David Foster Wallace

He died, no he committed suicide when he was 46. I am now 68 and stumbled upon his writing. I am an avid reader, read all kinds of things and thinner books usually find a place in my purse to read in any forlorn moment. Now I just bough two of his books (the bookshop in Antwerp only had two of his books) on offer and I went home with Infinite Jest, 1000 pages plus and 93 pages of annotations and the Pale King. No way to carry the book in a regular purse. When I started I was wondering about whether I could read it all without getting bored, uninterested or disgruntled... I soon discovered that this was writing like I had never read:rich, long winded, interesting all about the young peoples at a sports college. The language sings, the fumes of pot almost waft off  the page. The words will run away from you, will crowd you, will make you smile... Of course this is a book to be read as a young adult struggling with all that goes on in life. Yet the beauty will floor you at times:

That cockroaches can, up to a certain point, be lived with.
That "acceptance" is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
That different people have radically different ideas of basic personal hygiene.
That it is permissible to want. That everybody is identical in their
secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else. That this isn't necessary perverse.
That there might not, but there are people who might as well be angels.

David Foster Wallace grew up in Illinois. He studied at Amherst, he suffered severe depressions. He wrote a short story about the 1983 episode. The Planet Trillaphon as It Stands in Relation to the Bad Thing." which was published in the Amherst review. Trillaphon is an anti-pychotic medication...

If it looks difficult, think of the education you'll get reading his work: the taste  and smell of a time of growing up as Generation X in the USA.

PEN-International's congres in Amsterdam.

Openingsspeech Job Degenaar WiPC/ICORN-conferentie, De Duif, Amsterdam, 25.05.2015

 

 In a rich and democratic country as The Netherlands there is still freedom of speech and expression. There are no writers in prison. As a writer at the sunny side of the world you can do two things. Enjoy your luxury free life and write as a free human being about your free life.

Or enjoy this luxury and write, but also try to support your colleagues at the shade side of the world that can't defend themselves: the path less traveled by, as Robert Frost should say.

 Many of you, here gathered, do the same. You try to do something for writers who are in big trouble, writers, not criminals, who are in prison, or under threat, or who have killed with impunity, writers who are unable to help themselves: you can't open a prisoner's door from inside. Most of them live in countries with dictatorial governments as China and Vietnam or with powerless governments, like Mexico and Honduras:

There is no distance between writers, only between the circumstances writers have to live.

In my capacity of the national WiPC Chair, for nearly 10 years now, I became a member of the international PEN-community – and I'm proud to be so. Most of our work is in silence, in the lee, because of diplomatic reasons. It needs carefulness and hidden actions, which is not the same as chicken-heart: when lights are spotted on a writer who is in danger, he could become in more danger. You always have to keep in mind what you want to reach: not your so called bravery, but the life of a colleague who is unable to fight for himself. The Dutch WiPC is at this moment especially focused on actions for East-Asiatic countries where most of the writers in the world are imprisoned.

What we do, is seeking contact with governments and diplomats, and of course with other PEN-centres for consultation about the way how to take action, supporting imprisoned writers by sending cards to them, telling their stories in our own country, translate their work and give them a name and a face. The basic principle for our work is the dialogue, not the confrontation. You can't win anything by offending regimes if  you want to change their minds.

To mention three small, recent successes from our centre: we received from the Vietnamese Nguyẽn Hũu Caũ, who was freed after 40 years imprisonment, and his family, personal thanks for the work we have done. And together with a French sinologist we nominated two years ago the Chinese Li Bifeng for the American Hellman-Hammett Grant and we translated some texts of him into Dutch. He received the award. Unfortunately he is still in jail. Our work continues.

We also supported the foundation of the North Korean Writers in Exile Centre and the South-Korean president Lee Gil-won did a lot for them. And now some work of them also has been published in important Dutch papers and in a literary magazine.

David van Reybrouck, from PEN Flanders, once said: 'WiPC is the core business of PEN' and Larry Siems, from PEN America, summarized in Kyrgyzstan what should be the main subject in conferences like these: 'The key core issue is dynamic engagement on every case'.

Well, let's be engaged. I wish you a very pleasant and inspiring time here in Amsterdam.