what irks me is that i can't get any of my singapore friends to love nooteboom. i don't know why this should be, they were wild hits with quite a few of my professors back in school. the following story, or in the dutch mountains, rituals - perhaps it could be because we were not raised with mythological imaginations, and only later - and it takes people like calasso to - are we startled into developing one, and by then is it too late? or maybe i just haven't tried the following story out on enough people. i love the elegance of the tale, of dinesen and nooteboom, true and beguiling without ever descending to dialogue and grit and human drama - it's the very lightness of which calvino spoke that is at work, and i don't care what coetzee says about nooteboom. i have byatt and julian barnes on my side, so there.