Eric de Kuyper

Between 1988 and 1993, the Belgian author Eric de Kuyper published five volumes of fictionalized memoirs: Aan zee: taferelen uit de kinderjaren (1988), De hoed van tante Jeannot: taferelen uit de kinderjaren in Brussel (1989), Mowgli's tranen (1990), Grand Hotel Solitude: taferelen uit de adolescentiejaren (1991) and Bruxelles, here I come: nieuwe taferelen uit de Antwerpse en Brusselse tijd (1993). They roughly describe the author's youth between 1944 and 1961.

Grand Hotel Solitude. show more Taferelen uit de adolescentiejaren, the fourth volume, is situated in Antwerp, where the family moved in the 1950s. It describes the main character as a young man, aged 15 or 16, in 1957 / 1958, around the time of the World Expo in Brussels.

As with previous volumes, the author has chosen to give the main character as particularly "childish" voice, which, at times, gives the impression that the main character is only 12 years old. While this is a possibility (in a fictionalized memoir the age of the main character need not be the same as the author, who was born in 1942), nonetheless, the character's experience seems to suggest that his real age should be around 16.

The novel describes the difficulties of the main character developing his identity as gay during the harsh, prohibitive 1950s, the years before Stonewall. Beside these struggles, there is the development of his interest in the cinema, and friendship with a classmate.

Despite the "childish" voice, this volume is more attractive than previous volumes, focusing on life in Antwerp in the late 1950s. show less

The series of six books that started of with Aan zee: taferelen uit de kinderjaren (English: By the Sea: Scenes from a Childhood) take a central place in the work of the Belgian author Eric de Kuyper. In these books, presented as fictionalized autobiographies, he explores the time of his youth.

Het teruggevonden kind (English: Childhood regained) is a collection of essays about childhood. The title is a direct reference to the work of Marcel Proust whose Le Temps retrouvé has been translated show more into English under titles as varied as Time Regained Finding Time Again and The Past Recaptured (1927). The essays in Het teruggevonden kind are grouped into three sections; Part 1 which deals with various aspects of Proust's seminal work À la recherche du temps perdu published in seven volumes, translated as In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (1913 - 1927), followed by an Intermezzo consisting of two essays about sleep and strolling, and Part 2 about Childhood biographies.

Marcel Proust in À la recherche du temps perdu is the author par excellence to write about childhood memories. De Kuyper explores this theme in Proust's work extensively. In Part 2, several authors who are known to have used their childhood memories in their work are discussed, notably Rumer Godden, Roland Barthes, Walther Benjamin, Colette, Andre Gide, Imre Kertesz, Michel Leiris, Jean-jacques Rousseau, George Sand, Georges Simenon, and Stendhal among many others. At the end of the book, an annotated bibliography to authors discussed in the book is added.

The essays in Het teruggevonden kind are characterized by a heavy, laden, very literate style, with many references to literature. Various essays are repetitive, coming back each time to aspects of memories, childhood, etc. It seems De Kuyper is much more interesting than his fictional work. show less

Van deze drie romans scheen mij de eerste, "Aan zee" het meest authentiek. De tweede roman bevat nog een deel authentiek aandoende passages, maar alras klinkt het kleine-jongensstemmetje, de kleine jongen die opziet naar de grote mensen. In de navolgende delen blijft zit zeurderige stemmetje terugkomen, en zij verliezen elke aantrekkingskracht.

Over het geheel genomen, te weinig authentiek en, voor Nedelandse lezers, een tikkeltje te Vlaams (hoewel ik de vele franse verwijzigen dan weer show more moeilijk kan plaatsen). show less