18th, Utrecht.

It was the mold that pushed me over the edge.  The corner of the bedroom, behind a dresser, the entire wall was stained with patches of black.  All that was missing from the scene was a soiled mattress on the floor with needles scattered around to make the place officially a crack den.  The fact that this was my bedroom put me to question it all.  That, contrasted with the fact that I visited a good friend with floor heating.  Not that I particularly care for floor heating, but wanting to live in an environment free of toxins certainly doesn’t seem too much to ask.  

So when I finished Knausgaard and moved the dresser, standing there with my rubber gloves and a spray bottle full of bleach, I questioned my dedication to literature.  I suppose the underlying question would be, if it is meant to bring anything more to your life than a distraction, a human experience, some empathy.  Because I had assumed, quite wrongly apparently, that it would lead me to something else.  Wild assumptions like maybe a career, or at least some guidance in navigating one, some  ‘intellect’ (what does that mean?  I guess the ability to connect things, articulate my thoughts, to be critical), some knowledge to use out into the real world, something to prevent me from having to live like a crackhead.  Because if it is just the experience of reading – then aren’t there other endeavors that allow you to have satisfaction with the ‘experience’ – if only for the satisfaction, and even better something to use in the world?  A simple example would be watching a series.  You watch the right series and you can get a lot of the things I hoped to get out of reading – with the added bonus that the chances that another person has watched it is a lot higher than someone who read that book you read.  You could even argue that watching a football game has equal benefits.  I mean if you really watch it, without distraction, you come out the other side relaxed after hopefully having been on a rollercoaster.  Or subtract the time I take to read – if I put that into something like ‘home improvement’, I could learn a new skill, and eliminate the mold while I’m at it.  From there I could buy several run-down places, renovate them and sell them for massive capital gains.  Or what about studying the stock market?  Have you thought about that?  Because as I stared at that mold, I wondered how my life would look without literature in it.

On a whim I contacted a shipping company to see how much it would cost to ship my books to Canada.  You don’t want to know the number.  It’d be cheaper to leave them here and buy new copies one by one over there, but I likely wouldn’t do that, which means the physical representation of a lot of what I spent my time here doing would be gone.  And I really, really have to question if without that, I have anything to show for it.  I mean obviously the physical pieces, but also the actual knowledge in those books.  I’m extremely bad at recalling ideas that I’ve read, and sometimes entire plots.  So, with that not available to me – what do I have?  An overarching knowledge sense that life is unfair, everyone is more or less out to fuck you over, there have been atrocities in the past.  You see, if I studied something completely useless – I don’t know, say information security, at least at the end of it I could get a shiny certificate.  No one is giving me a plaque for finishing the Power Broker.   Robert Moses was a baller and a racist asshole.  That’s all I got.  

The mold, the shitty book, more free time than I’m used to for being inundated with the algorithm culminated in that review.  

But even without those circumstances, I’m quite certain it’s a shitty book, and I took comfort in finding a couple of reviews sharing my same sentiments – that this was not the standard we were used to from Knausgaard.  

I really deliberated a long time about the next book – even reading one.  Let’s see if Life and Fate brings some redemption, because we’re looking at a hefty time investment.  Just think of what you could do during that time. 

November 21, Seoul

The brick that is Life and Fate is on the floor next to me. I’m on the sofa with a laptop doing exactly what it was intended for, being atop my lap. The brick serves to raise my coffee mug by a few centimetres. Just the few required to bring the mug at ideal height, so I don’t have to lean over as far to make my laptop tumble down. No distractions in the house otherwise. No music, no wife, no laundry, nothing but a few indistinguishable sounds from the streets. It’s half a degree too cold for my liking but with this decor carefully built, there is no question of getting up to raise the temperature. O hail the guy who always claims there is no need for remote controlled light and heating by smartphone. I’m very excited to read L&F, I was very happy with you instigating reading it and I cannot wait to suggest reading War & Peace over Christmas and into the new year. I can see you won’t be up to the challenge but then I’ll apply a little blackmail saying the L&F suggestion was inappropriate too, and didn’t I just accept that too.

