It has been quiet here for a long time. The main reason: my work on a novel. It is finished now! This week I sent in the manuscript of Het Laatste Jaar (The last year), that will be published by AtlasContact next april.
Though the novel has a fictive plot and does not claim to be comprehensive or factual, its subject is autobiographical: I try to tell the story of my friendship and collaboration with Martin Bril, who died in 2009, 49 years of age.
Our friendship goes back to the days of typewriters and phonebooths and we wrote each other many letters, that were to be the starting point for our debut in collaboration, Arbeidsvitaminen, het ABC van Bril&VanWeelden. That’s why so many typewriters appear in the novel, no, it’s more accurate to say the novel is narrated by typewriters who live after all among us humans and are the ideal spies to observe and tell all about what’s been going on.
In the picture above you see the meter-high shadow of my Olivetti Lettera 22, standing on its back on the table. It is the typewriter that narrates the entire part 3 of the novel and is the only typewriter in the book that changes owners.
You know what’s funny about Dutch? I can understand it roughly, being a Swiss-German native speaker.
I was pretty sure this is an Olivetti shadow, but I thought it was a Studio 42.
Comment by maschinengeschrieben — February 22, 2013 @ 11:03 am
And congratulations on getting published!
Comment by maschinengeschrieben — February 22, 2013 @ 11:03 am
Did you write the manuscript on the typewriter or in a word processor?
Comment by uair01 — February 23, 2013 @ 10:44 pm
Congratulations on completing your novel!
Comment by Richard P — February 27, 2013 @ 9:15 pm