Out of Mind by J Bernlef

Out of Mind by J Bernlef

Dutch fiction

Original title – Hersenschimmen

Translator Adrienne Dixon

Source – Personal copy

Am I the only person that has a list of books you have seen on the list that you know are out of print, so you want to keep an eye out for them. This is the case with this book, well, a couple of books of the same list, and that was a list of the ten best Dutch novels that came out that was the NRC Best Dutch novels, of which this was the fourth best novel of a public vote. The list also had The Evening by Gerald Reve, a book I have read several times and just didn’t connect with it that wasn’t translated when the list came out. This was bt was out of print. So this won the m find book of the Year when it came out. Bernlef was a name taken by the writer Hendrik Jan Marsman. Bernlef was a blind 8th-century poet who started off as a poet writing novels later in his career, and this was very well received when it came out as it deals with dementia from an elderly couple as one of them slowly loses them self to dementia.

Philip scratches his ginger chin-strap beard, apologizes that there is no hot coffee left, and then asks how I liked The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene.

The question takes me aback. I am not attuned to it. It also seems as if I only half understand it. Like an incomplete sentence. You can guess at the rest, but there are more possibilities.

‘Haven’t got round to it yet, I say, and in order to please him I select another book by the same author from one of the shelves. Our Man in Havana.

‘I saw the movie once,’ I explain, ‘with Alec Guinness! He nods but I can tell from his face that he doesn’t know the movie. I pay. He accompanies me to the door and holds it open for me.

The Greene early on in the book Maartens remembers more

The book follows a Dutch couple that escaped the nazis and settled in Glouster, Mass., where they escaped when the Nazis took over. Maarten was a quiet man and a secretary in an NGO. He lives with his wife Vera. As the books open, he seems fluid, talking about the book he is reading by Graham Greene. This is a recurring thread in the book is Greene novels and films.  We see this quiet man as his mind starts to fail and how Vera copes with this as it is just simple things like bringing in the firewood, something he has done for years. He is in his mid-seventies, and those small things creep in, but as I say, the recurring talk around Graham Green each time, he remembers less and less about him and the book. This is being in the face of the storm as a man loses himself and how it affects his relationship with his wife.

Philip sends his regards to you – Philip, the bookseller, says the man, putting a notebook into his inside pocket.

‘Oh, him. I haven’t seen him for ages.’

“You went there only the other day. You bought Our Man in Havana from him. A very good Graham Greene. Made into a movie as well. Who played the main part again?’ I shrug my shoulders. Then Vera whispers a name. ‘Alec Guinness.’ Damn, she’s right. This fellow does look like Alec Guinness. Let’s hope he didn’t hear her, because it may not be much of a compliment. Same jowls and broad rims to his ears. I have to make an effort not to start chuckling.

Later on the same book and he remembers less about it and hos language is less !

I wondered how I would like this, as I had mixed feelings about The Evenings, another great Dutch novel. But no this is a book I think should be better known it captures a man as his mind falls apart so well. I was reminded of two works I have seen or read in the last decade that deal with this. The first was the memoir of the art critic  Tom Lubbock, which I read several years ago and was so touched by it but never reviewed it probably as I felt I couldn’t do a fragile, beautiful book like that justice. Bernlef has caught in the same way here how some lose words and memories as the day-to-day events slip bit by bit as the person loses themselves. The other is the film The Father, in which Anthony Hopkins plays a father struggling with dementia and how his world constantly seems different as his mind adjusts to the gentle loss of memories and place and time. Both of them showed, like this novella does, how one can fall apart and what we slowly fall off us as people. This is a hard-hitting little book that slowly moves like dementia does as we follow Maartens as he is struck down by dementia. Have you a favourite book dealing with Dementia?

Do you have a list of books you have seen on list of best books from places , times or just in the paper ?