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auteurs / penproject 2006-07 
Koen Peeters
Since his debut in 1988, Koen Peeters (°1959) has been working
on a unique oeuvre in Dutch literature. His first novel Conversations
with K. set the tone by introducing a number of characters and
themes which would populate and define the rest of his work.
In this novel the main character Robert Marchand - often considered
to be Peeters' alter ego - and his conversation partner K. chat
away while visiting a series of Belgian monuments and icons
like the Zoo of Antwerp, the atomium and the Africamuseum. The
structure of this novel is loose: it is a collection of anecdotes
and faits divers. In his second novel Visit our cellars from
1991 the conversation partner is the reader. He/she is taken
on a tour by the narrator-guide through five different cellars
of a house. Each cellar contains a biographical story.
The main narrative form of these first two novels is 'the conversation':
in Koen Peeters' novels there is always a lot of conversation
going on. That motive characterizes his oeuvre until today.
Thematically, it illustrates the complexity of human communication
and the (im)possibilities of language. The conversations in
his novels tread the borders between
clichés and witty stories; pubtalk and humanistic-didactic
dialogues in the style of Erasmus or Rousseau. Koen Peeters'
books always have an enlightened encyclopaedic stance: the narratee
and the reader are offered small facts, historical digressions,
fragments of a documentary discourse. The reader can always
learn from it, but you always fail to build them into a coherent
world view or an ideology. Like an encyclopaedia, his novels
remain fascinating, instructive but deliberately incoherent
collections from which no conclusion or synthesis is to be drawn.
Collecting is another important leitmotiv in Peeters' oeuvre.
His third novel The postman (1993) has collecting as its central
theme. Here too, the main character is Robert Marchand, this
time in the guise of a postman who picks up stones on his route,
which he uses to construct a bizarre building in his backyard.
That habit/hobby can be considered a metaphor for Peeters' writing:
the author follows a course in reality and collects encounters,
anecdotes, conversations along his way which he then compiles
into a literary text in a deliberate, artificial, yet very readable
way.
Because of this fragmentary discourse and this explicit artificiality,
Koen Peeters has always been labeled a postmodern author. Yet
he definitely can not be situated in the intellectual variant
of this movement: he is attracted not by the big theories but
rather by the banality, the surface.
Collecting becomes an adventure in Peeters' novels: a way of
putting things in an alternative order: arbitrariness and efficiency
pair up and a trail becomes visible which was hidden before.
In a similar way the humble practice of philately functions
in Peeters' oeuvre as a metaphor for the efforts made by people
and the author to be creative with trivia, with details, with
what is marginal and unessential. Coherence is not given in
the world, but is applied by each individual to his own discretion.
The entire oeuvre of Koen Peeters suggests that depth is not
found únder, but rather ín the surface of things.
In his novel, It is not serious, mon amour from 1996, we meet
with a small group of Tintin-like young men who try to make
sense of reality by doing experiments and setting up projects.
In fact, the group is not réally doing that: they produce
pseudo-science, pseudo-art and pseudo-solutions: it is an old-fashioned
boys' club made up of dreams of the future and the urge to experiment.
Yet the book has a serious, existential stance: an insecurity
about the significance of life. The novel explores the possibilities
of an ironic attitude towards life. Such an attitude is clearly
beneficial for friendship and a sense of belonging together,
but is doesn't come up with answers, let alone sense or meaning.
Irony is a trademark of Peeters' oeuvre. Because of that distance
towards reality he is again labeled postmodern. Yet the irony,
which Peeters is very skilled in, is not uncommitted: the irony
itself is being ironized. That double movement leads to a sense
of authenticity in Peeters' oeuvre: it is committed and even
optimistic.
In Bellevue/Schoonzicht, a book from 1997 which he wrote with
Kamiel Vanhole, the authors present a versatile portrait of
Brussels. In his entire oeuvre until then, Peeters had been
designing a portrait of Belgium, a country which he made into
a typically Peetersian collection of dreams, monuments, memories,
anecdotes and characters. The effort to portray Belgium continues
in his novel Acacialaan (2001). It is peopled by Belgian literary
icons like Louis Paul Boon as well as by Belgian psychopaths
like Marc Dutroux.
In Mister Shaman from 2004 science and superstition are set
up against each other. Koen Peeters doesn' t take a stand in
that discussion: the main theme is rather the quest for sense,
continually thwarted by the persistent march of nonsense.
In 2005, Koen Peeters successfully made his debut as a poet
with the collection Fijne Motoriek, that shows the same mixture
of rhetorics and anecdotism which
characterizes his novels.
In 2007 Koen Peeters published a novel entitled Great European
Novel. Despite the highly ironic title which refers to the Great
American Novel, this is Peeters' least ironic novel so far.
Two stories are being interwoven: that of the businessman Theo
Marchand and that of Robin, his subordinate, who is commissioned
to write a European report. Enthousiastically Robin departs
on a journey along the European capitals. In fact, he is writing
two reports at the same time. The first, official report is
an empty shell made up of universal marketing language. This
is a Europe made of airports, call centers, hotel lobbies and
meeting rooms, but is that the real identity of this continent?
The second report is just a notebook filled with jottings: sentences
overheard by Robin, strange words he notices, accidental encounters.
A completely different picture of Europe is drawn there - and
the notebook resembles the novel we are reading - a human Europe
of small events and differences, of nuances and details. Language
and multilingualism are crucial here: Robin collects words from
different languages. Finally, a third dimension of a European
identity is drawn through the life story of Robins boss, the
jew Theo Marchand: it is the heavy load of 20th century European
history.
In the story 'Small European novel' Marchands life story is
extracted from the novel. His life - just like Robins undertaking
- is defined by the words: 'The boy will travel and in that
way temporarily disappear'. Yet the European languages offer
both travelers an anchorage and root them in a community.
Great European Novel is a very rich, committed and touching
book, which is small and banal as well as great and meaningful.
With this novel Koen Peeters further broadens his writing horizon:
he enters European waters .
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