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:
“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“For me, writing something down was the only road out.”
—Anne Tyler (b. 1941)
“There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)