Adri van der Heijden’s 40-Year Novel Cycle: The Toothless Time, Zogkoorts, and The Iron Man

NieuwsuurZog fever

The Romancycle The Toothless Time from AFTh. van der Heijden has been around for forty years and has been expanded this weekend with a thirteenth part: Zogkoorts. Released by his own foundation, his publisher Querido is not involved.

The first book of the cycle would come first Scissors expanded into a triptych with the working title A Working Class Hero – to John Lennon’s song – and eventually saw the light of day as The Toothless Time. That is also the name of the foundation that is concerned with the legacy and dissemination of Van der Heijden’s work.

The fact that the foundation is publishing the new novel is nothing short of a stunt. The book can only be ordered through the foundation; it is not available in bookstores. That has everything to do with the ‘birth’ of the cycle, exactly forty years ago this weekend.

“Maybe I once had the intention to build a house and call it ‘The Toothless Time’. But I initially didn’t know that it would expand like this,” Van der Heijden says to News hour. The foundation asked him for a new novel, Van der Heijden delivered.

‘Exciting and pleasantly unpredictable’

From roman Zogkoortsof over 300 pages, is a sequel to Tuning forks, the eighth part of the cycle. Both parts revolve around the love of two women. The intermediate parts – nine, ten, eleven and twelve – have not yet been published, or only in a bibliophile edition. The writer is ‘in preparation’ for parts fourteen and fifteen.

Is that amazing, strange or crazy? Not for those who are familiar with Van der Heijden’s working method. At least two connoisseurs of his oeuvre are not surprised. Literary critic Arjan Peters and Dutch professor Marc van Oostendorp have long since stated that Van der Heijden is a writer who adheres to the laws of advertising gravity: A follows B, C follows.

The writer does what he wants. According to experts, this makes his work exciting and pleasantly unpredictable. “You never know what he’ll come up with next.” According to Peters, “this series never ends. It goes on and on. With his cycle, Van der Heijden plays a trick on time. That’s the beauty of it.”

Watch a fragment of Adri van der Heijden in an interview with Nieuwsuur below:

Adri van der Heijden about his novel cycle that he started 40 years ago

The Toothless Time is more than the sum of its parts, Peters and Van Oostendorp realize. Anyone who attempts to count the works of the cycle becomes entangled. “What is coming out now is part 13, which follows part 8,” says Peters. Van Oostendorp: “We already have a prologue, the original triptych with an extra book, a snack and then parts 6, 7, 8. And now part 11, which is also not part 11.”

Peters and Van Oostendorp are addicted to the cycle, but this is less true for the general public. According to Peters, the Dutch like order and logic, especially when it comes to reading. A writer who skips part of a cycle is just a nuisance. “For those who refuse to surrender and immerse themselves in their universe The Toothless Time reading thousands and thousands of pages of prose may be a task.”

Once upon a time, after the launch of the first part in December 1983, everything was different. The first parts of the cycle went through edition after edition and Van der Heijden was a literary star. Peters and Van Oostendorp can still remember their first encounter with the work. They were immediately captivated by it.

“It was an impact,” said Peters, who was a 19-year-old student at the time. “We thought: something is happening here in Dutch literature and we are there.” And Van Oostendorp: “It is the writer, also for autobiographical reasons, who has guided me all my life. Whom I discovered myself as an adolescent, 40 years ago, and whose books are still being published. And that it is so is a series that are all related to each other.”

Loner

Van der Heijden has started living a withdrawn life in recent years. “He has become a loner,” says Van Oostendorp. “As a result, he has lost the position of power that he once had in literature. He is an important loner, but a loner. That there is a writer who creates such a great work is unique. He has long surpassed many writers That is very special.”

In the meantime, Van der Heijden continues to write. A new part of the cycle will probably appear in May: The Iron Man. He has no illusions about reading his colossal oeuvre: in a country where unreading has been elevated to an art form, a new generation of readers will not easily join in. “What should I do then?” says Van der Heijden. “I just keep pretending to myself that it’s still good for something.”

2023-12-10 18:56:31
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