*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?