My head has been all over the place the last couple of weeks, months even. The lead-up to and then the actual visit to the Netherlands. Then coming home here, and having to ignore tiredness, mostly mental exhaustion over two weeks of social commitments – I thought obligations, but wrote commitments instead. There was study and work pressing at the end of three weeks of none of that. Then Inyoung and I hosted a wedding ceremony for our Korean family and friends three weeks ago now. With Inyoung and her mother doing the largest part of the preparations leading up to and on the day itself, there is hardly space for me to complain. Also, it was just a great day as well. But having decided I’d simply do this for the joy and satisfaction of my wife and mother-in-law, there was still a vague but constant shadow looming over, at the horizon in the weeks, months before. It’s done now. It was great. It was lovely. And I hope we never have to do anything like it again. The final semester of my studies kicked off immediately after returning from the mother country. The difference in complexity of previous semesters versus the current one is incredible. We’ve done away now with all the language learning and we, my thirty-odd classmates and I, are simply expected to be A-level Korean speakers. We’re clearly not, but well, why bother. Expectation is more than half anyway with a little ‘ignorance is bliss’ we cover a large chunk of the remaining discrepancy, and off you go. This semester focuses on relevant other topics for societal integration; law, money, history, that kind of stuff. I bought a text book of almost 300 pages, entirely in Korean and at the behest of a friendly teacher with a very monotonous voice we rush through the chapters as were they advertisements one reads quickly while on an escalator heading to the metro platforms. No offline classes were available after the NL trip, so it’s the online nightmare that is zoom. We’re all on mute and remain muted, even without the possibility to raise a symbolic digital hand, the teacher talks, we listen. I’m fifty-two hours in according to the intranet list I just checked and I am yet to speak a single word. Grasping the content of the book is do-able. Whether I’ll score the required number on the exam is largely up to the gods though as there is no speaking practise, and the oral exam takes up the main share of the exam.

I had to get up from the sofa as a large parcel was delivered. The heating is now up by the one required degree. The parcel sender appears to be Sinterklaas, a little inside joke that I guess the Korean custom officer didn’t pick up on. Every year since we moved here, by the end of November, my mom ensures we get a large box filled with presents and festive sweets to ensure we don’t get to forget the Dutch tradition I was so fond of as a kid. Having no experience with either Sinterklaas or Santa Claus, Inyoung is always childishly excited to receive the box and as a true Dutch kid pretends to be sad that Sinterklaas tells her not to open it until the fifth of December. I can only hope some of my presents are books.

I’ve been going through an intense streak of movie watching. Both together with Inyoung (she wants to watch horror movies with me) and by myself, watching old movies instead of endless series bingeing. And there were books too. Sufficient reading these days but I doubt if there was anything that I still remember when you ask me in a year. Carrère was a good one. I enjoyed Goodnight Tokyo for its similarity to a great series I watched a few years back. I may have mentioned this on whatsapp before, apologies for repetition, if any. Enjoyed the Passenger series on Korea as well, although you gifting it was more than half of the joy. I’d probably not have bought it myself. No new insights on the country after reading, but I liked the way the stories presented a slightly broader array of the different trends and issues we’re facing here. With your previous Passenger experiences that you seemed to enjoy a lot, I wonder where it went wrong for the Korean version and you as it seems to me they were successful in what they set out to achieve. I remember you were delighted with the Italian edition. Maybe it’s just the country itself that’s not for you. Although with your interest in boring North American concrete, it seems there is a lot to love here on the peninsula as well. On that note too, are you worried that an account of destroyed Soviet war-lands may not be entirely up your literary alley? And if so, are rescue measures in place for this 800-900 pages monster read? I’m not mocking though. I would hate it if something like this would push you from reading rather than pull you in more.

I’ll leave at this for today but will be back frequently. Life and Fate or just my life and my fate. No spoilers. Just rambling. Can you recommend me a movie you want me to watch in the remainder of the year? I’d like that. Something you enjoyed, or something you think works nicely with Soviet devastation.

21st, Leusden.

