Is Bottom's Dream the logical conclusion to literature?

No, that's Voskuil's 'Het bureau', a 7-volume

The reader follows him on his daily grind to his work: an office researching Dialectology, Folklore and Onomastics. In detail, all the experiences and social contacts of the main character are described. It covers the period 1957-1987.

It's 5500 pages of a man's mundane life.

who the hell read that
who the hell buy that
WHO THE HELL PUBLISH THAT

more importantly, who the hell write that

If can't finish it, just read it on easy

>logical
no
>conclusion
yes

A man, a glorious magnificent Dutch man.
Published by van Oorschot, one of the more high-brow Dutch publishers.
It sold quite well all things considered, the local intelligentsia have embraced it lovingly with their thin emaciated hands, it reached cult status, few people heave actually read it though.

His debut was 'bij nader inzien' an autobiographical novel about his university years.
1200+ pages.

He writes extremely descriptive and repetitive but in a manner that it it's not that boring.

Het Bureau is being translated in German as we speak, one of my friends wants to translate it in English, no deadline sadly.

Post excerpts. One short paragraph will do.

Most literature critics in Germany have rightfully denounced Arno Schmidt as a fucking joke. Even some dusthead poseur won't be able read the 1000 pages of language puns and dick jokes by this guy and give this thing a masterpiece status. The whole appeal it has is about the size of the book and the perceived difficulty baka.

>Dutch:

Bij het aanvegen van de keukenvloer vond hij een koffieboon. Hij wilde haar met het vuil in de vuilnisbak gooien, maar bedacht zich.
Zo'n boon was opgegroeid in Zuid-Amerika, geplukt, verscheept, geroosterd, ingepakt.
Hij vond het onzin, maar hij kon het niet over zijn hart verkrijgen om haar weg te werpen en stopte haar in de koffiemolen.
Toen hij na het malen wat koffie op het aanrecht morste en die wilde opvegen, aarzelde hij opnieuw, maar nu alleen omwille van de consequentie.
Want een gemalen boon zei hem niets, zomin als een stuk vlees waarin hij geen beest meer herkende.

>Google translate English:

Whilst sweeping the kitchen floor he found a coffee bean. He wanted to throw her in the trash with dirt, but thought better of it.
Such a bean was grown in South America, picked, shipped, roasted, packed.
He thought it was nonsense, but he could not find it in his heart to throw it away and put her in the coffee grinder.
When he finished grinding he spilled some coffee on the counter and wanted to sweep it up, he hesitated again, but only for the sake of the consequence.
For a ground bean meant nothing to him, no more than a piece of meat in which he recognised no beast.
The language isn't hard, it really is just a man's internal monologue (but in Dutch at least) it's written in a lovely way, the words he uses are chosen carefully and cary weight and profound meaning.

It's great that you're passionate about him but, christ, if the rest of the book sound like this passage it has to be really excruciatingly boring. I mean Marguerite Young also wrote about nothing in particular but at least her style was inventive and beautiful, this seems (of course only on a first glance) to be dry as fuck. Convince me to check this guy out.

thanks for reminding me of this, going to read it senpai

het bureau can be found as epubs nowadays

It's incredibly dry.

That's the appeal.

The mind-numbing blandness of the ordinary life of an ordinary citizen,
Boredom described in an utterly boring way and to not only get away with it, but to even produce a national bestseller.

It should by all accounts have been completely unreadable and about as exciting as learning the phone book by heart, but J.J. Voskuil mysteriously managed to achieve an alchemy by which this massive assault of boredom actually becomes transmuted into something compelling and highly entertaining.

If you endure, the emotional bonding you get with the characters becomes more so then real life, anything happening to them is as if it's happening to you or your friends.

A passage is quickly dismissed but if you ever have the chance give it a shot.

You either love or hate it.

Okay I understand the appeal now. It would probably make me want to off myself though so I don't think it's made for me.

nothing that attempts to be the logical conclusion of something could be the anything of literature

>The mind-numbing blandness of the ordinary life of an ordinary citizen

Sounds a bit like my diary desu

hey user how's your reading coming along? I bought this seeing your thread the other day, I can't wait.

I can understand that.
I expected it earlier desu.

>For a ground bean meant nothing to him, no more than a piece of meat in which he recognised no beast.

Pretty nice line desu. Wish I knew dutch.

>Wish I knew dutch.

