I finished reading Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut.

It was not until I had read Galápagos (1985) in 2012 that I realized what a genius Vonnegut is. Last winter in China I read While Mortals Sleep (2011), a collection of short stories of which “The Humbugs” is absolutely gorgeous.

Back to Slaughterhouse-Five.

On page 21 (I’m reading the beautiful Dutch translation of 1970 translated by Else Hoog and with a cover by Ton Klop[above]), is the remark of Vonnegut on the fact that nothing intelligent can be said about a massacre, in this case the bombing of Dresden in World War II.

These are his words: “There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet?“”

“Poo-tee-weet”, translated with an exclamation mark in Dutch au lieu of a question mark in the original English, is an onomatopoeia of a bird vocalization and in Vonnegut’s novel it stands for something meaningless (as Aristotle used it when he called the Platonic forms teretismata).

In reality of course, bird vocalizations are not meaningless (they are not blituri to use another ancient word), it is a form of animal communication that humans fail to understand.

Which brings us to the trope of meaningless violence, the Dutch notion of excessive and unnecessary violence. Here too, Vonnegut has something to say. When one character announces he is writing an anti-war book, someone retorts that writing and anti-war book is useless, because war is inevitable, you might as well write an “anti-glacier book”. Observations like this make Vonnegut not only a philosophical writer but also one of the great moralists of the 20th century.

Pete Shelley was an English singer, songwriter and guitarist, best known as the leader of punk rock band Buzzcocks, and for writing “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” (1978) and solo singles as “Homosapien” (1981) and “Witness the Change” (1981).

Robert Venturi was an American architect, best known for his book Learning from Las Vegas (1972).

Learning from Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (1972) [above] is a book by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour.

On the book’s cover was a billboard advertising “Tan Hawaiian with Tanya”[1].

The book had a major impact on the emergence of postmodernism.

Me posing in front of a giant sequoia, photo by Katelijne Van de Cauter

I never realized there were sequoia in Belgium. The one I’m posing with above lives in the parc of the Solvay Castle.

The largest in girth is found in Esneux[1].

“Artichoke” wallpaper[1], by John Henry Dearle for William Morris & Co.

As I’ve mentioned[1], I travelled to China over the holidays, to visit my daughter Bonnie.

On holiday , and practically only then, I read.

My finest read this trip was Michel Houellebecq‘s De koude revolutie. One of the most enigmatic essays in that collection is “Sortir du XXe siècle” (2000), the title of which translates as “Leaving the 20th Century”, but which has, to my knowledge, not been translated into English.

The essay starts as a diatribe against the left, against 20th century social sciences (Pierre Bourdieu) and thought (Jean Baudrillard). It criticizes the nouveau roman and praises New Wave science fiction (“Ballard, Disch, Kornbluth, Spinrad, Sturgeon and Vonnegut…”).

Most of all it praises American writer R. A. Lafferty and extols the virtues of the short story “The World as Will and Wallpaper” (1973), the title of which references Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation and manages to weave William Morris (English artist, writer, socialist, activist and designer of wallpaper) in the story, both as character and as author of The Wood Beyond the World, which in this story has become a place which cannot be reached.

I am quite fond of texts that make broad sweeping generalizations.

Last Sunday, I came across one such generalization in the Dutch translation of Kristeva’s Strangers to Ourselves (at the Sint-Jansvliet flea market in Antwerp).

“Nowhere is one more a foreigner than in France. Having neither the tolerance of Anglo-American Protestants, nor the absorbent ease of Latin Americans, nor the rejecting as well as assimilating curiosity of the Germans or Slavs, the French set a compact social texture and an unbeatable national pride against foreigners.”

The above generalization is one of national character, one of the hardest to make and the least respected, the category basically came into being with Hegel and Herder‘s Volksgeist and fell out of favor with Nazism.

I visited my daughter Bonnie in China over the Christmas holidays. An entirely pleasant journey. This is what we did.

Jazz À Gogo (1964) – France Gall

France Gall was a French singer. She is famous for such songs as “Teenie Weenie Boppie” (on LSD), “Zozoi” (Brazilian), “Ella, elle l’a” (on Ella Fitzgerald) , “Laisse tomber les filles” (on Lotarios), “A Banda (Ah Bahn-da)” (Brazilian), “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” (Eurovision song winner) and “Pauvre Lola” (which only features her giggle).

Of personal interest is her collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg.

Notorious is the fact that she apparently was unaware of the fact that the “lollipops” in  “Les Sucettes” could mean more than just mere lollipops, despite her being already 19.

2018 is around the corner. As always, I check the new authors/painters/musicians whose work becomes public domain in 2018.

Nude Against the Light by Pierre Bonnard

Major names this year include:

• Pierre Bonnard (b. 1867), French painter
• Pierre Janet (b. 1859), French psychologist
• Arthur Machen (b. 1863), Welsh writer
• Alfred North Whitehead (b. 1861), English philosopher
• Aleister Crowley (b. 1875), English occultist
• Luigi Russolo (b. 1885), Italian artist