I’ll resist the temptation, bite my knuckle and avoid anything of the sort – it definitely crossing the line.  You have to know what I’m talking about.  Calling it a labour camp would set off an unhinged phoenix rising from the ashes scorching levels of wokeness  – anyways, I’ve already done it before and the analogy is played out.

This morning, snow on the ground, and I am running a deficit to keep the place a balmy 19 degrees, even though I said I’d rough it out at 15 the entire time in the absence of a youngling to keep warm.  With a green bottle of Turkish mineral water as makeshift candle holder, in a temporary morning ritual I set aflame a candle and put on “You Must Believe in Spring” (never too early – and the proudest title of a Strava run I’ve ever conceived).  Last week after a three-year absence I visited Ohoj coffee roasters for a batch of freshly ground dark Brazillian roast – the jury is still out if two year old Albert Heijn prepackaged beans can hold, well, a candle to Ohoj’s beans, delivered in a ropey sack and roasted in front of an audience – at least he wins on the style category.  It’s probably what I miss most – slow mornings, without the speedometer at 100 from the moment I open my eyes.

You’re right that it’s a brick of a book, though I was surprised that my copy, at least, has a manageable level of bulkiness.  One does not look absurd reading it in public, any question of being perceived as showing-off-because-I-read-big-books are put to rest.  The round glasses adorning the man on the jacket of the hardcover scream Eastern European intellectual, to my delight, though as is my wont, I remove the cover and store it safely for the duration of reading.  Naked, it is a beautiful deep red, with a golden fabric ribbon, attached to the binding edge of the book to be used as a bookmark.  Here again, we have a victor in the style category.

Yet I didn’t reach for it this morning.  Instead I read your post, with equal, if not greater delight.  I’ve stated before, I do miss the cultural exchange that occurs – admittedly ‘exchange’ is doing a lot of work in that sentence – since it’s usually one way, as my offerings are more of a cry for help.  Nevertheless, the writing brain is once again activated, and as I sit here in my cell, typing and drinking my second cup of Nespresso piss that they’d dare not even serve in a ……. 

I’ve only gotten to a few pages, chapter 4 or 5, and so far I am picking up strong Primo Levi vibez, would you agree on that? Both authors trained in the sciences and interesting descriptions about the hierarchy of the camp.  The difference being, Levi actually survived and lived to tell the tale, while Grossman was merely an observer (haven’t gone too deep on his life yet, but I think that is correct).

They’re calling for more snow in the afternoon and this does not bode well, for I left my copy at home, judging the 13 minute train ride insufficient to get into the mood.  Now I fear two hour train delays – it could have been the perfect setting to read on the train platform, standing in the falling sleet and snow, cold and hungry, shivering with the other passengers after a long day of subservience, waiting to board the train….

The country is changing.  In my first years here, when the temperature dropped below a certain level, the NS station Kiosk would offer free hot drinks.  If snow fell, trains were cancelled, people understood and accepted it.  It is now cheaper to own a car in this country than to rely on public transportation.  You’ll pay four euros for a crappy station cappuccino, and all hell breaks loose when there is a breakdown in service.  I’m not sure of the NS book of the month concept still lives, where reading a copy of the book on the train serves as your ticket.  Or did I dream that idea?  Rents are astronomical, young people are collecting portfolios of real-estate with the help of daddy.  You hear more and more that companies are adopting American style kamikaze employment contracts:  short and uncertain, no benefits, paying below market rates to the most desperate.  More and more people doing, things they don’t want to do, against their will, pushed with some vauge idealogy of freedom, GDP, profit maximization….

November 22, Seoul

The NS website tells me the free travel holding the ‘boekenweek-boek’ was suspended because of the pandemic, after which it was decided the concept was not to return. Within the current political Dutch landscape, I guess the train operations have different priorities. Same for the free coffee upon delay. Keeping in mind the NS involvement in the cleansing of the nineteen-forties, it seems understandable they don’t want to offend the current chief in charge, the duplicate Mozart with his racial theories. Free coffee and free train rides are no longer on these days train operation zoom schedules.