Mostly a waste of time, it's an easy language to learn but hard to master and Nederlands is an insignificant language in the greater scheme of things
The best literature we have has mostly been translated anyway and 50% is about tits and fucking, like our movies and the other half is philosophical egowanks, quite pleasant in a way.

You can try to learn, use duo lingo, being a polyglot is neat.

From your description it sounds a bit like Proust but with shorter sentences and a less florid style. Is that right?

sounds like knausgard

>de avonden is still untranslated

criminal desu

It's more direct, as with all Dutch things.

Knausgard isn't nearly as autismo though.

Do it yourself, make big bux.

Not too bad. I can see myself drifting into this.

>her
Didn't know Dutch had genders. A bean is feminine in my language too. Cool.

>Dutch genders

They are mostly hidden and don't really come into play.

Dutchfag here and amateur translator

This is from p.171 of the second book:

>"His desired had all but ceased. Only the occasional and brutal yearning for an animal mate stirred him from a life otherwise defined by the kind of staid domesticity he had so violently despised as a young man, although by any conventional standards he was still a young man, though in truth he had never quite felt that way. That afternoon he dressed in his grandfather's overcoat and quickly apprised his appearance in the cracked mirror bolted to the otherwise blank white wall of his silent rented room. Having spent so much time by himself, without company and without any degree of intimacy even when company was forced upon him, he had over time grown so attached to himself that every change in his person, both physically and psychologically, was noticed with a acute dread. While he was sure nobody else in his office would notice how a wrinkly was beginning to form each side of his nose, and had each week dragged further down towards the corner of his mouth, he himself observed his physical downfall in silent horror, concluding that each further change in his appearance served only as further evidence of his decline, and further reason to continue to expect no more from a chilly, windy and thoroughly grey Saturday afternoon than to wander alone through the streets of a city he would never call home."

Best I could do, but it's a passage I really liked. The book is full of them.

What's some good dutch lit? I am dutch but can only really remember Borderwijk, Avonden, and de Aanslag. I loved de Avonden

Gerard Reve.

>Even some dusthead poseur won't be able read the 1000 pages of language puns and dick jokes

Is this a challenge?

Nooit meer slapen van W.F Hermans

Thank you very much, kind user.

No worries.

If anybody wants me to post some more passages I translated I can do. Commar and period placements are all in the original btw, he just tends to write long sentences at times...

In fact I'll post another just because I have the book here with me now. This is page 243 of the second book also:

>"Detached from society, distant from his remaining family, without friends and entirely unloved, he walked to work that morning burdened by what appeared to be a certain dilemma: either he would have to resign himself totally and without reserve to the Stoic ideal, to embed himself as much as he was able into a life of dogged isolation from external events; or, in contrast, he would have to bind himself once more to the world beyond himself, a world he had for many years now drifted away from, severing everything which had once made him more than just his isolated self. At the entrance to the building he was approached by a young man, no more than twenty-one, who he recognized as a new employee who had recently graduated from university. Maarten had barely paid him any attention before now, filing away the young man's face and superficial distinctions as he did into the vast internal archive where all such acquaintances were stored along with any relevant impressions they may have had on him. But he could not distract his attention away from the young man this morning, something about his appearance and demeanor as he walked towards him along the pavement demanded that Maarten think of nothing but this stranger, who he had spoken no more than ten words to over the past three weeks. The young man, whistling so forcefully that the air in front of his face was no less than a cloud of thick smoke, tore open the entrance door and bounded inside across the lobby. Maarten himself stopped outside the door, stood still with his briefcase still held tight at his side, and peered in at the young man who was now leaping up the stairwell two steps at a time, his back hunched to aid his propulsion, a smile sending wrinkles across his young face. It was himself, Maarten realized. Or at least, the man he had once been, in younger days, when the future did not seem, as it did now, as a prolonged exercise in futility and despair. He had once been that same ambitious and eager new employee, he too had once harbored dreams, hopes and the stubborn conviction that a fulfilling life awaited him in the near future. Where had such dreams retreated? Had his ambition truly dissipated? In his reflection in the glass, blurred somewhat by the dim morning light, he saw a man compelled solely to fail, qualified only to regret, and destined only to despair."

>he just tends to write long sentences at times...

A Dutch thing really desu.

>a fucking joke

His short fiction is actually pretty good. Haven't read Zettel's Traum, tho.

Besides, most American literature critics think David Foster Wallace is the endgame of literature. The point is, why give these sentinels of contemporary hegemony the last word?

These rule. Thanks for posting. I hope Veeky Forums memes the shit out of this when it gets translated into English, I'd definitely buy a copy.