The Discomfort Zone

As my time in Amsterdam starts its 6-month draw to a close, I increasingly feel that I have failed to fully engage with the city -- to learn more than transactional and yoga-related Dutch; to appreciate the myriad restaurants and cuisines (there's got to be more than broodje met kaas, right?); or to take advantage of the full range of cultural activities on offer, and I'm not just talking about the coffee shops and the ladies in the windows. It is therefore inevitable that, in these final months, I shall find myself out and about, buying tickets to dance and music, attending literary readings: in short, picking over the cultural bones of the 'Dam like an aesthetic vulture. (But, as I've mentioned before, no opera!)

And so it is proving. Two weeks ago it was the ballet; tonight, I accompanied friend Jessica from Leiden to a reading/interview with Jonathan Franzen, renowned American author of The Corrections and infamous snubber of Oprah's book club. He read from his new memoir, The Discomfort Zone -- an amusing chapter about bird watching that encompassed the death of his mother, his uncertainty around having children, and the onset of global warming -- and was then "interviewed" by a Dutch journalist. All very entertaining and enjoyable, particularly as he made the bold assertion (in the context of his audience) that art was, essentially, useless -- and should thus be celebrated for its very uselessness. After all, what other animal would devote so much time and energy to something so pointless? But, the audience found it hard to move beyond the "art is useless" opinion, failing to recognize the rhetoric of the embattled American liberal, weary of being attacked by the conservative right and the notion of the importance of utility in all things. Question after question centered around the notion of "usefulness", something that Franzen quite rightly alluded to as being more suited to a late-night discussion in a dorm room with some beer and those famous cigarettes from Amsterdam.

The moderator for the evening seemed to struggle somewhat in his role -- failing to divert the course of the conversation or questioning, prefering the grand statement about "art" or the nature of writing and failing to pick up on the seemingly evident humour or irony or sarcasm in Franzen's responses. Throwaway comments were treated with great seriousness. I've never watched much Dutch television over here; they're fond of broadcasting seemingly interminable "debates" from a studio one block down the canal. These usual consist of three or four middle-age men, enjoying the sound of their own voices and opinions, rather than actively engaging with each other. Well, that's what Jesscia told me this evening: Like I said, I tend to skip past these to David Caruso putting on his sunglasses of justice while promising little Timmy that he can call him any time he feels bad about his mother being murdered. Where was I? Oh yes, but at least this serious questioner was better than the moderator at the previous literary reading we attended together -- Candace Bushnell, author of Sex And The City. There, the moderator -- a well-known Dutch author -- was quite clearly drunk and quite fancied herself a Carrie Bradshaw, but coming across far more as a lewd, crude Samantha.

However, the evening served its purpose. I went out, interacted with the city and its citizens, caught up with Jessica, and ate some excellent sushi. I wish I had had the chance to ask a question -- something about blogging lowering the barriers to entry to publishing to a global audience, and the impact of this and all of us rank amateur writers upon this noble (if useless) profession -- but I was stuck at the end of a row and am incredibly shy at these things and the microphone would have been too high. But I got to take another pop at my Dutch peers and decided that I would buy The Corrections and probably also The Discomfort Zone. Well sold, Mr Franzen; well sold!