kip.stratton@natinst.com
Mon, 19 Jul 1999 09:39:25 -0500
In response to query about Janwillem van de Wetering, I like
his novels quite a lot, though I'm not sure I'd call them
exactly hardboiled or noir. They center around two Dutch
police detectives and the commissar (I believe that's how its
spelled; I'm away from my books right now) who floats above
them as a sort of Zen master. Janwillem spent a fair amount
of time in serious study of Zen while living in Japan. His
intellectual concerns are Oriental philosophy and European
nihilism, and his books are, therefore, pretty bleak for some
tastes. So I guess the existential nature of his work makes
it at least a first cousin of the hardboiled/noir
school.
By the way, his two classic memoirs of Zen training, THE
EMPTY MIRROR and GLIMPSE OF NOTHINGNESS, have at long last
been brought back to print over the past two or three months.
His new follow up to those two books, AFTERZEN, is in
bookstores now.
Kip
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