Doubts, always those doubts. ‘What it says is too good, I reread; I’m not enough of a dick yet’, writes Kees van Kooten in the story collection Forty, when he rereads his modest production of an undisturbed writing holiday in Gérardmer, France. The booklet, which was published on the occasion of his 40th birthday, deals with, among other things, the struggles and distractions of the writer’s life (‘What is striking about Gérardmer is that more than half of the population is female, some even in a striking way’), and the fear that what he produces is not good enough.
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