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auteurs / penproject 2006-07 
Kamiel Vanhole
Kamiel Vanhole made his entry in Dutch literature as a traveler.
And that label still fits him, although his stories are no longer
travel-stories in the strict sense. In his debut A demon in
Brussels (1990) he defined his own writing as 'dwelling on movement'
and he has continued to keep that attitude in the four novels
he has published afterwards.
A demon in Brussels is a collection of travel-stories that fits
into the heyday of that genre in Dutch literature, which is
situated in the eighties and nineties of the twentieth century.
Such bestselling authors as Lieve Joris and Adriaan van Dis
managed to give the genre a literary aura. Something similar
happened around the same time with the genre of autobiographical
prose which entered the literary arena with authors like Eric
de Kuyper and Leo Pleysier.
Both trends tighten the strings between literature and reality.
On the one hand they rely on the familiar realistic concept
of the novel, on the other hand they broaden and deepen that
pattern.
Kamiel Vanhole too continued to exploit the possibilities of
literary realism and to explore its boundaries.
In his first novel The Bite of the Turtle (1993) the starting
point is the life story of his grandmother. However, he radically
fictionalizes that story, e.g. by focalizing through Maggie
herself. It is typical for Vanhole that he doesn't focus on
events and anecdotes, but rather on dreams and thoughts. Reality
is defined as inner reality.
A recurring theme in Vanhole's oeuvre is the relation to your
roots. Those roots can be your family, but also your country,
your region, your culture.
The Bite of the Turtle is situated in Ireland and Flanders,
his next novel Animal Crossing in Flanders and the United States.
The title of that last novel thematizes Vanhole's fascination
for crossing borders and the effect this has on one's identity.
In Animal Crossing the I-narrator travels to America following
the footsteps of his long deceased great-great-granduncle. Vanhole
introduces a lot of documentary material, which enhances the
realistic and autobiographical stance of this novel. Nevertheless
this novel is not so much concerned with facts as with reflections
on roots, identity and freedom.
Vanhole's two latest novels, O Lord, where are your sidestreets?
(2002) and Bea (2006) elaborate on themes from his first novels,
but add two at first sight paradoxical dimensions: a political
and a mythological one. In O Lord, we follow an African stowaway
on a bizarre journey by train through Europe. The journey is
a strange mixture of concrete, recognizable places, people and
events on the one hand and Ulysseslike wanderings on the other.
Political questions about Europe, nationalism and migration
are raised, next to more philosophical reflections on identity
and universality. Kamiel Vanhole can be situatued on the left
of the political spectrum, which was also obvious in the collection
of letters entitled Right's right of way (1993) which he published
with the author Charles Ducal, in the aftermath of the spectacular
rise of extreme right in Belgium.
In the most recent novel Bea, Vanhole's reader, who is by now
used to travelling, departs on a dantesque trip through the
realm of the dead. In this novel Vanhole seems to part with
realism: surrealist traits that have been lingering in his books
since The Bite of the Turtle take the overhand and pull the
story out of a realist frame. However, that doesn't diminish
Vanhole's commitment: the stance of this book is clearly ecological.
Bea takes place in Brussels, a city Kamiel Vanhole has entertained
a dialogue with ever since his debut. In a typically Vanholian
way Brussels is not just this one concrete city with its recognizable
squares and streets and its foul-smelling river the Zenne. It
is also a symbolic place, a crossroads where past, present and
future are simultaneously perceptible and where Vanhole's quest
for identity takes shape. Together with Koen Peeters, Vanhole
wrote the book Bellevue/Schoonzicht, the story of a 30 kilometer
long walk through Brussels, which is revealed in all its banality,
plainness and charm.
Kamiel Vanhole has not only written novels, travel-stories and
a collection of letters, he has also written a comic and seven
plays. Throughout his oeuvre he has combined a deliberate use
of literary means with a critical social commitment. In his
writing he breaks through the fictional code in two ways. On
the one hand he foregrounds the artificial and literary character
of his stories by inserting commentary on the writing activity,
by being explicitly intertextual and by playing with literary
conventions. On the other hand he breaks through the fictional
illusion through his explicit social and political commitment.
Instead of writing closed, coherent stories which take the reader
on a safe trip through the fictional world, he opens up his
stories on two sides: he shows the literary mechanism and he
engages his books for a 'better world'. That makes Vanhole's
oeuvre vulnerable and relevant.
The story 'The Journey of the Slippers' fits the motto 'dwelling
on movement' with which Kamiel Vanhole entered Dutch literature.
The narrative situation is peculiar: the point of view taken
is that of a pair of hotel slippers: marginal and futile. The
narrator only indirectly takes part in the world: he is at the
service of the traveller. The story has elements of a fairy-tale,
an effect that is enhanced by being situated in Iran, the cradle
of story-telling. The story is not only concerned with the theme
of freedom or transitoriness, but also with the power of narration
and memory (next to experience): that is the pebble that gets
stuck in your soul/sole and that makes you realize: I exist
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