Benjamin Moser hosts Bozar’s English Book Club
In its third season, the Bozar Book Club sticks to its winning recipe, with authors discussing books they love with an audience
American author is impressed by number of strong Dutch-language writers
Book clubs have become something of a fad over the last few years, but it could be argued that they have to some degree helped make reading sexy again. And that’s no small feat in an age of electronic gizmos and ever-decreasing attention spans.
The club switches between English, Dutch and French, and on 21 January, American author Benjamin Moser takes the stage to lead the discussion on Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet.
In addition to being a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and Harper's Magazine, Moser is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector and a translator to English of multiple languages, including Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch. He has translated the works of authors such as Elie Wiesel, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Bernardo Carvalho. He is currently working on the authorised biography of Susan Sontag.
For the past 14 years, Moser has lived in Utrecht in the Netherlands, where he earned his PhD from the local university. He also speaks perfect Dutch, which he says is not that small of a language “on a European level. For example, more people speak Dutch than all the Scandinavian languages combined.”
Still, he notes, it doesn’t have the power of numbers that English and French do. Which is why he’s so struck by the number of good Dutch-language writers. One he mentions is Flemish author Dimitri Verhulst of De helaasheid der dingen fame, three of whose novels have been translated into English.
But getting to that level of literary production requires help, he says. The government “has to pay for it. And if the language and culture are important to them, they will. You can’t keep cutting the subsidies for writers and culture in general as they’ve been doing in the Netherlands. Culture is expensive, but would you like to live without it?”
Books as windows
For Moser, the power of literature and the benefits of collective reading experiences, like those of a book club, can’t be underestimated. “If you read good books, they will automatically widen your horizon,” he says. “A good book club can introduce you to writers – and even languages and cultures – that you would not have otherwise known. Presumably, if you took any three good books, they would offer you perspectives into other people’s lives.”
Culture is expensive, but would you like to live without it?
Moser spoke with Bozar literature programmer Tom Van de Voorde at length about the selection of books to be discussed this season. “What was clear was that we wanted a mix of contemporary and classic authors and a mix of English-speaking writers and translations,” he says, “in order to try to represent the people that we hope will come.”
Under Moser’s stewardship, the book club will next month tackle The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa’s posthumously published book. You might wonder what the appeal is of a book by a writer who didn’t even bother to try to have it published during his lifetime. But Moser finds it remarkable. “If you had to choose one book to name the best book ever published, this would be a serious candidate. I read it in Lisbon when I was studying Portuguese. When you go to a country as a cultural tourist, you tend to buy the two or three famous books that you’re embarrassed you haven’t read yet.”
So he bought The Book of Disquiet out of duty, read it and fell in love with it. “It’s about how one man survives, about his doubts and his fears. It tells how he gets through his working day, over and over again, without any sort of glamour or hope for fame or money or love, or any of the things that motivate people. It’s a book about how to live. I still keep it by my bed. You can just pick it up wherever and read a few paragraphs.”
In April, the English section of Bozar's Book Club will discuss The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner. She’s an up-and-coming American writer who isn’t very well-known in Europe, but, according to Moser, that will soon change. “It’s only her second book, but it’s coming out in Dutch and French in the spring. She’s had rave reviews in the English-speaking world,” he says.
Kushner’s book, says Moser, offers a contemporary take on the late 1970s, “a romantic period that many people might remember”. The novel takes place in different American settings, but also in Italy at the age of the Red Brigade terrorists. “So European readers can certainly relate to it.”
