Wednesday, December 02, 2009

DREAMY ADOLESCENCE

I was probably a peculiar fourteen year old. For which I give all credit to my home environment.
My older brother Tobias was the local chess prodigy, and had thousands of games memorized. He could also quote all of Charles Dickens, and the bible in both Dutch and English.
These eccentricities made holding a conversation with him hard, as his grammar school friends one by one had discovered. His friends from the Hertog Jan College were a bit more like him.

There was only one of them with whom I really got along - he lent me Multatuli's book 'Max Havelaar'. It was the first Dutch book I had read in quite a while at the time - we did not have many Dutch books in the house.
[It wasn't untill later that I discovered the Dutch poets and playwrights, as well as many fine writers. What I read was in our bookshelves, and that reflected the home language.]


My mother was an avid reader, and regularly received packages from Blackwells. At one point I tried counting how many books were in the house, and gave up at around five thousand, with probably a far greater number not included in the count. Of course not all of the books were hers, but many of them were.
Between the four of us we were probably responsible for quite a bit of deforestation, as there were bookshelves in every room including the hayloft over the stables. And one of the sheds.


Children's books. Science Fiction. Poetry. Mythology. Art.
Reference. Textual Criticism. Architecture. Religious Studies.
Old Norse, Old Irish, Old English - in the original languages, plus translated, annotated.
Mystery Novels.
Medicine.


That last category was one shared by both of my parents, though neither were medical people.


By the time I was fourteen I had read all of Kipling, Saki (H.H. Munro), Shakespeare, Nabokov, Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Simenon, Conan Doyle, Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, plus Tanach and the Christian Subsequentia.
All of the National Geographic mags published between 1950 and 1974. Ditto for all issues of The Magazine of Fantasy And Science Fiction, from founding date in 1949 onward. Two and a half decades worth of Scientific American. A decade and a half of Horizon Magazine. The Larouse Gastronomique.


The medical books I browsed through had told me all about human reproduction and digestion by the time I was nine, and I had gotten into trouble at school when Mijnheer Goes discovered me drawing a detailed diagram of the urinary system for my classmates - with "witty" asides about all the things that could go wrong.
The Merck Manual inflamed my imagination with all manner of fascinating diseases, their diagnosis and prognosis, and the recommended treatment.
I happily quoted clinical jargon, and got sent home for using 'bad language'.


I also read Candide by Voltaire.

Not because I was precocious and intellectual, which you might expect me to claim (I won't), but because the cover intrigued me.


THERE WAS A NAKED BREAST ON THE COVER!


A BEAUTIFUL GORGEOUS CREAM-HUED WELL-ROUNDED PERKY BREAST!!!

WITH A ROSY NIPPLE!!!!!


I read the entire book very attentively trying to find that breast.
Which, of course, also explains much of the Science Fiction I had read, as pulp-covers were delightfully lurid and imagination-sparking. You've seen the illustration style - buxom young thing with fruity cleavage is distressed in the fore-ground, a very handsome and erect rocket is in the middle distance, the mountains and sky in the background are not on earth.
Like Candide, the covers had very little if anything to do with the contents. But the Sci-fi was infinitely more interesting than Candide, much of which must have gone right over my head.


Now, at fifty years of age, I have little urge to read anymore Science-Fiction, but I think I ought to try reading Candide again.
Perhaps I will finally find that naked breast.
If I do, it will remind me of my well-spent youth.

7 comments:

NonymousG said...

this absolutely hilarious :)

Ari said...

Juvenile dilettante-delinquent, you were. Great portrait of you and your awesomely eccentric family.

Anonymous said...

..and lets be honest about exactly WHY 14 year old boys used to "read" National Geographic as well! A good issue of National Geographic, perhaps with a photo spread of some simple, un-clothed tropical peoples. I suspect that alot of adventure travel was inspired that way..

The back of the hill said...

..and lets be honest about exactly WHY 14 year old boys used to "read" National Geographic

Not really applicable in this case. I was already building a small collection of choice smut by that time - there was a lovely dirty bookstore three doors down from the tobacconist on the Aalsterweg in Eindhoven (just before the Leenderweg junction) where I bought snuff (Singleton's, made for the Germans and Swiss, those being the major remaining consumers of cheap powdered tobacco left in Europe).

They had a sheerly wonderful and very diverse collection of porn - glossy thick paper, high quality colour printing, damsels in sunlight, naughty bits..... something for every taste and every budget.

This was before the whole industry got taken over by cheap printing, cheap production values, cheap tarts.

Sometimes it seems like the only ones who still produce quality pornography are the Japanese, bless them.

The back of the hill said...

Of course, I could have purchased naughty mags much closer to home - instead of ten kilometers up the road.

There was a porn store on the Luikerweg, opposite Slijtery Smeets (excellent selection of Genever and wine - Mrs. Smeets came from a family that was several generations in the wine business). But in addition to that shop being too close to home, the selection was terrible. It was run by strenge Protestants with absolutely no taste.

The other pornostore in Valkenswaard was owned by the father of a classmate, and was a little seedy besides.

The back of the hill said...

And in my third year of highschool I discovered a deliciously degenerate "bookstore" on the Grote Berg Straat in central Eindhoven, near where I purchased art supplies, and just up the road from a cigar emporium run by a man with taste.

It was a clean well-lit place for obscenity. Very nice. Ashtrays at regular intervals to encourage prolonged browsing. Framed nudes doing unbelievable things hung on the walls above the shelves and racks.

All in all, a veritable buffet for the horny adolescent eye. Though it catered primarily to middle-aged businessmen.

jonathan becker said...

good memoir writing should cause the reader to both resent the lame, boring restrictiveness of his/her own upbringing, and at the same time thank his/her lucky stars for it.

well done, enjoying this current series very much.

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