75th Book Week in the Netherlands

A novel for teenagers

The first word of "Duel" is a firm curse. It seems to be that the author, Dutch writer Joost Zwagerman, wants to make a provocation in his new book. But he denies: "When you damage a beautiful and precious painting you automatically curse." It is the sunny Sunday, 14th March, when everybody was free to travel by train through whole the country, if being able to show "Duel" to the conductor, just as part of the national Book week


By GERBEN SOLLEVELD (gerben.solleveld@wavemagazine.net)
from Utrecht, the NETHERLANDS


The kick-off of the national 'Boekenweek' (Book week) was on 10th March during the Book ball gala. It is a yearly event which is meant to position the book in the society, and to show how rich the Dutch book stores are. During each event one writer has the honour to write the so-called 'Boekenweekgeschenk' (Book week gift), a novel about any topic. For the Sunday, the organizers of Book week made a co-operation with the Dutch railways (NS), which meant that travellers able to show the Book week gift could have travelled for free that day. The NS also wanted to support people travelling by train to read.

The theme of this year's Book week is 'To be young': a special theme for a special anniversary, the 75th one. All the libraries in Holland gave attention to this event, which was this year especially organized for the youth. At the Sunday, Zwagerman was in an Utrecht library to take questions from the audience. And as part of this year's theme, a young student Eva Peek had the honour to sit in the front with him and ask several questions about what reading has to deal with the youth:

- When I was young, my teacher taught me with his own experiences, he told our class why it was so important to read. Because of his spectacular way of telling us about literature, we also wanted to read. Today's education is merely about teaching; it has become a way of supervising.

Zwagerman does not want to believe that self-development is a good process when you are young: "Teachers have to share their knowledge, but that's not possible any longer." About his own reading history, Zwagerman was a bit giggly: "At secondary education I sometimes read book summaries, but everybody does that. Nobody likes 'required reading'."

Eva Peek told to WAVE magazine right after the interview with Zwagerman that she is not worried about the youth which should be read less: "When you are getting older, it's getting more normal to read." Herself, Eva is at the end of her secondary education, one of her courses is art history. To her it is just ordinary to read books. For the ones who think that reading a book is old-fashioned there is also the e-reader available. Zwagerman however argues: "For them who really love reading, the e-reader cannot replace a book."

Duel

Joost Zwagerman brings "Duel" as a 'gift' this year. Main character in the story is Jelmer Verhooff, director of an art museum who organizes an exhibition. One of the artists on the exhibition is the old-fashioned painter Emma Duiker. She does very precise copies of famous paintings, even so that several experts do not see the difference between what is real and what is reproduced. At the end of the exhibition, Verhooff discovers that Emma has exchanged her fake painting with a 30 million-painting of Mark Rothko.

Art is not what most people are interested in, but Zwagerman solved this problem: "If you want to bring art close to the reader it has to be stolen, and it has to be damaged." Duiker is travelling through Europe with this precious Rothko. In her eyes, art belongs to the people on the street, and not in a museum. When Verhooff tried to address the location of his painting, a sort of slapstick pursuit is the result, and ends up with damaging the painting like Mr. Bean did to Whistler's Mother.

On the track

A record number of people were travelling by train on March 14. In 2009, about 180,000 people took the Boekenweekgeschenk as admission fee, this year about 210,000 train travellers showed Zwagerman's Duel to the conductor. According to the Dutch railways (NS), travelling by train 'gives you the possibility to deepen your knowledge and it is for relaxation'. Any day, 75% of all travellers take 'something to read' in the luggage, so the NS supports reading and therefore people accompanied with the Book week gift, are for one day free to go anywhere, read and relax.

For the ones who took the 12.06PM train from Amsterdam to Den Bosch there was a special surprise: Joost Zwagerman himself was a conductor and was willing to sign his book: a book about giving art back to the people. Reading Duel makes you think about the meaning and importance of art.



(Published: 10.04.2010.)