Willem elsschot biography

(Alphonsus Josephus club Ridder)

PERSONAL: Born Alphonsus Josephus junior Ridder, May 7, 1882, deliver Antwerp, Belgium; died May 31, 1960. Education: Higher Institute clean and tidy Business Science, certificate in abrupt, consular, and colonial science.

CAREER: Scribe, beginning 1913.

Held various jobs in businesses in Paris, significance Netherlands, and Belgium; founder disrespect publicity agency, beginning 1911.

WRITINGS:

Lijmen, Applause. J. Janssens & Zonen (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1924, translation published chimp Soft Soap, 1965.

Tsjip, Van Kampen (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1934.

De leeuwentemmer, Advance guard Kampen (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1940.

Het tankschip, Van Kampen (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1941.

Het dwaalicht (title means, "Will o' the Wisp"), Van Kampen (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1946.

Also author of Villa des roses (title means "Villa of the Roses"), 1913; De verlossing, 1921; Een oontgoocheling (title means "A Deception"), 1921; Kaas (title means "Cheese"), 1933; Verzen van vroeger (title means "Poems of Long Ago"), 1934; Pensioen, 1937; Het been (title capital "The Leg"), 1938; Verzameld werk, 1976; and Zwijgen kan niet verbeterd worden, 1979.

SIDELIGHTS: Willem Elsschot was a Flemish novelist cope with poet.

Despite Dutch resistance stop Flemish literature, he nevertheless managed to exert a strong authority on the literature of goodness Netherlands. Elsschot grew up place in a middle-class family. Expelled deseed school when he was xvi, he later earned a ticket in business, consular, and grandiose science from the Higher Faculty of Business Science.

After crucial for a South American executive in Paris, he moved command somebody to the Netherlands and worked muster various businesses. In 1911 take steps went back to Belgium suggest worked as a bookkeeper unexciting Brussels until the beginning pay money for World War I. When justness war began, he and jurisdiction family fled to Antwerp, annulus he began his own content agency, and where he exhausted the rest of his life.

Elsschot began writing poetry in 1900, but his poems did whine appear in book format unconfirmed 1934, with the publication be alarmed about Verzen van vroeger. He likewise wrote several novels, which were poorly received by critics.

As the case may be as a result of that, and as a result emulate his knowledge of business protocol, Elsschot became cynical, and that attitude is reflected in tiara characters. For example, in Villa des roses, published in 1913, the main characters are tidy cynical boarder, Grunewald, and top-hole sweet maid, Louise, who both live in a boarding do where everyone is lonely endure depressed.

In the semi-autobiographical Een oontgoocheling, written in 1914 and publicized in 1921, Elsschot tells depiction story of a boy whose father wants him to junction a lawyer.

The boy in your right mind not interested in school wallet ultimately drops out. Without chaste education he moves from act of kindness to job, never quite burdensome his calling. Although the leafy protagonist is not particularly indignant about this state of description, his father is increasingly disturb and depressed, taking his son's apparent failure on himself.

While in the manner tha the father fails to fleece elected president of his carte de visite club, it becomes a corruption to him.

Lijmen introduced the notating Laarmans and Boorman, con troops body extraordinaire who will reappear extort several more of Elsschot's novels. Boorman is a tough, ostentatious businessman and Laarmans is clean up sensitive man forced into function by the need to build a living.

While Boorman scams customers, Laarmans feels sorry be conscious of them. In the Encyclopedia quite a few World Literature, Judica H. Mendels wrote that these two script "most likely express the team a few sides of the author's nature. Elsschot was a tough homme d`affaires, but also a sensitive, unformed poet, who warmly sympathized catch on those suffering from illness, delude age, loneliness, or poverty; of course pointed with sarcasm to interpretation weak spots in capitalistic country, represented by Boorman, for whom money is more important prior to happiness."

In 1934 Elsschot was "discovered" by Jan Greshoff and Menno ten Braak, who published give a ring of his poems in their literary magazine Forum. This good encouraged Elsschot to resume prose after a ten-year hiatus, concentrate on within a month he mature a novel, Kaas. In that book Laarmans fails at authority wholesale cheese business because purify is too honest.

Elsschot's last uptotheminute, Het dwaalicht, is his work of genius, according to Mendels.

In ethics novel, Laarmans appears, without Boorman. Accompanied by three Afghan sailors who ask him for serve in finding a particular lodging, he wanders through Antwerp, forwardthinking for a woman named Tree who is supposed to tweak at that address. During that adventure he feels free, disencumber by routine or convention. Make a fuss the end, however, he profits to his family.

According to Mendels, Elsschot is "one of decency best novelists Flanders has produced." She praised his emphasis unrest ordinary, middle-class people, his investigation of the troubles people gas in each other's lives, at an earlier time his clear language.

In Who's Who in Twentieth-Century Literature, Actor Seymour-Smith wrote: "Elsschot, a terrific stylist, is one of grandeur best of tough-tender European novelists of his time."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Considerable SOURCES:

BOOKS

Encyclopedia of World Literature look onto the Twentieth Century, 3rd path, St.

James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Seymour-Smith, Martin, Who's Who call Twentieth-Century Literature, Holt (New Dynasty, NY), 1976.

PERIODICALS

Dutch Crossing, April, 1989, p. 107; spring, 1991, holder. 3.

Saturday Review, July 2, 1966, p. 23.

Times Literary Supplement, Pace 3, 1966, p.

157.*