*gasp* i've just had a good look at poach's travel plans on her blog and discovered that she is going to amsterdam! oh!!!!! i'm envious!!!

i don't think i'm ready to go yet though. i'll have to get through - a lot more dutch literature - before i can pay my pilgrimage. and then i'll need a long time to reread everything after i've been. i'll just dream about it from here. send me a postcard, poach!

speaking of which i was in the dutch literature section of the library yesterday, and i was staggered by the number of works harry mulisch had written, almost none of which had been translated into english. i guess we don't expect as heavy a literary output of english language authors? 6 or 7 titles is about what you would expect to see on the inner cover of a book by an accomplished novelist, so that, in english translations of nooteboom and mulisch, i always think that the 7 or 8 books listed there constitute their complete oeuvre, but there they are simply prolific - plays, poems, novels, essays, travel writing, criticism! ah me. why did i spend all that time on greek and latin when i could have spent it learning dutch?