It sounds to me as if you are reading a hardcover version of the book. Mine is the Vintage pocket version. Not winning design awards, it does make for a sizeable and fairly light edition, easy to stuff in a bag, not the most comfortable for late night, laying down reading. A hindrance that pales comparing it to what the book’s subjects have to carry. I gladly carry my share of small potatoes.

Yes, there are hints of Primo Levi here. It also reminds me of Solzhenitsyn’s Ivan Denisovich. The seemingly futile but constant conversation. Imprisoned, at war, bad marriage, but may we never stop spouting words into the world. Having read a few descriptions of Grossman’s background, he may not have survived life in the camps but pinning him down as a mere observer seems a little harsh. He did spend a similar amount of years on the front line, trapped between a river on fire and a German army chucking grenades at him. I’d say, we are the mere observers here. While reading I find myself constantly referring to the list of characters in the back of the book to see if I’m meeting someone I’m supposed to already know. This usually improves over time, but this time it makes me wonder how many people never finished reading the book relinquishing to the difficulty of another language names. I remember experiencing similar inklings reading Korean translations in the beginning, that’s solved for me now but I’m sure many international readers give up on Parks and Kims and the constant who-was-that-again. Korean first names for siblings are often picked for their matching sound with the oldest child, adding an extra layer of complexity. But Russian names too. Length, similarity, complexity. Also, to list the characters on the last pages of the book appears to me not the best place. Readers who open a book at the beginning and don’t fast-forward or check elsewhere, do exist. Creating the scenario where one spends three weeks reading this tome, struggling to keep up with names and storylines, only to find a helpful list all the way at the back end. Maybe that’s only this edition.

Another thing that left me confused yesterday. You write about visiting a coffee roaster for the first time in years. Putting its roastings beside mass-produced, tasteless Albert Heijn produce that for which, every time a Dutch family fills a jug of coffee, an Italian barista commits suicide. But a paragraph later you are writing while sipping a cuppa George Clooney ambassadorship. Where did the beans go? This reminds me that, during my visit to Utrecht earlier this year, after you and I met, I ended up in a coffee place where I made a mental note to see if you knew the place. Mental notes are inferior to pencil notes once more. Too many Peaky Blinder moustaches, staff too laidback, furnishing and facilities all too sophisticatedly at random placed, but a delightful brew of coffee they serve. And there is a canal in front with benches, so it’s easy to escape the whole Scandinavian, fixed-gear bike, midsummer, kombucha vibe and simply enjoy coffee and reading. Now where and what is this place you ask? Good questions! Again, pencil note over mental note. I’m googlemaps’ing my way to an answer here. It’s definitely the west bank of the Westerkade. And, I’m zooming in on architecture now, the place name is… Coffee Leute Brauhaus. There you go. A name befitting the entire atmosphere inside. Home made pickles, lots of scrap wood, board games and guys in cycling lycra. But the coffee!

Today I am opening a second bank account and I am sending some photos and gifts to my mom. Hopefully the one friendly lady at the post office is around, she often gifts me something. Maybe an in-season tangerine today. After all this I’ll retreat to the sofa with Grossman and more tangerines.

22nd Utrecht

Yes, let me clarify what had occurred – I already felt this jump might be slightly confusing (along with some other typos), but there was a T8-70 transaction that desperately needed my attention (some buffoon ticked the Y5 tax box when clearly it should have been V0).  Ohoj was enjoyed at home, before hopping on the bike, catching the train and getting picked up by a colleague who took us into the salt mines for Nespresso heaven.  My lunch was a can of tuna, taken straight from the can.

Today I’ve gone and done just about the greatest thing ever – requested a half day off.  In theory I could read already, but I’d have to be at the helm of the laptop just in case, that buffoon may have been right all along at that tax code should’ve been Y5, for example, but I just want a full four hour block of uninterrupted reading.  If the weather clears up, I may heighten the experience by heading to a spa to read on the lounge chairs.  

