Writing
His early work was strongly influenced by modernism, but he soon decided that this was not his strength. The titles of his stories and poems better represented his talent for critical reflection towards reality and a certain detachment from everyday life. Like his friend, the author Menno ter Braak, he was a great admirer of the famous writer Multatuli. But much more than Ter Braak, du Perron was in fact his cultural heir.
Du Perrons masterpiece Land of Origin (1935) is strongly influenced by Multatuli and Malraux, but rather it is a work that stands alone in Dutch literature as a true autobiographical novel. Extracts from the Dutch East Indies of his childhood are interspersed with European episodes, mostly located in Paris, where du Perron paints a sharp portrait of Europe, based on interviews with his contemporary intellectuals and artists.
The freshness of du Perrons observations and the liveliness of his imagination makes ‘Land of origin’ among the best Dutch novels of the twentieth century.
Read more about this topic: Edgar Du Perron
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.”
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“That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I’m sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.”
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