De Nederlandse schrijver en dichter J. Bernlef werd geboren op 14 januari 1937 in Sint Pancras. Zie ook alle tags voor J. Bernlef op dit blog.
Uit: Hersenschimmen
”Zakelijke aanpak, Maarten. Die man wil iets van je. Ze beginnen altijd vriendelijk, iets te amicaal. Dat verraadt hen meteen. Dat duidt altijd op achterliggende bedoelingen. Dan is de methode Simic geboden. Simic heeft het me na het werk een keer uitgelegd. We zaten in de cocktaillounge waar Karl na zijn werk altijd heen ging voor hij de ondergrondse naar huis nam. Een chique, wat duistere tent verdeeld in met donkerpaars fluweel beklede boxen met van die kelkvormige melkglaslampjes uit de jaren twintig op de tafeltjes. Simic, Karl Simic. Een Joegoslavische naam geloof ik. Spreek uit: Simmitsj. Daar ging hij iedere dag een paar whisky’s drinken. Ja, hij kon hem soms flink raken, die Karl.
‘Heb je dorst,’ vraagt Vera. ‘Je zit zo met je lippen te smakken.’
‘Whisky on the rocks.’
Er zit een man in de kamer met een boerse vierkante kop, met hangwangen, grote oorlellen en kortgeknipt stug blond haar. Hij is er. Hij lacht. Hij weet niets van de methode Simic. Hij heeft een fotoalbum op zijn schoot waar hij in bladert. Hij bekijkt één foto nauwkeurig en reikt me dan het opengeslagen album aan.
Uitgerekend een trouwfoto. Ben ik totaal niet in de stemming. Maar Simic zou zeggen: stelregel één: herhaal met beleefde glimlach de woorden van je gesprekspartner terwijl je ter ondersteuning vriendelijk met het hoofd knikt.
Tijdwinst is vooral aan het begin van een gesprek alles.
‘Is dat een foto van uw trouwen?’ vraagt de man.
‘Is dat een foto van uw trouwen?’
Kijk schuin omhoog, tussen hen door en geef knikjes met het hoofd. Dan zeg ik vlug achter elkaar zes keer ja. Dat is Simics tweede regel: beleefdheid tot rituele hoogten opgevoerd. Zelfs als je het nergens mee eens bent, begin met alles te bevestigen, maar ontneem door veelvuldige herhaling meteen weer bet bevestigende karakter aan wat je zegt.
‘Jajajajajaja.’
De Britse schrijver en journalist Edward St Aubyn werd geboren op 14 januari 1960 in Cornwall. Zie ook alle tags voor Edward St Aubyn op dit blog.
Uit: At Last
“‘Surprised to see me?’ said Nicholas Pratt, planting his walking stick on the crematorium carpet and fixing Patrick with a look of slightly aimless defiance, a habit no longer useful but too late to change. ‘I’ve become rather a memorial-creeper. One’s bound to at my age.
It’s no use sitting at home guffawing over the ignorant mistakes of juvenile obituarists, or giving in to the rather monotonous pleasure of counting the daily quota of extinct contemporaries. No! One has to “celebrate the life”: there goes the school tart. They say he had a good war, but I know better! – that sort of thing, put the whole achievement in perspective. Mind you, I’m not saying it isn’t all very moving. There’s a sort of swelling orchestra effect to these last days. And plenty of horror, of course. Padding about on my daily rounds from hospital bed to memorial pew and back again, I’m reminded of those oil tankers that used to dash themselves onto the rocks every other week and the flocks of birds dying on the beaches with their wings stuck together and their bewildered yellow eyes blinking.’
Nicholas glanced into the room. ‘Thinly attended,’ he murmured, as if preparing a description for someone else. ‘Are those people your mother’s religious friends? Too extraordinary. What colour would you call that suit? Aubergine? Aubergine à la crème d’oursin? I must go to Huntsman and get one knocked up. What do you mean, you have no Aubergine? Everyone was wearing it at Eleanor Melrose’s. Order a mile of it straight away!
‘I suppose your aunt will be here soon. She’ll be an all too familiar face amidst the Aubergines. I saw her last week in New York and I’m pleased to say I was the first to tell her the tragic news about your mother.“
Edward St Aubyn (Cornwall, 14 januari 1960)
De Japanse schrijver Yukio Mishima werd geboren op 14 januari 1925 in Tokyo. Zie ook ook alle tags voor Yukio Mishima op dit blog.
Uit: Confessions of a Mask (Vertaald door Meredith Weatherby)
„I was born two years after the Great Earthquake.Ten years earlier, as a result of a scandal that occurred while he was serving as a colonial governor, my grandfather had taken the blame for a subordinate’s misdeeds and resigned his post.Thereafter my family began sliding down an incline… huge debts, foreclosure, sale of the family estate, and then, as financial difficulties multiplied, a morbid vanity blazing higher and higher like some evil impulse.“
(…)
My parents lived on the second floor of the house.On the pretext that it was hazardous to raise a child on an upper floor, my grandmother snatched me from my mother’s arms on my forty-ninth day.My bed was placed in my grandmother’s sickroom, perpetually closed and stifling with odors of sickness and old age, and I was raised there beside her sickbed.
(…)
On NY morning just prior to my fourth birthday, I vomited something the color of coffee.THe family doctor was called.After examining me, he said he was not sure I would recover.I was given injections of camphor and glucose until I was like a pincushion.The pulses of both my wrist and upper arm became imperceptible.
Two hours lapsed.They stood looking down at my corpse.
A shroud was made ready, my favorite toys collected, and all the relatives gathered. Almost another hour passed, and then suddenly urine appeared.My mother’s brother, who was a doctor, said, “He’s alive!”He said it showed the heart had resumed beating.
A little later urine appeared again.Gradually the vague light of life revived in my cheeks.
That illness, autointoxication – became chronic with me.It stuck about once a month, now lightly, now seriously, I encountered many crises.By the sound of the disease’s footsteps as it drew near I came to be able to sense whether an attack was likely to approach death or not.“
De Chinese schrijfster Anchee Min werd geboren in Shanghai op 14 januari 1957. Zie ook alle tags voor Anchee Min op dit blog.
Uit:Pearl of China
“Before I was Willow, I was Weed. My grandmother, NaiNai, insisted that naming me Weed was better. She believed that the gods would have a hard time making my life go lower if I was already at the bottom. Papa disagreed. “Men want to marry flowers, not weeds.” They argued and finally settled for Willow, which was considered “gentle enough to weep and tough enough to be made into farming tools.” I always wondered what my mother would have thought if she had lived.
Papa lied to me about my mother’s death. Both he and NaiNai told me that Mother died giving birth. But I had already learned otherwise from neighbors’ gossip. Papa had “rented” his wife to the town’s “Baresticks” in order to pay off his debts. One of the bachelors got Mother pregnant. I was four years old when it happened. To rid her of the “bastard seed,” Papa bought magic root powder from an herbalist. Papa mixed the powder with tea and Mother drank it. Mother died along with the seed. It broke Papa’s heart, because he had intended to kill the fetus, not his wife. He had no money to buy another wife. Papa was angry at the herbalist, but there was nothing he could do — he had been warned about the poison.
NaiNai feared that she would be punished by the gods for Mother’s death. She believed that in her next life she would be a diseased bird and her son a limbless dog. NaiNai burned incense and begged the gods to reduce her sentence. When she ran out of money for incense, she stole. She took me to markets, temples, and graveyards. We would not act until darkness fell. NaiNai moved like an animal on all fours.“
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 14e januari ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag en eveneens mijn blog van 14 januari 2011 deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.