In fact I already knew the place as you described it!  I must concur that their coffees are divine, worth turning a blind eye to the over-the-top kitchiness.  The owner of Ohoj gave a good assessment of my stance on these things when I told him what I wanted.  He said that I seem to have stigmatized all the trendy coffees with their sour fruitiness, and he understood that I wanted to rebel against all this when I ordered the dark traditional roast.  He gave me a batch, but at the same time advised me to give the tangy cranberry toned with hints of burberry and cinnamon another chance.  

I’m afraid I can’t find the time, or rather the piece of mind to watch a movie – I mean this space is occupied by reading.  Mr. Dekker gifted me a three month subscription to the movie platform he’s working for, and there are some gems to be found on there, but I don’t know if I’ll get to any.  There’s some protestant guilt that I feel when watching, that is somehow bypassed when I read.

Anyhow, I had a day to think about a movie recommendation for you.  Keep in mind that this is one I watched twenty years ago, I may have been a completely different person then (read: uncultured) but I remember watching The Red Violin on cold winter nights in Canada.  They may have even shown it on public TV for all I know, it is a Canadian film or filmed in Canada – some association with Canada in any case.  So keep in mind that it is a twenty something suburbanite making this recommendation.  I’d be curious myself to rewatch it to see if it is genuinely good or if it is the big screen version of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci code.   It’s quite old, I’m not even sure if you’ll be able to find it.  Depends how good you are at finding illegal streams, I suppose.

If you’re asking for something on the Eastern Front, then I’d go for the Polish film Cold War, if only for the music.  And lastly, El Secreto de sus Ojos, which I think I watched the last time my family was away, and one that makes my top five.

23rd. Utrecht. ~100 pages.

If the rest of the novel goes the same as the first 100 pages, I will have come out the other side unharmed, and moderately satisfied.  The names have become dangerously abundant, and you won’t find me referring to the back for the who’s who while I’m reading.  Instead, my strategy is to read through and not paying too much attention to this.  So far it has worked sufficiently, though I’m certain there is something that is lost.  I hope it does not take away from the novel as a whole.  Yet it’s precisely why I am already putting my foot down and saying no to Crime and Punishment, which I assume has the same name and relation issue, magnified by the fact that it would take place during the reign of the Tsar’s, where I’m aloof of the relationship and power dynamics between a prince, a kulak, a priest, the monarchs, the Romanov’s and so on.  Even with Life and Fate I’m certain I’m missing something with all the military terminology.  Someone needs to write the Russian epic within the context of a corporation.  Then I’m on board and fully aware of the dynamics.

The parts that I’ve least enjoyed are when the characters engage in dialogue – too often I’m guessing at my interpretation.  Sometimes a joke is made, and I can’t for the life of me see the humour.  

There are many characters, and I’m wondering if we’ll be asked to recall them again in another 100 pages.  There does seem to be a ‘main’ character within each chapter, and if I focus on them, I can fairly enjoy the reading.

The book has brought about dreams.  Last night I dreamt I was living in another time and place.  I was a peasant that could only labour and lived in a fantasy country that still believed in princesses.  She was even given a yearly one million euro allowance.  Thank God we’ve progressed past those times.

Snowy Seoul, November 28. ~200 pages

Abarchuck walks to the far end of the barrack, where the smoke of cigarettes is thickest. This provides him with a sense of otherness, the other side of his world. My bag too heavy today, I cannot recall the exact writing, so this is the image as it stuck. Hearing one podcast voice to the other stating that Grossman’s description of the infamous Lubyanka prison feels so familiar after reading his Solzhenitsyn’s as the like, feels like me (or you for that matter) using Abarchuck and his stroll to the other side of the barrack, to explain moving to another continent. Why are people so full of shit Jack? And by no means, I’m no different. I try and I fail miserably. Some manage to fail even more miserably and I can’t claim this surprises, in me is an ever-present pessimist, but I notice and I frown. Yes sure, it’s a perfectly maintained 20.5 degrees in your mansion, a house a size outshining comrade Putin’s, all one floor so you don’t have to climb stairs. All your kids moved out by now, it’s you and the housemaid who allows you to call her your wife, and here you are in ‘the office’. One glass into a new bottle of brandy, reading Life and Fate. Of course it’s only glimpses, but you are a sensitive chap, it’s those glimpses of Lubyanka atmosphere that strike hardest.

