Louis Paul Boon | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Louis Paul Boon (1967) | |
| Born | Lodewijk Paul Aalbrecht Boon (1912-03-15)15 March 1912 |
| Died | 10 May 1979(1979-05-10) (aged 67) Erembodegem, Belgium |
| Occupation(s) | author, poet, painter |
| Known for | My Little War (1947) Chapel Road (1953) Menuet (1955) Pieter Daens (1971) |
Lodewijk Paul Aalbrecht (Louis Paul) Boon (15 March 1912, inAalst – 10 May 1979, inErembodegem) was a Belgian writer of novels, poetry, pornography, columns and art criticism inFlemish. He was also a painter. He is best known for the novelsMy Little War (1947), the diptychChapel Road (1953) /Summer in Termuren (1956),Menuet (1955) andPieter Daens (1971).
He was born in 1912 asLodewijk Paul Aalbrecht Boon inAalst,Belgium, the oldest son in a working-class family. Although he was still very young during theFirst World War, memories of a German soldier shooting a prisoner would end up in later autobiographical work. Boon left school at age 16 to work for his father as a car painter.[2] He was expelled from school for possession of forbidden books. During evenings and weekends he studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts, but soon had to abandon his studies due to lack of funds. In 1936 he married Jeanneke De Wolf. Three years later, their son Jo was born.
In September 1939, Boon was mobilised and stationed as a soldier in Gooik and Tessenderlo. Boon was moved to Veldwezelt at the outbreak of World War II in May 1940 in order to defend the Albert Canal. However, he was captured as a prisoner of war on the first day and eventually sent home, after a few weeks in a prisoner camp. His experiences during the War and mostly the Occupation are the subject of Boon's fourth book,My Little War (1947).
After writing an unpublished novel, Boon's official debut came in 1942 withDe voorstad groeit (The suburb grows). It was awarded the Leo J. Krynprijs award at the recommendation ofWillem Elsschot. His next novel was loosely based on the life ofVincent van Gogh,Abel Gholarts (1944, not available in translation).
Boon started working as a journalist for the communist dailiesDe Rode Vaan (1945–1946),Front (1946–1947) andDe Vlaamse Gids (1948). Together with Maurice Roggeman, he also made a comic strip,Proleetje & Fantast, forDe Rode Vaan, for which he wrote storylines.[3] Later he contributed to the newspaperVooruit with which he established himself as afreelancer. In subsequent years, Boon continued to combine newspaper and literary work, and even added painting and sculpture to his activities. His literary output ranges from short prose, longer experimental novels, one man magazines, documentary and historical novels, poetry, erotic works and fairy tales.
Boon died in his home inErembodegem in 1979 at the age of 67.
His experiences during World War II and the Occupation are the subject of Boon's fourth book,My Little War (1947, translation 2010 by Paul Vincent,Dalkey Archive Press). With this title Boon emerged for the first time as an important innovator of the novel. Rather than containing one story, "My Little War" contains over thirty loosely interrelated chapters, each containing a story that can be read as an independent piece. Most stories describe the difficult circumstances of life during the Occupation, such as finding food and fuel to warm the house, some deal with the deteriorating sexual mores, and some treat more direct war experiences such as bombings. Yet the overarching structure, though well hidden, makes for a coherent whole as well. The stories are interspersed with numerous raw fragments about equally raw incidents during the Occupation as the short stories: rape, theft, treason, humiliation. Boon admitted that the work ofJohn Dos Passos provided the inspiration for this literary device. In this book, the term 'enemy' by no means signifies Germans exclusively, even though one story tells of the extermination of a Jewish girl and another of a camp prisoner's experiences. People are just as likely, if not more, to be robbed of food, money, or even their spouse's fidelity by their neighbours as they are by the Germans.
In 1953 he published the work that now stands as his greatest masterpiece,Chapel Road (De Kapellekensbaan, translated byAdrienne Dixon), which he began to write as early as 1943. Its dazzling construction combines several narrative threads, including an almost postmodern one where the writer and his friends discuss how the story should develop further. Another one is an extensive reworking of the most classic medieval work in the Dutch language, the twelfth-century story ofReynard the fox. There are several references toChapel Road in Boon's lengthy 1956 novelZomer te Ter-muren (Summer in Termuren), which picks up where the earlier novel left off.
Boon's literary legacy is a versatile, ranging from journalistic pieces on Belgian politics and society to erotic novelas. In historical novels such asDe Bende van Jan de Lichte,De zoon van Jan de Lichte,De Zwarte Hand, andDaens, he depicted the oppression of the working class in 18th centuryFlanders; in his controversialGeuzenboek, he wrote about the Spanish domination of theLow Countries in the 16th century. Nearly all of Boon's work was infused by his profound commitment tosocialism; inexperimental,modernistic works such asVergeten straat, Boon projected an ideal society but at the same time shared his doubts as to whether human nature could achieveutopia.
Boon was thought to have been shortlisted for aNobel Prize in Literature in the late 1970s, and even received an invitation to appear at the Swedish Embassy, probably to be told that the Prize had been awarded to him.[citation needed] The day before the appointment he died at his writing table of a heart attack. Very little of his writing has been translated into English, butDe Kapellekensbaan andZomer in Ter-Muren are both available in English translation fromDalkey Archive Press asChapel Road andSummer in Termuren, and Paul Vincent's translation ofMijn kleine oorlog (asMy Little War) was published by Dalkey in 2009.
