismatch between our physical, psychological handling of reality and how we actually interact with each other. I like to talk about this in schools. In fact, I almost always get the question: why does your work so often talk about sex?'
Yes, why is your work so often about sex?
Giphart laughs, and sits back down. 'OK, if we lock a girl in a room and watch her for two hours with a hidden camera, she won't touch her hair once for two hours. A boy by himself sits hunched over and breathes through his stomach. Put them together in the room, the girl touches her hair 30 times in 10 minutes, and the boy starts breathing through his chest and uses different language. Both grip their glasses differently. This is all impressing behaviour. We humans are constantly giving each other sexual signals without being aware of it, in all sorts of ways, through our movements, through our clothes. We engage in sexuality a lot: not in the sense of genitals going in and out, but in the sense that we are constantly determining everyone's position in the group. Human beings are very social creatures and through those sexual signals we map out the social context.
With students the other day, I also got that question again. Someone said: 'I found Harem very nice, but why does all this sex have to be in it?" So I asked those students the question: who masturbated last month? No one. OK, I said, so either all the students in Utrecht who don't masturbate are together in one room today - which is statistically impossible - or you are willing to lie about a completely innocent subject. Why I write about sex is because you don't dare answer this question. By reading, you can confront your own fears, desires, frustrations and frustrated feelings. So that when you are forty, you can admit that masturbation is completely innocent and that everyone does it and that there is nothing to be ashamed of.
I once told this story to a room full of adults. But those are young people, someone said, that doesn't go for adults. OK, I thought, then you can have it. There are two hundred adults gathered here now and we are going to answer honestly. Who among you has ever had anal sex? No one! That's strange too, isn't it? No one! A lot of giggling, though. While anal sex is perfectly normal; sixty per cent of people have done it once. Why on earth couldn't you talk about it normally?'
Word versus image
Even more than about sexuality Harem about the 'battle' between the image, in the person of Mac, and the word, represented by Liam. The novel is a plea for writing and reading.
'My book is definitely a oratio pro domo. We are linguistic beings; we come from an oral tradition. We were the only species that developed the ability to say one thing and mean another: imagination. Beautiful language emerged, rhythmic language. Poetry. One hundred and five years ago, photography was invented. Then came the image and the word began to slowly give way.
I have nothing against images, but their ubiquity these days is starting to take on bad forms. This comes at the expense of our overall empathic capacity and intelligence. Long-term Canadian research from 2009 found that reading novels makes people more empathetic, steadfast and open-minded. They can empathise better with others' situations and score better at problem solving. No activity can be imagined in which people do as much brain work as reading. Someone who reads a lot, 30 to 50 pages every day, literally becomes smarter and scores better on intelligence tests. It can mean the difference between havo and vwo.
Of course, society is changing, so forms of expression are also changing. You might say: what difference does it make that people express themselves through music or film and no longer through books? Well, I think it will matter in the long run. If people are no longer used to reading long or a lot, it will also have repercussions in areas like politics and education. Reading keeps you sharper and cognitively up to date, so I could imagine, although that is not yet a scientifically substantiated proposition, that de-learning is going to have major consequences in terms of diseases of old age like Alzheimer's.'
You do a lot to promote literature. However, your work gets little literary recognition. Does that sting?
'Well, why do some chefs get Michelin stars and others never? While they cook with the same dedication and the same ingredients? I think with me, several factors play a role. I have been popular among a readership that shouldn't interfere with literature, namely young people. According to some, I have gone too much for fun. Literature should be serious. Take Bert Natter and his novel 'Desire has touched us'. A fun book, with good jokes in it, but also serious. He was invited to Knetterende Letteren, but then the invitation was withdrawn because an editor thought the humour exceeded the seriousness. In other words, it is too funny a book to pass for literature. Such is the attitude of "official literature". It applies to more writers. Herman Brusselmans will never be nominated either.
By the way, I can't be bothered. Nominations and awards are given to a certain type of literature to which I do not belong. Then I can moan that I want to belong to that, but then I should just try to write such a book.'
If you look at how Harem put together, how deceptively simple and smooth the story jumps back and forth between times and storylines, then it must not have been easy to write.
'No, with this book - and it was a change from previous books - I spent a very long time working on perspective and composition. That has been a struggle, for the first time. Harem hasn't had any negative reviews yet, which is quite exceptional. Who knows, maybe this novel will end up on a longlist for the first time - I've never even made it to a longlist! But we still have months to go. So let's not assume anything. I won't shed a tear.'
Ronald Giphart - Harem (382 p.). Publisher Podium, paperback: €19.95/e-book: €9.99.
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