Once in a previous lifetime, I travelled to Tallinn from Helsinki by ferry. A ferry packed with alcoholics and cheap Scandinavians evading tax rules, buying carts filled with booze, not even considering the effort of leaving the ferry premises to see Tallinn. If they had been allowed to stay aboard the ferry, they would have. My friends and I hadn’t seen each other for several months, most of our Tallinn trip is also alcohol infused. Memories of being ripped off by taxi drivers, lousy strip bars and early morning club entries, it’s not as if we did Tallinn more justice than my fellow ferry boarders. The one thing we did though, we signed up for a guided tour through an old, abandoned Soviet prison. A thing I won’t likely forget. Abandoned as if in a rush to get out, all facilities and equipment in varied state of deterioration but still all there. Rusty bunk beds, single shoes on the floor, medical chair with gigantic light. And there was the execution room. Pure concrete, square sized, not bigger than your average broom and mop hideout, and dark stains on the wall which we were told were, well you get the gist. And as impressive as that tour was (and still is), not a second did I feel I could relate in any way to the harshness of life in one of the Soviet prisons.

We were served a surprisingly large amount of snow yesterday. The biggest november snowfall in Korea since weather registration. Maybe even more then, who’s to know. We can put it down to global warming, or to the long arm of Big Donald and his white house comrades, Father Christmas maybe? I read somewhere about the Snowball Earth hypothesis, which seems to gain traction among conspiracy theorists, for some even replacing the flat earth solution. Yesterday was definitely a strong argument for their books. There were some traffic accidents, cars slipping and sliding. One senior died an unfortunate dead. One senior seems by no means more than what would be an average death rate without snowfall. I saw a delivery guy, motoring his way up a slippery slope in our town. Very slowly, almost slower than me walking up the same hill. He almost made it all the way up, then slipped and fell. Revoking that Lubyanka feeling, can I say it feels as if I had a traffic accident yesterday? A near-death experience. I almost died yesterday Jack.

Here’s to hoping you work in the office today so you can tell the colleagues how you have a friend who almost died in a snow blizzard yesterday.

Utrecht, 29th, ~300 pages.

You speak of Abarchuk as if I know who he is.  Then you mention Lubyanka assuming that I know that this is a place, not the slovenly niece of Lietenant Commisinar Yakochenko who we met in Vyvostok at the helm of the 87th regiment while he was strategizing how to overtake the flanks with his Brigadier General Alexander Alexandorof Vivichukskistankof.  If it is true, that you are still oriented at this point, then I bow down to your greatness.  As for me, I’m lost in it all, and it’s slowly bringing on frustration.  I”m at the point of reading through and not dedicating any mental energy into figuring out the characters – and this passing over is, I’m afraid on the verge of extending into not only the people, but the ideas of the book.  You’ll hear all of this on Goodreads – the people must know.  These feelings are not unfamiliar with me.  It was the exact same with The Brothers Kamarazov, I was reading and looking at the words, but absorbing very little.  Occasionally an interesting passage and observation I could appreciate but by and large I was reading on autopilot.  I’m cursing myself for the choice of the book, and like TBK I’ll finish it mostly for appearance sake.  I’ll listen to the podcast, hopefully I can get something out of that.  As far as reading experiences go, I’m feeling let down.

It’s not only a door that I need.  I’m pining for a new house, two-door garage, a seven seater mini-van, floor heating and a kitchen with all the latest appliances.  Have you seen that stovetop that sucks the steam down, instead of letting it rise up?  This gets me giddy, not whatever is going on with air vice marshall…. You get the point.  (Switching mediums to reply to your messages earlier in the week – here, have a Strava kudos while I’m at it).

The agenda for the weekend is Life and Fate (maybe while listening to a podcast?), constructing two pieces of Ikea furniture, throwing out a lot of shit, cleaning the basement, cooking, running.  Would you believe me if I told you I miss the chaotic life of my not so distant past life?  I’ve forgotten how to do this.