By Tom Kando
I just finished Dutch author Herman Koch's novel "HET DINER," published in 2009.Fabulous, fascinating, a page turner, impossible to put down. I swear, the Dutch have some awesome writing. Too bad much of it isn't translated and available to a much wider world-wide audience. "Het Diner" is both mesmerizing and deeply disturbing.
Quick summary: Two couples go out to dinner in a fancy restaurant. The entire book, the entire narrative, occurs during the 4 hours of that dinner. Everything else, the tragedies that unfold, are all brought into the story during that 4-hour episode, as earlier events, events occurring elsewhere in the city.
The book's main character - the "I" person, seemingly the author - , is Paul, an aparently normal, average (former) high-school teacher. His loving wife is Claire. The other couple consists of Paul's brother Serge, and his wife Babette. Serge is famous. He is in all likelihood the country's next prime minister. In the restaurant, in the streets, people recognize him and approach him admiringly.
Paul loathes his famous brother Serge. He can't stand Serge's phoniness and superficiality, his typical politician' persona.
There are many things that aggravate Paul, and he shares his many irritations with the reader - his contempt for his brother, for their absurd 500-euro dinner, for the idiotic waiters' pompous lectures about the fancy dishes they bring to the table, etc.
Paul seems above all to loathe hypocrisy, and to value honesty. He also deeply loves his family - his wife Claire and his teen-age son Michel. He philosophies how so many morons subscribe to political correctness and think that this allows them to be assholes. If you hate George W. Bush and you are anti-American, you are permitted to treat everyone like shit. So the reader likes Paul. He is a right-on guy.
Bit by bit as the evening unfolds and the fancy dinner progresses, the reader finds out recent and not so recent bone-chilling events in the life of this extended family - which comprises Paul, his big-shot brother Serge, and their respective children and wives:
Just hours earlier, Paul had accidentally put his son Michel's I-phone in his own pocket, something he only realizes when his son Michel calls him, at the restaurant. Michel bikes over to the restaurant to retrieve his phone from his dad. But before he gets there, his father snoops on him, picks up some of his phone messages and even sees a video recording his son, along with Serge's two teen-age sons, beating up a homeless man.
It gets worse: Later in the evening, we find out that some weeks earlier, the boys torched a homeless woman to death. The authorities dont have an leads about the grewesome murder, so unless someone talks, the boys will get away with it.
Paul and Claire, the parents for whom their beloved son can do no wrong, are hellbent on protecting Michel, counting on it that the murder will simply blow over.
On the other hand, Serge, the prospective future prime minister , feels that this is such an enormous skeleton in his family's closet that he has to withdraw his candicacy, i.e. sacrifice his entire political career.
We also find out, during dinner, that Paul has a history of violence, that he was fired as a high-school teacher, that he is on psychotropic medication, that he beat up his brother Serge mercilessly over a family argument, that he also beat to a pulp the high-school principal who crticized his son's term paper, etc.
In fact, Paul, with his wonderful values of honesty, straight-talk and uncompromising love and support for his son is an out-of control nutcase who doesn't mind hurting anybody who even mildly aggravates him, and who finds torching to death a homeless woman a "forgivable accident." To suggest that this might be "murder" is preposterous, in his delusional, self-righteous thinking. And when his son and nephews beat up old homeless men, Paul does not see this as skin-headlike behavior, but merely as a forgivable prank. His son is not a fascistoid monster (who also favors vigilantism and the pre-trial execution of suspects by "private" means) - he just made some mistakes. Paul's wife is not far behind, in this frame of mind.
There is a lot more to the story. I can't do justice to all the details, or to the final "denouement."
The main question one is left with is this: What exactly is Herman Koch telling us?
I have to be careful here. If I say, "Paul is an asshole, he is totally wrong, but Koch makes him out to be a noble figure," I run the risk of being seen as a simpleton who has misunderstood the entire book. Because maybe Koch's central point is precisely that Paul is a delusional psychopath who will go to any rationalization to protect his son, his family and his "happiness" (which he talks a lot about). This interpretation would be supported, for example, by reviewer Pieter Steinz (NRC Handelsblad), who describes the story as "Dr. Jekyll in the Watergraafsmeer," presumably feeling the same way about Paul as I do.
But is this sure? Or are we being told, in this morality tale, that Paul and his wife are actually very good guys? And that borther Serge is indeed an asshole? If this is what we are told, it's difficult to swallow. Serge, the phony and despicable politician, is prepared to sacrifice his political career, in view of the enormous evil that has occurred in his extended family.
Who is the asshole?
Okay, I know, one should not simplfy this complex novel, as I am trying to do. I am doing violence to it. The novel is sophisticated, as are Dutch writers, often. This is wonderful. The novel's strength is the AMBIGUITY it expresses regarding murder, evil, loyalty, love, honesty, hypocrisy. Maybe I should leave it at that, and not ask Koch: Who, finally, is the bad guy?" Maybe that is a stupid American question.
And yet, here is my conclusion, whether you like it or not: I find Paul an asshole, his brother less so. I find that when an innocent homeless woman is murdered and BURNT to death, by a gang of fascistoid teenagers whose hobby it is to beat up homeless people, then there is a cry for justice, i.e. for consequences, for punishment. I assume that Koch agrees,...but I am not totally sure...
© Tom Kando 2014
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