Interview #13: Jaap van der Bent

Sixty five years after its US publication & in the Centenary year of its author, On the Road is the focus of a leading European Beat academic. What did Kerouac's work mean to the Dutch and Flemish?

AFTER WRITING his MA thesis on the work of Jack Kerouac in 1981 and his PhD dissertation on the work of John Clellon Holmes in 1989, Jaap van der Bent became Assistant Professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Until his retirement in 2013, he taught American literature, with an emphasis on the Beat Generation and African-American writing. He has published many articles and essays on American literature and the Beats in Dutch, British and American newspapers, periodicals and books.

Could you please share the title in Dutch and English of your new book?

My book is called Jack Kerouac op weg in Nederland en Vlaanderen. In English that would be Jack Kerouac on the road in the Netherlands and Flanders.

Who is publishing it and when is it available? Might it appear in an English edition at some point?

It is published by a relatively small but interesting and active publisher of both Dutch and foreign literature called In de Knipscheer, who, in the past, also published books by a number of Beat and Beat-related writers like Franco Beltrametti, Diane di Prima and Jerome Rothenberg.

The book was published on October 9th and has been available since then. And, no, I don't think there will be an English edition, mainly because the book is very much focussed on the reception of Kerouac's work by Dutch and Flemish critics and writers whose names won't ring any bells with English readers. Possibly with the exception of the poet and novelist Simon Vinkenoog, whose work I discuss, and – if any British readers still remember him – Jan Cremer, to whom I briefly refer.

Pictured above: The cover of Jaap van der Bent’s new On the Road book

This is possibly more of a geography question they a literary one (!), but why do you include both the Netherlands and Flanders in the title?

As most people in the UK will probably know, Dutch is spoken both in the Netherlands and in Flanders, which until 1830 were one country. Still, there are a number of cultural, linguistic and literary differences between the Netherlands and Flanders.

It would go too far to discuss these here, but some of the differences I just mentioned also play a role in the reception of the Beats in the Netherlands and Flanders. For instance, from the beginning, Flemish writers seem to have been more receptive to the experimental aspects of Beat writing, which may have to do with the fact that Flemish literature frequently has a baroque quality which seems to be less prevalent in Dutch literature. Possibly because of that difference, a number of Flemish writers picked up on William Burroughs' work before their Dutch colleagues did so.

I am assuming that this project is tied-in with the Kerouac Centenary celebration – or is that a coincidence?

No, that is not a coincidence. Last year I became involved in the organisation of a Kerouac Centennial event that would take place sometime in 2022 in Ruigoord, which is an artistic and bohemian community on the outskirts of Amsterdam.

The other organisers were Hans Plomp, a Dutch Beat-influenced writer; Yvonne van Doorn-Mousset, the widow of the Dutch author Johnny van Doorn; and René van der Voort, the man behind Counter Culture Chronicles whom you interviewed some time ago. Another person who took part in some of the early discussions about the event was Peter de Rijk, the main editor of In de Knipscheer.

Of course we soon started wondering what might be a suitable publication to accompany the event. At a certain moment I suggested to Peter and the other organisers that it might be a good idea to publish a more general book about the impact of Kerouac's work on Dutch and Flemish literature, especially because such a book did not yet exist. That's how it happened. It also helped that I had already written in English about the influence of the Beats on Dutch and Flemish literature in a number of more academic publications. 

Is there a particular premise or argument presented in your book?

There is, but it is not necessarily my premise or argument only. What I wanted to do, is to give an overview of the way Dutch critics reacted to Kerouac's work in the course of time, and to investigate how Kerouac's writing influenced a number of Dutch and Flemish writers.

As a consequence, the book features longish chapters by me on the critical response to Kerouac and on the way in which he influenced Dutch and Flemish writers. But the book also consists of a selection of articles and reviews which are meant to illustrate some of the points I make, as well as poems and prose fragments by Dutch and Flemish writers who were influenced by Kerouac.

In the articles and reviews there is one premise or conclusion which really stands out. What is especially relevant to Dutch critics and writers is no longer the sense of freedom and adventure which characterises a book like On the Road, but Kerouac's artistry and the notion that for him writing was more important than anything else.

What impact did On the Road have on the Netherlands from the late 1950s? When did it first appear in English? In Dutch?

It took some time for the book to reach the Netherlands. Because American hardback editions were not imported on a large scale in the 1950s and 60s, both critics and general readers had to wait for the British edition of the book to come out. As a result, the first reviews of On the Road appeared in the autumn of 1958.

These reviews were very mixed. Some critics liked the desire for liberty and spontaneity which is evident in the book, while others thought it was superficial, repetitive and boring.

In fact, quite a few critics preferred The Subterraneans to On the Road. Perhaps that has to do with the fact that in a small country like Holland readers were able to relate to the smaller, ‘European’ scale of The Subterraneans, rather than to the much larger scope of On the Road. The Subterraneans was also the first of Kerouac's books to appear in Dutch, in 1959. On the Road only came out in a Dutch translation in 1961.

Apart from the critics, there were of course many younger people who responded enthusiastically to the sense of adventure and freedom in the book. That freedom was definitely not easy to find in the rather conservative and staid Dutch society of the late 50s and early 60s.

What impact did that book have on you when you first encountered it? Did it trigger your interest in the Beat Generation and eventually draw you into Beat Studies?

I first read the book when I was 16 and still in high school. Living in surroundings that were rather conservative, I was definitely among those younger readers who immediately were captured by the sense of freedom one finds in the book. That said, I was also impressed by the mournful and melancholy quality of the book, those moments when Sal Paradise does not really find what he is looking for.

And I remember the excitement I felt when I discovered that the characters in the book were all ‘real’ people, who themselves were sometimes also writers and about whom you could read in other books by Kerouac, and even in books by other writers, as in John Clellon Holmes' Go.

What do you feel is the lasting legacy of the book and that movement in the Netherlands?

I think On the Road and the work of the Beats in general have helped to open up Dutch literature. Of course one should also mention Allen Ginsberg, whose poems exerted a strong influence on Simon Vinkenoog and a number of likeminded poets.

And, as I said earlier, it is interesting to see how Kerouac's devotion to his art holds a strong appeal for quite a few contemporary writers who in many cases are not influenced by Kerouac as far as their use of language is concerned.

How do you personally view the book today, 65 years after its publication? Has it dated? Or are its ideas outmoded on matters of race, gender and sexuality? Or does the literary voice of the work still resonate?

I think On the Road was already dated, but in a positive way, when it came out in 1957 and perhaps even more so when the first Dutch translation came out in 1961. Although people tended to overlook that at first, by now everyone realises that the events in the book take place in the late 1940s.

Of course Kerouac, as a child of his time, sometimes writes about racial issues, gender and sexuality in a way which nowadays tends to raise the eyebrows of some readers. I am very much in favour of reading literature in the context of the time in which it was created and I am definitely against banning books because they deal with issues that have become delicate in certain circles. And yes, the writing in On the Road for me is still as powerful and impressive as when I first read the book. 

Many thanks, Jaap, for talking to Rock and the Beat Generation…

See also: ‘Dutch celebrate Kerouac at 100’, September 24th, 2022; ‘Countercultural cornucopia’, August 17th, 2022, and ‘Dylan and the Beats: A Dutch take’, June 16th, 2022, all at Rock and the Beat Generation